Tablet Site » Chuong Nguyen

Slate v. iSlate: Microsoft & HP to Battle Apple on Tablet Front

Chuong Nguyen — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:35:27 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Microsoft unveiled the HP tablet, which the company says has a Slate form factor, and a more compact screen than the typical 10-inch tablet screen on today’s convertible form factor. The sleek, HP-designed tablet looks really nice and runs full Windows 7, can double as an e-reader, and has all the power you need for your computing need while on the go.

Source: Gizmodo

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Steve Ballmer to Announce Courier Tablet by HP at CES?

Chuong Nguyen — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:50:56 +0000

Steve Ballmer will be the opening keynote speaker at CES and will introduce Microsoft’s second attempt at the tablet computing market in 2010, a full nine years after Bill Gate’s introduced the world to the Tablet PC in 2001. Rumors from the New York Times peg that Microsoft will introduce an HP-made tablet that is said to run multimedia and double as an ereader as well with multitouch capabilities. Could this be the Courier that was floating around a few short months ago?

Source: Engadget

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HP Unveils Updated TouchSmart tm2 Tablet at CES

Chuong Nguyen — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:46:50 +0000

It looks like HP updated its tablet, now at model tm2, at CES. The new TouchSmart tm2 brings up to 9 hours of battery life on a six-cell battery running on Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor with discrete ATI GPU–which is nice for all day computing. The tablet comes in a convertible form factor with a re-designed look, complete with a trackpad from the company’s higher end Envy lineup and also chiclet keys on the keyboard.

The new tablets also have an improved software suite and eschews the optical DVD drive for a sleeker finish. It will start at $949, which is a pretty low price point compared to options from competitors like Lenovo or Toshiba.

Source: Engadget

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Fujitsu Core i7 Tablet Spotted at the FCC

Chuong Nguyen — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 07:03:57 +0000

It looks like the FCC has leaked what appears to be a Fujitsu tablet with a convertible form factor and sporting an Intel Core i7 processor; the new model is called the T900 and will replace the T1510 in Fujitsu’s lineup. The T900 tablet will have a 2.66 GHz quad-core mobile chip, probably with integrated graphics. Pricing and availability is not available at this time as it’s just been submitted for regulatory approval in the US. The device will have a 13.3-inch display.

Source: Electronista

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Archos 9 Windows Tablet Gets Unboxed

Chuong Nguyen — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:01:03 +0000

The guys over at UMPC Portal have just received the Archos 9, which is a tablet that runs Windows 7 Starter Edition, has a large resistive touchscreen, and a capable Intel Atom CPU with integrated GPU. Overall, the aesthetics of the device looks nice and seems to be a worthy upgrade for those who need more than Android on the Archos 5 and 7 tablets. Those wishing to use more of the pen and “Tablet PC” functionality beyond Archos’ customizations on Windows 7 Starter Edition should upgrade to a higher level of Windows 7.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Orange Tabbee: Tablet for Content Consumption

Chuong Nguyen — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:40:26 +0000

The Orange Tabbee is a tablet created for Orange, a French wireless carrier, that enables easy consumption of content on the internet through its 7-inch WVGA screen. 3-hour battery life, a capable Opera Mobile 9.7 browser, and a host of widgets aim to simplify your life on the web.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Tabbee also supports Adobe Flash playback, but only Flash 9 is supported, not the newer Flash 10 at this point. Thus far, the Tabbee has only been made available in France for the asking price of €249. Hopefully, we’ll see more widespread release of this home mobile internet device.

Source:http://www.pocketables.net/2009/12/orange-tabbee-tablet-spotted-at-leweb-conference-in-paris.html#mce_temp_url#

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CrunchPad Lives on as Fusion Garage JooJoo

Chuong Nguyen — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:45:34 +0000

While the CrunchPad is no longer to be because of a complicated history of intellectual property, Michael Arrington’s conceived idea lives on in the form of the Fusion Garage JooJoo, a 12-inch internet tablet with a custom OS that does most of its storage on the cloud. The operating system behind the JooJoo follows the same idea that Google’s Chrome OS is built on–WebKit based, fast access, and cloud-based storage for ubiquitous access. The device will be powered by an Intel Atom processor and will include a GPU for its HD video.

