Tag Archives: slate

apple, e-book, kindle, sony

A BIG e-Book Reader

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We often don’t get gadgets here in the UK that they have in the US, for example anyone want a Zune? Well even if you did, not available officially in the UK.

I remarked very early on when Amazon released the Kindle back in January 2008 that

Of course they aren’t available in the UK at all, I wonder if we will ever see a UK version of the Kindle?

Well the Kindle eventually made it to the UK in October 2009, however without the full on connectivity that made it an attractive device and one that stood out from the other e-Book devices out there. Without the connectivity I couldn’t see how the device was that much different to the Sony eBook Reader which I was using for eBooks. I was also pretty sure that we would see a new tablet/slate device from Apple soon (well probably in next couple of weeks) and that sounded a much better deal.

Having said that, released this week is the Kindle DX, the BIG Kindle. This is again an eBook Reader from Amazon but with a much bigger screen, 9.7” over the 6” of the Kindle. This makes reading complex pages and PDFs much easier than other eBook Readers. This makes it a much more suitable reading device for some curriculum areas which depend on diagrams and pictures.

The other big advantage of the Kindle is the backing of Amazon, making it very easy to buy and download eBooks to the device. This is something that other companies like Apple know, make it easy to buy content and people buy content.

With my Sony eBook Reader, I need to make sure I am on the right computer and then download the eBook to that computer before syncing with the Reader and then I can read my book. With the Kindle, I can browse and download the book via the device. In the US this is pretty seamless, however in the UK it gets a little more complicated and adds an extra charge to the book (as you have to pay roaming 3G charges).

I do like eBook Readers, however I won’t be buying a Kindle DX as I am going to wait and see what Apple bring to the market before the end of the month.

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Tabletish

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The rumours continue to ruminate, the possible leaks continue to leak, the stories continue to be told.

It is almost 100% likely that Apple will sometime this year, probably this month, release a table slate type device.

No one knows for sure, but there are lots of rumours and speculation running around the web.

One thing that I recently heard about and caught my eye was this simulation of a tablet device showing a magazine. Note that this is not the Apple device, this is just a concept of a future device.

This concept is Sports Illustrated, however replace a sports magazine with a core text book, or a relevant magazine for a vocational area.

No more just pictures and text, now throw in video, audio and animated diagrams.

Yes we can do this already, and with the NLN Materials this was been done a few years ago. However the difference now is the device on which someone would view this content. With 3G and WiFi you can now have the connectivity to download content quickly and easily when you want to use it. A device with a battery life of a day rather than an hour and a half. A device with an intuitive interface that just works then one that requires a pen, stylus or a degree in mechanics to work out how it works.

I have no idea when the Apple device will come out though I think the 26th or 27th January are possible, I certainly will consider getting one.

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NVIDIA Tablet Chipset

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NVIDIA made a major announcement on Thursday introducing their latest Tegra 2 mobile chipset.

The Tegra 2 chipset incorporates 8 independent processors to handle web browsing, HD video encoding/decoding as well as mobile gaming. It also accomplishes all this with a very low power consumption. In part, this is accomplished by the use of the ARM Cortex A9 dual core processor. The ARM Cortex A9 is the same processor that has been rumored to be utilized in Apple’s future tablet.

NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 powered Tablets boasts the following features:

– Over 16 hours of HD video or 140 hours of music on a single charge
– Adobe Flash Player 10.1
– 10x faster than processors used in smartphones today
– Playback 1080p video