Toshiba Announces Excite 10 LE, Shipping March 6th

At CES this year, we got a chance to go hands on with the Excite, Toshiba's latest and greatest Android slate. To recap, it's an OMAP4 device that features a 10.1" 1280 x 800 IPS display and measures in at a downright anorexic 7.7mm thick. At the time, we were given the price points Toshiba planned to hit, but no firm details as to availability or what OS it would ship with.Today, Toshiba announced that the Excite, formally titled the Excite 10 LE for the US market, will be available for purchase from retailers starting on March 6th, next Tuesday. Pricing is $529.99 and $599.99 for the 16GB and 32GB models respectively, as was known previously. 

Since CES, the clock speed of the OMAP 4430 SoC has been raised to 1.2GHz. Unfortunately, Toshiba has decided to launch the Excite with Honeycomb, promising an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich later in the spring. We demoed the Excite at CES running ICS, and it seemed relatively stable then, so it's a bit disappointing to see the shipping device on Honeycomb. 

We're on the list for an evaluation unit of the Excite, and we'll work to get the review out as soon as possible.

]]>

Kinect for Windows hardware now shipping

Microsoft has begun shipping the Kinect for Windows hardware, opening the door for a wave of motion-based applications for PCs.

The newly-developed peripheral is now available for £249, although Qualified Educational Users, can get a $100 discount later this year.

The launch of the Kinect for Windows hardware accompanies the release of version 1.0 of the commercial SDK and runtime to enable developers to get to work on new applications.

New features

The official launch of the SDK brings several improvements on Beta 2, which was released three months ago.

Among the new features is support for up to four peripherals on the same computer, improved skeletal tracking and the new Near Mode which allows the sensor to track objects as close as 40cm from the device.

The full list of new features can be viewed on the Kinect for Windows blog.

Wednesday's launch lives up to CEO Steve Ballmer's recent promise to make the devices and software available on February 1st.

Updated: ASUS Eee Pad MeMO ME370T Shipping in Q2 2012

ASUS originally introduced its 7-inch Eee Pad MeMO tablet at CES 2011, but today it is announcing that in Q2 of this year it'll be available in North America in two versions - including a Tegra 3 based model. The tablet will feature a 7-inch 1280 x 800 IPS panel, a Tegra 3 and it will ship with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.1 as of now). The MeMO 370T will sell for $249 making it the cheapest Tegra 3 tablet we've seen thus far.

The tablet measures 7.8 x 4.6 x 0.5" and weighs 14.2 oz. A capacitive stylus will ship with the tablet, cementing the MeMO's role as a tablet that's designed for note taking (similar to the HTC Flyer). 

Updated: There are two MeMOs, one with a dual-core Scorpion based Snapdragon and the 370T which features an NVIDIA Tegra 3. 

]]>

Intel Announces first 22nm 3D Tri-Gate Transistors, Shipping in 2H 2011

Earlier this week Intel sent us a cryptic message:

I wanted to invite you to an Intel press conference on Wednesday May 4th at 9:30am Pacific time. Intel will be making its most significant technology announcement of the year. No further details will be provided in advance. The event will be held in San Francisco so for those of you are local in the SF Bay Area please attend in person if you like. It will also webcasted live. Tune-in details and logistics are below. Please let me know if you can attend.

A while ago Intel decided that a nice way to drive up its stock price would be to behave more like Apple, keeping major announcements under wraps and introducing them on its own terms to hopefully build up anticipation and excitement for Intel's announcements. You've seen examples of this with how closely Intel held Sandy Bridge's architectural details before its presentation at IDF, and how little we knew about Quick Sync (Sandy Bridge's hardware video transcoder) until Intel decided it was time to talk about it.

Apple can get away with it since most of its products are tangible, consumer facing devices. Intel's technologies are arguably even more important, but they're just not as easy for the general populace to get excited about. Today's announcement is the perfect example of just that.

Earlier today Intel announced that its 22nm process would not use conventional planar transistors but rather be the first time Intel is using 3D Tri-Gate transistors. This is a huge announcement that fuels Intel's leadership in the mobile/desktop/server CPU space and makes it a lot more attractive in the SoC space, let's understand why.

]]>