Tablet Computer | featured news

Safely and properly e-cycling your old, unused consoles, smartphones, tablets, and laptops is easier than you think, and you can actually save money.

Research in Motion announced last week that cost cutting efforts will include layoffs following a sluggish start to the year and continued new product delays. Shares sold off sharply as investors bailed on lowered guidance and delayed new Blackberry launch.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 is available in stores across the country today, and it seems the company has offered the best Android tablet on the market. The hardware on the tablet is great; it’s sleek and light with a great screen and is easily the best Android tablet I’ve played with so far. But what I — and non-Apple manufacturers, apparently — keep running up against is the iPad question. With the number of applications designed for tablets on Android, there’s just no comparison.

A number of Android smartphone makers who have turned their hand to Android tablets to try cash in on the tablet PC category dominated by the iPad are said to giving up. Instead, their focus has switched back from tablets to the development of larger, high-end smartphones with 4- to 5-inch displays. According to Digitimes, only Samsung has made any significant inroads into the segment, claiming a 10% share.

Like the old Timex commercials — “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” — torture tests featuring electronic tablets like the iPad are appearing on YouTube.

Microsoft plans to restrict the number of computer hardware makers that initially can make tablets using its Windows operating system, requiring five select chip makers to pair up with one development partner each.

Opponents of AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile filed last-minute petitions to federal regulators Tuesday in hopes of blocking the $39 billion mega-deal. But they are going up against a deep-pocketed telecom giant that’s just getting started on its own campaign to influence the decision.

Intel unveiled a new category of laptops that it says will include the best features of tablets as the world's top chipmaker struggles to find its footing in the exploding market for mobile gadgets. Netbook pioneer Asustek showed its first new PC in Intel's "Ultrabook" class, the UX series, on Monday at the Computex computer show in Taipei. Intel said models made by other manufacturers would go on sale by Christmas and cost under $1,000.

The obsession with tablet computing will be on full display Tuesday as Computex, the world's second-largest computer show, begins its annual five-day run in Taipei. The prominence of tablets underscores a dramatic shift under way in the personal computer industry — and keenly felt in Taiwan, which is home to some of the world's biggest PC manufacturers — as many consumers opt to buy a tablet rather than a new PC.

Bidding to differentiate itself in the increasingly competitive tablet-computer market, Samsung Electronics plans this year to launch an Android-based tablet running on fourth-generation network technology.