Mice:Cooler Master CM Storm Recon Review

Those who check out my gaming rig invariably ask me the exact same question: why use an entry-level gaming mouse such as the Razer DeathAdder when you've spent Rs 7,000 on a mechanical keyboard and another 1500 bucks to mod it? Unfortunately, this brand of ignorance is the bane of a large chunk of gamers, whose perception of quality and performance solely depends upon the price of a product. If that logic had any merit, guns and knives would have been fashioned out of gold and not steel. Good engineering, you see, is the pursuit of the simplest and the most efficient solution possible. In the world of gaming-grade mice, the best solution also happens to be the cheapest—optical sensors.

The smart money's on optical
Although every single gaming hardware manufacturer pimps laser sensors, I have yet to find a single laser mouse that's perfect for gaming. From the catastrophically bad Philips Twin-Eye (PTE) sensors used in high-end Razer mice to the inherent tracking inaccuracy of the Avago A60XX/S60XX sensors found in Logitech GX series of laser mice—they all have serious flaws. Even everyone's favourite laser sensor, the Avago ADNS 9500, is plagued with negative/positive acceleration that kills low-sensitivity precision.

The best gaming mice in the market are all powered by Avago's S3XX8 (infrared LED) and A30XX (regular LED) optical sensors, which are similar designs differentiated by firmware enhancements. Even optical rodents such as Logitech G400 and Roccat Kova are excellent, but they are marred by pronounced jitter and tracking issues at certain resolutions. The Razer DeathAdder has pretty much flawless tracking precision-wise. Unfortunately, it is let down by recurring reliability issues.

All these optical mice, however, lack the bells and whistles found in more expensive mice. All that tracking quality comes at a cost of features such as LOD (Lift-Off Distance) customisation, advanced lighting controls, and other gimmicks found in high-end laser mice. However, all that is about to change with Cooler Master's CM Storm Recon, which packs in premium features in a relatively inexpensive optical platform.

Clever design and premium build quality
The Recon has been cleverly designed to cater to a wide gamut of gamers with different playing styles. The body, for example, is ambidextrous and mirrors the thumb-activated buttons on both sides. This works well for southpaws, but that also makes it easy to inadvertently press the buttons mirrored on the opposite side. However, that's an issue found in all ambidextrous mice, and you can always disable the switches on the pinky side through the driver suite. It's theme of maintaining balance is evident in the size and shape of the mouse as well. It is small enough to be suitable for the claw grip, while its pronounced hump makes it feasible for the palm grip as well. The weight is just right—not too light for the palm style, without being too heavy to be used with the claw grip either.

The plastics employed are top notch, which is palpable thanks to their soft feel and a reassuring lack of shine. The top surface is rubberised and feels great to touch. The sides are equally soft, but fashioned out of a grippy matte material that makes it easy to anchor the mouse even with sweaty fingertips. Build and material quality wise, you will not find anything better in this price range. My only gripe is the lack of a braided cable. The mouse cord's rubber construction, although surprisingly tangle resistant, tends to grip and snag against the desktop as well as the mouse pad. This annoyingly introduces drag unless you leave enough slack in the cable.

The rubber-coated mouse wheel is large and chunky, while providing a positive tactile feedback tuned for reliably cycling through your weapons. The hollow, plasticky sound made by it is a letdown though. Just to the south of the wheel, a pair of DPI switching buttons come in handy for adjusting sensitivity on the fly. The Recon incorporates high-quality Omron micro-mechanical switches that sport a delightfully light minimum actuation force, without compromising on tactile feedback. The mouse feet are the slickest I have seen in this price range, and provide a considerably smoother gliding motion when compared to the Razer DeathAdder, Logitech G400, or the Corsair M60 mice.

Comprehensive driver suite
Unlike its Spartan optical brethren, the CM Storm Recon has most of the bells and whistles found in more expensive laser mice. It features LED lighting in three zones: the wheel, logo and the DPI switching buttons. Each zone can be assigned any colour you fancy, in addition to other individually adjustable parameters such as brightness and illumination modes.

