Previews and Reviews

Thinking of buying an iPad? Getting a little obsessed with it, maybe? Counting down the days until it goes on sale? You’re not alone, and I won’t pretend I don’t share some of your enthusiasm. But there may be a compelling reason to wait a little while before you buy one. The Marketbeat blog at WSJ.com reported today that Apple will stay “nimble” on iPad pricing and apparently doesn’t feel locked in to the numbers they revealed the other week.

The report comes from Credit Suisse analyst Bill Shope, recounting some things Apple execs said in meetings with the financial services group. The $499 to $829 price spread may actually go down if demand for the iPad doesn’t meet expectations. Perhaps Apple is a bit worried since, according to Marketbeat, shares are down 5.5% since the iPad’s launch.

This may be bad news for Apple fanboys but good news for consumers. $499 is a pretty aggressive price, but if the higher capacity versions came down closer to that, it could tempt more of those people who know about the iPad but just aren’t interested in it.

Of course, this is all academic to those of you out there who never buy first generation devices anyway. Being an early adopter may seem cool, but all too often we play the role of beta tasters and shell out large sums for the privilege of doing so. Let’s hope that’s not the case this time.

Well, that was quick. Just a month after Nexus One debuted as the first and only phone with Android 2.1, giving it a slight edge over slightly older Android handsets, Motorola announced, via its Facebook page, that it will begin rolling out the updated OS to Droid owners beginning next week.

Just a refresher: most of Android 2.1’s benefits over 2.0 are pure eye candy. This version of Android, the most up-to-date at the moment, includes animated backgrounds, five home screens instead of three, and a three-dimensional App launcher. Its best features, including free turn-by-turn navigation, are already available on phones with Android 2.0, such as the Droid.

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Now that we’re done with Apple rumors, how about some Sony tablet rumors? There was a bit of buzz generated last week when Sony’s CFO, Nobuyuki Oneda, said that the company is “very interested” in getting in on the tablet market and “confident we have the skills to create a product.”

This isn’t too surprising as just about every computer or electronics company has caught tablet fever. However, given that Sony is going for the whole universal media experience with their expansion of the PlayStation Network to encompass a wider range of devices from laptops to calculator watches, it makes sense for them to create yet another access point to this portal of entertainment goodness.

Sony already has the elements of a great tablet scattered throughout their various divisions. In a perfect world, they’d all come together to create one kickin’ device. Here are 5 things we’d like to see in a tablet from Sony based on the technology we’ve seen from them so far:

1. PSP Gaming Capability – These days tablets are almost synonymous with multimedia tablets, and I’d particularly expect this of Sony due to their already excellent mobile gaming platform. The core purpose of a Sony tablet wouldn’t need to be games or entertainment, but taking what’s good about the PSP and adding a bigger screen would be a great first step. Click here to read 2 – 5

It’s that time of year again. Your W-2 and 1099 forms have come in the mail, you’ve gotten all your receipts in one place, and you’re just about ready to start doing your taxes. You don’t want to end up spending big money on an accountant so you need tax software. Fortunately, you won’t have to break the bank on that either because Amazon has great discounts on preparation programs.

The discounted tax prep programs include:

TurboTax 2009

• TurboTax Deluxe 2009 ($47.49): E-files both state and federal tax returns. (Buy It)
• TurboTax Premier 2009 ($65.54): Investment guidance and rental property deductions are offered in addition to the features found in the Deluxe version. (Buy It)
• TurboTax Home & Business  2009 ($67.44): Includes all the features of  TurboTax Premiere plus help for self-employed workers. (Buy It)

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Immediately following Apple’s iPad announcement last week reactions to the device ranged widely both from tech bloggers and from casual observers of the Apple tablet madness. Plenty of people praised the iPad as being revolutionary, others expressed disappointment that it didn’t live up to the (admittedly over-the-top) pre-announcement hype, and still others dismissed it as “just a big iPhone.” Tech journalists and bloggers will argue back and forth on the merits or detriments of the device for the next couple of months, but the key thing in determining if the iPad will be a hit is whether consumers are interested in buying it.

Retrevo Pulse conducted a study to determine consumer interest in the product, comparing answers from before the launch when the tablet was still mythical and the week following its unveiling. Before January 27th, the number of people who’d heard about the device but weren’t interested in buying one was 26%. 19% were interested in seeing what the device looked like and 3% wanted to buy one. But after the announcement, consumer opinion shifted. Click here to read more.

It’s over! Firefox has passed Internet Explorer . . . at least when it comes to Laptopmag.com users. Checking out our stats today, Firefox has overtaken IE as 38.5 percent of our online audience (past 30 days) visited with the open-source browser while 38.16 percent were using Microsoft’s alternative. Google Chrome took third place with 11.65 percent while Apple Safari managed a decent 7.64-percent share. Other browsers, including Opera, made up the tiny balance.

