harrymcc writes "We know that the iPad is selling like hotcakes, but how satisfied are the people who buy it? Over at Technologizer, we conducted a survey of 6,000 iPad early adopters. There are a few places where they were critical — the majority, for instance, aren't happy with Apple's App Store approval process. Overall, however, they're overwhelmingly upbeat."

FyreWyr writes "In 2008 we discussed Swype, which allows a mobile (phone, e.g.) user to draw a path over a virtual keyboard to enter words, rather than requiring precise tapping to accomplish the input. Using this software, a Swype intern (Franklin Page) beat the Guinness record by about 6 WPM for the Guinness-standard phrase: The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human. (Unfortunately the video at that link is marked private.) TechCrunch reports that Swype is presently in open beta, and will be available for 'a couple of days,' supporting English, Spanish, and Italian entry. Finally, while the deadline has apparently passed, I was able to retrieve the Android beta for testing a few minutes ago. I'm posting it here for the benefit of Android-enabled Slashdot readers."

theodp writes "Slate's Farhad Manjoo has seen the future of computing, and it's looking mighty bleak for desktop computers. In the last decade, portable computers have erased many of the advantages that desktops once claimed while desktops have been unable to shake their one glaring deficiency — they're chained to your desk. Last year, sales of laptops eclipsed sales of desktops for the first time, and it's been projected that by 2015 desktops will constitute just 18% of the consumer PC market."

judgecorp writes "Lenovo's new IdeaPads will be using face recognition as a way to replace passwords for users logging onto the laptops. 'Lenovo's VeriFace combines the Windows login and file encryption to password-protect individual files. It identifies users by matching unique features of their faces to photographs taken by the 1.3-megapixel webcam built into the laptop. When Windows users start up their PCs, a camera window pops up in the login frame. The user then just has to adjust their position so their face appears in the window, and VeriFace logs them in automatically.' That could be good, but is the technology really ready for mass market devices? HP ran into trouble when its face recognition software had trouble recognizing people with darker skin."

MojoKid writes "At Computex 2010, devices like the Eee Pad and Eee Tablet were all the rage. Of course the bulk of these were Intel Atom-based systems, but there were a number of NVIDIA Tegra 2-based models in the mix as well. What is glaringly apparent on all of these tablets — and absent on the iPad — are the multitude of connectivity options built into them, like USB ports, flash card readers, and video output ports. Obviously, from a hardware perspective, the iPad is a sexy device; but Apple's true mastery is that of the user interface. The first big player that steps up with something competitive to Apple in that regard will have the pole position in 2010's race for the hot re-emergent tablet market." Reader Raikus adds an opinionated summary of winners and losers at "Tabletpalooza," i.e. Computex 2010.

Kilrah_il writes "After HP bought Palm a few weeks ago, many rumors emerged regarding the new parent company's plans to further expand the scope of devices running WebOS. Now it appears that at least one of the rumors is true: The Slate will be running WebOS. 'Today an HP exec has confirmed that the company is developing a WebOS tablet which should be available by October.'"

eldavojohn writes "HP announced a device like Dick Tracy's watch, with a target user base being the US military. CNN describes it as 'a flexible display that shows maps and other strategic information to soldiers in remote combat fields. The watch's screen will be made of plastic and it will run on solar energy, making it less likely to malfunction or run out of power in a tense scenario.' HP says a prototype will be done within a year. This new device hinges on recent display technology that HP says it has been developing for 10 years. The flexible displays are a mere 50 microns thick."

An anonymous reader writes "Taiwanese manufacturer Asus is planning a netbook with a slot-in mobile phone that will double as a 3G communications module, according to a distributor. The arrangement is apparently meant to be an easy way to use the same SIM card and data account for both a phone and a portable computer. The phone module, from an Israeli company called Modu, is already on sale, together with an array of feature-phone shells and other devices that it's designed to slot into. There is some comparison being made with the iPhone and iPad — except that with the Modu approach, you can slot the phone into the netbook."

medcalf writes "Ars Technica has an opinion piece by Sarah Rotman Epps on the iPad and other potential tablets as a new paradigm that they are calling 'curated computing,' where third parties make a lot of choices to simplify things for the end user, reducing user choice but improving reliability and efficiency for a defined set of tasks. The idea is that this does not replace, but supplements, general-purpose computers. It's possible — if the common denominator between iPads, Android and/or Chrome tablets, WebOS tablets, and the like is a more server-centric web experience — that they could be right, and that a more competitive computing market could be the result. But I wonder, too: would that then provide an incentive for manufacturers to try to lock down the personal computing desktop experience as well?" And even if not, an emphasis on "curated computing" could rob resources from old-skool computer development, as is already evident at Apple.

mantis2009 writes "Paul Thurrott, the prolific technology analyst and Windows expert, reacts strongly to an article highlighted on Slashdot. Thurrott takes numbers from IDC and the Wall Street Journal, indicating that netbook sales have not in any meaningful way been affected by sales of Apple's tablet computer, the iPad. Money quote: '[N]etbooks and sub-12-inch machines will sell 45.6 million units in 2011 and 60.3 million in 2013. If I remember the numbers from 2009, they were 10 percent of all PCs, or about 30 million units. Explain again how the iPad will beat that. Please. Even the craziest iPad sales predictions are a small percentage of that.'"