Software:Corel AfterShot Pro Review

Corel AfterShot Pro does exactly what its name suggests – it helps you do everything with your photos right from the time they are shot till you get the final output. It includes viewing, organising, enhancing and exporting/printing the results. This workflow is typical of any photo management application, such as Adobe Lightroom. Let’s find out what AfterShot Pro has in store and whether it’s a worthy alternative.

Photo management
AfterShot Pro uses a different approach than Lightroom. The latter doesn’t allow you to do anything with your photos until you import them into the catalogue. So much so that you cannot even view photos. In contrast, AfterShot Pro allows viewing and editing photos without having to first catalogue them. This is good if you want to view your photos before organising them or if you simply want to enhance and export individual photos. However, if your photo collection is large, then the Library tab will make your life simpler. Here, you can organise your photos into catalogues. So, you can create collections based on events or names of subjects, and so on. This can be done by creating catalogues and adding photos using the File System tab. In addition to shaping up your collection, cataloguing also makes filtering and searching for images simple.

The Metadata Browser in the Library tab allows filtering images in the catalogues using EXIF and ITPC information stored in photos. This drills down to as deep as locating photos based on parameters such as camera make, date/time, aperture, focal length, ISO, lens model, metering mode, shutter speed, white balance mode, and so on. In addition to this, you can also assign star ratings to photos, flag them (pick or reject) and assign colour labels. These can be accessed by hovering on the thumbnails or using the toolbar right on top. The toolbar comes in handy when you want to rate/flag/label multiple files at a time, whereas the thumbnail route is preferable when you want to go file by file. The Filter tool on the toolbar allows searching for photos based on star ratings, flag status and label colours or a combination of multiple parameters. For example, you can search for images rated four stars, labelled red and flagged as Pick.

Enhancements
Like Lightroom, this software features non-destructive editing. This means that the corrections and enhancements you apply won’t affect the original files – everything is stored as metadata. To get the final results, you have to export the photos.

Double-clicking a photo opens an enlarged view, fitted to screen. You can use the 1:1 button on the toolbar at the bottom to switch to 100 percent zoom or use the slider to zoom in up to 800 percent. Also present are buttons for picking white values, cropping and straightening tilt.

A good thing about Aftershot Pro is that you don’t have to jump between different modules. Here, the user interface is common for image management, enhancement and exporting. The tabbed panel on the right is where all the action lies. It starts with the Standard tab that has the basic adjustments such as White Balance, Exposure, Fill Light, Blacks, Contrast, Saturation, Vibrance, Hue and Noise Ninja. Using just these parameters should help you get acceptable results. A notable feature here is Noise Ninja, which is a third-party plug-in for noise removal. It does a fantastic job, but you have to be very careful with it as using higher values result in loss of details. Some parameters such as Color Temperature, Highlights and RAW Noise are only available when you’re processing RAW images.

The next two tabs, Color and Tone, should be used if you’re meticulous about colour reproduction. You can adjust the Hue, Saturation and Luminance for RGB and CMY colour channels. The values can be either keyed in manually or changed using sliders. There’s also a histogram at the top in which you can drag the curve and pick black, grey and white points. With the Detail tab, you can enhance the details by adjusting the Sharpening, RAW Noise and Noise Ninja Standard parameters. On registering Noise Ninja, you get granular control in which you can tweak the strength, contrast and smoothness of colour and luminance noise.

The Metadata tab displays EXIF info and presents an interface to manage keywords and keyword sets. Keywords (for example, Family, Friends, Nature, Sepia, etc) can be used to filter search results. The Plugins tab can be used to add punch to your photos. The most notable elements here are the Black and White and Nostalgia – Film Simulation plugins. The Black and White plugin lets you use colour filters and selective colour.

Printing and Exporting
The Output tab on the left is from where you can export results to TIFF (8-bit and 16-bit) and JPEG formats. The output parameters such as resizing, embedding EXIF info, DPI and output location can be customised as per your preference. The Printing tab makes printing photos easy. With customisable print packages, you can print multiple 4x6, 5x7 and custom-sized photos on a single A4 sheet. So, even printing multiple passport size photos on a single sheet is a breeze.

Gold-plated iPhone 5 goes on sale

If you thought that the iPhone 5 with its price tag, was as far as one could go with the word 'premium' or 'expensive', you have to read this. Liverpool designer, Stuart Hughes has his own version of the premium iPhone 5, that is all gold and diamond.

