Netbook Navigator tablet runs on Windows 7

The tablet market is more or less dominated by just two operating systems – Android of Google and iOS from Apple's stable, but it seems as though Microsoft still has an extremely small voice in this niche (a squeak, actually), with their Windows 7 platform, although Windows 8 might just change the landscape altogether. It will take a whole lot of convincing from Microsoft to developers to support a Windows-powered tablet. Still, we shall take a closer look at what Microsoft has in store with Netbook Navigator's Windows 7 (choose from Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate versions) powered tablet. Running on an Intel Atom N570 1.66GHz dual-core processor with a base price of $499.99 (sans operating system), you will also find it equipped with a 10.1″ display at 1366 x 768 resolution, 2GB RAM, a 16GB solid state disk, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity, a 1.3-megapixel front facing camera, two USB ports, a microSD memory card slot, a SIM card slot, a 3-cell battery and stereo speakers, with the possibility of throwing more dough in this direction to up the ante to 128GB of storage space and 3G connectivity.

Google launches Chrome browser for Android smartphones and tablets

Google on Tuesday announced the first beta release of its Chrome Web browser for Android-powered smartphones and tablets. The firm's native Web browser is certainly among the better mobile Web browsers on the market, but with Chrome, Google is focused on aligning its mobile browsing experience more closely with its desktop browser. “Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices,” Sundar Pichai, Google's SVP of Chrome and Apps, wrote in a post on the company's blog. Chrome for Android is available immediately as a free download in the Android Market and it is compatible with smartphones and tablets running Android 4.0 or later.

7-inch ZTE Optik tablet now available at Sprint for $99.99

Sprint has a new affordable Android tablet in its lineup ready to be ordered. After being officially announced a few days ago, the ZTE Optik is now up for grabs at the Now Network. The ZTE Optik has a 7-inch touchscreen, a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of built-in storage space, a 5 MP rear camera, a 2 MP front-facing camera, microSD card support, Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, and a 4,000 mAh battery. It runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb.

Fujitsu unleash a new 7' Android Tablet in Japan

Fujitsu announced last Friday its latest Stylistic Tablet, with the M350/CA2. This Android 2.3 tablet comes with a 7" screen and a 1024×600 resolution, 8GB of internal memory, a Freescale i.MX 53 CPU at 1GHz, 512MB of RAM, a 1.3Mpix Front Camera/ 5Mpix Rear Camera, WiFi BGN, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR for a total weight of 420g, a 16h battery life and announced at around 34,800 Yen!

CyanogenMod 7 NOOK tablet

If you own the NOOK tablet and want to see how it performs with CyanogenMod 7 (CM7) runs on it (compared to how CyanogenMod 7 on the Kindle Fire is), then you might want to check out the video above. While a number of heavy hitting bugs are still crawling around this built, the developers behind it are still working on ironing out the kinks, and we do know that when everything is declared to be hunky dory, two roads are available to install CM7 on your beloved NOOK tablet – that is through the NOOK's internal storage, or to a bootable SD card. Those who take the first route will see the erasure of software that ships with the tablet, but good thing you are still able to (and recommended, of course) perform a backup of your device before installing CyanogenMod 7 in order to revert to the default settings at any time. As for the others who prefer to get CM7 hit on their NOOK tablet with a microSD memory card, you will gain the ability to boot it up directly from the memory card itself without having to touch the default software. I like the second option better – how about you? Just what kind of advantages that CM7 has over the default Barnes & Noble software that might cause you to venture an install? For starters, you will gain access to nearly 12GB of storage space for apps and file storage, out-of-the-box support for the Android Market, the ability to enjoy any third party keyboard application, and voice input support among others.

Huawei's MediaPad available at AT&T today

It's cheap tablet season in the USA, apparently. Yesterday Sprint officially announced the $99 ZTE Optik, and today it's AT&T's turn to start offering an affordable Android-powered tablet it seems, although it's a different one. After having made its way to T-Mobile where it's sold as the Springboard, the Huawei MediaPad (the world's first tablet to run Android 3.2 Honeycomb, if that matters to anyone anymore) should become available for AT&T business customers today. Unfortunately the Chinese company didn't bother to say anything about pricing, so we'll have to wait and see. Anyway, for business customers, pricing usually varies according to the account, so hopefully when the MediaPad will be out for consumers we'll find out more.

