If that’s not all, I’m also still trying to fill the new parent role. I somehow doubt that two days is going to be enough time to get all that done.

What about you guys. Any exciting gadgets to play with over the weekend?

The $US69 Bamboo Touch is basically the product to add a multitouch trackpad to your laptop or desktop. The 5.0 x 3.5 inch surface is larger than the typical touchpad and supports all the typical gestures, including two finger zooming and scrolling. The Bamboo Pen costs the same amount and is, as you might expect, pen only. Then there is the $US99 Bamboo Pen and Touch for the best of both worlds. And the $US129 Bamboo Craft and $US199 Bamboo Fun that are larger and are bundled with lots of software.

I am still most intrigued by the Bamboo Touch since I think everyone should have the goodness of a multitouch touchpad and the ability to two finger swipe all day long. The new tablets work with both Mac and PCs (Win 7 support included) and are attached by a USB cord. [Wacom]

For more on this and Wacom, check out Chris’s post.

Wacom Australia’s managing director David Spencer backs up the claim, explaining that Wacom, with its new Bamboo range, is bringing multi-touch computing to the desktop for less than $100 and offers a product that combines multi-touch and pen interface for less than $160.

OK. Now you’re talking. I’ve long been a fan of Wacom tablets but only ever been able to afford one of the dinky A5 pen tablets without any of the fancy-schmancy bits (such as the 2nd gen Bamboo’s ExpressKeys) and so it spends a lot of time gathering dust. More affordable, more features = good.

However, an achingly long FAQ issued with the announcement reveals the company is quietly planning for world domination of the desktop input device market through innovation and clever positioning. Hang on, that sounds familiar. Oh yeah, business planning 101. Wacom, has it not ever been thus?

In other Wacom news, the company today also revealed a new suite of tools and applications developed exclusively for the Bamboo range are now available for free download. Bamboo Dock is a collection of applications and widgets, all developed around Adobe Air. Bamboo users can download the dock and review the available array of free tools or ‘Mini’s’ by reading overviews and user comments or watching videos that explain the function and use of each one.

Kind of like an app store, really. I popped in there just before posting this item to check out the goods. A couple caught my eye, among them a Twitter client that tweets doodles, and Mah Jong, which seems a game well suited to a tablet.

Wacom also played its hand in the Windows 7 game, announcing the launch of a new sensor system with support for the multi-touch functions built in to Windows 7, while re-iterating its support for current operating systems.

Wacom has just released their newest pen tablet, the Intuos4, with features that are sure to interest any aspiring digital artist. If you fall in that category, PC Magazine thinks you won’t be disappointed.

While it doesn’t compare to the Cintiq in terms of functionality, it also doesn’t carry the hefty price tag. For $US230 to $US790, Intuos4 users get a pad that features 2,048 pressure levels (with a starting pressure of one gram) and a software bundle that includes Colour Efex Pro and any two of the following programs: Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 for the PC (or Elements 6 for the Mac), Autodesk SketchBook Express 2010, and Corel Painter Sketch Pad. Essentially, the Intuos4 occupies that spot between the low end Bamboo and the high end Cintiq for users that need more than a basic tablet but are not ready to spring $US1000+ for the best of the best. [PC Magazine]

Wacom, the tablet and touchscreen company that’s made a name for itself in graphic design circles, is about to enter the club scene.

The entry is called Nextbeat, a music controller that lets prosumer DJs mix and manipulate their beats with a variety of touchscreen controls and a portable “pod” that docks with the main unit. In theory, it could allow DJs to leave the booth and enter the dance floor maelstrom, if they so choose.

The Nextbeat is slated for release in Europe (surprise) and Japan in the next few months. No pricing info was available, nor was there any mention of this portable beat box making an appearance Stateside. It will be on display, however, from March 24-28 in Miami Beach at the Winter Music Conference. Pacifier and glow sticks are not included [technabob]

Of course there’s the secondary screen, clocking in at 10.6 inches and popping out of the side of the 17-inch screen. But there’s also the built-in Wacom digitiser. And the fingerprint scanner. It is, frankly, awesome. But the cost of said awesomeness is size: this thing is an absolute tank.

Weighing in at about 5kg, this is more desktop replacement than portable computer. Sure, you could carry it around with you, but expect back problems if you try to do it too often. Oh, and the battery life? Two hours. Er, yeah. But for people who are looking for a boatload of functionality (not to mention two screens) in a laptop, there are few peers to the W700ds out there.