Reportedly, Hughes'd version of the latest iPhone has been decked in 18-carat gold and has gold and diamond finishing. Turn the phone over and you see the recognisable Apple logo, encrusted in diamonds. Hughes has on offer a limited edition of 100 handsets of this variety. Hughes' version of the iPhone 5 priced at a mind numbing £21,995 (around Rs 18,76,888).

An excerpt from Hughes' website reads, "This beautiful handset took weeks of detailed intricate work to re-create the original chasis of the iPhone in solid gold all of which was started and finished by hand, also a full gold dressing for the rear section with the logo in solid gold with 53 flawless diamonds amounting to 1ct. This masterpiece boasts a massive circa of 128 grams of 18ct gold. The result was outstanding even down to the precise polishing to reveal its most beautiful harmonious appearance. The handset is 64gb and is available as a ltd edition of only 100." 

This isn't Hughes' first attempt at adding bling to technology. Last year, he grabbed headlines when he made the Stuart Hughes’ version of the iPad 2, a snazzier sibling of the regular iPad 2, which you might want to own if you have £5,000,000 on you. For the rest of us, the iPad 2 Gold History Edition was just as exquisite, as it could possibly get.

However, with the iPad 2 Gold History Edition, gold and diamonds weren’t all; it came with a hint of history. The Apple logo that carefully rested at the back of Hughes’ version of the iPad 2 had been set with 12.5 carats of flawless diamonds, 53 of them encrusted to form the signatory Apple logo. The 24k gold logo has been set at the back, weighing a total of 2,000 grams. Its front frame has a touch of history to it.

It has been made out of the oldest existing rock, Ammolite. Apparently, on the front frame of this iPad 2, pieces of a T-Rex dinosaur’s thigh bone had been used, which according to Hughes, was splintered and shaved into the rock, and then given a jewel finish. Adding some bling is the single-cut, 8.5-carat flawless diamond beautifully set in the centre, surrounded by 12 other flawless diamonds.

Apple CEO apologises for flaws in Apple Maps, recommends Google Maps

Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook apologised Friday to customers frustrated with glaring errors in its new Maps service and, in an unusual move for the consumer giant, directed them to rival services such as Google Inc's Maps instead.

The rare apology follows Apple's launch of its own mapping service earlier this month, when it began selling the iPhone 5 and rolled out iOS 6, the highly anticipated update to its mobile software platform.

Users complained that the new Maps service - based on Dutch navigation equipment and digital map maker TomTom NV's data - contained geographical errors and gaps in information, and that it lacked features that made Google Maps so popular from public transit directions to traffic data and street-view pictures. 

"We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better," Cook said in a letter to customers released on its website, adding that the company "fell short" of its commitment to deliver "the best experience possible to our customers."

Unusually, he suggested that customers download rival mapping services available in Apple's App Store while the company improves the product.

"While we're improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app," he said in the letter.

Apple is typically loathe to tout rival services and the contrite apology by Cook is an indication of how Apple is changing under the chief executive who took over last year from co-founder Steve Jobs just before his death. It also took the additional step of prominently displaying the rival services on its Apps Store.

"It is a bit unusual but at the same time, Tim is keeping Apple's commitment to provide the best user experience for customers," Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu said. "A key reason for Apple's success is keeping customers happy so we think this is a good move."

"People forget that Google Maps started out inferior to Mapquest and Yahoo Maps," he added.

Apple's home-grown Maps feature -- stitched together by acquiring mapping companies and data from many providers including Waze, Intermap, DigitalGlobe and Urban Mapping -- was introduced with much fanfare in June by software chief Scott Forstall. It was billed as one of the key highlights of the updated iOS6 software.

But errors and omissions in the maps service quickly emerged after the software was rolled out, ranging from misplaced buildings and mislabelled cities to duplicated geographical features.

New Apple
The last time Apple faced such widespread criticism was in 2010, when users complained of signal reception issues on the then-new iPhone 4 model.

A defiant Jobs at the time rejected any suggestion the iPhone 4's design was flawed, but offered consumers free phone cases at a rare, 90-minute press conference called to address those complaints.