New Asus TF300T tablet gets leaked

Apparently Asus feels like there's room for another tablet in its lineup. That's because a new, previously unseen and unheard of Asus tablet (presumably running Android) has showed up on the Internet. Its model number is TF300T, the pictures below show you what it looks like, and that's really all we know about it. So let's speculate based on that model number. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime has the model number TF201, and the recently unveiled revamped edition of that tablet (with fixes for connectivity issues through a redesigned back plate and with a higher-res screen) has the model number TF700T. Now this newly leaked gadget obviously stands somewhere in between those two, at least in Asus' vision. Then again, the company's model numbers don't make much sense. The TF700T is basically just a minor revision of the TF201, so why the huge jump in number there? TF202, or even TF201T (since the original lacks that final “T” anyway) would have made a lot more sense. So the TF300T could be anything. It could be a lower-end companion to the two Primes, which is something that makes sense from a business perspective. Or it may be something else entirely. Sadly, the only thing we can do is wait and see.

Kindle 3 Keyboard 3G Network International Coverage – US versus The Rest of the World

Amazon Kindle 3G-The Perfect Travel Companion US Kindle 3 3G Coverage I went to Amazon.com to look at the 3G coverage map. Huh? No 3G coverage in Vietnam? Had I slurped back too much Pho, or had the sun addled my brain, or was it just like an episode of Dallas and it was all a dream? Then I remembered there's actually two versions of the 3G Kindle , a US one that is only available in the US and uses an ATT sim card and also an International model that uses a Vodafone sim card.  Now, Australia being NOT being part of the US meant I had an international model. So I went to Amazon.co.uk and check the Vodaphone 3G coverage map there. Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage So you can see while the US (ATT) Kindle 3 offers ZERO 3G coverage in Vietnam, the International version (Voda) gives almost full 3G coverage. US Kindle 3 3G Coverage Intl Kindle 3 3G Coverage Tasmania US v Intl 3G Coverage For interest sake I then had a look at Australian coverage.  I live in Tasmania, that little island just underneath Victoria, but couldn't get my screenshot to include in the map above, so I added separately. (We hate being left off the map of Australia ).  You can see  that there's dramatically different coverage between the International and the US Kindle 3 3G . Looking at the maps above, in reality I'd be much better off with a US Kindle 3 3G than the International model. Vodafone has notoriously bad coverage in Australia, and it's a bit ironic that a US Kindle would give me better coverage than an “International” version.  But of course if I had a US model, I'd have NO coverage while in Vietnam. A quick comparison of the maps shows some obvious areas where coverage is different, Morocco (I), Namibia(I), Cote D'Ivoire(I), Belarus(I), Malawi(I),Ecuador(U), Tanzania(U) and Bolivia(U) amongst others, and the degree of difference in coverage varies. I'm guessing that this “anomoly”  has to do with the partners that the respective Telcos have in the different countries. The long and short, if you're intending to use your Kindle while travelling, it's worth checking out if the US or International will give you the best coverage in the countries that you're going to visit. Be aware though that it's not possible to get a US Kindle 3G directly from Amazon internationally and conversely an International Kindle 3G in the US, but there are ways of doing it. Happy travelling

Samsung Galaxy S Aviator and Galaxy Tab 10.1 will be US Cellular's first LTE devices

Last month, US Cellular let us know that it was getting ready to launch two LTE devices, a tablet and a smartphone. But that was all the carrier had to tease, as it didn't mention the specific gadgets it would launch. Here we are about a month later, and it's finally decided to tell us that the Samsung Galaxy S Aviator and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 will in fact be the first devices to support its nascent LTE network. Fortunately, the initially announced release months of March for the tablet and April for the phone are still valid. We did kind of anticipate that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 was the tablet that US Cellular had in mind, yet the Galaxy S Aviator is new. At least in name, since upon first look it seems to be just a rebranded Samsung Droid Charge seen on Verizon. We'll know for sure when we get all the specs. For now, US Cellular has published the basics about each device. Unsurprisingly, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 will have a 10.1-inch touchscreen, a front-facing camera, HD gaming capabilities, Adobe Flash support, and will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb. The Samsung Galaxy S Aviator will run Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread and will have a 4.3-inch 480×800 Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, an 8 MP rear camera, a front-facing camera as well, and an HDMI out port.