If this thing gets priced low enough ($300-$500) for a nice 12-inch display, I doubt that Fusion Garage will have a hard time selling these tablets when they do ship.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: Gizmodo

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Lenovo X200 Tablet On Sale!

Chuong Nguyen — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:37:47 +0000

The Lenovo X200 is one of my favorite tablets with its gorgeous screen, portability, and long battery life. The device is on sale, for an instant $370 off and an additional 20% off! Here’s what GottaBeMobile has to say about that deal:

Lenovo’s offering an instant discount of $370 and 20% stackable coupon on the ThinkPad X200 Tablet PC. This means you can pick up an X200 Tablet for just $1,207 after the discounts. Visit LogicBuy for the details and coupon code.

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CrunchPad Tablet Killed Due to Greed

Chuong Nguyen — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:04:31 +0000

For those who have been patiently waiting for the CrunchPad despite rumors of manufacturing issues, today brings sad news as Michael Arrington, visionary of the tablet pad, has announced that the CrunchPad has been killed off due to greed from its manufacturing partners.

The CrunchPad uses technology that was co-developed by Arrington and a small satartup called Fusion Garage. Essentially, from Arrington’s post over at TechCrunch, it seems that Fusion Garage had put pressure on the shareholders of the CrunchPad’s manufacturing facility to abandon Arrington and go with Fusion Garage.

You can read the detailed post made by Arrington about the foul situation:

It was so close I could taste it. Two weeks ago we were ready to publicly launch theCrunchPad. The device was stable enough for a demo. It went hours without crashing. We could even let people play with the device themselves – the user interface was intuitive enough that people “got it” without any instructions. And the look of pure joy on the handful of outsiders who had used it made the nearly 1.5 year effort completely worth it.

Our plan was to debut the CrunchPad on stage at the Real-Time Crunchup event on November 20, a little over a week ago. We even hoped to have devices hacked together with Google Chrome OS and Windows 7 to show people that you could hack this thing to run just about anything you want. We’d put 1,000 of the devices on pre-sale and take orders immediately. Larger scale production would begin early in 2010.

And then the entire project self destructed over nothing more than greed, jealousy and miscommunication.

On November 17, our deadline date for greenlighting the debut three days later, the CEO of our partner on the project, Chandra Rathakrishnan, sent me an email with the subject “no good news.” Yuck, I thought. Another delay, probably with the screen that had been giving us so much trouble – capacitive touch at 12 inches isn’t trivial. And sure enough, the email started off with “no good news to update. updated hardware is still on its way , so that’s a timing issue. friday will be a challenge now.”

But the email went on. Bizarrely, we were being notified that we were no longer involved with the project. Our project. Chandra said that based on pressure from his shareholders he had decided to move forward and sell the device directly through Fusion Garage, without our involvement.

Err, what? This is the equivalent of Foxconn, who build the iPhone, notifiying Apple a couple of days before launch that they’d be moving ahead and selling the iPhone directly without any involvement from Apple.

Chandra also forwarded an internal email from one of his shareholders. My favorite part of the email: “We still acknowledge that Arrington and TechCrunch bring some value to your business endeavor…If he agrees to our terms, we would have Arrington assume the role of visionary/evangelist/marketing head and Fusion Garage would acquire the rights to use the Crunchpad brand and name. Personally, I don’t think the name is all that important but you seem to be somewhat attached to the name.”

And with that, the entire project self destructed.