While Apple fixed the issue, Jobs had apologized to users only after he was specifically asked if he was sorry. He also said the issue was shared by all the major manufacturers, naming rivals Research in Motion, Samsung Electronics and HTC Corp.

Cook himself played a key role in convincing Jobs to tackle the negative publicity that arose around that issue, something he was initially reluctant to do, according to his biographer.

"Finally Tim Cook was able to shake him out of his lethargy," Walter Isaacson said in his biography on the late Silicon Valley icon. "He quoted someone as saying that Apple was becoming the new Microsoft, complacent and arrogant. The next day Jobs changed his attitude."

It remains to be seen how fast Apple can fix the mapping glitches. Jobs had been in a similar position when he allowed email synchronization software MobileMe to launch in 2008, to deadly reviews. The mercurial CEO took the group to task for it and replaced the group's head. The service is now folded into the iCloud product.

Mapping is a complex process that takes a lot of resources and years to perfect, said Marcus Thielking, co-founder of Skobbler, maker of the popular GPS Navigation 2 app, built using the crowdsourced OpenStreetMap platform.

"It helps a lot if you have great data to start with," he said, adding that it appears that different database were thrown together in building Apple Maps. "They (Apple) can offer incremental updates and that's what they will do."

Cook said that more than 100 million iOS devices are using the new Apple Maps and that the more people use Maps, the better it will get. He also offered some hints on why the company decided to remove Google Maps.

Apple launched the Google-powered Maps "initially with the first version of iOS" and created a home-grown version of the service as it wanted to provide more features, Cook said.

"As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps," he said in the letter.

Google provides turn-by-turn navigation on Android-based devices but the popular feature was not available for Apple devices. Apple Maps replaced Google Maps in iOS 6 and the Google service is now only available through a browser.

New sleeker PlayStation 3 makes debut

Sleek new PlayStation 3 consoles took their places in US homes on Thursday as Sony tapped into its video game prowess to put itself at the heart of internet age entertainment.

The PS3 model that made its US debut was slimmed to be stylishly unobtrusive but featured a beefy 250-gigabyte hard drive to store more films, music, games and other digital content.

A version with a 500-gigabyte hard drive will hit the US market on Sunday. The models are priced at $249 and $299.

The 500-gigabyte PS3 will be released in Europe on Friday with a price tag of 299 euros ($386). A version of the console based on Flash memory was set for an exclusive debut there on October 12 for 229 euros.

"While we certainly use gaming as our foundation, the PS3 is a complete entertainment center in the living room," John Koller of the PlayStation hardware team told AFP.

"We added higher hard drive space because consumers have become much more digitally inclined; it is a significant area for all of us in the industry."

Memory capacity for consoles has become increasingly important to users as lifestyles shift to downloading games, films and other digital content from the internet.

Sony has ramped up its PlayStation Network online service for games, movies and music and made free games available for PlayStation Plus members.

More than 4,000 games have become available for download for PS3 since the console was launched in November of 2006, according to Sony.

Sony completely redesigned console innards, reducing volume and weight.

"It is certainly a cleaner, sleeker model that takes up less space and looks cool," said National Alliance video game industry analyst Mike Hickey.

However, he noted, powerful and pretty new PS3 models might have to come with a price cut to lure a significant number of new users to PS3 this late in the life cycle of the console.

Sony spiced up the PS3 package here by adding a "game of the year" edition of hit title "Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception" and digital content for massive online multiplayer science fiction shooter game "Dust 514."

Sony chief Kazuo Hirai has a long history with the company that includes helping PlayStation consoles become a hit in the United States.

Soon, data card that can last for 100 million years

Researchers claim to have developed a new water proof storage device that can endure extreme temperatures and hostile conditions like fires and tsunami 'forever' without degrading.

Japanese multinational conglomerate Hitachi has unveiled the chip, which it claims is resistant to many chemicals and unaffected by radio waves, can be exposed directly to high temperature flames and heated to 1,000 degrees Celsius for at least two hours without being damaged.

The chip is also waterproof, meaning it could survive natural calamities, such as fires and tsunami, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

"The volume of data being created every day is exploding, but in terms of keeping it for later generations, we haven't necessarily improved since the days we inscribed things on stones," Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii said.

