Tegra 3 is the world’s first quad-core mobile platform, Nvidia assures us, and along with those 4 CPU cores come the Tegra 3 GPU which has 12 additional cores of its own. Nvidia is happy to show off the graphical capabilities of the Tegra 3 GPU, which they claim to be up to 3x faster than the Tegra 2 GPU. A few months back (when Tegra 3 was still being called Kal-El) Nvidia demoed a game called Glowball on pre-production hardware. Now, Nvidia is showing off a new level of the game, running on a production version of the Transformer Prime:

If you were already anticipating the Transformer Prime, I can only imagine you are now that much more excited; you’d be hard pressed to call that demo anything but impressive. I’ll be curious to see some benchmarks, but I’d say Tegra 3’s graphical capabilities are right up there with Apple’s A5 CPU/GPU found in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2.

I think it’s great to see that competition has created extremely high performance mobile computing platforms, but when it comes to gaming on tablets, casual play is still where the segment thrives. As soon as you push touchscreen gaming beyond casual, you absolutely need a controller to achieve a reasonable experience. Even though we should be able to connect Bluetooth peripherals (or even USB), it seems that there is not yet a defacto controller to suit the needs of beyond-casual gaming on mobile devices.

What say you? Do you find beyond-casual gaming on tablets impractical with only a touchscreen to control them?

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime (aka Transformer 2) leaked last month but now it’s all been made official. Tegra 3 has been confirmed, and although the Transformer Prime will ship with Android 3.2, they are confirming that it can be upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich.

celebrex costs

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Transformer without the signature attachable keyboard, and Asus is claiming that the Transformer Prime will get a whopping 18 hours of battery life from a full charge using both the tablet and the dock.

With the Tegra 3 quad-core processor (once codenamed Kal-El), Nvidia says that you can see improvements in speed up to 3x over Tegra 2, with up to 61% less power consumption. The lower power consumption is thanks to a fifth “companion cube” “companion core” that is designed to do the easy lifting, completely shutting down the quad-core CPU when it isn’t needed. Once you start doing tasks that require significant power, everything is shifted from the companion core to the quad-cores and the companion core is shut down. Nvidia calls this process Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing or vSMP.

The GPU included in Tegra 3 utilizes 12 processing cores and can automatically convert OpenGL applications and games into stereo 3D, allowing you to hook up your tablet to a 3D HDTV or 3D head mounted display (like Sony’s upcoming HMZ-T1).

The Transformer Prime itself is an impressive 8.3mm thick, which will make it the thinnest 10″ tablet available on the market (that is, until Toshiba releases their 7.7 mm thick AT200). It is also one of the lightest 10″ tablets at 586 grams, though still behind the Galaxy Tab 10.1. This is all without the keyboard of course.

The Transformer Prime screen retains the 1280 x 800 resolution and IPS technology used on the original Transformer. 1GB of RAM accompanies the Tegra 3 processor. Unfortunately, Asus has not moved the USB port onto the tablet itself, as per Damian’s hopes; you’ll still need transform into the keyboard mode to access the USB port. Unfortunately they’ve actually reduced the count from two USB ports to one, which seems like a step backward considering the good USB peripheral support of Android Honeycomb and beyond. The Transformer Prime alone has micro-HDMI, 3.5mm headphone/mic input, a built in mic, micro-SD card reader, and stereo speakers.

The Transformer Prime is Priced at $499 for a 32GB model or $599 for a 64GB model. There are two colors available: Amethyst Grey and Champagne Gold. The keyboard dock, which includes one USB port and a full-sized SD card reader and battery (and will add 537 grams to the Transformer Prime), is optional and will run you an additional $149.

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer 2 has leaked and Android Authority is showing off the goods. I must say I’m rather impressed with what I’m seeing from Asus here. It appears as though they’ve made the Transformer 2 to look just like one of their recently unveiled Zenbook Ultrabooks, meaning it’s thin and lean.

Not only does the Transformer 2 looks extremely svelte, while still retaining it’s signature keyboard-connecting feature, but it is packed with Nvidia’s latest and great quad-core CPU, codenamed Kal-El.

Kal-El is the world’s first quad-core mobile CPU, according to Nvidia. Though the processor is still currently codenamed Kal-El, it’s been colloquially dubbed “Tegra 3”, as that’s the name it is likely to launch under.

Then there’s that whole Ice Cream Sandwich thing which is also said to be included with the Transformer 2, according to Android Authority, which also has some additional leaked specs which you can find here. [Google and Samsung just blew the doors off of Android 3.0 Ice Cream Sandwhich last night at a join event, we’ll have more on this soon.]

Here’s Asus’ just released teaser for the Transformer 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp6MZupUq78

The original Asus Eee Pad Transformer was a runaway success for Asus, who struggled initially to keep them in stock against demand. Android Authority says a source is claiming a November launch for the Transformer 2, in time for the holidays.

Our own Damian and James co-reviewed the original Transformer and were rather impressed with the unit. They lauded the full USB port functionality (and compatibility with a wide range of USB peripherals).