Neither we nor Fusion Garage own the intellectual property of the CrunchPad outright. Fusion Garage has a team of 13 or so employees, currently working here in Silicon Valley out of a home they rented and in our office. Their team has mixed with our CrunchPad team, which is led by Brian Kindle, the former Vice President Hardware Engineering and Manufacturing at Vudu and an early hardware engineer at TiVo. Development expenses have been shared, and our team has spent time in Singapore and Taiwan, and their team has spent time here. We chose to work with Fusion Garage on Prototype C and the launch prototype after we finished Prototype B internally.

We jointly own the CrunchPad product intellectual property, and we solely own the CrunchPad trademark.

So it’s legally impossible for them to simply build and sell the device without our agreement.

We’re still completely perplexed as to what happened. We think they were attempting to renegotiate the equity split on the company behind CrunchPad, which was to acquire Fusion Garage. Renegotiations are always fine. But holding a gun to our head two days before launching and insulting us isn’t the way to do that. We’ve spent the last week and a half trying unsuccessfully to communicate with them. Our calls and emails go unanswered, so we can’t even figure out exactly what’s happened.

Yesterday Chandra sent an email saying “Following our phone discussion, I had another round of discussions with my shareholders. The shareholders are not willing to move from their position as they believe their stand is justified. On the other hand, there isn’t an alternative offer on the table from Crunchpad.”

My response: “We have not come back to you with any counter offer to the email you forwarded because you and your shareholders have communicated to us that moving forward without us is something that you consider to be a legitimate and legal option. In other words, your “counter” offer is theft of intellectual property.”

Ultimately there are two sides to every story, and they’ll certainly have their side. We will almost certainly be filing multiple lawsuits against Fusion Garage, and possibly Chandra and his shareholders as individuals, shortly. The legal system will work it all out over time.

Mostly though I’m just sad. I never envisioned the CrunchPad as a huge business. I just wanted a tablet computer that I could use to consume the Internet while sitting on a couch. I’ve always pushed to open source all or parts of the project. So this isn’t really about money. It was about the thrill of building something with a team that had the same vision. Now that’s going to be impossible. And I’ve also lost a friend – Chandra spent months in our office this year and, until a week and a half ago, was the kind of young, determined entrepreneur that I admire. I thought we’d be friends for the rest of our lives.

And what’s really sad about all this is the incredible support we were getting from companies and people around the world to launch this device. A major multi-billion dollar retail partner has been patiently working with us for months, giving advice on manufacturing partners and offering to sell the CrunchPad at a zero margin to help us succeed in the early days. They were also willing to pay for the devices on order instead of 30 days after delivery, a crucial cash flow benefit that would allow us to ramp up volume without putting ourselves our of business. They were even willing to fly the devices from China on their own planes to eliminate our shipping costs. Intel, which would supply the Atom CPUs to power the device, has assisted us repeatedly with engineering and partner advice, and gave us pricing that was ridiculously generous given our projected first year sales volumes. Other partners were eager to promote and sell the device for little or no benefit on their end other than “supporting the project.” We even had sponsors lined up to help us sell the device near our $300ish cost.

And money wasn’t a problem, either. We had blue chip angel and venture capitalist investors in Silicon Valley waiting to invest in the company since late Spring. We were simply holding them off until we launched, to eliminate some of the risk.

It’s a sad day at TechCrunch HQ. Hitting the publish button on this post, which makes all of this so…final…is a very hard thing to do. I’m enraged, embarrassed, and just…sad. The CrunchPad is now in the DeadPool.

At the heart of the CrunchPad is a device that is cheap and powerful enough for consumers to surf the web and perform other tasks. This loss is definitely a loss to consumers.

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Eking Brings Tilt and Slide Tablet Form Factor

Chuong Nguyen — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:36:35 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Eking is copying the design of the old HTC Shift or the HTC Touch Pro2 with the tilting and sliding screen, a landscape-oriented QWERTY keyboard, and Windows 7 to the tablet mix with a resistive 4.8-inch display in the S515 UMPC model. The design is nice and the right side on the front houses a nice little trackpad. Sleek, compact, and will definitely fulfill the needs of those who is looking for a UMPC with keyboard integration.

Source: Engadget

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