"The possibility of losing information may actually have increased,' he said, noting the life of digital media currently available - CDs and hard drives - is limited to a few decades or a century," he said.

The company's new technology stores data in binary form by creating dots inside a thin sheet of quartz glass, which can be read with an ordinary optical microscope.

Provided a computer with the know-how to understand that binary is available - simple enough to programme, no matter how advanced computers become - the data will always be readable.

"We believe data will survive unless this hard glass is broken," said senior researcher Takao Watanabe.

The material currently has four layers of dots, which can hold 40 megabytes per square inch, approximately the density on a music CD, researchers said, adding they believe including more layers should not be a problem.

The company has not decided when to put the chip to practical use but researchers said they could start with storage services for government agencies, museums and religious organisations.

Security Lacks:iPhone 5 jail broken in eight hours

It just took a few hours to jail break the newly launched Apple iPhone 5, according to a claim made by a hacker.

Grant Paul, an American hacker, claimed that he hacked the new iphone 5, less then eight hours after it was released to the public and he has also posted photos on his Twitter page of a 'jailbroken' iPhone 5.

Incidentally, Grant Paul, also develops software for Apple's iOS operating system.

According to the Daily Mail, instructions for stable 'jailbreaks' are posted online, which allow normal users to free their phones of Apple's restrictions.

Paul tweeted a photo of an iPhone5 screenshot that included Cydia, the app used to download non-Apple-approved software on jailbroken iPhones.

The implication of the photo was that Paul had been able to download Cydia to his iPhone 5 only because he was successfully able to hack it, the report said.

He celebrated the remarkable achievement by tweeting, 'taller screens like Cydia too. :)'
According to the paper, the tech community has largely accepted the pictures as proof that the iPhone 5 has successfully been cracked.

Google Nexus India launch in November: Asus

The Google Nexus tablet, available only in US market, will finally be launched in India, according to Google's hardware partner Asus.

"We can confirm as hardware partner that Nexus tablet is in pipeline for India market," said an Asus spokesperson here today.

Talks are on with our partner ( Google ) for the India launch. We may launch the product with a different name and few modifications in specifications, Apratim Sharma, Product head, (India) System Business Group, Asus told CIOL.

He also said that price of the Google Nexus for India market would be announced in October. Media reports have been speculating the price to be around Rs. 11,000

Some of the features and specifications of the Google Nexus 7-inch tablet PC are: 7 inch 1280x800 HD display, Quad core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB RAM, Android 4.1 (Android Jellybean) operating system, 1.2MP front facing camera, 8GB storage capacity (expandable to 16GB), Wifi, scratch resistant corning glass, near field communication (NFC) and so on.

ADATA shows off worlds thinnest USB 3.0 external HDD at 8.9 mm

In the technology world, everyone wants to have the thinnest, fastest, smallest device going around to gain some bragging rights, if only for a short time. ADATA only let Toshiba hold the title of the world's thinnest external HDD for a few days before it rolled out its DashDrive Elite HE720. Coming in at 8.9 mm thick, ADATA managed to shave a fraction of a millimeter off Toshiba's 9 mm thick Canvio Slim portable drive and take the title ... for now, anyway.

While the thickness might be negligible, the difference in price between the two 500 GB drives is substantial. The DashDrive Elite HE720 comes in at US$90 while Toshiba's Canvio Slim retails for $115. That $25 difference is pretty huge when the two drives are almost the same size, are both USB 3.0, and feature the same storage capacity.

Another point of difference is the finish, with Toshiba's unit coming in black or silver brushed aluminum, while ADATA's device is stainless steel boasting 9H level scratch resistance. As an added bonus, the DashDrive Elite HE720 also comes with a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security and a three-year warranty. This might not be a huge selling point for some users, but it is hard to complain whenever you get something for free.

This is just a reminder that the tech world moves fast. One day you can be toting a reasonably priced USB 3.0 HDD that is thinner than any of the competition, and just a few short days later, you are dethroned by a cheaper, thinner model.

Camera+ App now available on iPad

Tap Tap Tap has finally released the iPad version of Camera+. The Camera+ app became very popular amongst iOS users, when it first came out roughly two years ago, since then it has sold over 9 million copies.

