Nope, you’re not dreaming, but feel free to pinch yourself, rub your eyes or take a cold shower! You’ve read right — the HP Slate is finally official, and after all the teasing , back and forth , and ( very recent ) leaks , the Atom-powered, Windows 7 Slate will finally see the light of day — though in a different way than originally intended. While the first videos released by HP may have made it seem like it would be for consumers, HP’s tactfully changed its tune (don’t forget it’s got Palm / WebOS tablets on the way) and is now aiming the Slate at the enterprise and business market. Still, it will be available on HP’s site for $799 to anyone who wishes to purchase one. So, what does $800 of your hard earned cash buy you? Well, in addition to the dock and case, which are included in the box, the tablet packs pretty much everything we’d heard over the last year — it’s powered by a 1.86GHz Intel Atom Z540 processor, 2GB of RAM, 64GB SSD and packs Broadcom’s Crystal HD accelerator for handling 1080p video. (The included dock has an HDMI-out port if you want to hook it up to the big screen.) Obviously, the 8.9-inch capacitive touch Slate runs Windows 7 Professional, but it’s got a Wacom active digitizer for taking notes, which certainly sets it apart from the other Win 7 tablets we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks. Oh, and don’t forget its front facing VGA cam and 3 megapixel camera on its back. We got a chance to finally grope the tablet earlier this week, so hit the break for our early impressions and a short video. Gallery: HP Slate press shots Continue reading HP Slate 500 finally (finally!) official, rings up at $799 HP Slate 500 finally (finally!) official, rings up at $799 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Not surprising : Election Day is already over for more than 3 million Americans, and a surprising number of them are Democrats. Republicans clearly are gaining ground in turning out early voters compared with their showing two years ago, but figures from the first batch of states that offer clues about 2010 early voting patterns still give Democrats an edge in a number of states and big counties. “If people thought the Democrats were just going to roll over and play dead in this election, that’s not what we’re seeing,” said Michael McDonald, a George Mason University professor who tracks early voting nationally. “They’ve got to be feeling a little bit better with the numbers that they’re seeing.” Here’s a couple little secrets you won’t find out when you read the article: Democrats always lead in early voting.
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Surprise of surprises! On the day that Europeans finally got to dig into the Windows Phone 7 cake in earnest, Twitter’s official app for the hot new platform has also gone live. We’ve downloaded it to our own WP7 device and are having a play around with it now. If you need a refresher as to what it looks like, check out the video after the break. Update: Okay, we can neither log in nor get signed up at present, though others have clearly achieved the feat already. Twitter.com itself keeps alternating between its new and old versions, so we suspect there’s quite a bit of work going on in the background at present. To answer your queries, loading time from the Live Tile menu to the top tweets page above is approximately three seconds, while scrolling is basically identical to the perfection available on WP7′s own apps. Swiping laterally gets you into Trends, Suggested, and Nearby categories which take a couple of moments to load up their tweets, but otherwise match the performance. Exiting to the Live Tile menu throws you out of whatever you were doing and re-entering the app — as is par for the WIndows Phone 7 course right now — means starting from scratch. The only way you can save you state is by locking the phone, which takes a second or two to resume from its locked state and returns you to the exact point you were at. Great, now let us in, Twitter! Continue reading Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live Official Twitter app for Windows Phone 7 goes live originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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NPR’s CEO said Thursday that controversial opinions should not come from NPR reporters or news analysts and that whatever feelings fired analyst Juan Williams has about Muslims should be between him and “his psychiatrist or his publicist. (Oct. 21)
Continue reading …HP Slate 500 unicorns its way into e-tailers with product code, leaked documents
October 22, 2010 No Comment
We’d heard the HP Slate finally had a date with destiny (and corporate pocketbooks) sometime this fall , and it’s looking like the device is nigh — a number of boutique online retailers are taking orders for an HP Slate 500, which purportedly comes with an Intel Atom Z540 CPU, 8.9-inch WSVGA LED-backlit screen, 2GB of DDR2 memory, a 64GB solid state drive, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a webcam, a two-cell battery and Windows 7 Professional installed, all for somewhere around the vicinity of $800 to $900. What’s more, CNET ‘s just stumbled upon a document that apparently details the same, plus an HP Slate Digital Pen (no doubt for those who abhor sausages ) and a rear-facing 3 megapixel camera. We’d chalk up the CNET leaks to old prototype documentation and the e-tailer product listings to wishful thinking if either appeared on their own, but together we have to imagine there’s some sort of wind a’ blowing. HP Slate 500 unicorns its way into e-tailers with product code, leaked documents originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Images: Panthera It’s no secret that traditional conservation methods, while noble, have been failing miserably. Since the first forest and wildlife conservation programs were embraced internationally some 40-50 years ago, half of the world’s forests have been razed, and biodiversity has plummeted around the globe, to the point where many scientists are already terming this era that of the 6th great extinction. Alan Rabinowitz, CEO of Panthera and one of the world’s foremost conservationis… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Guinness World Records has confirmed a massive pumpkin grown in Wisconsin is officially the world’s heaviest. The gourd grown by Chris Stevens tips the scales at 1810.5 pounds with enough flesh to make 900 pumpkin pies. (Oct. 21)
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We’re having a party, where are you? If you happen to be in the NY area, feel free to drop by, we’ll be here at Espace in Manhattan until 10:30PM. Thanks again to Sprint for sponsoring, and all the exhibitors, which include Sony PlayStation, Research In Motion, Palm, Sony VAIO, Bug Labs, Panasonic, Nokia, Sling, Roku, Sonos, Boxee, Peek, and many more. We’ll be streaming live to Ustream with an EVO 4G, among other shenanigans, and we’ll try to update this post with photos and text throughout the night. More details on how to get here and what to expect can be found at this hyperlink . Update: Here’s the Ustream, live from an EVO 4G courtesy of Sprint. We’ll try to keep it live for as long as we can! The chat is here , if you want to hang out. Continue reading Live from the Engadget reader meetup in NYC Live from the Engadget reader meetup in NYC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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AP’s weekly Video Game Video shows you how to marry your friends online — or fart in their faces — as “Fable III” adds new online capabilities. (Oct. 21)
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Cathay Pacific has already promised that it would bring 50Mbps in-flight broadband to some of its fleet by 2012, but it looks like Boeing has beat it to the punch to become the first to actually take the service to the skies. The company has just announced the first certification and installation of Panasonic Avionics’ eXConnect in-flight internet service in one of its Boeing Business Jet 737 aircraft, which will initially be used by Panasonic itself for ongoing testing and demonstrations. That’s the same system that will be used by Cathay Pacific, and consists a fuselage-mounted antenna that communicates with a network of satellites to deliver speeds of up to 50Mbps, or about a hundred times faster than most competing in-flight WiFi. Unfortunately, there’s still no word on any further expansion to commercial aircraft, so Cathay Pacific may well still wind up being the first in that respect. Full press release is after the break. Continue reading Boeing installs 50Mbps eXConnect broadband on 737 Boeing installs 50Mbps eXConnect broadband on 737 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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