The upfront price of the Motorola Droid 2 R2-D2 Edition will be $349.99. The $100 mail-in rebate brings it down to $249.99, which is just $50 more than the regular Droid 2. The R2-D2 Edition will be available on Verizon Wireless on September 30th. The Droid 2 R2-D2 Edition comes with:
Star Wars-themed dock
Custom-designed carbonite-looking box
Custom live wallpapers (4), sounds, ringtones, photos, R2-D2 clock widget
There’s a video preview of a LG Optimus 7 prototype, also known as the LG E900. The Optimus 7 runs Windows Phone 7 and sports a 5 megapixel camera and what seem like dual LED flashes.
The overall ID looks nice and simple. The display will most likely be the 3.7-inch 16:9 854×480 TFT LCDs that are used in the Droid and Motoroi smartphones, but that’s just a guess.
The retailer had a Samsung 3D monitor on display with two pairs of those flapper glasses, comprised of LCDs that turn on an off with the pulses of the monitor, so one eye sees an image, then the other gets opened to see the image meant for its side.
This happens rapidly enough to fool the brain into forming a 3D image. I don’t want to get into the health effects, but the technology seems to have a negative impact on kids’ optic nerves. But this doesn’t seem to be a problem for the marketing people. There’s a “who cares?” attitude about the whole thing.
3D marketing folks might not even know there are potentially negative health effects on kids’ optic nerves. I didn’t know and I’m shocked. So I googled around a bit and came across an article by Crunchgear:
The flashing LCDs have been linked to epileptic seizures, among other things.
And there’s a bit more in-depth explanation:
What happens is this: having each eye being completely blocked out thirty or sixty times per second is the equivalent of having a high-frequency strobe going off in your face. You’re probably aware of the danger this presents to epileptics and others: seizures, nausea, and fatigue are not uncommon. Furthermore, though this hasn’t been adequately investigated to my knowledge, it seems to me that the constant strobing might result in fatigue of your iris and lens muscles, which are constantly receiving conflicting information.
…
Anyway, the point is that the visual lessons you learn can be unlearned. Yeah, it sounds kind of silly at first, but there are already reports of people having depth perception trouble after watching a 3D movie at home or in the theater. 3D gaming may even exacerbate the problem, since you’re not simply viewing a virtual 3D space but interacting with it. It’s conceivable that your visual system could become partly rewired in order to better understand how a 3D visual world can exist on a 2D physical plane.
My recommendation regarding 3D is this: it isn’t good enough in my opinion and the potential for harmful effects on your visual system seems to be there. Skip 3D for you and your kids, for now.
Toshiba’s older models Satellite E205, M645, A665, and Protege R705 are all 4G WiMAX ready and will be available in stores September 26th.
Satellite E205
Exclusive to Best Buy. NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU with Optimus. 14-inch LED-backlit LCD. WiDi. Core i5 CPU. Slot-loading DVD. LED backlit keyboard. Starting at US$1079.99. I’m liking the rounded edges of the E205 but it is interesting to see a non chiclet keyboard. The two trackpad buttons falling off the bottom of the chassis are too blue and might not as ergonomic.
Satellite A665
16-inch LCD. AMD Phenom II Quad Core Mobile or Core i3, i5, i7 CPUs. Optional NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU. NVIDIA 3D Vision compatible (Core i7 models A665-3DV, A665-3DV1). $804.99.
Portege R705
13.3-inch LCD. 4 pounds. WiDi. $899.99. The ID is angular, which I like. The keyboard and trackpad seem to be offset to the left a little, thanks to the extra column of keys on the right.
Hmmm… the HP Slate looks exceptionally terrible. There’s a Ctrl-Alt-Delete key? At first, I thought it unbelievable, but now I’m thinking, “Of course! It is Windows 7!”
How unfortunate.
Here are some other observations:
You still have a mouse pointer; it disappears though.
Touch feedback blue dot animation: I thought this was only used when you were developing an ad to help folks visually see what your fingers are doing without actually showing the fingers. I guess not.
Browser performance is slow, excruciatingly slow. I was grasping for air just looking at it.
Keyboard button: You need it since it isn’t automatic. Just terrible.
I guess Microsoft was spending too much time developing the Windows Phone 7 mobile OS to give much thought to the tablet-version of Windows 7. Of course, this video is of a prototype HP Slate so there is the possibility of things getting better, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. This is the case of the OS choking the hardware design and ruining the entire experience. If I had the choice between a HP Slate and a Samsung Galaxy Tab there is no doubt in my mind which is better. Here’s hoping HP will dump this garbage and focus on a webOS tablet. viaDaring Fireball
