Gizmodo Australia » computex 2009

Leftover Bits From Computex…

Nick Broughall — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:00:16 +0000

Thanks to my Friday flight back from Taipei, Monday’s public holiday and yesterday’s switch to a new CMS, I haven’t been able to share with you some of the bits and pieces I found over at Computex last week. Until now…

First up, I managed to have a little hands on time with the Sharp netbook with an LCD trackpad. I wouldn’t really call it quality time though – the computer was obviously designed for the Japanese market, and all I could get it to do was have a sparkle follow my finger around in an underwater setting. Still, it was enough to offer hope that there’s a real future for LCD trackpads, especially if it can really become a dynamic secondary display.

I also enjoyed a hands on with a couple of upcoming phones: The Asus Garmin nüvifone and the HTC Snap. First up, the nüvifone:

It looks like a really nice handset. Really nice. The UI is clean and pretty intuitive. Everything revolves around the GPS side of things really, which isn’t surprising considering the Garmin partnership, and that’s nice, but even so, you can’t help but think that it’s going to struggle. Firstly, there’s no app store, and because it’s running a custom UI, that means that you only get what comes with the phone. Or in aother words, disappointment. Secondly, it still hasn’t been released, even though it was announced years ago. The Asus lady reckoned it would be shipping worldwide next month, but couldn’t say one way or another whether Australia was included in this world of hers. Of course, there was a whole comedy of errors in the communication between us there, so who really knows when it will launch.

The second phone was the HTC snap, and truth be told – I reckon I might be able to tolerate Winmo for this phone. It’s gorgeous. It’s extremely comfortable to hold and is built extremely well. The keyboard’s comfortable to type on, and the extra button down the bottom that gives you immediate access to emails from your most important contacts is simple and genius at the same time. Because this one was on the Microsoft stand as part of their Windows Mobile display, nobody could tell me anything about release dates, let alone if we’d see it in Australia. But my fingers are crossed.

The Asus stand was filled with all the Eee PCs and Eee nettops and any other Eee you can think of, naturally, but they also had this pretty funky monitor. At first I thought it was a nettop rather than just a run of the mill display, but eventually I realised that the Full HD screens were simple monitors dubbed “visual artpieces” with a 50,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, HDMI input and a 2ms response time. And the stand is awesome, as you can see.

Finally, what would a trip to Asia be without a robot? MSI provided with their greeting robot, which had five motors in each arm, weighed 40kg and an automatic navigation system, that would let it roam the show floor without going on an inadvertant murderous rampage. Which is pretty impressive, considering it was running XP. The 24V battery gives the robot 2 hours of battery life, while the 20 IR and sonar sensors let it work its mojo on show-goers. Still, every robot needs to recharge, and I caught the MSI right at naptime, as you can see below.

There were a lot of things to see at Computex this year, and this is obviously just the tiniest sample. I have a few more Computex stories to share though, so stay tuned over the next week or so.

Hybrid Android/XP Tablet/Laptop Looks Nice, Has Me Confused

Jesus Diaz — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:30:00 +0000

At first this seems like a good idea: A tablet that runs Android in stand-alone mode. Then you connect it to an HP Mini 1000 netbook and it will run Windows XP.

Then I wonder how the data—the address book, the music, calendar, etc.—will be kept synchronized between its Android and XP personalities. Did they manage to share data structures between the two operating systems? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just a funky prototype that doesn’t really work at all. [Crunchgear]

Acer’s Android Netbook Will Come With Windows, Fail at Being an ‘Android Netbook’

John Herrman — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 11:03:21 +0000

When a company says they’re working on an Android netbook, people make assumptions: they’ll come up with a fresh UI; they’ll cater the netbook’s hardware to Google’s lightweight OS; they’ll make it cheap. Acer is doing none of these things.

Their Android netbook will actually be a Windows XP netbook, in that it’ll ship in a dual-boot configuration. This sounds harmless enough, but it’s not:

[Acer Chairman] Wang pointed out that the dual-OS strategy is much safer for Acer since consumer acceptance of the Android platform is unclear for the time being…Acer will be able to promote Android as a value-added feature, similar to Asustek Computer’s Express Gate, to account for any price premium.

To characterise Android as a value-added feature is to miss the point entirely, the point being that Android is free, and XP is not. Bundling a gimpy, largely untouched version of Android into an existing netbook relegates the OS to novelty status, which isn’t what we—or any other netbook watchers—had in mind earlier this week. [Digitimes]

Computex Spawns Hellish ‘MID Phone’ Phenomenon

John Herrman — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:57:25 +0000

New device categories almost invariably fall between preexisting ones. Sometimes they find a useful niche, like netbooks. Other times, they seem like obsessive compulsive attempts to fill a tiny, intentional gap in the spectrum of consumer electronics. Like MID phones!

These confusing little monsters have been popping up all over Computex. They’re essentially mobile internet devices, except outfitted with voice-ready 3G SIM slots and marketed as handsets. Like most Mobile Internet Devices, they’re Atom-based Windows XP devices, which means their batteries last, oh, about three hours, and that they’re too big to be pocketable. As for why anyone would want a phone number permanently assigned to one of these devices, I have no idea.

