a500

Ice Cream Sandwich flavoring Acer A100, A500 next week

Owners of Acer's Iconia Tab A100 and A500 tablets can look forward to a dollop of Ice Cream Sandwich in another week and a half.

An Acer support document confirmed that the two tablets are scheduled be on the receiving end of Android 4.0 in the U.S. on April 27. Other countries, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Latin America, will also receive the update on or around the same time, but all updates should be out and about by the first week of May.

Released last summer with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the Acer A100 is a … Read more

Acer Iconia Tab A200 promo video leaks onto Web

Tablet buyers interested in Acer's upcoming Iconia Tab A200 will pick up a few tidbits from a promo video now showing up online.

Popping up on YouTube and appearing below, the 2-minute promo starts off in typical advertising fashion with a family gathered around a campfire and then at home sharing and using the tablet. But scattered throughout the ad are some interesting details.

The tablet will come with both a USB port and a microSD card slot, allowing people to share files with other devices. A standard Webcam is included for shooting video and chatting online.

Owners will … Read more

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1-inch: The iPad 2 of Honeycomb tablets

Editor's note: The full review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 can be found here.

If there's one thing I've realized in my short stint covering tablets, it's that apparently there can never be too many Honeycomb-based products in the wild. Today, at Google's I/O conference, the company gave away 5,000 Wi-Fi-only Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1s. CNET was fortunate enough to have a few good men in the field willing to wade through cell phone belt holders and short sleeve button shirts to get us one.

Design and features The first thing that struck us upon taking the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 out of its box was its slight profile. In fact, when lying next to the iPad 2 we honestly can't tell which tablet is thicker and unfortunately we don't have a micrometer handy to get down into the business of microns.… Read more

Web speed tests: Tablet tournament!

Yes, I'm a huge Mortal Kombat fan. This should be evident to anyone after watching the video above. However, I can't take credit for the whole tournament idea. That was the brainchild of my producer, Jamie Yee (she's actually a hidden Easter egg in the video, if you watch closely). Jamie's a huge sports nut (or at least, an San Francisco Giants nut) and apparently thinks only in terms of brackets and tournaments.

Anyway, last week was a fairly busy week for the CNET tablet reviews team. Donald Bell and I received three new tablets in the span of only a few days.

With all that glamorous reviewing we were doing, I didn't really have the bandwidth to conduct any official speed tests, until now.

As I alluded to before, we split the tests into two rounds. The first round, featuring the Acer Iconia Tab A500, T-Mobile G-Slate, and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, would determine which tablet would take on the Xoom and iPad 2 in the final round.

So yeah, it's a two-round tournament. We thought about extending it, but decided that doing so would involve too much repetition in the video.

Check out the results below (or above if you prefer your results in talkies form).… Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1444: A line to the sky! (Podcast)

We all want to stream video on our devices but the big companies are saying "NO"! Bring on the parade of lawyers! and the Department of Justice approves Googles dream to help us plan our vacations so that we can travel freely about the world connected to our clouds & Google social media of course, while Facebook is engineering green open sourced servers that will require no air conditioning. What does this all mean?

Acer A500 tablet gets Best Buy preorders now, available soon

When I last saw the Acer Iconia A500 Tab back in January at CES 2011, there was very little information available about the tablet. Then, Acer only showed the tablet with a blank screen. Even the screenshots didn't include screenshots.

What a difference three months makes.

On Friday Acer announced that its Iconia Tab A500 is now available for preorder exclusively at BestBuy.com. And as you'll see from the slideshow below, there are now plenty of screenshots in the screenshots.

Acer also confirms that the A500 may be preordered in brick and mortar Best Buy stores beginning … Read more

CES: Acer shows nameless 7- and 4.8-inch tablets

LAS VEGAS--Earlier this week Acer introduced its 10-inch Iconis A500 tablet, but Acer also gave a sneak peek of 7- and 4.8-inch tablets.

Neither tablet has a name as of yet, and neither was functioning when we saw them. Acer is planning to release them, however no date was specified. No other information concerning operating system or processor was officially released.

One thing we did notice was that the 4.8-inch tablet's screen had a crazy aspect ratio, but Acer was unable to confirm exactly what it is.

Take a look at the pics to get an idea … 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

Crutchfield has the Sony Alpha DSLR-A500 12.3MP Digital Camera for $649.99, after $100 savings, plus free shipping.

Save $100 on the Sony Alpha DSLR-A500 12.3MP Digital Camera from Crutchfield >> Regular price is $749.99 >> Sale price is $649.99 >> Savings $100 (13.33%) >> Click here for deal

Sony gets up close with new lenses

Today, Sony announced two new lenses, the 30mm f2.8 DT Macro lens (SAL30M28) and the 28-75mm f2.8 SAM lens (SAL2875) along with three new dSLRs. Providing an inexpensive entry into macro photography is the new 30mm f2.8 DT Macro lens which will sell for about $200 when it becomes available in October 2009. The lens is a DT series for Sony's APS-C sensor size cameras such as the new Alpha a550 and Alpha a500 announced today, as well as the Alpha a380 and Alpha a330. It features a distance scale in both feet and meters. Reflecting … Read more