CES - Tablets and e-book readers

CES: Motorola reveals iPad-rival Xoom tablet

Motorola today revealed its new Android-based Xoom tablet, which the company hopes will dethrone Apple's iPad in this fast-growing market segment.

The Xoom betters the iPad in some ways--it comes standard with front- and rear-facing cameras, including one that can record in HD, compared with none in the current version of the iPad. It also boasts a larger screen with a higher resolution, supports Adobe Flash, and uses Verizon's network instead of AT&T's.

It will become the first device to run the latest version of Google's Android operating system, known as Honeycomb. The operating … Read more

Motorola unveils Xoom tablet at CES (live blog)

Editor's note: This live event has concluded, but as expected, it featured the introduction of Motorola's new Xoom tablet, as well as a parade of other new wares including the Atrix, Cliq 2, Droid Bionic and a laptop shell for docking your phone. Click here for a recap of what was announced at the event. You can also replay our live blog in the Cover It Live module below.

LAS VEGAS--Motorola is expected to finally take the wraps off the long-awaited Google Android tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show here Wednesday.

The device uses Google's Android operating … Read more

Seagate GoFlex TV to get Pandora, iPhone app

LAS VEGAS--Owners of Seagate's GoFlex TV: I have some exciting news.

Seagate announced today new firmware for the popular network media player to add support for Pandora and a remote control app for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

While the addition of Pandora is great news for music fans, I personally loved the remote control app after briefly playing with it .

Once loaded, the app turns the iPhone's screen into buttons similar to those of the GoFlex TV's original remote control and you can use the phone to control the player via Wi-Fi.

However, unlike the original remote, … Read more

Android Honeycomb video shows slick tablet OS

Google released a video today showing off the upcoming version of the Android operating system, called Honeycomb--and it is indeed just for tablets.

After a premature release earlier in the day, Andy Rubin, Google's vice president of engineering in charge of Android, published the video officially on a blog post. Here's what he had to say about Android 3.0:

Honeycomb is the next version of the Android platform, designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes, particularly tablets. We've spent a lot of time refining the user experience in Honeycomb, and we've … Read more

Triple-speed SD card standard finalized

The SD Association announced a new interface for flash memory cards today that triples data transfer speeds.

The faster SD card specification was expected since the group started previewing it in September. But more unusually for the consortium, the SD Association also announced an e-book specification at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"Our new e-Book application...opens broad consumer access to e-book content, and turns billions of existing SD mobile phones and devices into e-readers," Norm Frentz, chairman of the SD Association, said in a statement. "SD continues to evolve its capabilities to support voracious consumer demand for portable movies, television broadcasts, high-definition home videos, and now full-color books."

It's not yet clear who among e-book reader makers, publishers, or other companies are on board with the new specification, but two partners showing eBook support at CES are Toshiba and Sharp, the association said. Such partnerships will be important to its success, though, and there already are other e-book formats, such as ePub.

But eBook won't live in isolation. "The association plans to support popular external formats like ePublish, CPS, XMDF and ".book" formats in the near future," said SD Association communications director Kevin Schader. And to keep content publishers happy, it's free to use and supports copy protection. … Read more

Samsung debuts Wi-Fi-only Galaxy Tab

LAS VEGAS--Samsung revealed this week that its Galaxy Tab recently passed a 1.5 million global shipment milestone and the company isn't content to rest on the laurels of the tablet's initial success.

Today the company announced that a Wi-Fi-only version of the Galaxy Tab will be available in the United States in early 2011.

Other than that detail, the new Galaxy Tab looks to be identical (spec-wise) to the one already released, but let's list its specs anyway, for good measure.

Rear-facing 3-megapixel camera Front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera and camcorder Flash 10.1 support 16GB of … Read more

Netgear adds HD to Push2TV display device

LAS VEGAS--Exactly a year ago, Netgear debuted its first Intel Wireless Display-based display device, the Push2TV, which enables consumers to stream whatever is being viewed on a laptop to the TV without the need for cables or wires, via a click of a mouse.

Today the company announced the second generation of the product, the Push2TV HD TV adapter (model PTV2000), which now offers full-HD 1080p video resolution and other improvements, including:

30fps video: Image quality is now improved with full motion video.

Dual-band wireless connectivity: Supports multiple wireless bands to minimize wireless interference.

Extend mode: Users now can browse … Read more

Acer unveils 10-inch Iconis A500 tablet

LAS VEGAS--Tablet news just keeps a rolling in this week at CES and the tablet crew here at CNET remains focused on delivering as much as current U.S. labor laws allow.

On Wednesday Acer and Verizon Wireless announced the Iconis Tab A500. The tablet will use the latest version of Android and the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core 1GHz processor to power its 10-inch capacitive touch screen.

The Iconis will also make use of Verizon Wireless's 4G LTE Mobile Broadband network and use Acer's UI 4.5 in tandem with Android as its interface of choice.

Other … Read more

Clickfree backup goes wireless and portable

LAS VEGAS -- Advanced users need not apply but Clickfree's backup solutions, such as the Clickfree C2N could be lifesavers for many home/novice users, when it comes to backing up important data. By far, Clickfree has been offering the most easy-to-use backup solutions on the market.

And yet, it gets even easier as the company announced at CES 2011 a new solution called Clickfree Wireless. This new backup drive shares the same principle as the Clickfree C2N: once setup it works autonomously without requiring users' interaction. The difference is, it now works wirelessly, without even being connected to … Read more

Seagate's new Mac portable drives also Windows-friendly

LAS VEGAS--Among many things, Seagate's GoFlex family of portable hard drives were well-received during 2010 because they come with software drivers that allow Macs to read and write to them, even when they're reformatted using NTFS, the file system of the Windows operating system.

Now the role is reversed. The company announced today a new collection of GoFlex for Mac external drives that are reformatted using the HFS+ file system for Mac OS X and come with software drivers that allow them to work fully with Windows.

While this is not confirmed, the software is likely a rebranded version of Paragon's HF+ for Windows or something of that sort, which normally costs extra to use.

Other than that, each GoFlex for Mac product comes bundled with FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 adapters and cables--the most popular interfaces for Apple computers. Like all other GoFlex drives, however, they support the flexibility to change the drive's interface to USB 3.0 or powered eSATA for use with Windows computers, or in case your Mac supports these types of connectivity.

Design-wise, the new GoFlex drives for Macs share a similar look as those for Windows but come in white and feature a durable, metallic-finish chassis, which, according to Seagate, is designed to withstand scratches, fingerprints, or other marks incurred from regular usage.

The new lineup of GoFlex for Mac external drives includes: … Read more