Just last week, we were reporting that eLocity would be bringing out 7 new Android tablets – the A10.x series. (Replace .x with #1-#7.) eLocity caught my attention with a decent-sized CES booth on the show floor and I rushed over immediately to check them out. We learned that most of the tablets would be running Android 3.0 Honeycomb – which was the biggest drawing factor – but the units on display were all on Froyo with a slightly-modified launcher. None of the other software included has been customized as of today.

The official announcement told us to expect 7 10-inch tablets, but there were only 3-4 of the 7 on display (alongside the current A7 model.) They’re all powered by NVIDIA Tegra 2 processors, have HDMI, have front-facing cameras, and 512MB of RAM. The differences are going to be in screen size, operating system version, and storage space. (Configurations range from 16GB-250GB, apparently.

It’s clear that Froyo wasn’t taking full advantage of the Tegra 2 processor as things were a bit sluggish in my brief testing, but these tablets definitely deserve a re-look once they’re launched sometime this month or early next with Honeycomb or Gingerbread on board. Take a look at my quick demo of the thing on video above.

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As someone who has subscribed to National Geographic frequently through the years, amassed several shelves of the magazine, reaches for it first at any dentist office visit (my dentist doesn’t subscribe to Wired) and continues to make use of the magazine in my kids’ school projects, I was quite interested when the offer came through to test out the latest library release from the publisher. This version ships on an external hard drive, negating the inconvenience factor of swapping out a bunch of CDs or DVDs. Gadgetlab had a look at this last Christmas, but I thought it was worth revisiting.

The Complete Gational Geographic on 160 GB Hard Drive (image from National Geographic)

The Complete National Geographic houses every issue of the magazine from 1888 through 2009 on a compact external hard drive and retails for $199.99. It’s a 160 GB USB 2 drive measuring approximately 3″ by 5″ and 3/4″ tall, powered by your computer’s USB port, so no power brick to worry about. It includes a Mini USB to dual USB 2.0 connectors Y-style cable, so if one port on your computer is insufficient to power the drive, you can plug the second USB cable in. I only needed one cable on the iMacs and a MacBook Pro I tried it with. Computer requirements are quite modest (minimum OSX 10.4.11 and a 1GHz PowerPC processor on the Mac side and 1 GHz Pentium III with Windows XP for PC users).

The installation process was a little rough -at least on a Mac. It’s a simple enough, double-click installation with the usual licensing agreements (including for Adobe Air), but once it started, the progress bar trundled away until it hit the midway point, where it remained frozen for about five minutes.  Just when I was wondering if it had crashed, the installer finally popped up a dialog box for the Adobe Air installation, after which it suddenly jumped ahead to 3/4 complete. Adding to the confusion, components of the installation throw up their own progress windows, so there are sometimes two installation/progress windows on screen at the same time.

When you launch, you’re greeted by the familiar National Geographic refrain (if you don’t like having sound, it’s easily turned off with a toggle switch).

The interface could use some work. It’s very busy and not exactly intuitive, however once you actually open an issue and begin reading, the process is straightforward. Flipping pages is accomplished with prominent forward and back arrows. Mousing over a page reveals additional controls, including zoom, bookmarking and print, however there’s also a magnifying glass icon. Most of us have become conditioned to think of that magnifying glass as a zoom, but in this case it’s used to search for related articles. I found that if I re-size the window, it would result in a sketchy “preview” version with a “Loading Page please be patient” icon on top. I’m a pretty patient guy, but even on a decently powered machine, loading this page was taking forever. If I gave up and flipped to the next page, everything was fine- instantaneous rendering of both text and photos. I think this may be an Adobe Air issue.

Quibbles about the UI aside, it’s incredible to have every issue of National Geographic, from 1888 through 2009 contained on a single volume, complete with text, photos, maps and even the advertisements. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 articles and 200,000 photos from over 1,400 issues. As a parent, this is an invaluable school resource. As someone adopting a digital lifestyle, it’s even more space saved on the bookshelves -too bad I can’t export these onto my eBook reader…

Search functions are quite powerful (with the ability to drill down to maps, advertisers and contributors on top of expected options like feature articles). You can choose to browse by year, choose an Issue browsing option that anyone familiar with iTunes will recognize as being very similar to Coverflow and you can also use a Microsoft bing powered geobrowsing option. There are useful extras such as a Trivia game, bookmarking, reading lists and print capability. A bonus DVD is also included that includes photography tips and other useful information. There is an update function for software, but the one thing I’m not sure about is whether the collection can be extended by purchasing digital copies of issues after the 2009 collection cut-off. If I find out the answer to this one, I’ll let you know.

