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Nook Tablet or Kindle Fire?

That's the question that's already bedeviling consumers and gadget aficionados alike.

In a matter of weeks, it seems, the tablet market has been compressed to just a handful of choices. The iPad 2 still rules the high end ($500 and above), but the "e-reader as tablet" option now looms large in the sub-$250 range, with the $199 Kindle Fire going mano a mano with the $249 Nook Tablet.

The Kindle Fire has just started shipping, and the Nook Tablet will follow as soon as tomorrow (a few days earlier than originally expected).

Last year, Barnes & Noble released the Nook Color at the same $249 price. Back then, a 7-inch color e-reader that could run apps as well as read color books and magazines, and even play movies and music, was a revelation. The Android tablet could even be rooted--to many, it became known as the not-so-secret most-affordable Android tablet around with the best design (other similarly priced and more-generic Android tablets are, by comparison, terrible).

With the Fire on the horizon, Barnes & Noble knew it had to up the ante.… Read more

Google removed the "+" operator from searches a few weeks ago, but the replacement hasn't been received with open arms.

According to Google, the plus operator was being used incorrectly and was used in a very small amount of searches. In its place, double quotation marks were implemented and seen as operators that would be used more efficiently. However, a lot of users were not excited by this alternative.

To please the masses, Google is rolling out another way to make sure you're searching for something worded in the exact way that you typed it in: meet … Read more

As the holiday shopping season gets under way, chances are good that you will come across someone shopping for an Amazon Kindle Fire.

Thanks to its attractive $199 price tag, the Kindle Fire quickly has become the most talked about tablet since the iPad 2. While some will argue that it's actually an e-reader, I've come to the conclusion that the Kindle Fire is more than enough tablet for the typical consumer. But no matter what you call it, it's going to be popular.

When the entry-level Kindle starts at $79.99, you may balk at the … Read more

As more tablets are released, manufacturers need to continually come up with good reasons for consumers to buy their latest device. Whether they do this through price, features, or a unique design, with a $200 tablet like the Kindle Fire out there, tablets will need a hook to keep consumers interested.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus' hook is Peel, an app that turns the tablet into a pretty robust smart remote control for your TV.

It may not sound like much, but for those whose tablets remain permanently attached to their coffee tables anyway, well, you might as well get some use out of your device, beyond it distracting you from the plot intricacies of the latest episode of "Basketball Wives."

Check out the full review to see if a remote control that thinks it's smarter than you is enough to earn the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus the "best 7-inch Honeycomb tablet" title.

… Read more

The next two weeks are going to prove very interesting in the tablet market once both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet start hitting shelves.

Once it was revealed that the Nook Tablet would be featuring content from many major third-party players like Netflix and Hulu Plus to spice things up on that advanced e-book reader, everyone began to wonder what Amazon would come up with.

Although it looked like Amazon was just going to rest on its own ecosystem of products (Cloud Drive, Cloud Player, On-Demand video streaming, etc.) and promote those via the Kindle Fire, it turns … Read more

In case you didn't already know, Amazon really wants you to know about the features on its Kindle Fire.

After touting earlier this week highlighed applications, we have one more reason to consider the 7-inch device.

According to a follow-up to Wednesday's press announcement, Amazon also plans to offer support for Hulu Plus and its library of content. So in case the access to Amazon's standard library of movies, television shows, and music isn't enough, Hulu Plus can offer you more. … Read more

Panasonic is building rugged Android tablets, Nokia is looking for an app evangelist, and Google+ now allows brand and business pages.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Update, May 24, 2013: Since this post was published, I've found a much faster way to get rid of What's Hot posts from your Home stream. Once logged in to Google+, choose What's Hot from the left-hand slide-out menu. The top right-hand card on the page will say "What's hot and recommended." Click the Settings cog, and then uncheck "Show posts in Home stream."

That's all you need to do. But below is the original content of this story.

Users of Google+ probably noticed a new section on their news stream … Read more

When you open a Windows program like Notepad or Windows Update, the program's name appears in the window's title bar. Right-clicking the tile bar calls up the system window menu, which accesses commands such as Minimize, Maximize, and Close. Moo0 WindowMenuPlus is a simple tool that can add extra entries to the system window menu and taskbar button, everything from Keep on Top to Kill Process. It's easy to use and totally free.

When it's active, WindowMenuPlus lives in the system tray, also known as the notification area. Its menu accesses entries labeled Turn On, Show/… Read more