You can see both parts of their dual-review here:

• Eee Pad Transformer Review, Part 1 Intro and Comparisons
• Eee Pad Transformer Review, Part 2 — USB Connectivity Tests and HDMI-out

Hopefully we’ll see full USB ports return to the Transformer 2, and maybe we’ll even get full HDMI and a full SD slot — now that would be cool. I’m also hoping that Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich will provide functionality to make the hybrid nature of the dockable device even more useful when it’s in notebook-mode.

We’ll see these events all over the place over the next few months as all the Ultrabooks filter into the market but given the pricing and specs of the UX21 and UX31, the Asus models could generate the most interest.

Blogeee.net (link below) are highlighting a New York event for the 11th Oct

Read the full story

Well how about that. Despite all the moaning by OEMs that they can’t reach the target prices, up pop some very interesting prices for the Asus UX21 and UX31.

€799 for an 11.6″ Core i5 laptop in 1kg undercuts every option out there under 1.5kg. Given that Asus is unlikely to be commiting to a huge production run and that the specs and brand will trump Acer’s S3 offering, it could be that availability will be tight.

Read the full story

We’ve learnt that the Asus UX21 and Asus UX31 will officially launch in a few weeks with prices ranging up from €799

At an Intel event yesterday I managed to get some hands-on with the Asus UX21. More testing is needed but given the potential pricing, this could turn a lot of heads toward the ‘Ultrabook’ brand.

Read the full story

Coming in at exactly the expected price-point, Asus’ Ultrabooks, that’s the UX21 and UX31, will launch in October at a US-based event.

This news comes from Digitimes who say that the entry level price will be $899 but the prices will be rising to a lofty $1999. At that price expect the Core i7 and 256GB of SSD storage!

$899 is $100 below the target price given by Intel in previous statements.

The bad news about the price is that $899 is only likely to get you a non-Turbo-Boost Core i3 (given that it has been listed as an option.)  11″ devices based on this platform are already available at 50-60% of the price.

Based on this news, it’s unlikely that we’ll see more than just production samples at IFA this week. We’ll do our best to get some hands-on though so stay tuned.

[Chippy is reporting from IFA this week. You can follow near-live and behind the scenes via Twitter here. Watch out for the Twitter-only mini podcast announcements too.]

Via
http://www.netbooknews.com/33988/asus-ultrabooks-to-launch-in-october/

[ Posted via the Galaxy Tab. Ultra-Mobile at IFA 2011. For more IFA coverage, follow me on Twitter. @Chippy ]

As you may be aware Jerry and I are trying to get by in the Enterprise space with only our tablets and no Windows based laptops. Jerry’s using the Acer Iconia Tab and I am using my Asus Eeepad transformer with keyboard dock. Jerry has a few posts up on his experience so far. Week one using the Eeepad transformer as my only business “personal computer” was pretty successful. I had a pretty varied week which included working from home, working on the road at a conference and during site visits and of course in the office. My home setup includes a Logitech DiNovo keyboard and a Logitech traveller mouse, both bluetooth devices. I have wireless internet at home for connectivity and use a mix of apps for productivity. My first near-stumbling block was when I had to print something. I can’t use a solution such as Google Cloud Print as it requires a PC to be turned on, connected to both the net and the printer. Since I’m trying at all costs to avoid even so much as starting up a PC, that wont work. I did a bit of searching and found the best solution to be a paid app called PrinterShare [free version here]. As it often goes, a lot of the best apps are paid ones, and while I try to get by with free apps as much as possible, sometimes there’s no choice. Something I liked about PrinterShare is that you can download the free version and run a test print to make sure it works with your setup before you part with the cash for the fully enabled version. This saves buying something, downloading it only to find it doesn’t work with your particular setup. PrinterShare installed without a hitch and is a very functional app. It printed without issue to my Epson MFD and could even print good quality photos on the various papers that my Epson can handle. On the road I used a Mifi style portable wireless broadband device for connectivity. While I like the Mifi for being able to connect multiple devices at once, I did look on with a little envy at my iPad toting companions, who simply fired them up and got on the net (they had 3G models). I think once the Eee Pad Transformer is released with 3G I might upgrade. I did the find the extra weight of the keyboard dock a bit annoying, as most of the day I didn’t need the keyboard, and when I did at night I could have just as easily used my foldable keyboard. I did take along my bluetooth mouse as I find it easier to use than the touchpad when I’m using the tablet like a laptop. As you can see in this photo the tablets outnumbered the laptops at this meeting. I used Evernote and my calendar for this particular presentation while the iPad user stayed in his notes application. Again I found the keyboard handy but not essential, and something like the Eee Pad Slider would be a better device for me in this situation. One failing of the Transformer is that it can only output to HDMI and when I needed to show something on the projector I couldn’t just plug in. Only one of the work projectors has HDMI so 9 times out of 10 I won’t be able to project from the tablet. I got around it on this occasion by emailing the slides to the laptop on the projector but it wasn’t pretty. The iPad had a cable which allowed it to hook up via VGA so it scored points on the Transformer this time. Jerry has shown us that it’s possible to get from HDMI to VGA-out with adapters, so that’s one possible solution to this issue. Stay tuned for more updates next week.