A recent post up at TechCrunch claims that HP's "Slate" tablet has been canceled. Officials details for the tablet were limited, though a leaked internal presentation indicated it had an 8.9" screen, a 1.6GHz Atom processor, and ran on Windows 7. Some are now speculating that HP may experiment with porting WebOS to a similar device. Quoting: "Will WebOS emerge as a successful operating system for tablet devices? That seems very unlikely given the dominance of the closed Apple OS and the likely success of the open Android and Chrome operating systems from Google. To get traction from third-party developers with WebOS, HP will need to sell a lot of units. And it's not clear what they'd gain from all that effort, anyway. HP knows how to build and sell hardware, not operating systems."

CWmike writes "'The next innovation coming to Atom is on dual-core,' Intel CEO Paul Otellini said recently of the company's low-end chips, which delivered the modern netbook but also found their way into embedded devices, and in the future, into mobile devices like smartphones. His statement comes after close to two years of accelerated growth, and with the initial euphoria around netbooks now subsiding. HP has already advertised a new netbook, the Hewlett-Packard Mini 210, running Intel's upcoming N455 chip, one of the Atom-series processors, on Amazon.de. The N455 supports DDR3 memory, an upgrade over the DDR2 memory in most netbooks today. The DDR3-capable processors should allow data to be exchanged faster between the memory and CPU, translating to better overall netbook performance. Prices of laptops have been falling and the days of netbooks being a novelty have disappeared, said Jay Chou, research analyst at IDC. Laptops are bridging the pricing gap with netbooks, while offering better performance. 'You're getting something really attractive in the $600 range for better-performing notebooks,' Chou said. 'The original intended message of letting people expect netbooks to behave differently or less effectively is not really ringing.'"

Kostya writes "The much discussed Courier two-panel tablet device from Microsoft is now even less than vaporware — now it's just plain dead. 'Microsoft execs informed the internal team that had been working on the tablet device that the project would no longer be supported.' While the Courier had never been officially announced as a supported product by Microsoft, it had generated a lot of discussion as what the iPad should have been."

SillySilly writes "The ban has been lifted: The Communications Ministry announced Saturday evening that starting Sunday it will allow Apple's iPad tablet computer into the country, following two weeks of confiscations and confusion."

Mike_EE_U_of_I and jargon82 were among a number of readers who sent an update on the Lower Merion School District webcam spying case (see Related Stories for our discussions of the affair over the last couple of months). The school had originally stated that capturing laptop photos in students' homes had only happened 42 times. It turns out what they meant was that there were 42 instances when they began intensive surveillance on the suspected stolen computers. This consisted of (among other things) transmitting a picture from the laptop's webcam every 15 minutes. This may have gone on for weeks. In total, it appears that there were thousands of photos. One of the key administrators involved has been answering all questions about the program by invoking the Fifth Amendment.

unixcrab writes with this excerpt from The Mac Observer: "Apple's iPad is proving to be popular everywhere — except Israel. The country's Communication Ministry is refusing to let people bring the multimedia tablet into the country because it hasn't tested and approved the Wi-Fi technology used in the device, according to Haaretz. Ministry officials commented, 'The iPad device sold exclusively today in the United States operates at broadcast power levels [over its Wi-Fi modem] compatible with American standards. As the Israeli regulations in the area of Wi-Fi are similar to European standards, which are different from American standards, which permit broadcasting at lower power, therefore the broadcast levels of the device prevent approving its use in Israel.' The government seems serious about its iPad import ban. Customs officials have already confiscated ten iPads and told their owners to ship them overseas."

harrymcc writes "A dozen years ago, Microsoft convinced major manufacturers to put Windows CE inside devices that looked like undersized touchscreen personal computers. The platform was code-named 'Jupiter' and shipped as Handheld PC Pro, and it flopped — it turned out that people wanted full-strength notebooks. But in retrospect, it was a clear antecedent of what Apple is doing — much more successfully — with the iPad."

cypherdtraitor writes with news of an iPad rival being prepped in Germany for a June launch. "A German company, Neofonie GmbH, has set out to provide an alternative to the iPad, according to Neofonie's founder, Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen. The WePad will boast a Linux-based OS, USB ports, webcam, and Wi-Fi, as well as other features. The 16GB edition will cost €449 ($610), and the 32GB €569 ($773). A more expensive model will include a 3G modem. This PDF compares WePad specs with the iPad. There are also hints of cheap, available software. For example, OpenOffice.org will be the primary office suite, and you may use 'any application that pleases you' to play music and video, a clear edge over Apple's limitation to iTunes." The WePad will also run Flash.

Art Vanderlay writes "Apple's new MacBook lineup has launched with a refresh to the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models. As expected, the MacBook and MacBook Air both feature Core 2 Duo processors, as does the 13. The 15 and 17 models come with a choice of i5 or i7. Memory is 4GB across the board, with an optional upgrade. Additionally, the new line may include three different types of screen options: Glossy, High Resolution Glossy, and High Resolution Glossy with Anti-Glare. A second person familiar with the matter adds that at least some models will support 512GB of Solid State Drive (Flash) storage."

Dutch researchers are working on a new application of an old technology that could mean bright color displays that draw much less power than conventional LCDs, according to the BBC. In this application, an instance of a technique known as electrowetting, droplets of colored oil in suspension are the basis for the display's colors; each pixel's color is determined by moving the colored oils with electrical current. A prototype reader from Dutch firm Liquivista is shown in the accompanying video; color magazines with 50-60hz refresh time using this display technology are at least a few years out, though. Significantly, these screens are daylight readable, which makes me wonder how they compare to Pixel-Qi style screens in power draw, brightness, and maximum density.