HCL launches Android tablets in India

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HCL has finally launched its budget Android tablets in India.

HCL has finally launched its budget Android tablets in India. The two new tablets are named ME U1 and MyEdu tablet. Both these tablets will run on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) right out of the box. Enough of cheap Gingerbread/Honeycomb based Chinese tablets.

The HCL ME U1 tablet is 

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powered by a 1GHz processor, supported by 512MB RAM and 4GB of internal memory. Seems like HCL did an uncle Scrooge when it came to saving money on flash memory. 4GB on an Android tablet is like a pizza without cheese. Thankfully there's a memory card slot to solve the problem.

The tablet features a 7-inch display at a resolution of 800x480 pixels. It includes other standard features such as a front-facing camera, a USB port, a micro-USB port and a micro-SD card slot. The tablet is powered by a 3600 mAh battery. The hardware specifications for both the tablets are almost exactly the same.

Interestingly, the tablets have an HCL branded ME app store instead of the usual Android Market app, which is now called the Google Play Store. HCL has set the price tag of this tablet at Rs. 7,999, claiming that it would compete with the Aakash tablet.

Meanwhile the MyEdu tablet is targeted towards students. It comes in two variants and includes a bunch of educational content for students.  The K12 version, priced at Rs. 11,499, comes with a lot of educational apps such as games, videos and e-books. The second variant is priced at Rs. 9,999 and it includes higher education based content.
HCL has expressed their desire to bid for the next edition of the world's most cheapest tablet Aakash. The Aakash tablet will be provided at a subsidized price by the government and is mainly targeted at educational purposes.

HCL's Ice Cream Sandwich based tablets are slightly more powerful than the entry level Aakash tablets. Only time will tell which ones make it to the students' backpacks.

Google Chrome OS Review

 I will first tell my view of what's new in Chrome OS, Technical specification, advantages of Chrome OS, etc. Let me dive into the topic now. Everyone knows Google giant and also know their yet to launch OS. It is named as Chrome OS, after their own Browser.

Google revolutionize the browsing age by launching their slim and thin browser named as Chrome. The browser was similar to Firefox 3 and also IE 7. But it was faster than IE 7. It had some tweaking performance in the DNS side to make the browsing experience faster. Around 3 million people used Chrome browser. I was one amongst them.

Now the giant has announced the news of launching their own OS , which will surely compete against Windows. I think by the mid of 2010 Google Chrome OS will be available. This is a sad news for Microsoft. The catch point of Chrome Os is that it is open source light Operating System. But sad news for the Google fans is that, this OS is launched for Netbooks initially. But I hope they will release desktop version in a month or so, after the launch of netbooks version. The main importance is given for SSS(Speed, Security and Simplicity).

Google is designing the OS to be fast and lightweight , to start up and to get users onto web ASAP. The GUI (Graphical User Interface) is not given much importance. But the look will be like simple and elegant. They are also redesigning the security architecture of the OS so that user's don't have to worry about viruses and other malware threats.

As far as the technical specification goes, Chrome OS will run both in x86 and ARM chips. The software architecture is simple, with new windowing system on top of Linux Kernel. Now do you get from where Chrome OS will get its security feature , quicker start-up and also be lightweight? Yes it is from Linux kernel. All Web-based applications will easily work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And to the added benefit those applications will run on standard browsers running on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Google has announced that Chrome OS will revolutionize netbooks and other underpowered machines. The OS is a small, fast-booting platform whose sole purpose is to run a browser, and from there to access all the Google apps and other web services you know and which are dear to you. Now we will see the advantages of Chrome OS.

Economic -
Netbooks are really cheap. But netbooks running Windows are costlier than netbooks running Linux for one obvious reasons. To buy an original Microsoft license. . Ever wondered why the Linux versions of netbooks cost around 2500 Rs. less? It is because of Microsoft tax. Since Chrome OS is based on Linux , like most of the Google products, it will be surely less than netbooks running Microsoft Windows.

Speed -
We know Windows 7 runs faster than Windows Vista on a netbook. But the point is Windows 7 runs only on netbook. But Chrome OS will run on low-powered processors like Atom and ARM. And the web-applications doesn't require that much configuration. So it should be faster. It also promises for boot time in seconds, not in minutes like in Windows. So it will be easier for a cold boot, rather than hibernate or sleep , saving precious battery life.

Compatibility -
Google says that "People don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. " One of the big problems with using other OS on a netbook has been drivers. Try installing OS X on one if you don't believe, or any version of Linux not specifically designed for your model. If Google can come up with an OS that can be downloaded, dropped onto any machine and then "just works, " we might just have the ultimate portable OS.

And I conclude my thoughts with one main aspect. If Google can design a whole new OS which is clean, fast and focused for Web-Services, then Chrome OS will surely be a revolutionary OS. A free revolution that will make Microsoft very uncomfortable.