Frankie70 writes "Starting Sunday, December 11th at 6:00 p.m. Central time, 16GB and 32GB Touchpads will be available on HP's ebay store. A $79 accessory bundle will also be available, which includes a case, charging dock and wireless keyboard. The caveat with this deal is that these are refurbished TouchPads rather than the brand new models sold during the first firesale."

jfruhlinger writes "One of the reasons the iPad has stayed at the top of the tablet heap for so long is that — in contrast with the story of the Mac and PC 25 years ago — the iPad has remained competitive with its rivals on price. That may be starting to change, with cheaper tablets like the Amazon Fire coming to market. And now, the sub-$100 Novo7 is on sale in China, sporting Android 4.0. It promises to arrive in the U.S. for a similar price point soon." The official press release from MIPS has a bit more detail. Of interest is the use of a MIPS SoC designed by Ingenic.

An anonymous reader writes with a report that an employee of Hyperion Entertainment has disclosed (but not officially announced) that there is a new portable computer with the Amiga name on it in the works, quoting: "Supposedly, the new netbook Amiga is will be 'sourced in a special configuration from an OEM.' The manufacturer in question is, just like the price tag, the launch date and the hardware specifications, currently unknown paving the way for further speculation and rumors. The netbook Amiga will set a mark in computer history as the first portable Amiga to see the light of the day since the Amiga 1000 was introduced to the U.S. market in 1985."

The iPad has sold extremely well at a starting price of $500 but "that kind of pricing doesn't work for many tablet vendors," says a story at CNET. And recent price drops reflect this. It's been a rough year for tablet makers, and it's not even Black Friday yet.

theodp writes "Fourteen years ago, Microsoft Wallet promised 'secure, convenient purchasing on the Internet.' That was then, this is now. TechCrunch reports that the first commercial for Google Wallet has been unveiled, and it stars Seinfeld's George Costanza and his overstuffed, exploding wallet. At launch (TBD), Google Wallet will allow you to use a Google Nexus S 4G (from Sprint) to tap-to-pay using Citi MasterCard cards or the Google Prepaid Card. Not to be outdone, PayPal offered a video sneak peek of its upcoming virtual wallet offering, which is promised to be more than 'just shoving a credit card on a phone.' In May, PayPal sued Google over electronic wallet technology, alleging that the search giant hired two of its former execs to obtain trade secrets for a mobile transactions project."

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Edible Apple: "Apple didn't release the first tablet computer or even come up with the idea for tablet computing itself. If anything, Microsoft, and Bill Gates in particular, were championing tablet computers years before the iPad was released. In this video clip from the first All Things D conference in 2003, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains to Walt Mossberg why Apple, at the time, wasn't keen on tablets and more specifically, why Jobs felt that stylus computing and handwriting recognition were inherent failures."

First time accepted submitter phonewebcam writes "Here's something to liven up your weekend: a video of the Raspberry Pi running Quake 3. We're still working on ironing a few kinks out (specifically, there seems to be a library issue which means our framerate, while good, isn't quite as spectacular as we know it can be; we're working on it as I post this) – but this is what test boards are for, and we're making great progress getting the boards running smoothly."

MojoKid writes "For a CPU that hasn't seen the light of day, there's a great deal of debate surrounding Apple's A6 and the suggestion that it may not appear until later in 2012. The A6 is a complex bit of hardware. Rumors indicate that the chip is a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU built on 28nm at TSMC and utilizing 3D fabrication technology. While the Cortex-A9 is a proven design, Apple's A6 will be one of the first 28nm chips on the market. The chip will serve as a test case for TSMC's introduction of both 28nm gate-last technology and 3D chip stacking. This is actually TSMC's first effort with an Apple device. The A4 and A5 have both historically been manufactured by Samsung."

According to the New York Post — among many others — Amazon is expected to launch its long-anticipated color tablet in late September or October, and the device is slated to sell for 'hundreds less' than the iPad, which implies a price of $300 or less. MSNBC says much the same, but adds some (their words) "generic looking mockups" to illustrate. I expect millions of Kindle owners will happily skip the added weight and shorter battery life of a full-fledged tablet, but it's good to have options.

mike_cardwell sends in a detailed writeup of how he went about protecting a Ubuntu laptop from attacks of varying levels of sophistication, covering disk encryption, defense against cold boot attacks, and even simple smash-and-grabs. (He also acknowledges that no defense is perfect, and the xkcd password extraction tool would still work.) Quoting: "An attacker with access to the online machine could simply hard reboot the machine from a USB stick or CD containing msramdmp to grab a copy of the RAM. You could password protect the BIOS and disable booting from anything other than the hard drive, but that still doesn't protect you. An attacker could cool the RAM, remove it from the running machine, place it in a second machine and boot from that instead. The first defense I used against this attack is procedure based. I shut down the machine when it's not in use. My old Macbook was hardly ever shut down, and lived in suspend to RAM mode when not in use. The second defense I used is far more interesting. I use something called TRESOR. TRESOR is an implementation of AES as a cipher kernel module which stores the keys in the CPU debug registers, and which handles all of the crypto operations directly on the CPU, in a way which prevents the key from ever entering RAM. The laptop I purchased works perfectly with TRESOR as it contains a Core i5 processor which has the AES-NI instruction set."

