Mikio Katayama, Sharp’s president, is a man not in the business of making weak-assed claims, touting Sharp’s upcoming e-reader as a rival for the iPad. Considering the iPad is much more than an e-reader (okay, not that much more), such a claim would seem ludicrous. But Katayama’s bold as hell. Katayama likes things extra-spicy. Likes shaking things up. But while we puzzle over Katayama’s confidence, the Sharp e-reader is still turning out to be a pretty interesting device. Out later this year, the device will employ a colour display and utilize the new XMDF file format for e-books, which allows…

Sometimes, I like to think I’ll be famous for something, some day. In fact, on a good day, I firmly believe it. I pound my fist on my desk and declare knowingly that there’s nothing but sweet life ahead. I think, sometimes, we all have that feeling of invincibility. That we’ll overcome any obstacle. That we’ll be celebrated. That we’ll be seen. So, really, I don’t think Acer chairman JT Wang is entirely batsh*t for making the claim that by the time the tablet market has ‘stabilized’, Apple’s share of it will have plunged from 100% (okay, not really 100%, but not far off) to 20-30%. JT is a firm believer…

A few weeks ago India’s Human Resource Development minister, Mr Kapil Sibal was throwing words around the tubes known as the internet about a planned $35 laptop built for students around the world. Yeah, right. Yeah right. THAT’S going to happen. Wow, it’s really hard to be sarcastic on the internet. At least that’s how the world reacted a few weeks ago, but due to a few recent developments, it looks like it may actually happen. Right now Microsoft and Google are in a war to get their operating system on the device. It currently runs Android but Microsoft wants a copy of Windows CE on there. There’s also…

Okay, this headline is probably more clickbait than actual truth, but before January 2010 how many of you have waited more than a few years to see that headline pop up in your feed readers? Actually, this is quite the non-event – another device crudely fashioned and sold purely on the basis that it might actually run OS X for a week or two before becoming unstable. The Axon Haptic Tablet obviously doesn’t come with OS X installed, since only morons would actually try to sell a product owned by another company without any attempt to license or attribution. Instead, they sell systems “designed to be suitable…

This week, after teasing it with a countdown, Sony America announced the release of their Android smartphone, the Xperia X10. In years gone by, Sony’s ‘entrance’ into a new market would be cause for celebration. For decades, Sony’s name meant slick design and cutting edge tech. This should be a big deal. The Xperia X10, though? I’ve played with the phone for a few weeks now, and it’s pretty great. It’s thin and the screen is incredible. But, beyond also having a clunky Sony Ericsson skin, the device is also running Android 1.6. Yep. In August 2010, Sony are releasing a phone that is three steps behind…

Since Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer’s announced that their ipad killer would in fact be tablet computers running the Windows OS, the same approach they’ve been failing at for nearly ten years, we’ve been watching closely for comparisons between iPads and tablet PCs. Of course, it’s a tricky task, because every time Ballmer stands up and announces a tablet device running Windows, the damn things get canceled. Well, here’s a video comparing a tablet that snuck out to market with an iPad. Considering the nature of the Apple Vs. PC debate, and the fact that, well, this is the internet, the video is surprisingly…

Whatever you may think of the iPad – whether you believe it to be the savior of old media or simply “a big iPod Touch” – there is one thing that cannot be denied: the thing has been a massive success. By last count, Apple had sold 3.27  million of them in the last quarter and, if that rate is anything to go by, sales are now probably over 4 million. The tablet computer, it seems, has arrived. Naturally then, Apple’s competitors are gearing up their own versions. This, for better or worse, is the state of our industry: Apple innovates and others then play catch-up. Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry,…

Hurrah – HP’s recently-acquired Palm unit has updated its webOS software, unleashing a whole new world of handheld gaming. Well, not quite, but with HP already saying it intends using its newly-acquired webOS to spark a whole new period in connected device development, then we’ll be watching the Palm OS for some time to come. In future expect printers and all manner of other digital devices to speak to each other using webOS. Beyond this, HP has also confirmed plans to unleash a whole new wave of webOS-powered netbooks and slates. And in a sign that it isn’t all going to be Apple versus Google…

These days, if you asked most people which company is out to destroy the PC, they’d tell you ‘Apple’. But it isn’t just Steve Jobs out to crush the personal computer. In fact, a much better symbol for the end of the PC came recently when Google launched an on-site video editing app on YouTube. Why? It was one more step in a trend that moves computing away from the desktop and onto the web. And nowadays, you could even skip editing on the web – the new iPhone will let you edit movies and then upload them directly to YouTube, no computer required. Things that were unimaginable just a few short years ago are now…

Oh dip. This is a sultry unit. Toshiba is celebrating its 25th anniversary by dropping a true iPad killer into the fray. Billed as a ‘concept product’, a limited quantity of the Libretto W100 are being released into the wild as a test to see if consumers will dig it. Hell, I, for one, dig it. Just look at this thing. With a 62gig SSD, 2gigs of RAM, dual 7-inch screens at 1024×600, Bluetooth, WiMAX, and, perhaps most importantly, Windows-goddamn-7, the Libretto W100 sounds a lot like the future of mobile computing we were all hoping the iPad was going to be. This is a real computer, running real, grown-up…