The Price: $US750

The Verdict: If the Kindle was the Sidekick of ebook readers, the iRex 1000S would be the G1. Its functionality is broad, but it lacks the stability, comfort and focus of Amazon’s perennially sold-out little snow speeder.
As a technology statement, the iRex is impressive: It’s the first ebook reader I’ve played with that has a 10-inch E-Ink screen. I’d seen the displays at tradeshows, but having one in my hand is different. It’s nice to have all of that real estate without a lot of weight and no backlight or glare. (I’m assuming the E-Ink upgrade is the main cause for the 1000S’s Hugh Jass price tag.) This is also the first ebook reader I know of with a Wacom touchscreen and an accompanying, almost Windows-like interface of pop-up menus and floating dialog boxes, plus the more typical launcher-style icons. This UI reveals the reader’s computer roots, which is exciting but also frustrating.

In the US, the debate between the Kindle and the Sony Reader is one of closed platform versus open one. (Ironic that Sony is the “open” platform here.) The Sony does have a DRM-heavy ebook retail operation, but it also plays, among other things, the many free PDF-format ebooks that are widely available on the internet. iRex doesn’t really help you buy books, but rather it equips you with a versatile array of options for easing “large documents” into its memory.

For one, you can “print” to the 1000S. It sounds high tech, but it basically involves converting the document you’re looking at in Windows to a special format that gets saved on the 1GB SD card the 1000S calls its home drive. Another means to get content is PressReader, a third-party Windows app that securely transmits “800 newspaper titles from 81 countries, including The Telegraph, Washington Post, USA Today, Die Welt, NRC Handelsblad, Le Figaro…”

The 1000S currently supports Adobe PDF, TXT, HTML as well as the DRM’d Mobipocket PRC, but I couldn’t figure out quite how to introduce the PRCs I did have to the system. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying the process isn’t as easy as 1, 2, 3. Along those lines, there’s a folder marked “Audible,” and another marked “music,” but it wouldn’t take my Audible recordings or MP3s and besides, without a speaker or headphone jack, I’m not quite sure what they’d do with them anyway.

A perfect example of how this advanced device makes no sense for Grandma (or even Mum, Dad, Big Sis, Big Bro, your kids, or any but the most nerd-tastic of your friends and neighbours) is the dictionary look-up function. I can set the stylus to instantly look up words that I tap, but when I do, the 1000S can’t find any dictionaries. The nice thing is, you can add as many dictionaries as you want to the thing, but I don’t happen to know where digital dictionaries come from. Maybe I’m dumb, but technology is supposed to help me with that, not make it all the more painfully obvious.

I wanted to like the iRex. Its nine capacitive buttons are a fun departure from the typical interfaces of the day, though I found myself using the stylus most of the time to get around. That scared me, because, as a Wacom touch surface—which you can even draw on—the screen itself doesn’t react to your finger. Lose that stylus, and you lose the easiest way to work the thing.

Though I am someone who thinks that a gadget like this is only as good as the lush garden of content surrounding it, I can see how people who are into shadier sourcing of ebooks would find the 1000S a way cooler alternative to Sony’s Reader. But for those people, I just hope that iRex works to make the firmware less buggy. In the few days I’ve been using it, I’ve had numerous freezes and crashes, and several full-battery false alarms—I thought the thing was fully charged only to find out, a half hour later, it was running on fumes.

If you do buy one—and the daring (+ rich) among you may want to—whatever you do, don’t pop out the SD card without selecting “Safely Remove.” That’s as bad as stealing Jobu’s rum. As in, very bad. [Product Page]

As far as nuts and bolts go, the W700 has a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Extreme quad core processor, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M graphics and dual HDD Bays configurable in RAID 0 or RAID 1 (SSDs are an option). Display outputs include Dual-Link DVI, VGA and Display Port (no HDMI, sorry). The computer also has a full number pad, 7-in-1 card reader, five USB Ports, and the option for a BD-RE Drive and Compact Flash reader (you can finally leave your card reader at home).

The Lenovo W700 will be available in September, starting at around US$3000. But with RAM and HDD configurations, that price could be much higher. [Lenovo]

Lenovo Unleashes PC Beast on Mobile Workstation Market with ThinkPad W700
Delivers Industry’s First Built-in Digitizer and Colour Calibrator Along with Ultimate Power, Multimedia and Display Technologies

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – August 12, 2008: Lenovo today introduced the ThinkPad W700, a 17-inch widescreen mobile workstation engineered with game-changing technologies and innovations to exceed the demands of the most data and graphics-intensive users. Lenovo brings the industry’s first built-in digitizer and colour calibrator to a mobile workstation and combines these innovations with first-in-market technologies such as new NVIDIA® Quadro FX mobile graphics and supporting the upcoming Intel® mobile quad core processor. Other features such as optional dual hard drives with RAID configurations, up to 8 GB of high speed DDR3 memory, a range of wireless connectivity options and excellent multimedia capabilities including an optional Blu-ray™ DVD burner/player make the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation the standard-bearer for power and performance in a mobile workstation.

