Is the premium that a brand commands actually caused by the corresponding generics underpricing themselves (leaving money on the table)?

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Asus Eee T91 Touch Tablet Review: Keep Dreaming [Lightning Review]

The Asus Eee T91 is a return to netbooks gone by—a tiny 8.9-inch screen, 16GB SSD—except for one thing: It's a touchscreen tablet.

Price: $499

Verdict: Have you ever wanted to touch Windows XP? No? There's a pretty good reason for that—it's a really crummy touch experience, even with slightly larger-than-usual buttons. It's kind of like trying to poke poke poke around Windows Mobile 5 with a stylus—the onscreen keyboard's small keys gives us pretty horrific flashbacks. (This is at least partly because the T91 is running standard Windows XP Home, not Windows XP Tablet edition.) The "touch optimized" Internet Explorer is a joke. That's okay, Asus knows all of this too, so they've included their own custom interface that sits on top of XP called Touch Gate.

The UI is glossy and glowy and widgety—lighting effects, reflections and giant buttons abound. It can be impressively smooth in action, given how dinky the T91's guts are (1.33GHz Atom Z520). It has its own apps inside, like a flashy photo program, notepad for scribbling, and internet radio. There's widget desktop inside as well. You can move between the Touch Gate homescreen, widgets desktop and Windows XP by flicking left or right. It's confusing and annoying though—why can you only have five programs on the Touch Gate homescreen? To get to other apps, you have to move a slider sitting below to "unlock" the rest of the apps, which pop up in a semi-circle. From there, you can launch one, or trade out the apps that appear on your homescreen.

But let's just cut to it: I'm just not sure why anyone would want this, barring other third party apps you'd install that would unleash the potential of the tablet. (Which is perfectly adequate from a hardware standpoint—the touchscree! n is pre tty accurate with the stylus after calibration, though the LED-backlit screen suffers from the typical Asus dimness.) With the exception of being able to literally scribble notes and some whizbang photo flick gestures, there's nothing you can accomplish with Asus's custom widget OS overlay you couldn't do on a regular netbook with a regular Windows XP build. And a glorified app launcher for a handful of custom apps + a widget desktop that essentially exist just to lie on top of Windows XP to make touch actually usable aren't exactly compelling reasons to spring for a tablet, especially when more often than not, the experience simply frustrates because the software seems to misinterpret what you intended a tap to mean.

If there's a specific reason you want a Windows XP tablet with a crampy screen that doubles as decent last-gen netbook with a crampy screen, then for $500, the T91 might be your ticket. But if you're just aching for a cheap touchscreen tablet to dick around on the internet, you'd be better off waiting for the $300 CrunchPad. The T91 was much better as the glimmer of hope in our eye at CES.

Asus custom touch interface is flashy without bogging down system too much

Touch is accurate after calibration-provided you use the included stylus

It's half tablet, half last-gen netbook

Windows XP + touch is not the good ki! nd of to uch

In the age of 10-inch netbooks, the 8.9-inch screen is weenie-sized

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Tesla goes Big Apple with Chelsea showroom

It's a time of dire news for auto manufacturers, with losses widening, dealerships closing, and whole brands disappearing. Not so for Tesla, which despite all that bickering up top has managed to scrounge together the funds to open up a shop in Chelsea in western Manhattan, a swanky area full of art galleries and the beret-clad people who frequent them. No surprise, then, that Tesla has outfitted the walls of this new dealership with large prints of its very own manufacturing process -- probably not earning it much cred in the 'hood. Annual operating cost is estimated to be a cool $1.5 million, pocket change by GM and Toyota standards, but surely a little more significant for a small company like this. Tesla used the space to show off the 2010 Roadster, which we still don't have full details on, but have heard features slightly improved circuitry, a locking glove box, and WiFi to enable remote, wireless diagnostics. Surely a Tesla-branded application store of some sort can't be far behind.

Filed under: Transportation

Tesla goes Big Apple with Chelsea showroom originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS Eee PC T91 review

We've had our eye on ASUS' first full touchscreen tablet netbook, the Eee PC T91, since way back in January, when the hardware was on display while the software had yet to appear. Since then, we've seen quite a lot of the T91, and now it's finally making its way onto the US retail market. We've spent the last few days giving it the once over, to see how this netbook -- which is a true departure for ASUS -- stacks up. Touchscreen tablets have been, in many ways, an oft-repeated mix of excitement and disappointment -- great ideas coupled with mediocre hardware, or nice-looking hardware coupled with bad implementation of the touchscreen. Has ASUS managed to sidestep these issues with its own tablet PC? Read on for our impressions.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC T91 review

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS Eee PC T91 review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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GE's Smart Grid aims to cut home energy consumption to zero, promote world peace

Judging by the company's recent infatuation with energy-efficient LED lighting solutions, we're not at all surprised to see General Electric launching a daunting initiative that aims to cut homeowner energy consumption to zero by 2015. The so-called 'Smart Grid' is part of the Net Zero Home Project, which combines solar and wind energy (for on-site power generation) along with specialized appliances that can "communicate with utilities to participate in utility-run demand-response programs." In other words, these intelligent devices can turn themselves down or off when no one's around in order to shave peak-time consumption, and the in-your-face nature of always knowing exactly how much juice you're wasting should also encourage conservation. Of course, we have all ideas that a Smart Grid-certified home will run you quite a bit more than you're willing to pay, but hey, Ma Earth deserves it -- doesn't she?

[Via CNET]

Filed under: Household

GE's Smart Grid aims to cut home energy consumption to zero, promote world peace originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Jul 2009 09:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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