The Complete National Geographic: UI is visually appealing, but confusing (screencapture by Brad Moon)

While doing so may run contrary to licensing agreements, it’s quite simple to duplicate the drive as a disk image on your laptop or computer (not that we’re recommending you do so), so you have full access to the content without having to drag the external hard drive everywhere (while it’s a 160 GB drive, the actual data volume of the drive is considerably smaller, making for a 63 GB disk image). Doing so also makes the application considerably snappier in performance. Those looking for a less expensive alternative could pick up the same collection on DVD-Rom through Amazon for $79.99 or less and either deal with the disc shuffling or try a local install. Portable USB 2.0 hard drives of this capacity go for around fifty bucks, so at $200, basically you’re paying around a $70 premium for the convenience/cool factor of hard drive over optical disc.

Disclosure: National Geographic supplied a Complete National Geographic hard drive for this review.

Wired: Every National Geographic ever on your computer!  You get a pretty useful little external USB drive that can be re-purposed.

Tired: Installation process is far from smooth, user interface is a bit of a confusing mess, considerably more expensive than DVD-Rom version.

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Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Photos of candy sculptures: Massimo Gammacurta

View full post on Product Reviews | Wired.com

Several months ago, I ranted a bit about the problems I had with my Vista desktop computer. After that article, I was contacted by Michael Simpson  of Iolo Technologies about their product, System Mechanic.

System Mechanic is a an overall system cleaner. I thought it was definitely worth trying, especially since the eldest minion, my teenage daughter, often forgets to do what she’s supposed to do with basic programs like CCleaner, by Piriform. I wanted to see if there was a better way to keep her PC healthy.

I  downloaded copies of System Mechanic on three computers: the newly-upgraded Windows 7 desktop, the Windows XP desktop used by the eldest minion, and the Windows XP desktop used by the youngest son, the tech genius minion.

The tech genius minion was the most skeptical of the three of us about System Mechanic. His objection was that you could download free programs that would do everything that this program does. He finally agree to try it after seeing it in action on my computer.

Downloading was simple and I had no glitches. The first full scan took several hours but I was able to keep the computer up and running during it without suffering any significant loss of processing speed.

Once the full scan was done, the program recommended a number of repairs.

Now, here’s where I really started to like it because System Mechanic explained both what it had found and why it needed to be fixed. I’m not a computer or tech expert thought I’ve learned bits and pieces along the way. So having a program explain, in simple English, what it was doing was not only a nice feature but it also taught me something.

After the tech genius minion saw the list of repairs that System Mechanic recommended on my desktop, he changed his mind about it. He still believes that you could get free programs to do what it does but it would take several different programs and they wouldn’t do it as efficiently as this one program. He wanted me to say he thinks it’s significantly improved his processing speed.

But here’s the part I really, really liked: you can set System Mechanic to run automatically in the background.

If you’re careful to remember to clean your PC every day, then this is not a huge advantage though it’s nice.

However, if you have kids using computers in your house, chances are that they are much less careful.

To the left is an example of what the screen shot will look like after System Mechanic finishes analyzing a PC.

For my teenager, I especially liked that it cleared away unnecessary start-up items. I know, she can do it herself. But she rarely does and it’s added protection against a program automatically setting itself to run.

If you click on the “options” tab, that’s where you enable all this to run in the background.

The program costs $19.95 a year of upgrades or $29.95 for two years of upgrades, both including the program itself. I did receive my copy for free but after watching it in action for over a month, I’m definitely going to buy it when my current subscription is up.

I like the convenience, I like that it could be uploaded to three different computers, and I like that it showed no difficulties/clashes with the anti-virus programs that are running on the various computers.

And I really like that the XP computers are running better. I can’t say with certainty how it’s affected Windows 7 processing speed because I uploaded System Mechanic only a week after I started using Windows 7. What I can say is that my desktop so far is working far better than Vista. Part of that, I think, is the cleaning done by System Mechanic, especially the way it cleans up after my kids use my desktop.

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Drugstore giants start playing nice, but poor price action could turn off investors
Shares of drugstore giants Walgreen Co. (WAG) and CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS) are in rally mode this morning, after the pair signed a multi-year contract for Walgreen to remain in CVS’ pharmacy benefit management network…( Read More )

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I was happy to see Nokia and T-Mobile USA announce the Nokia Nuron since we rarely see an official carrier S60 smartphone here in the US. As I wrote last week, Engadget was one of the first sites to get a chance to try the device and they were not overly impressed. I was sent an evaluation unit a couple of days ago and honestly have to say I am quite impressed with the device and think it is actually a very good choice for people looking for a lower end smartphone. You can buy one for just $69.99 with an Even More plan and only $179.99 with an Even More Plus (non-subsidized) plan. $180 for a S60 5th Edition device with full Ovi Maps navigation and maps of the world for free seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

Specifications

Let’s start off my first impressions post here with a look at the specs of the Nokia 5230 Nuron:

• 3.2 inch 640×360 pixel resolution touchscreen display with support for 16 million colors
• T-Mobile 7.2 Mbps 3.5G data network support
• Quad-band World GSM radios
• Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support
• FM radio
• GPS receiver with free for life Nokia Ovi Maps
• Symbian S60 5th Edition software
• microSD card slot
• 2 megapixel camera

Honestly, the only lower end specs we see here are the rather limited camera resolution and the lack of WiFi. I highly doubt many new smartphone owners even use WiFi (I actually rarely use it on my 3G phones) so that may not be a big concern. I would have like to have seen a 3.2 megapixel camera though.

