Hope you haven’t forgotten the AT200 tablet that Toshiba had announced at the IFA conference held in Berlin last year? Unfortunately, it never hit the market anyway, the company came up with its CES announcements yesterday and re-announced the 10.1 inch tablet and the best thing is that it now has its own official commercial name – Excite X10.

This incredibly thin device has a width of 7.7mm which happens to be about 1 mm thinner than iPad2 and Galaxy Tab. It sports aluminum back which makes it more uniquely snazzier compared to the other available tablets that come with plastic body which easily get smudged. Its IPS panel is covered with Corning Gorilla Glass and provides really wide viewing angles together with a native resolution of 1280X800. The processing in the device is done by a dual core 1.2GHz TI OMAP 4430. In the September of 2011, it was popularized to be superior to Tegra 2 from Nvidia, but now it’s the time that we got to check out how good it stands to quad-core Tegra 3 tablets.

It provides connectivity through 802.11n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0; micro-sized USB, SD & HDMI ports, doing justice with the slender profile of the device. Other features of the device include DLNA support, dual HD cameras 2MP on front and 5MP on the back offering 1080p video capture capability; GPS & built-in compass; stereo speakers with SRS. However, at the initial level, device won’t be offering any mobile broadband connectivity options.

Toshiba will be presenting their Excite X10 with Android 4.0 “Ice Creame Sandwich” once the device gets available in the market by first mid quarter of 2012. It will be available in two capacities namely 16GB and 32GB with $529 and $599 price tags respectively. Excite X10 will be Toshiba’s premium tablet offering along with the already existing devices making up their ‘mainstream’ options that will be available for $380 for 8GB, $400 for 16GB, and $480 for 32GB. A 4G AT&T HSPA+ option for 16GB device will also be offered by Toshiba at the CES at a price of $480, which won’t require any contract.

Other than its upcoming 10-inch tablet, Toshiba will also be displaying its Portégé Z835 Ultrabook at the CES starting this week. This 13.3 inch laptop will be offering a 1366×768 matte display, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, second generation Intel Core processors & Integrated Intel graphics, spill resistant keyboard, a full sized backlit & spill resistant keyboard. The internet connectivity will be offered by three USB ports each being USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA-out, Wi-Fi and Wi-Di. With its pricing starting at mere $819.

A leaked picture has come to our notice that has given some authenticity to the rumors related to the forthcoming smaller equivalent of Asus’ 10 inch Transformer Prime. Though it has not yet been made clear that would it be one or two of the 7 inch devices coming up with speculations around the 7 inch Transformer Prime as well as a refreshed version of the last year’s Eee Pad Memo.

However, the rumors around are confidently announcing that either one or may be a blend of the both will be making its presence during the Consumer Electronic Show this year.

The picture of the device published by Notebook Italia, an online media brought the device to the world which is quite similar to the Transformer Prime in terms of its aesthetics and has some resemblance with the Memo which is found to have bulkier edge. The rumor monger site is pretty sure that the mini Transformer will be introduced as a separate device but interestingly no specifications are revealed yet other than the commonly known ones like – a hardware keyboard attachment, Android (probably Ice Cream Sandwich), and a price tag which can easily be afforded (something like $299).

Notebook Italia seems quite sure that the overhauled Eee Pad Memo will be available with a capacitive display of 1280X800, Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor of 1.2Hz, an integrated flash memory of between 16GB to 64GB and Wi-Fi as well as 3G connectivity. And there’s also a possibility of Ice Cream Sandwich to be present at the time of the launch. Though extra details are yet to be made available, on the basis of the name of the device, it is being assumed that the device will be supporting pen input as well as the handwriting software.

These upcoming products from Asus will be competing with numerous other second-gen products in the 7 and 10 inch product range. Sadly, the market hardly looks any changed compared to how it was doing last year. However, it appears there will be a little less cluttering as some of the major playing PC makers would be concentrating on the Ultrabooks in place of tablets. But then, there are sure signs that the first half of 2012 will be ruled by Apple’s iPad & Amazon’s Kindle Fire and some of the Android devices that have made some place in the market.

Amazon has just come up with its Kindle Software’s 6.2.1 version. The main reason behind this update seems to be the requirement to improve the UI performance, which has been a complaint against the software ever since it came into being.

The update can be received over-the-air, however, if you face troubles in receiving it, you can consult the instructions present at the end of this article.

