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The tablet era has arrived at big-box retailers, which are now setting aside large swaths of floor space previously devoted to traditional PCs.

Best Buy is probably the highest-profile example of this trend. At U.S. stores, it has overhauled--or is in the process of overhauling--display areas. Tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Motorola Xoom, and Hewlett-Packard TouchPad now get prominent placement at stores, rendering the iPad just one among equals.

This is all part of Best Buy's "Tablet Central" strategy. Here's how Bill Seymour, vice president of investor relations at Best Buy, explained … Read more

Speck's black CandyShell Wrap was one of the more strikingly designed cases for the original iPad. Now the company has announced an iPad 2 version that comes in the same glossy finish it calls DarkLord Black that's reminiscent of Darth Vader's helmet.

We're not sure how the shiny finish will hold up over time (it might be prone to showing scratches), but we recently got a look at the case in person and it looks a lot like the previous model, only slimmer and lighter.

Like the PixelSkin HD Wrap for iPad 2, this one's … Read more

I love conducting in-depth analysis of technology; however, the problem with such analytic endeavors is that the deeper you go, the more time it takes to reach your goal.

This is why I'm always impressed with the abyssal depths of analysis DisplayMate's Ray Soneira travels when he covers display quality. In his latest article, the man gets downright subterranean.

Soneira takes the iPad 2, Xoom, and Asus Transformer and completely scrutinizes their screens on the basis of brightness, contrast, color quality, screen reflectiveness, viewing angle, and backlight power consumption. That's pretty much anything and everything important when … Read more

Can the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 best the iPad 2 in my grueling performance speed tests? Read on to find out. And please check out the full review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 for more of an all-encompassing view of what it has to offer.

Once again, I take you into the murky bowels of CNET Labs to deliver hard-hitting performance test results for tablets. Well, I guess "hard-hitting" is a relative term. Let's try "light-touching." I guess I'd just like to avoid getting raked over the coals for promising too much, because if I've learned anything from Scotty from "Star Trek," it's to never overpromise. Actually, he was more of an underpromiser, but I shouldn't take my humility too far, lest it come back to take a significant chunk out of my backside. So, we'll go with "moderate-groping." Moderate-groping test results! Yes, that sounds appropriate.… Read more

Among all the myriad events and announcements of E3 2011--some bombastic, some evolutionary--the unveiling of the Wii U was one that, no matter who you asked, generated some degree of mixed feelings. As gaming press and players, what we saw from Nintendo's future console controller produced sensations of excitement, skepticism, ambivalence, and intrigue.

That might be due partly to the expectations that Nintendo set for itself. The Wii was a new experience, a new idea. It also might be due in part to Sony's PSVita stealing some of the spotlight a day before; the handheld device actually has … Read more

LOS ANGELES--Another year, another show floor filled with bright lights, thunderous music, and scantily dressed women showing off big-budget studio games. Sometimes it feels like E3 never changes.

Yet, I've been to roughly 10 E3s in my life dating back to the Sega Dreamcast debut, and in my first on-the-show visit in a few years, the landscape has subtly and definitely altered from years past.

So here are my final observations about this year's show.

Everyone wants to be accessible. The … Read more

LOS ANGELES--The Wii U, Nintendo's 2012 reinvention of the Wii hardware and of home console gaming, is still a device clouded in mystery. Its controls are intriguing, its capabilities seemingly vast. We had the opportunity to play with the Wii U after Nintendo's morning press conference. To gain more perspective, we had a one-on-one conversation with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, game design legend and creative executive behind Nintendo's first-party games.

Time was limited, but I certainly had plenty of questions: about the Wii U, the future evolution of console and handheld gaming, and most importantly, how this all relates to Apple.

Q: What were the influences for the creation of Wii U? A: There was nothing external that influenced us. What really brought about the idea for it stemmed from our original concept for the Wii. We talked about it as the system that would never sleep, using something like Wii Connect 24--meaning, people would be able to access the system very quickly at any time. But, what we found was that as people started getting larger TVs, turning on the TV began to take more and more time than it used to. It was no longer instantaneous. So that became a barrier for people, and people who were watching TV would essentially make the system unavailable for somebody who wanted to play a game or see what was new with the system that day.

And so, with those challenges in mind, we started to look at what we wanted to do for the next system, and started to think that if we can't continue to always rely on the TV, we need to create a dedicated screen just for the system so people can quickly and instantly interact with it, regardless of what was happening on the TV. … Read more

From time to time we like to highlight a project spotted on funding platform Kickstarter. This month we bring you the Tavoletta, an iPad/Kindle stand accessory that lets you prop your tablet device on your lap--or other body parts.

The folks behind the project are John Albano, Craig Robertson, and Geoff Strawbridge from Williamstown, Mass. (home of Williams College). They've spent a couple thousand bucks prototyping the Tavoletta, and are now looking for $30,000 in pledges to produce it (our headline's a wee bit snarky, but these guys are very serious, as evidenced by their Kickstarter video).

Here's what they say about the product: … Read more

Last month, in a marketing stunt, an iPad 2 encased in a $59.99 G-Form "extreme" sleeve was tossed out of a plane and survived just fine. So what, right? Who drops their iPad out of a plane?

Well, the folks over at the Canadian Web site Mobile Syrup decided to do a more practical test: they ran a G-Form-protected iPad 2 over with a car.

In a bit of drama, after they ran it over, they discovered that the video they had running during the test had stopped playing. But once the sleeve came off, the iPad ended up turning on just fine.

Note to Android fanboys who will take issue with us writing up another Apple story: the Motorola Xoom should fit inside the G-Form sleeve. … Read more