Tablets

On Wednesday at an event in San Francisco, HP revealed its oft-rumored and highly anticipated WebOS tablet, the HP TouchPad.

HP will pit the TouchPad against the iPad and Android tablets. WebOS was previously seen in the Palm Pre Plus smartphone and will be featured in the new Palm Veer and Palm Pre 3.

The tablet will make use of Palm's latest version of the OS, WebOS 2.1. The device has a 9.7-inch capacitive touch screen, weighs 1.6 pounds, and is 13.7 millimeters thick. It includes 16GB or 32GB of storage, a dual-core 1.2GHz … Read more

This week we recap the best and worst high-tech ads from the Super Bowl, then debate the surprisingly high price of the Xoom tablet. There's plenty of media news as well, with The Daily launching for the iPad and AOL picking up the Huffington Post.

Finally, we play another round of our new tech trivia game, with Joey, Scott, and Julie playing to win prizes for chat room participants. Tune in live every week at 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT for your chance to play. The game is new, and doesn't have a proper name yet, but we're thinking of calling it Office Dummies, after our favorite Twitter feed.

Bonus: You can download the show's theme song as a free MP3 here for a limited time!

… Read more

Editor's note: This live event has concluded. You can replay our full coverage of the announcement in the Cover It Live module at the bottom of this post. To get the key details on what was announced--including the long-awaited TouchPad tablet, an upcoming version of WebOS for desktop and laptop PCs, a new version of the Pre phone, and the new Veer smartphone--read our summary post here.

What follows here is a collection of excerpts from the live blog with some of the newsier and more interesting entries. To get all the nitty-gritty details, reader comments, and our … Read more

Dell expanded its foray into tablets today with a new 10-inch Windows 7-based device designed, the company said, for users "who need greater mobility, as well as IT organizations that demand control, security, manageability, and integration with existing infrastructure investments."

The Windows 7 Business Tablet, which will run on an Intel processor, could be available by the middle of the year (note that the tablet in the above photo is a nonworking mock-up of the machine).

The tablet was among 39 new products unveiled at the company's Dell Means Business event in San Francisco this morning. They include laptops, desktops, workstations, and a convertible tablet, the Latitude XT3 (a follow-up to the laptop/tablet hybrid XT2).

But the news out of the event likely to grab the most attention is the Win tablet, even though details on specs remain scant and we don't yet have a price or a release date beyond sometime later this year.

Businesses want Windows because it fits into the IT management scheme, Steven Lalla, vice president and general manager of Dell's commercial client product group, said at the event. Not to say Android doesn't, he added, but he maintained that a bigger chunk of the business sector wants to go the Microsoft route. … Read more

This tip is easy, but extremely useful for users wanting to get the most out of their iOS device. Interestingly, there are tens, if not hundreds, of calendar, to-do, and organization Apps for your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that you can use to remember things.

But the best way may be a functionality that iOS offers already. The screen most people see the most is the lock screen. It stands to reason then that the lock screen would be the perfect place for a constant reminder.

There are any number of ways to accomplish this. One, provided by a … Read more

Any hard-core audiophiles out there probably have a soft spot in their hearts for Cowon. The Korea-based manufacturer made an early splash in the iPod era with products like the iAudio X5 and the D2 and their exhaustive spec sheets, supporting every file format under the sun and propping them up with a wide array of sound enhancement tools.

And while most manufacturers have fled the field of dedicated portable media players, Cowon has bravely (or foolishly) decided to stick it out. Cowon's latest device is the Cowon D3, a $370 premium portable media player running a heavily skinned version of Android 2.1, packed with 32GB of storage.

As expected, it sounds wonderful, and features the full suite of JetEffect sound presets Cowon is known for. Codec support is outstanding for both audio and video, the latter of which supports resolutions of up to 1080p. Other features include FM radio, a Web browser, e-mail, calendar, photos, and all that Android typically brings. Well...almost.… Read more

Want to back up your iTunes library and/or transfer it to another PC? iTunes itself has a backup option, but it requires blank CDs or DVDs. Bleh.

CopyTrans TuneSwift will back up your iTunes library to the media of your choice (including network folders, flash drives, and external hard drives), or let you transfer it to another machine--Windows or Macintosh.

(Just to clarify, TuneSwift itself is for Windows only, but it includes an option for transferring iTunes libraries to Macs. Pretty neat!)

The program will cost $20-30 when the next version is released, but right now you can get TuneSwift free of charge. … Read more

Best Buy is offering a deal to people who don't hold onto gadgets for long.

Through Saturday, customers who buy certain products at Best Buy or Best Buy Mobile, including televisions, laptops, tablets, and phones, will be enrolled in a buy-back program at no charge.

Best Buy launched its buy-back program last month. Under the program, customers who enroll at the time of purchase can get a Best Buy gift card when they eventually decide to move on to a new product. Normally, customers pay $69.99 to enter the program when buying laptops, Netbooks, or tablets. The enrollment … Read more

We're expecting a new iPad to be announced in the next few months, and it appears that it, or future iterations of it, could have a built-in kickstand. A new patent filed by Apple shows a stowable stand that folds into the iPad's casing, removing the need for cases with built-in stands.

The patent, detailed by Patently Apple, shows a dual-hinged stand that folds out to hold up the iPad in either portrait or landscape mode on a surface like a table. It might not be built-in; the patent says it might be optional, which means it might affix via screws, suction cup, magnets, or witchcraft.

No matter what, it's better than not having a stand. As anyone with an iPad will tell you, a stand's a good idea--apps like Hulu and Netflix are popular on the iPad, and unless you're watching them in bed, you have to hold the tablet up. That's fine for short YouTube videos of cats hitting people in the groin, but not for watching awesome movies like "Fletch." … Read more