Amazon boasts that this new version namely 6.2.1 offers some of the most wonderful features, which are:

• Enhanced fluidity & Performance: Earlier, the user interface offered quite a choppy experience especially in the case of the items such as cover flow of “carousel” feature.
• Touch navigation responsiveness is much improved.
• Special option is added to choose the items to be displayed on the carousel which you want and remove the ones that you don’t. Earlier, there were some privacy issues as the carousel could then display all the items, even the once which you didn’t want others to see.
• Special password lock for Wi-Fi access – This will prove helpful for the parents as they’ll be able to make sure that their kids are reading books and not wasting their time watching YouTube videos.

It is notable that even when people made comparisons between this $200 device and iPad 2, its $500 competitor, it is found to be more appreciated ever since its release on November the 14th. And in fact, Amazon had to increase the production repeatedly from time to time in order to fulfill the consumer demand and it became the “hottest table” at “Target” and “Best Buy” just the last month.

Instructions:

Download your Software: first click on the link given below for downloading the software update file right into your computer: Download Software Update 6.2.1

Transferring the Software to your Kindle: for this, you’ll have to turn your Kindle Fire and unlock the screen.  After this, connect it to your computer with the help of a USB cable. Now drag and drop the new update file right from your computer to the Kindle updates folder on your Kindle drive. You’ll get to see this drive displayed as a “device” icon.

Monitoring the File Transfer and Disconnection: Now simply check the progress of the file transfer to make sure that the file has successfully transferred to your Kindle Fire. Once the transferring is done successfully, simply tap on the “Disconnect” button of your Kindle Fire screen and have it successfully disconnected from your computer. Now disconnect the USB cable from your computer as well as the Kindle Fire.

Now even the poorest lots can think of owning their own tablet with the launch of the world’s cheapest tablet, Aakash in India, coproduced by UK based Datawind.  It will be available for a mere 34 dollars or 22 pounds for the students and for others its cost will be set at 60 dollars or 39 pounds.

The size of the tablet is found to be that of a paperback book and it offers a resistive touch screen, this makes it impossible for the gestures to work on it; however, it shouldn’t be an issue because of the price at which it is available. Users will get a SD card slot along with a 2GB card and a possible support for up to the capacities of 32GB. Its other important specifications include Wi-Fi, USB ports, video conferencing, 256MB RAM, 600MHz processor. The battery life offered by Aakash is 2 hours and it runs on Android 2.2.

Datawind also has plans to roll out a little more expensive “UbiSlate” in December, which is going to be the commercial variant and will include a cellular modem. This special variant will aim at making it easy to access the online content from anywhere through mobile phone reception. This will make it possible for the tablet to function like a mobile phone.

The Indian Human Resource Development Minister, Kapil Sibal gave away 500 units of the tablet to university students for testing. Indian government also has a plan to hand over more than 10 million units to the students in the coming years.

Sibal told to the press that their goal is to break the price barriers so that computer and internet access becomes available to all and this is why they have brought out this affordable device which will reach the masses.

India is going to have orders for 100,000 units at a slightly higher price of 45 dollar or 29 pound with an agreement that the orders to be taken in the future will be for as low a price as 34 dollar.

So, Amazon has also stepped in to the Tablet market finally with its recently launched Kindle Fire tablet. The digital world is taking this latest launch as a threat to Apple Inc’s, iPad, most popular product in the tablet market.

Is Kindle Fire an iPad killer?

Some are taking this brand new tablet from Kindle as an iPad killer but researchers have found that it won’t pose any such threat to Apple’s iPad even with the cheaper price tagged to it. This is because it is targeting largely a different type of consumers.

Amazon.com became a success in the corporate America with its online retail business and even with its entry into the tablet market, it has no plans to make a shift in its product line and its new tablet is simply a complement to its already existing undertakings.

The main aim of introducing Kindle Fire is to improve the popularity of its e-readers and tempt the other customers to buy more of books, movies, videos, etc available on its site. This will prove beneficial for the popularity of the company’s already existing library consisting of 18 million e-books, songs, movies, and TV programs.

Specifications

Kindle Fire, a 7 inch touch screen tablet weighs almost one-third less than iPad 2 at quite a light weight of just 14.6 ounces. It comes with a dual-core processor and is available at quite a lower price of just $199 compared to $499, the minimum price of iPad. It offers its own unique Android interface and takes the advantage of Amazon’s reputable cloud services.

Its multi touch 7 inch display comes packed with anti-reflective treatment, 1024X600 resolutions at 169 ppi and offers Gorilla glass protection. The battery promises a continuous reading of 8 hours and video playback of 7.5 hours and gets fully charged in 4 hours. You get internal storage of 8GB, microUSB 2.0 which can also be connected to PC for charging, top-mounted stereo speakers, 3.5 mm stereo audio jack, and Wi-Fi.  You don’t get support for 3G. The content formats that it supports are Kindle (AZW), PDF, TXT, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX), unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, DOC, DOCX, GIF, PNP, JPEG, BMP, non-DRM, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP3, MP4, VP8.