The new Camera+ for iPad app has been long awaited and now with the release of iOS 6 and the new iPad (some time ago), this was the most appropriate moment for the app to hit the iTunes store. The app is as fully featured as its phone counterpart, offering the ability to independently set the exposure values and focusing point, something that the stock camera app in iOS has always lacked. The ability to separate focus and exposure from each other has allowed for the reduction of the number of bum shots taken by the iOS device, especially in conditions where the subject is backlit.

The iPad app utilizes the retina display of the new iPad along with its full real estate. While taking photos with the iPad app is just the same as shooting with the iPhone (save for looking silly), but the real joys of using Camera+ lies in the lightbox and editing section sections.

The lightbox allows the photos to be displayed along with their EXIF data, which is pretty nifty. The editing station has a plethora of effects that can be applied to the image, but the new feature of the app is the ability to layer effects. Earlier, each effect had to be applied one at a time, making the process cumbersome, and often turning people away to other editing apps.

Camera+ is currently on discount in the iTunes store and can be bought for just $0.99.

Hitachi develops near-indestructible glass storage chip

Hitachi has come forward and announced that they have successfully developed quartz glass sheets as a medium of storing information. According to Hitachi, these little glass squares are fire and water proof, can withstand chemical exposure, and are impervious to radio waves.

Data Storage,though easily accessible thanks to cheap DVDs and hard drives, has always left some amount of stress on the user. What’s there to worry about? Drive failure of course. Or scratched disks. Storage media these days have a life of a few decades, but Hitachi claims that their quartz glass storage system could survive for a few hundred million years, at least.

The glass stores information in binary in the form of dots inside the quartz sheet itself that can be read by an ordinary optical microscope. As long as a computer can understand binary, the data will always be readable.

Hitachi’s prototype device is just a 2 centimeter square with just 2 millimeter thickness and has a storage space of about 40 megabytes per square inch, putting the current prototype around the same space as a regular CD. Hitachi says that since the information is stored as dots in layers, adding more layers should not be a problem. This way, they will hopefully increase storage space without increasing the length and breadth of the glass itself.

 
Hitachi has not yet stated when they will release the new chips for commercial use, but they do have plans to support government organizations and museums with their new technology.

RIM won't unveil any BlackBerry 10 handsets this year

Research in Motion (RIM) has made it clear that no devices that will run the in-works BB10 operating system will be unveiled this year. The Canadian company, that makes the Blackberry smartphones, has clarified that it will continue to make announcements regarding the progress of the development of BB10 and share news about new features. Research In Motion’s Chief Marketing Officer, Frank Boulben said this in an interaction with Cnet.

In a nutshell, BlackBerry fans waiting to see what the next generation of Blackberry smartphones will bring will have to wait until early 2013. The idea being to reveal the hardware very close to the final launch.

It isn’t a surprise that the company is keeping its cards close to its chest. RIM has a lot riding on its next-generation Blackberry 10 operating system, and this is the make-or-break stage. There is hope that Blackberry 10 will reverse its falling revenue, and continued losses.

RIM will continue to show-off the capabilities of the operating system to the public, as well as continue sharing alpha devices with developers. The recent trend points at companies announcing and unveiling their phones some time before the official launch. However, RIM has decided against adopting that strategy, keeping in mind the slew of upcoming launches aimed at the Christmas season shopping rush.

Intel, partners showcase Windows 8 tablets and more

Would you pay $650 for a Wintel tablet? That's the price Samsung will charge for its upcoming Windows 8-based Series 5 Slate powered by Intel's newly unveiled Atom Z2760 chip.

TeChLeTe$t

Samsung and several other Intel and Microsoft partners were on hand at an Intel-hosted event at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Thursday to showcase upcoming Windows 8 tablets and hybrid laptops that use Intel's dual-core, 1.8GHz System-on-a-Chip (SoC) formerly code named Clover Trail. The Atom Z2760 (pictured) will be released on Oct. 26 alongside Microsoft's next-generation, touch-optimized operating system, with hardware manufacturers like Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and others coming out with tablets and hybrid tablet-laptops built around the x86 SoC and running Windows 8.

Before getting started, Intel Mobile and Communications Group executive Erik Reid tried to clear up a bit of a PR mess over reported comments made by CEO Paul Otellini in Asia earlier in the week.

