Wednesday, Apple Insider reported on an investor report from J.P. Morgan, which indicated that tablet manufacturers competing with Apple's iPad have reduced their future build plans for their devices after experiencing lackluster sales. J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moscowitz called the poor sales an "early dose of reality". The tablets in question include Asustek’s Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola’s XOOM, RIM’s PlayBook, and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab. Overall planned production numbers have declined by 10%, from 81 million units to 73 million units. It's not surprising that these competitors’...

The ASUS “Campus Life” blog reports that the Eee Note EA800 is about to hit shelves in North America at a list price of under $200 (which probably means “exactly $199.99”). The device is an 8” touchscreen 4GB e-ink “digital notepad” that comes with a stylus (or, as they call it, a “2,540dpi resolution touch pen that has 256 levels of pressure”) for precise, pressure-sensitive note-taking, annotating e-books, and so on. It also includes a 2MP camera, micro USB, micro SD, 802.11 b/g WiFi, headphone jack, and speakers. Battery life is given as 13.5 hours with a 10-day standby....

According to Linux Devices the new reader will be offering a high definition 1024x768, 64 grey scale LCD touch screen with Wacom technology. It will be released in Taiwan at about $230 and may make it to the US in the first quarter of next year. It is called the Eee Note EA800. It will run the Linux operating system. The unit will ship with 42 templates for note-taking needs and will have a built-in camera and voice recorder. Battery life is expected to be about 13.5 hours. The Asus web page is here. ...

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!)...

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...