First look at SlingPlayer for Amazon's Kindle Fire

Sling Media has been the go-to provider for video placeshifting solutions for nearly seven years now. The California-based company launched its first Slingbox in 2005, enabling users to watch live television exactly as it was being broadcast to their homes on any Internet-connected PC. The company rolled out its first SlingPlayer Mobile application the following year and it hasn't looked back, continuing to expand its mobile offering to support a wide range of popular platforms and devices. Sling Media will launch the latest addition to its mobile app lineup on Tuesday when it releases SlingPlayer Mobile for Amazon's popular tablet, and we spent much of our weekend enjoying placeshifted live television on our Kindle Fire to test the new app. Check out a small gallery of screenshots below and hit the break for our early impressions of SlingPlayer Mobile for the Amazon Kindle Fire. We have been using various versions of the SlingPlayer Mobile application here at BGR for years, but it wasn't until Apple initiated the tablet boom that SlingPlayer Mobile was really able to shine. Having the ability to watch live television or even on-demand and DVR-recorded content on a mobile phone is fantastic, but the relatively small size of cell phone displays makes the experience a mixed blessing. Not missing a moment of the NFC divisional playoffs while being dragged around a mall is fantastic, but viewing a game with wide camera angles on a screen that only measures about 4-inches diagonally is less than ideal. Tablets changed things for SlingPlayer, however. While these slim devices are typically much larger than smartphones - though the line continues to be blurred - they're far more portable than laptops and much lighter as well. More importantly where Sling is concerned, tablets also feature more substantial screen sizes that are far better-suited for displaying video. With an iPad-optimized build and support for a number of Android tablets out of the way, Sling Media's collective eyes turned to Amazon's Kindle Fire when the tablet launched late last year. The retail giant's first slate was expected to be a huge success before it was even announced and once it finally hit virtual store shelves, that expectation became a reality. The Kindle Fire has been Amazon's best-selling electronics device since mid-November. “Amazon has created a wonderful device and experience for people looking to consume media — and at a good price point, Sling Media's marketing VP Jay Tannenbaum said in a statement. “Now anyone with a Slingbox Solo or PRO-HD can turn their Kindle Fire into a TV with our latest version of SlingPlayer, available on Tuesday in the Amazon App Store. We are very proud of the video quality and performance of our app and believe the combination of a Kindle Fire and a Slingbox provides a great value.” Sling's Kindle Fire app launches on January 31st, but we spent some time testing a preview version this weekend and it absolutely impressed us. For those unaware of Sling's solutions, the company takes a complicated problem and makes the solution relatively simple considering how capable it is. Sling's TV placeshifting solution involves two components, the Slingbox that connects to the set-top box provided by a cable or satellite TV provider and the SlingPlayer software, which can be installed on a desktop PC, a notebook PC or a variety of tablets and smartphones. With Sling Media's solution, SlingPlayer becomes a window into the user's living room. The software features integrated remote control functions that allow the user to send commands over the Web and through the infrared transmitter running from the Slingbox to a cable box, meaning SlingPlayer can do nearly anything a standard remote can do. Users can therefore change channels, view guides, navigate to and watch DVR content, purchase and watch on-demand content, schedule DVR recordings and more. On the Kindle Fire, Sling's app performs as expected. Connections to the Slingbox are made quickly and when video first begins streaming, quality is a bit low until enough content has been buffered. Provided the Fire is connected to a network with decent Wi-Fi speeds, quality improves within about 30 seconds and remains quite clear and impressive as long as the connection is not interrupted. There is also a low-quality setting in the event bandwidth is not up to snuff. The low-quality setting is important on the Kindle Fire, since it is a Wi-Fi only device with no embedded 3G or 4G connectivity. This means that plenty of bandwidth is available when the tablet is connected to a home network or in an office, but those who connect on the go will likely be tethered to a smartphone or MiFi. While Wi-Fi tethering is becoming more reliable thanks to 4G, fast and reliable LTE service is still relatively scarce in the U.S. so most users make do with 3G data connections. Whether in high quality or low quality mode, however, SlingPlayer for the Kindle Fire performed as advertised. Operation using the on-screen controls was straight forward and commands were received by the Slingbox quickly. I did manage to trip up the connection once or twice by sending multiple commands too quickly, but seasoned SlingPlayer users know not to overload the controller and beyond that, performance was very impressive. The gravity of being able to reproduce the living room experience - access on-demand content, DVR content, programming guides and everything else that one is able to access while at home in front of a TV - while on the go is something that cannot be fully appreciated until it is experienced. There are a variety of streaming video solutions for mobile devices but none of them come close to providing the same wide range of live TV and varied content that home cable or satellite services provide. SlingPlayer Mobile for the Amazon Kindle Fire launches on January 31st for a one-time fee of $29.99, and it can be purchased directly on the tablet through the Amazon Appstore. As with all of Sling's solutions, there are no monthly subscription fees for the service.