"We could not be more excited about Windows 8 and what it brings to the market ... and that's the message Paul delivered to the employees this week," Reid said, referring to and dismissing reports that Otellini described Windows 8 as not being ready for release.

Samsung was the only Wintel partner at the SFMOMA showcase to name a price for its upcoming product. The Series 5 Slate will sell for $649 as a tablet and for $749 with its dockable keyboard attached, the South Korean tech giant said.

Other products on display included hybrid laptops with detachable tablets like the Acer Iconia W510, Asus Vivo Tab, Dell Latitude 10, and HP Envy x2, all due out in the Windows 8 release timeframe, as well as a standalone tablet Lenovo called the ThinkPad 2 that could also be ready by Oct. 26 and another standalone from ZTE called the V98 that won't be made available until January.

One notable party missing from the event was Microsoft itself, which has its own Intel-based version of its self-produced, Windows 8-based Surface tablet on tap as well. Fujitsu and LG Electronics are also readying Windows 8 tablets and hybrids running on Atom chips, according to Intel.

Other than Samsung's, Lenovo's, and ZTE's offerings, these Clover Trail laptop-tablet hybrids are all being sold as a package deal, so the $749 Samsung will charge for both its tablet and keyboard set-up might be the benchmark for prices we can expect for the other manufacturer's devices.

For consumers, the new Wintel hybrids from Acer, Asus, HP, and Samsung are probably the best bets for a holiday purchase. Dell's Latitude 10 and Lenovo's ThinkPad 2 are being targeted at the enterprise, according to those companies.

All of the tablets and detachable tablets showcased at SFMOMA were in the 10-inch to 11-inch range, weighed in at as little as 1.5 pounds, and were in the 9-millimeter range for thinness. Some thicker Windows 8 tablets sporting more powerful and more power hungry Intel Core chips were on display at the event but ultimately this was a day for Clover Trail.

The Atom Z2760 is a 32-nanometer chip with hyperthreading that affords four-way processing on its two CPU cores, plus a built-in graphics engine that Intel pitched as delivering better graphics and video performance than ever before. You'll get more than 10 hours of battery life on a system packing the Clover Trail SoC, according to Intel, plus better than three weeks of connected standby.

Because it's built on the x86 architecture, the Atom Z2760 is basically tailor-made for Windows, Reid said. He and a colleague demonstrated a Clover Trail slate running such core Microsoft productivity apps as Word and Excel without a hitch, as well as showing a brief snippet of a shoot-em-up video game and a deejay application.

"Intel has made a lot of progress on their tablet SoC. If you look back just a year ago, Windows-based Intel tablets were high performance, but also were thick, heavy, had a fan, and got around four hours of battery life," said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategies.

"With the Atom Z2760, Intel now has tablets as thin as 9mm, light, fanless, and with all day battery life. That's a huge change and was driven as much by hardware design as it was software integration."

Intel spent a lot of time talking up voice recognition and gesture-based interfaces for future-generation ultrabooks, tablets, and hybrids at the recent Intel Developer Forum. None of that technology will be in the first wave of Wintel tablets and hybrids, it appears, but what you will be getting in systems like the HP Envy x2 and the Samsung Series 5 is a device that functions like both a standard Windows laptop PC and a pretty nifty tablet to boot.

Will that make a dent in the holiday market with popular products already out there like the Android-based Nexus 7 $249.00 at B&H Photo-Video from Google and Asus, the new Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble, and the rumored iPad Mini from Apple—not to mention Microsoft's own Surface and tablets running the ARM-optimized Windows RT version of Windows 8?

Moorhead said it looks like Intel's play in the consumer tablet space may take a bit longer to gain steam than the traction it stands to get in the enterprise with the release of Windows 8.

"Tablets from HP and Dell will initially play very well in the enterprise space, a market which Apple is trying hard to penetrate. Intel-based tablets provide a much stronger value proposition than an iPad to enterprise IT, in that to the enterprise, they 'look' like a Windows PC. They're deployed, managed, and have the security that IT is already familiar with," the analyst said.

"As for the consumer space, while nothing keeps Intel from attacking that now, it looks like Microsoft and its ARM partners Nvidia and Qualcomm are more focused there right now."