I’ve been an exclusive Mac user since 2005. It’s a phase I guess. Most of my friends went through the whole PhilMug pilgrimage and you gotta admit that at some point till about OS X Tiger, Macintosh spelled ultimate productivity. One thing though — although I was on the “Mac and will never go back craze” at the time, I had not abandoned Windows, which was precisely why Bootcamp was a boon in OS X Leopard. The drill was the same for all my MacBooks after my circa 2005 iBook to have Windows installed on the side. And for what? The games of course. It was always about the games.
We’ve been seeing a lot of gaming hacks in recent history. With RAZER building their FIONA gaming handset, Valve dwelling into a gaming console for the living room, it looks like graphics chip manufacturer NVIDIA is also developing their own console hardware. And it looks like a XBOX controller with a 5″ clamshell screen.
One of the sexiest booths in MWC belongs to NVIDIA. Not much on the outside, but a lot to offer on the inside. NVIDIA went all out to demonstrate the new Tegra 2 mobile GPU for tablets. This is essentially the technology that will allow your tablet to do high end graphics and a bunch of other cool stuff. If your tablet is running on Android, you need to have at least Honeycomb 3.0 installed to become compatible with NVIDIA’s latest chip. Examples of such devices are the Motorola Xoom and the LG Optimus Pad.
In the video, I go through the following:
Motorola Atrix 4G – an Android phone that attaches to an external dock. The dock serves as the charger, desktop display, keyboard and mouse. The phone automatically converts your screen orientation from phone to desktop mode. After docking, it takes roughly 7 seconds for the desktop dock to refresh and show your new screen.
ASUS Slider and Transformer – The ASUS Slider is a Honeycomb enabled device that comes with a pop-up keyboard. It’s 10 inches bitches! On the other side, the Transformer is a detachable 3.0 tablet. Both sport the Tegra 2 chip.
Motorola Xoom – The first Android 3.0 device in the market is definitely sexy. I had a bit of time to immerse with the new Samurai game that takes advantage of the processing power of the Tegra 2. Same goes for the LG Optimus Pad
After reading all of this, I suggest you do yourself a favor and hold back on that Tablet purchase you were about to do this month. 2nd generation tablet technology (1st gen was the one Microsoft tried to espouse) is about a year old and there’s so much room for growth. What I’m showing you are up and coming devices to be launched this year.
Parting shot: Andi9 with the Motorola Xoom. Or is it the LG Optimus Pad. Gee, they’re all looking the same!
