The iPad is certainly becoming popular in education. One of the latest schools to experiment with iPads as a teaching tool is the Stanford University School of Medicine, which will be looking at using iPads to lighten the textbook load on students, Mediabistro’s GalleyCat reports. Given that medical students have to study anatomy, the iPad’s color screen with its easy ability to zoom at a touch could prove very useful for examining pictures and diagrams. (We previously covered another Stanford institution, the Stanford Engineering Library, getting rid of many of its paper books in favor of electronic equivalents.)...

Indian Android news site Androidos.in has broken the news that the $35 “home-grown” tablet touted by the government of India (and lauded by OLPC’s Nicholas Negroponte) looks suspiciously similar (that is to say, identical) to Chinese manufacturer HiVision’s Speedpad Android tablet. AndroidOS reports that HiVision’s tablet was first seen at CeBIT in March, 2010, where it was predicted to retail for about $100. Androidos is not pleased by the discovery that this tablet, claimed to be the result of development at India’s top engineering colleges, has apparently turned out to be a Chinese import in actuality: ...

On CNet, Erica Ogg poses the question, “So, who’s still buying Netbooks?” She posits that the netbook craze is a tech fad that has been fading over time, citing figures showing the number of netbooks shipped falling quarter to quarter as the manufacturers gear up to jump on the next fad, chasing the popularity of the iPad. Some have long complained that the netbook is a solution in search of a problem, featuring a too-small screen wedded to a too-small keyboard. The lack of built-in optical media renders installing software a challenge (I’ve spoken to a couple of...

Google’s Android OS has become pretty much the go-to operating system for cheap tablets and e-book readers these days. But what of Google’s other OS, ChromeOS, that is rumored to be hitting tablets by Black Friday? If you’re curious, and have a computer that is hardware-compatible and a spare USB drive, you can actually try it out and see for yourself. ReadWriteWeb notes that a developer going by “Hexxeh” has been compiling both a modified Chromium (the developer version of Chrome) build called “Flow” and an unmodified, straight-developer build called “Vanilla”. These can be downloaded and placed on...

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!)...

Wired has a brief “Fetish” piece looking at a new Toshiba netbook that joins a number of other failed or issued dual-screen devices in replacing the keyboard with a second 7” touchscreen. Among its other uses is, naturally, that of e-book reader, with each pane showing a separate page. At $1,100, over twice the cost of the cheapest iPad, the 1.2 GHz device certainly does not lack ambition. What it does lack is much reason for buying at such a ridiculous price. You don’t need two screens to display two “pages”. The iPad manages it just fine. ...

Following up to my post about Augen devices last night, I just called the Kmart in Branson and spoke to them, and what they had in stock was the e-book reader, and one remaining unit of an Augen netbook different from the one Engadget found. Engadget’s find was an Android “smartbook” with a 400 MHz processor and 128 megabytes of RAM, but Branson has one clearanced unit of what appears to be this model listed for $75 (currently out of stock) on Geeks.com, or $67.99 + $9.99 shipping at NewEgg (apparently in stock), a Windows CE “smartbook” with...

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...