With the steady coming up of a plethora of tablets, Sony, Acer, and NEC are some of the names that have just come up with fresh announcements. First on the list, Sony is soon to launch its latest consumer slate; it will be a Honeycomb-based Tablet S of 9.4 inches. The boring sounding slate offers those silicon inner parts that are available with most of its Android based competitors, i.e. a dual core Nvidia Tegra 2.

Coming to its hardware parts, you’ll find it offering a “TruBlack” display of 1280X800, front & back mounted cameras, as well as an SD card reader; however, it is notable that some of the reviewers have found that the one can’t play any media from the SD card directly. If anything really makes the Tablet S an interesting and unique device, it is its sloped shape measuring between 0.3 and 0.8 inches, which is believed to be taken from its inspiration from a folded magazine.

While discussing its software, it avails you with a kind of PlayStation emulator that comes along with a custom universal remote app that enables you to control the TVs from Sony, Blu-ray players, and other similar compatible devices. Its battery life is found to be lesser than that of the iPad2 or Galaxy 10.1, by being merely 8.35 hours. The 16GB model will be priced at $499 and the 32GB models will be available for $599 and will be available within a few weeks.

Acer and AT&T will be coming up with a 4G (HSPA+) tablet this year, as they had promised. This Sunday, September the 18^th, the Iconia Tab A501 will be launched in US and will be available in two versions. One will be a 16GB device at a price of $330 when purchased with a contract for two years or at an unsubsidized amount of $500f. The other version will be a 32GB device at $550 sans contract. It is believed that most of its specifications are same as those of the company’s Iconia Tab A500.

On the other hand, NEC has declared that it will be rolling out a 10.1 inch 1280X800 IPS paneled Wintel device offering 1.5GHz Atom and SM35 Express chipset, RAM of 2GB, storage of 64GB, Windows 7 Home Premium, two USB ports, HDMI-out, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.  The LaVie Touch will be available in Japan for 94,500 Yens which is equivalent to $1,225. It will be accompanied with a DVD drive, a keyboard, and mouse.

Mozilla is doing excellently well in taking up new ventures from time to time, as its regular updates are hitting the browser pretty frequently, here Mozilla is looking forward to release a brand new Firefox browser for Android 3.0 tablets pretty soon.

Ian Barlow, the user experience designer of Mozilla mobile device made aware of this by posting some mock-ups of the browser on his personal blog.

It’s been just a little while that Mozilla brought out Firefox for Android smart phones. It first came out in its beta version but then was released in its full version. However, the version for Android tablets doesn’t offer as rich an experience as desktop version. This is because in order to create a better phone version, many of the UI elements had to be kept off by Mozilla so that the space on small screens can be made free. Notably, many of the popular features of the desktop variant of the browser are found on the larger tablets as they don’t have any space restrictions like the smaller tablets and mobiles.

Barlow has announced that the Firefox for tablets is going to have many new enhancements made compared to its predecessors so that it can utilize the benefits of the larger screen size of the tablet.

One of the UI that will be coming back will be the tabs, which are generally kept hidden in the smart phone browser for the space restriction. Usually, the tabs on the tablets work in two ways. They are either in the landscape mode; in this case the tabs are visible on the screen’s left side as small thumbnails of each of the open page; or in the portrait mode, in which the tabs are placed in the drop-down style menu groups that increases the usability.

The minimalist design of Honeycomb will be utilized by the tablet version of the Firefox but still some of the most popular elements will be included by Mozilla such as its distinctive tab shape, Awesomebar URL entry field, and oversized back button.

But it is hardly known how long one will have to wait for it as the release date has not yet been announced.

The news of Sony’s working on tablets this year has already hit almost all the shores, but there’s a new bit of information related to the Sony’s device that was earlier known as S1. So the latest happening is that this device is reported to have got a changed name, it is now S, and its time to see the light of the world is approaching near as it is believed to be getting released in the first fortnight of September.

Sony made its two tablets, namely S1 & S2 official right in the month of April with a promise of releasing it in the fall in a press event held in Tokyo.

The Sony Tablet – S offers a 9.4 inch screen, a front facing camera of 3 MP and a rear sided shooter of 5MP. It is powered by Nvidia’s Tegra 2 SoC, provides wireless connectivity with the help of Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G. Most interesting thing it offers is the IR port for AV controls including Sony’s range of Bravia televisions along with the other devices that support the standards set by Digital Living Network Alliance.

