“Inspired” by Apple

ViewSonic ViewPad 10e: What a BRILLIANT name. So original. So consumer-focussed. So Web 2.0. So bhjkbfhjkghvgjk*

(*This is what happens when you headbutt your keyboard in despair three times in a row)

(image from Engadget)

Pantech Element: An Android tablet, peeing itself. Now I’ve seen everything.

(via My Dinner With Android)

Unnamed Toshiba tablets and phone: Oh, come on…

(image from The Verge. I feel sorry for The Verge, actually. Dredging up the enthusiasm to talk about these apparent knock-offs in a dispassionate way must be absolutely soul destroying. Poor things. I just want to give them all a hug and tell them it will all be OK, that it will all be over soon.)

Polaroid Spectrum 8: Good news, everyone who wants a tablet made by Polaroid! Remember the Polaroid tablet that I non-exclusively trailed a couple of days ago? Well here is one model in the flesh, or, rather, on paper - I picked the Spectrum 8 because it looks most like an iPhone 4/4S. Sadly, my name predictions were a bit off, but no matter - Spectrum 8 is deliciously generic. Could have done with an “e” or an “x” at the end, mind you.

And it is with further sadness that Engadget is reporting that it is due to ship “before the year end”. However, I’m quite sure that the specs will still be top-drawer in 11 months time. I can’t wait!

(image from Engadget)

HP Spectre: “Ah, MacBook Pro, we meet again. But this time the advantage is mine.”

From Wikipedia:

SPECTRE began…as a small group of criminals but became a vast international organisation with its own SPECTRE Island training base in the films

As quoted by Blofeld on several occasions: “This organisation does not tolerate failure”

Others may comment; I merely admire.

(image from Information Week)

Samsung Chromebox: LOLrel and Hardy-har-har.

(image from Gizmodo Australia)

Dell XPS 13: I don’t think it would take Hercule Poirot long to figure out that the original template for this new laptop, sorry ultrabook (or is it Ultrabook? Is it a brand name? Do we even care?) might have come from the pen of the dashing Sir Jonathan Ive, though that’s often the case with Poirot - we sit there shouting at the television for ninety minutes (“Can’t you see? It looks like a MacBook Air! Look at it!”) before the big reveal. No, this is more like Columbo - we find out “whodunnit” right at the start.

(I’m sorry, I’ve been watching Poirot on Netflix this evening- turns out it was his old mate Sir Charles all along who had to bump off Tolly Strange, who knew about his wife, who was in a sanatorium, and then kill his wife, so that he could marry Egg!)

(more pictures, including a handy side-by-side guide over on Gizmodo. This image from Engadget)

NVIDIA/Asus unnamed tablet: When CES kicked off what now seems like seventeen million years ago, a time when the design of the iPad was a mere glint in Sir Jony of Cupertino’s perfectly-sculpted unibody aluminium eye, no-one - NO-ONE - could have predicted the rich seam of treasures which awaited the tablet-desiring public.

Here’s another “iPad killer” from NVIDIA/Asus. It’s currently unnamed, but I can confidently predict that it will be called eTec X7, the GlassCom 7R or the MySlate Pro 7. Here’s hoping.

Bonus points for the slide. Looks familiar.

(image from Engadget)

Acer Aspire S5 power adaptor: “MagSafe-esque”. Of course, there are only so many ways you can design a magnetically attached, easily detachable, right-angled power cord (henceforth the “there are only so many ways you can draw a stick man theory of design defence”).

(via ikoerni and Engadget, image from Notebooks.com)