The whole thing is even stranger when you consider what else is being shown at Computex, namely products based on Intel’s upcoming Moorestown platform and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, two solutions that could potentially be used to build a new generation of more powerful, MID-like smartphones, that, at least for the tasks at hand, would actually outperform these clunky Atom mongrels, while lasting long enough to actually consider using. Oh, Computex. [Pocketables]

Atom-Based Ferrari Makes Up for Lack of Horsepower With Extreme Levels of Novelty

John Herrman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:10:00 +0000

There really isn’t a whole lot that distinguishes a conference like Computex from a real life version of the Ben Heck forums: yesterday, we saw a PC in a vase; today, an Atom-based net-top in a Ferrari.

We don’t know much about this mini-Modena, except that it’s got netbookish guts and some definite kid appeal. And the people who made this thing really committed to it, custom-molding the body and optical drive tray, all in the honourable service of whimsy. For this, I cannot fault them. [Engadget]

Microsoft Wants to Rebrand Netbooks ‘Low-Cost Small Notebook PCs’

John Herrman — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:01:07 +0000

Microsoft wants us to move away from the term “netbook”, instead referring to the tiny, cheap laptops, which the company says demand recognition for handling more than just browsing, as—brace yourselves—”low cost small notebook PCs”, according to Digitimes. Sorry, Intel!

Steven Guggenheimer, general manager of Application Platform & Development Marketing, outlined the plan in a speech yesterday at Computex. The theory behind the push, according to the report, is tied up with Microsoft’s overstrict definition of “netbook”, as gleaned from Windows 7 Starter Edition’s alleged maximum specs.

The thinking is, I guess, that Microsoft would look bad for deeming one notebook as eligible for the discounted OS and not another, when the only difference between the two is an inch in screen size or a extra stick of RAM. By changing the term from “netbook” to the more descriptive, performance-aware “low cost small notebook PC,” they can base the slim version of Windows 7 around that term’s definition—which they are free to write—and avoid clashing with the public’s broad preconceptions about what a netbook is.

Microsoft is planning to outline this plan in more detail today, but from here it looks a little silly. Microsoft can construct as many internal device categories as it wants, but to customers, a netbook will still be a netbook, and Windows 7 Starter Edition will be unreasonably exclusive. [Digitimes]

Thank The Gods That Windows 7 Doesn’t Look Like This

Nick Broughall — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:30:27 +0000

Seen on the Computex floor showcasing somebody’s cheap and nasty peripherals, this cheap and nasty version of Windows 7* actually makes me jump on the Microsoft anti-piracy bandwagon.*Obviously, it’s just a copy of XP with a “Windows 7″ wallpaper. The real question here is what would inspire someone to actually stick this on display at a mjor regional tradeshow, when Windows 7 is actually free at the moment. Crazy.

[Giz@Computex]

Computex Has Smell-o-Vision!

Nick Broughall — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:00:19 +0000

Sure, it’s only designed for advertising purposes, and isn’t actually a real “real-world product” just yet, but this odourous display system from Taiwanese company GVision International was a pleasant surprise on the Computex floor.The smell-o-vision system is controlled by an 1.6GHz Atom-based PC running XP, 512MB RAM and an 80GB HDD. It runs the company’s smell-o-vision software to synchronise the video being displayed with a perfume module mounted on the side of the screen.

You can use any screen with the system, and at the moment the system is capable of expunging two scents, although the guy at the booth promised that soon they’d be able to push it up to 10 different flavours (odours). It was working pretty well while I was there – displaying a couple of perfume ads and pumping out a spray of each perfume at certain points during the commercials.

The guy on the stand wouldn’t talk price with me, but did say that they could scale to mass production very quickly (of course he’d say that though).

It’s a long way off moving into your loungeroom though, so don’t get too excited just yet…

[GVision, plus more Giz @ Computex]

Retromodo: Intel’s First Notebook Wasn’t Quite Netbook Worthy

Nick Broughall — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:30:39 +0000

Apparently Intel have a museum of old machines like this old model designed in Taiwan. It was based on their 386 SX processor, had a 16MB HDD, 1 hour battery life and ran DOS. The scariest part – it was only 19 years ago that this bad boy was considered cutting edge…

[Giz @ Computex]The antique laptop was shown off by Navin Shenoy during his keynote at the Intel Mobility Event at Computex yesterday. Funnily enough, in a sea of shiny new netbooks and notebooks, this was the product that really stood out from the crowd (although it wasn’t necessarily in a good way).

DigiLife Crams a Pico Projector Into a Pocket Camcorder

Dan Nosowitz — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:00:00 +0000

DigiLife’s DDV-JF1 pocket camcorder rocks mostly the same features as other mini-cams like the Flip HD, including 720p recording and a 2.5-inch LCD. But it’s got a trick up its sleeve—a 640×360 pico projector built right in. No word on price or availability yet, though. [Engadget]