Engadget has obtained marketing materials indicating that the CVS pharmacy is going to stock a $99 Sylvania-branded Windows CE netbook, and a $179 “LookBook” color e-book reader. From the illustration, the Sylvania looks like yet another rebranded cheap Chinese smartbook. If it’s similar to some of the ones I found while searching for other cheapie netbooks, it probably won’t even be able to install new Windows CE applications so will be limited to what’s already installed. And of course, the savvy consumer will recall that you can get significantly more able refurbished Eee Linux netbooks for only...

Yesterday we mentioned that Google had stated that the $150 Augen tablet and $100 smartbook included a number of unauthorized closed-source applications (Market, Gmail, etc.). Now Engadget reports that Augen has issued a press release stating the apps were installed on the devices for “testing purposes” during development, and were accidentally left in the production version of the operating system. Augen says that it and Google have come to an understanding that, though it can’t do anything about the products that have already shipped, it will remove the controversial apps from future production runs of its...

Our sister blog Gadgetell reports on a Digitimes story that Asus is planning to release an 8” 64-greyscale e-paper reader at “under $599”. (E-Reader Info and Engadget also have coverage.) When I saw this story, I had to glance at my new wristwatch, which helpfully provides a display for the year as well as month and day, to make sure that I hadn’t accidentally slipped one or two years back in time. (The watch synchronizes by radio with the atomic clock in Fort Collins, Colorado, so I can know for certain that it’s still 2010—the atoms say so!)...

In a related matter to Paul’s last post, I’ve just gotten off the phone again with my three local Kmart stores inquiring after the Augen devices. At the one where I used to work, it seems that they’ve gotten so many calls about it that as soon as I said nothing more than, “Electronics, please,” the customer service rep who first answered my call said, “If this is about that computer thing in the circular, we’re out of stock…” When I spoke to the electronics department anyway, the electronics associate said they had gotten maybe two of them...

TechCrunch has a piece looking at the new low-cost tablet and e-reader devices planned by Copia (as well as a Copia iPad app). We’ve covered Copia before; the readers’ “gimmick” is supposed to be a unique social-networking component to the devices, allowing readers to exchange reviews and recommendations about books. They recently announced new pricing on their devices. Another TechCrunch writer uses the opportunity to suggest that we are seeing a repeat of the pricing race to the bottom that happened with netbooks: everyone is coming out with cheap devices, and most of them will be junk. John...

The Augen 7” Android tablet that Paul mentioned yesterday is proving to be hard to find. I called all three of the Kmart stores in the Springfield area, and none of them had received either it, or the 7” “smartbook” I mentioned Engadget reviewing yesterday. (The tablet was the only device featured in the sales circular—the smartbook was nowhere to be found, and the electronics associate didn’t know about it.) I was able to get a rain check for the tablet, though that does not necessarily mean the store will actually carry it. I probably won’t buy...

Not only is Kmart selling Augen’s 7” Android 2.1 tablet for $149 (as Paul mentioned earlier), it is also selling a 7” Android 1.6 “smartbook” from the same company for $99. Engadget has a review of the device, which appears to be one of those el-cheapo Chinese netbooks that turn up every so often for sale from disreputable companies and/or on eBay. This particular netbook can now be found at the much more reputable Kmart, but Engadget suggests that it might not be the best value for the price—it boots terribly slowly, they had difficulty getting apps to...

A putative $100 netbook has been spotted a couple of times. Once, we reported on the offering from a certain company that those who ordered from found to be a bigger talker than it was a shipper (and which took umbrage when we pointed this out). Another time, David Rothman pointed me at a $100 Chinese netbook being sold through a particular online vendor—but once I checked the vendor in ResellerRatings and discovered an extremely low customer satisfaction score, I decided not to report on it. Fool me once, shame on you… Now Wired reports on...

As reported by our sister blog AppleTell, Valve has just released its popular Steam game distribution engine for the Macintosh, and has made the popular game Portal available for free (for both PC and Macintosh) until May 24th. One of the remarkable things about this launch is that Valve is declaring gamers will automatically have Mac versions available of any game they have already purchased for PC that is also Mac compatible. This is comparable to Baen’s policy of allowing free download of any format of e-book they offer once purchased—and quite the opposite of the...

You know the Pixel Qi screens that are one of the forthcoming “better-than-e-ink” display technologies? Gizmodo and the “What’s Happening at Pixel Qi” blog note that a DIY 10” screen replacement kit will be out in the second quarter of this year, bringing the ability to swap out your netbook’s 10” LCD screen for a transflective Pixel Qi model that can be read in direct sunlight. Writes former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen in the Pixel Qi blog: It’s only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbuld [sic]: it’s basically 6 screws, pulling...

The biggest opportunities are in smartphones and netbooks and notebooks, not dedicated e-readers with E Ink, says Amanda Edmonds, Google’s director of strategic partnerships. Her points at DigitalBookWorld: Google wants a model that simplifies life for consumers and publishers. Consumers will be searching for a lot of backlist books. Google Editions wants to monetize book searching and buying. Can purchase print and digital editions. Search traffic from smartphones increasing faster than search rate for PCs. Has ability to share notes; 39% of people who access cloud computing say that they do so...

We have already said plenty about the possible e-book reading potential of netbooks as opposed to dedicated e-book readers. Now here comes a whole new category of micro-laptop that might also be good for e-book reading, at a lower price point. In the last few years, we have had notebooks, powerbooks, macbooks, netbooks…and now “smartbooks” and “webbooks”. * It seems as though every time computer manufacturers decide to make a different size of machine, they have to come up with a new name for it. Remember when we only had “laptops”? Or even just “notebooks” and “subnotebooks”? How...