Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Acer Strikes First With Seven-Inch Honeycomb Tablet

With what is likely to be the first of many smaller-screen Honeycomb tablets to hit store shelves, Acer on Friday is launching its seven-inch Iconia A100 line of tablets.

The new tablets run Android 3.2, the first version of Honeycomb to support the smaller screen resolution. Huawei has also announced — but not yet started selling — a seven-inch Honeycomb tablet.

While shrinking the screen size might not seem to be the easiest way to erode the massive lead of Apple’s iPad, such devices can be both lighter and cheaper.

Acer said the new tablets weigh in at under a pound and are available immediately at major retailers in the U.S.; they will land in Canada next month. A 16GB model is priced at $349, while an 8GB model has a suggested $329 price tag.

Among its interesting features, the Iconia A100 supports dual displays; meaning, for example, the tablet can be used as a controller while a game is displayed on a television. The product also has a MicroSD card reader, allowing users to easily boost the product’s capacity for music, movies and apps.

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald