Lenovo Multimedia Remote..

Over a year ago we cut the cable/dish around here and began using Home Theater PCs, and various extenders and it has worked out much better than I had hoped. My wife and two sons have been delighted with the selection of content available and we’re saving almost $125/month by not having DirecTV.

All went smoothly in the transition, building the HTPCs was easy, putting the Rokus, Popcorn Hour, Microsoft XBox360 and Thecus NAS on the network wasn’t a problem either. The only real issue we had was finding the right remote keyboard. I tried a slew of them and could never find one that was easy to use, small enough to fit in one hand and accomplished all the functions necessary to fully utilize the Windows 7 based PCs that were acting as the heart of our system.


Along came the Lenovo Multimedia Remote, a fan-shaped, gem with a roller-ball and qwerty-keyboard. It was almost perfect except for two things: 1. The keys weren’t back lit so it was very hard to see, and 2. There was no way to easily scroll (wheel) through web pages. Well, it appears my desires are about to met as Lenovo has introduced the Enhanced Lenovo Multimedia Remote Keyboard (N5902). The new model incorporates a scroll bar, touch pad rather than a ball, back-lit keyboard and, it appears, a little nicer overall look. It’s going to sell for $79.99 and should be shipping September 1. I promise a review as soon as I can get my paws on one.

It’s really refreshing to see a company that has listened to its customers and made changes to an already pretty-good product. I’ve included a short video highlight the keyboard and the changes that Lenovo made.

Samsung Galaxy Note Announced..

Along with the Galaxy Tab 7.7, Samsung also unveiled a new phone…err…tablet…umm…something in between, the Galaxy Note.  Samsung calls the Galaxy Note a handset, and this device comes with a gigantic 5.3-inch display! The 5.3-inch Super-AMOLED display has a disappointingly low WVGA (480×800) resolution. With a 5.3-inch display, the Note successfully manages to blur the line between a handset and a tablet.

The Note is powered by a 1.4GHz dual core processor (Exynos SoC), and packs 1GB of RAM. The handset is also pretty thin and light at just 9.65m thick, and weighing in at 178 grams. The usual Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS with A-GPS, HSPA+, microSD card slot, FM radio, 3.5mm audio jack and a bunch of sensors are all present. Being called a ‘handset’ by Sammy, the Note runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with TouchWiz 4.0 on top of it. The back of the device sports an 8MP camera with an LED flash, and a 2MP camera resides in the front of the phone. A beefy 2500mAh battery powers the Galaxy Note. 

The highlight of the Note is the S-Pen, which comes with the Note. This pressure sensitive stylus will help Note users to easily take down notes on their handset. Samsung will also release the S-Pen SDK to developers, to that more applications can make use of this feature. With the Galaxy Note, Sammy is trying to open a new segment, residing between the handsets and tablets market. The Note will be ideal for businessmen’s and college going students, for taking down quick notes. While some people may like the Note, I highly doubt it’s going to be a major success. Nonetheless, it is still nice to see Sammy innovating, instead of just releasing run-of-the-mill Android handsets and tablets.