One other difference between this device and the Nokia 5800 XM is that there is no stylus on the Nuron. It still has the excellent slider lock switch, XpressMusic button (I love this functionality), physical camera button, and externally accessible microSD card slot. There is also only one speaker, compared with two on the 5800 XM.

First impressions

I opened the fairly standard T-Mobile packaging and saw a white Nokia device in the compartment that looked an awful lot like my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic device. I really like that device and have to say this one looks better to me with the silver frame, red and green bottom buttons, slick pearl back. The display looks fantastic with the high resolution and smaller size.

Interestingly there is a myFaves icon on there, which is funny since T-Mobile no longer offers this service to new customers. I still have a grandfathered myFaves account because it works well for my family’s needs and am happy to see it still supported on the Nokia Nuron.

I tested out Ovi Maps navigation and it was excellent on the Nokia Nuron. You will also find that TeleNav has their application loaded on the device for navigation. This services costs $10/month and honestly I see no need for it with Ovi Maps on board.

Software

Taking a look through the software I was very disappointed that Nokia Messaging was not preinstalled on the device. This should be on every S60 device and Nokia needs to do a better job of making sure that happens since the older email client is pretty bad. I tried visiting the Nokia Messaging site to download the application and it seemed to work. However, ever single time I went through the setup it just created an email account in the lame default S60 application and would not work. I will talk to the Nokia Messaging team and try to figure out what the problem is here. While Mail for Exchange is not loaded by default, through the standard email setup process you will get to the point where it is downloaded and installed to the device.

I did see the Nokia Podcasting application on board and the E72 doesn’t even have this application. Other applications I liked seeing on board include voice recorder, FM radio, YouTube, S60 browser, Facebook, and Ovi Store.

T-Mobile also included some of their applications, including Visual Voicemail, My Account, Instant Messenger powered by Oz, Audio Postcards, and a few trial games (Guitar Hero, Pac-Man, Need for Speed, Brain Challenge, Bowling, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?). I personally like the IM client since it uses text messaging rather than data and I can give this to my daughter to use who does not have data, but has unlimited text messaging service.

Would I buy one?

I am more of a power user, but am seriously thinking about buying one of these for my daughter who turns 16 soon. She is very bad with directions and needs a GPS navigation solution before she can get her license and be out on her own. For $180 I can get her this with no data service requirement and she can have full voice-guided GPS navigation, text messaging IM, and even a full PIM PDA in her hand. I may actually have her use this evaluation device for a bit to see if she can get used to text messaging on it.

It feels very durable in your hand, has a responsive touchscreen display, has a beautiful display, and has a ton of capability with S60 5th Edition on board.

View full post on Nokia Experts

One of the reasons I have been using my Google Nexus One more than the N900 over the last month or so is the sheer number and quality of applications for Android. The N900 is a fantastic device, but applications need to get better. I saw a Tweet from Chanse (Nokia employee) that he was testing a new Twitter application called TweeGo. I followed the link to Maemo Central and followed the instructions to download and install the application to my N900. I also discovered an update to Witter and can honestly say that lack of a good Twitter app is no longer a concern for me on the N900.

TweeGo

I was getting some dependency errors and had to enter apt-get -f install to get things straightened out, but now all is good. TweeGo definitely has a slick look and feel to it, but still feels a bit early in development with some limits on Twitter functionality. You can view your Twitter stream, post status updates, and perform some functions after tapping on a Tweet (Retweet, reply, favorite, unfollow). I do not see any way to view mentions or direct messages, update your status with photos, or view conversations/threads. I was all ready to stop using my current application, Witter, and make the switch to TweeGo when I saw there was an update to Witter made today too.

Witter

The updated Witter version improves the UI, which is the area I wanted to see fixed up since it already had a ton of functionality built into it. As you can see in the screenshot, you can now view profile pics in your Twitter feed while also getting a cleaner default theme. The one final function I would like to see is the ability to view the conversation. Other than that, I have to say I am quite happy with Witter and am pleased with the way applications are rolling out on the N900.

View full post on Nokia Experts