The tablet will be available with the support for Android 3.1 but it has the provisions for being upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, ones it is available, which is believed to be available by October. Users will find several accessories similar to the ones offered by iPad.

Just a few months back, the price for this Wi-Fi enabled Sony Tablet S was guesstimated to be $600, but now it seems that Sony will lower down its price in order to compete with the price offered by Apple’s device.

As Apple has been ruling the tablet market and this has made it really tough for the other competing brands to taste the wine of success, most other brands are forced to lower down the prices. Even HP had to discontinue their WebOS based TouchPad just after the device completed its 49 days on the market leading to a liquidation of the already existing stock of TouchPad at once. And many retailers even started offering the 16 GBa nd 32 GB tablets for just $99 and $149.

ViewSonic is all set to release its ViewPad 10pro sometimes in late August and mid September. What attracts people toward this new product is that it is certainly not an iPad clone like the ones common these days and it maintains its own uniqueness. Oak Trail platform from Intel powers the device which includes latest 1.5 GHz Atom Z670 processor and is capable of running multiple operating systems simultaneously.

This functionality of Oak Trail Platform made it possible for ViewSonic to provide access to Windows 7 and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The operating systems aren’t booted on the tablet in the conventional dual-boot system instead here the Google’s operating system is made to run on the top of the Windows in the form of an application.

“Users need to simply tap on the Android icon to make a seamless switch between business productivity and … entertainment,” ViewSonic said about their upcoming product.

This will certainly persuade some shoppers to take home this ViewPad; however, Windows based tablets aren’t found much successful and this only the time will tell how successful it will prove for this new tablet to choose Android 2.3 in place of 3 X Honeycomb which is especially meant for the tablets and has been used by most other devices since the month of February. Other than Honeycomb, by the end of 2011, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is to be released, but it isn’t clear whether 10pro will be getting an update or not.

Other than Oak Trail from Intel and the dual operating system functionality, one gets to see ViewPad as a typical spec sheet. It offers 1024X600 capacitive display of 10-inch, Bluetooth 2.1+ EDR, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, USB 2.0, front mounted webcam of 1.3 MP, Mini- HDMI ports, and audio jacks. It also offers support for 32 GB microSD cards and has a battery life of eight long hours. It weighs about 2 pounds and measures 10.7 x 6.7 x 0.58 inches.

It is estimated that no less than two configurations will be made available at the time of the launch in the US sometimes in the end of this month. Out of these configurations, one will be offered with Windows 7 Home Premium along with a 16 GB SSD at a price of $599 and the other will be with Windows 7 Professional along with 32 GB SSD at a cost of $699.

Industry insiders say that the tablets will be available in Europe not before a few weeks from the launch in US and there too, the tablets will be offered in two models, namely a Wi-Fi only unit at a price of about 539.99 pounds and another one a 3G-equipped version at a cost of 599.99 pounds. However, no storage difference is known yet.

Lenovo’s forthcoming business oriented device, ThinkPad tablet is all set to be launched on August 23. It is said to be priced at starting price of $47 9.99. This is going to be using Android’s Honeycomb 3.1 OS along with a standard hardware load-out.

The ThinkPad tab includes a Nvidia’s Tegra 2 dual core processor that operates at 1 GHZ and a system memory of 1 GB. Its IPS display of 10.1 inch offers a resolution of 1280X800 and comes covered with Corning Gorilla glass. One will be able to get the tablets with the capacities of 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB.

On simply glancing at the ThinkPad, it appears to be same as any other 10.1 inch Android tablets already available in the market. However, on closely investigating one can say that the optional accessories that it offers can catch some attention of the buyers.

The dock of the tablet provides data synchronization, charging, and even the expansion of the device in an ergonomically created vertical positioning stand. One gets a micro USB port, USB 2.0 port, HDMI port, stereo out, and microphone in. Other than this, one can configure it with ThinkPad USB keyboard or a combo or Edge wireless keyboard and mouse.

If you are ready to spend a little more you can also get special tablet pen and keyboard folio case by paying some additional amount. Its stylus pen will be appreciated by graphic artists or the users who have already used the older versions of Lenovo tablets but it seems less likely to be liked by the newer users.

Its keyboard folio has a special possibility of being converted into a netbook like device quite similar to the Transformer tablet of Asus which the users have much liked in the recent times.

Other than the accessories that it is providing, one gets hold of 25 additional applications preloaded on the tablet which will prove beneficial in providing better usage and experience.