While the difference between IE and Firefox is only .34 percent, it’s quite telling that nearly 62-percent of our visitors choose to use something other than IE. That’s pretty startling, when you consider Internet Explorer has historically controlled the lion’s share of the browser market and, even this week,  NetMarketShare.com released a survey showing that, for all Web sites, IE continues to maintain a 62.12-percent share, exactly the opposite of what our users are doing.

Internet Explorer has home field advantage, because it comes pre-installed in all versions of Windows. However, it seems that more and more users are seeing how slow Microsoft’s browser is and upgrading to something better. We were shocked last week when we compared IE 8 to Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari and found that it took a whopping 18 seconds to open where others took less than 4 seconds!

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Palm Pre, Pre Plus, Pixi, and Pre Plus users that have been envious of their smartphone brethren’s ability to listen to Slacker Radio while on the go no longer have a reason to have a green eye. Today, Slacker announced that U.S. and Canadian Palm webOS users can now tune into their favorite tunes courtesy of the free Slacker Radio app.

As with other Slacker apps for BlackBerry and iPhone, users can create custom stations,  fire up over 120 expert-programmed genres,  and over 10,000 artist stations. Additional features include an intuitive interface and the ability for listeners to personalize each station based on their music tastes.

Slacker also serves up artist biographies, album reviews, album art, and “peek ahead” artist and album previews.  Liked songs can be favorited, and ones that you don’t find quite as appealing can be banned.

If you’re ready to jam, the Slacker app is available now.

Hey Nexus One users, I know you’re still celebrating your bloodless coup over Google — the spoils of war being the duly deserved but unjustly denied multitouch action that the Nexus One lacked until yesterday’s Android 2.1 software update – but as your fingers do the pinch happy dance, consider these wise words: pinch-to-zoom alone does not a great browser make.

Although Android’s stock browser is all the better for its newfound multitouch functionality, it’s far from the best option for browsing the web at the highest echelon of gesture-based interfaces. That award lies with Dolphin Browser 2.0, which takes multitouch-enabled browsing to the next level and gives you a few cool tricks not found  in other Android browsers. We reviewed Dolphin 2.0 last week, but in case you’re curious, here are five reasons it’s better than the stock Android browser, even when the stock browser is armed with pinch-to-zoom.

1. Additional Multitouch Gestures –  Dolphin’s smartest feature is by far the use of customizable touch gestures. Twenty-three commands like “Bookmark a Page”, “Save Link to Read It Later”, “Browse Forward”, or “Browse Backward”, etc — can be set to execute with a single-stroke gesture defined by the user. Can you use your finger to draw a circle in Nexus One’s browser and have the current web page refresh itself? Nope.

2. Start a Tab, or Six – If you’re the kind of stimulation-seeking Web surfer who sits at a desktop PC with 15, 20, 25 tabs open in a single Firefox session, you’ll appreciate Dolphin Browser’s ability to browse the net with as many as six tabs. Sure, it’s not 25 active webpages, but it is six more tabs than the baked-in browser can perform.

Read for these featurues: swipe navigation, RSS finder, and YouTube downloads

Sony’s VAIO W Eco Edition netbook, priced at $480, seeks to appeal to a wide range of users. The eco-conscious, of course, with a chassis made from 20% recycled material and a 100% recycled carrying case. Plus parents shopping for a netbook that’s safe to give their young ones, thus it’s pre-loaded with a kid-safe browser and some hefty parental controls. Then there’s the multimedia fans who will appreciate the HD screen and robust webcam software. And I would hazard that the color scheme indicates a desire to attract female consumers.

There’s no doubt the VAIO W is full of appealing features and attributes and will shrink your carbon footprint, but is it worth the $80 premium? Click here to read our full review to see how this netbook measures up to the competition.

Not content to let Apple’s iPad have all the attention, Google has released “visual explorations of how a Chrome OS tablet UI might look in hardware.” The concept drawings come courtesy of the Chromium project, the same same group working on Google’s upcoming Chrome OS. On the concept page, Google notes that possible features of a Chrome-based tablet include “keyboard interaction with the screen: anchored, split, attached to focus” and “contextual actions triggered via dwell.”

We were both amazed and confused by the rendering above, which shows a split keyboard. Other renderings show a keyboard that takes up the full width of the screen or half the screen. However, this one reminds us of the goofy layout on the Microsoft Natural Keyboard. We’re not sure how we feel about that.

Google has also released a video, detailing its concept. You can view that video below.

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