An anonymous reader writes "After recently running a full-page ad in the WSJ saying, 'PC gaming is not dead,' Razer has now announced a new laptop, the Blade, for the express purpose of playing video games. Its most distinctive feature is what they call the 'Switchblade' UI, which is an area next to the keyboard that has a multi-touch LCD screen and 10 dynamic keys. The screen can receive and display information from games, and the keys can show unique icons particular to the game you're playing. The requisite hardware for a gaming laptop makes it weigh almost seven pounds, but it's less than an inch thick. Another distinctive feature is the price — at $2,800, they price a lot of gamers right out of the market. As the article says, 'It's a gamble, but an exciting one.'"

retroworks writes "According to a story in Digitimes, Acer chairman JT Wang is predicting the end of 'tablet fever.' 'Commenting on tablet PC's impact on the notebook industry, [Acer chairman JT Wang] pointed out that tablet PC fever is already starting to cool down and consumers are also being attracted by notebooks again with Intel's Ultrabooks and Microsoft's Windows 8 the major attractions.' Back to the old model then... PC and laptop sales, driven by Windows upgrades?"

Joining the ranks of accepted submitters, HumanEmulator writes "The NY Times reports on how the Hollywood summer-movie business model is being applied to tech products: 'Every release needs to be a blockbuster, and the only measure of success is the opening-weekend gross. There is little to no room for the sleeper indie hit that builds good word of mouth to become a solid performer over time.' New products are being pulled from shelves only weeks after a lackluster release. What if the TouchPad, the Microsoft Kin, or even Google Wave had had more time on the market? Is this blockbuster-or-bust model a good thing for consumers, or for the industry in general?"

Hugh Pickens writes "Christopher Williams writes that the success of HP's fire sale in unloading hundreds of thousands of TouchPads at heavily discounted prices may provide clues to other Apple competitors hoping to loosen the iPad's stranglehold on the tablet computing market. The main Google Android tablets, made by Samsung and Motorola, are pitched at around the same price point as the iPad but, put together with all the other Android tablets, it's estimated the iPad outsells them eight to one so 'the problem becomes circular: the user base is too small for app developers to invest in,' writes Williams, 'so users buy an iPad because there are more apps and the user base gets even smaller relative to Apple's.' According to Williams, Android tablet makers must find a way of breaking the cycle to avoid the TouchPad's fate. 'No doubt acutely aware of this is Amazon, which is rumored to be preparing to release an Android tablet this autumn,' writes Williams, adding that Amazon must price their 'iPad killer' at break-even or a loss to succeed. 'Its online retail empire and the Kindle brand mean Amazon has the marketing clout to take on the iPad, but on the evidence of HP's successful TouchPad sell off, the question is whether it has the courage to put its money on the line. '"

theodp writes "In NASCAR, you can finish a race in the Top 3 by leading the whole way or by having spectacular crashes take out those ahead of you. The same may hold true for the tablet race, where Apple has led the whole way, but Microsoft could advance into 2nd or 3rd place as those once ahead of it crash and burn. 'Microsoft tablets based on Windows 8 won't be ready until next year,' notes SplatF's Dan Frommer. 'Unexpectedly, that might not be too late to matter.' Far-fetched as it may seem, Ars Technica's Peter Bright explains why the Windows 8 tablet invasion might work."

An anonymous reader writes "The Dutch site webwereld.nl has found incorrect evidence submitted by Apple (Google translation of Dutch original) in the EU design-right case against Samsung. In the ex-parte case, a German judge recently issued a temporary injunction against the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the whole EU except the Netherlands. The faulty evidence is a side-by-side picture of an iPad 2 and the Galaxy Tab. The Tab is scaled to fit the iPad2, and the aspect ratio is changed from 1.46 to 1.36, which more closely matches the iPad 2 aspect ratio of 1.3, according to webwereld.nl."

theodp writes "Don't want to pay Apple $199 to repair the cracked screen of the $199 iPhone you dropped? Neither, apparently, does Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. A patent application made public Thursday lists Bezos as an inventor of 'a system and method for protecting devices from impact damage,' which proposes using airbags, springs, and even a jet propulsion system to keep your iPhones, iPads, and other portable devices safe and out of the clutches of the Genius Bar. Let's hope there's an API — those gas cartridges could be a game-changer for fart apps!"

MojoKid writes "Earlier this year, Intel unveiled its plan to redefine the concept of a PC around an ultra thin-and-light chassis reminiscent of the Macbook Air and with a standard CPU TDP of just 15W. Intel has unveiled the reference specs for ultra-notebook products they're calling 'Ultrabooks.' The cheaper ultra-notebook model will be 21mm thick with a BOM (bill of materials) between $475-650. A second, thinner model (18mm thick) will have a BOM between $493-710. Unlike netbooks, Ultrabooks will target the full range of consumer notebooks with screen sizes ranging from 11-17 inches. Reports are surfacing that the new systems will eschew the use of module-based components in favor of directly soldering certain components to the motherboard. Other findings indicated that Intel and its partners have researched alternatives to an aluminum-based chassis with materials like fiberglass expected to dominate the segment."

MojoKid writes "Recently, Western Digital stepped out and announced their new 1TB 9.5mm Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch notebook drive. The announcement was significant in that it's the first drive of this capacity to squeeze that many bits into an industry standard 9.5mm, 2.5" SATA form-factor. To do this, WD drove areal density per platter in their 2.5" platform to 500GB. The Scorpio Blue 1TB drive spins at only 5400RPM but its performance is actually surprising. Since areal density per platter has increased significantly, the drive actually bests some 7200RPM drives."

An anonymous reader writes "About six months ago, however, I began to wonder about how the other mobile products had grown. When the HTC HD7 crossed my path a little while ago, I decided to abandon my Nexus S and live among the Windows Phone folks for awhile. The experience was fun, but I eventually went back to my Nexus S. About a month later, I was presented with the opportunity to repeat the experiment, only this time with a Palm Pre Plus. With the HP Touchpad on its way, I wanted to get a feel for how WebOS worked, explore the differences, and take a look into the community that was still loyal to WebOS."