“Lenovo has engineered a new breed of mobile workstation with the ThinkPad W700,” said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo. “No other PC manufacturer has a mobile workstation that delivers the sheer power, performance and cutting-edge innovation that Lenovo has packed into the ThinkPad W700. The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation flat out delivers the command performance our customers demand at the desk as well as in the field.”

According to IDC, the compound annual growth rate for the worldwide mobile workstation market has been more than 60 percent per year since 2002.1The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation extends Lenovo’s commitment to workstation users, complementing Lenovo’s W500 mobile workstation and ThinkStation S10 and D10 workstations. As workers in fields such as digital content creation, computer-aided design and manufacturing, digital photography and science fields including the oil and gas industries become increasingly mobile, they are demanding the full-featured performance of a desktop workstation in a mobile workstation.

First-in-Industry Engineered Innovation
The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation takes customer driven innovation to a new level with an optional built-in palm rest digitizer and colour calibrator. Lenovo and Intel collaborated to integrate the colour calibrator and digitizer into the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation. Designed for digital content creators and users, the mobile workstation’s digitizer helps them easily configure an image, either mapping it to the entire screen or to an area defined by the user. High performance users, especially digital photographers, will benefit from models with the built-in colour calibrator as colour continues to play an important role in their work. The calibrator automatically adjusts the display’s colour in up to half the time of many external calibrators and with higher accuracy, resulting in the most accurate, true-to-life images in an integrated package. Together with the upcoming Intel® mobile quad core processor, multimedia designers and animators now have outstanding quad-core processor performance and true colour replication that is critical for realistic digital creations and workflow efficiencies.

Super-Charged Performance Unleashed
Supporting the latest Intel processor technologies including the upcoming mobile quad core processor, the mobile workstation can be configured with up to 8 GB of memory with an additional 2 GB of Intel Turbo Memory. Lenovo also offers models with Intel® vPro™ technology for complete manageability. The mobile workstation can be equipped with dual internal hard drives, including solid state drive storage. The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation offers both the NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 2700M and 3700M Open GL graphics processors with up to 1 GB of dedicated video memory for exceptional graphics performance in a 17-inch mobile workstation. The hard drives can be configured for RAID 0 to help users access and save their data faster than traditional disk-writing methods, or users can choose RAID 1 for mirrored data redundancy.

The mobile workstation includes WiFi wireless connectivity. Additionally, users can connect to other devices wirelessly using mobile workstation models featuring Bluetooth and ultra wideband technology. Models supporting WiMAX will be available later this year.

New Heights in Display Technology and Multimedia Excellence
As the company’s first product with a 17-inch display, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation delivers an unparalleled viewing experience with a combination of leading technologies. Its optional 400-nit WUXGA display provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstation models, and the 72 percent wide colour gamut provides more than 50 percent greater colour intensity. The high resolution, extreme brightness and wide colour gamut coupled with the NVIDIA Quadro FX MXM graphics solution results in a user experience unequalled in a mobile workstation today. For external connectivity, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation provides support for Dual Link DVI, Display Port and VGA. A 7-in-1 multicard reader, and five USB ports give users flexibility in transferring and accessing digital content. Additionally, the workstation comes with an optional compact flash reader and Blu-ray™ DVD burner/player. An optional mini-dock extends the mobile workstation’s capabilities with eSATA and digital audio ports as well as convenient cabling for power, external monitors and peripherals.

Packed for extreme performance, the mobile workstation also features BIOS/port disablement and an optional fingerprint reader, a smartcard reader and hard drives with full-disk encryption. It will carry more than 20 certifications from independent software vendors.

“Our engineers use Lenovo ThinkStation workstations to help them design the next-generation Williams – Toyota FW31 race cars, aiming to make them faster and more agile, with greater performance than the competition,” said Chris Taylor, IT manager, AT&T Williams. “We’re
thrilled to see Lenovo deliver the workstation performance we’ve come to rely on – now in a mobile, portable solution.”

Pricing and Availability2
The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation will be available beginning in September with models starting at $2,978. It is available through Lenovo Business Partners and www.lenovo.com.

[Lenovo]