Product Central
Dispatches from the Reviews Editor's desk
Wednesday 21 May 2008, 10:26 AM
OLPC The Second
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project has been hitting the headlines for the wrong reasons recently, but that hasn't stopped OLPC from unveiling the successor to its XO notebook.
When we say 'unveil', what was actually revealed at yesterday's MIT Media Lab event was a concept design — the finished product isn't due to appear until 2010. The XO-2's standout features are its small size (about half that of the original XO) and dual touch-screens: it can function as a portrait-format e-book, as a tablet with a single continuous screen, or in clamshell mode with a virtual keyboard (see above).
The display technology will come from Pixel Qi, which was founded earlier this year by former OLPC chief technology officer Mary Lou Jepsen.
According to Negroponte, the target price for the XO-2 is $75 and the target power consumption is 1 watt. The original XO currently clocks in at $188 and 6W.
Wednesday 14 May 2008, 10:50 AM
Tablet trouble
We've had Dell's Latitude XT convertible tablet at ZDNet Towers for a couple of days, and been impressed with its sleek brushed aluminium finish, near-ThinkPad-quality keyboard, integrated HSPDA, diminutive AC adapter and capacitative touchscreen.
About the touchscreen. We don't have a lot of luck with touchscreens, and now the XT has fallen victim to The Curse of ZDNet Reviews. The very morning we were planning to do a video review of the unit, it woke up looking like this:
The machine has suffered no more than the average London-Bedford commuter at this time of year (jostling, overheating, general sense of ennui).
As soon as Dell has got to the bottom of the fault, or provided another sample, we'll bring you the review!
UPDATE:
Having sat and thought about it all morning, the Latitude XT has decided to show half a Vista desktop. Not the most useful half, mind you, but it's some sort of progress. Maybe by home time it'll all come back...
Tuesday 13 May 2008, 2:39 PM
Telescopic oversight
Microsoft Research's new WorldWide Telescope, in the brief time we've had to play with the beta, looks wonderful. A real productivity-killer, in fact -- especially as I'm lucky enough to have a powerful PC and a 30in. screen to view it on. So it would be churlish to poke fun at a typo we found in the 'Many worlds' guided tour wouldn't it?
Ah well, here it is:
Eruopa eh? Those Amreicans could sure use a spelling lesson!
More sensible stuff on the WWT soon.
