HP Unveils Three Low-End Tablets In China Under Compaq Brand

Three tablets, and as expected by 1Pad, they use the Allwinner A31s CPU:

Compaq 7: 1024 x 600 7-inch TN screen, 1GHz Allwinner A31s CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GBs storage, microSD card slot, 2MP front and 3MP back cameras.

Compaq 7+: 1024 x 600 7-inch IPS screen, 1GHz Allwinner A31s CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GBs storage, microSD card slot, 2MP front and 3MP back cameras.

Compaq 8: 1024 x 768 7.9-inch IPS screen, 1GHz Allwinner A31s CPU, 1GB RAM, 16GBs storage, microSD card slot, 2MP front and 3MP back cameras.

The only one of interest here is the Compaq 8, which is an iPad Mini clone that is actually not a rebadged Onda despite the specs.

Some photos after the break.

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All Aboard The Graft Train!

Top Reviewers On Amazon Get Tons Of Free Stuff

You’re on Amazon.com. You’re buying, say, a toaster, and you’re checking out the customer reviews. You assume the people writing these reviews are people like you — people who wanted a toaster, went online and bought one. As it turns out, a lot of reviews on Amazon are written by people who are nothing like you. They’re written by elite reviewers who are sent free merchandise to review products. In other words, it’s possible that the guy reviewing that toaster you’re looking at wasn’t in the market for a toaster to begin with and didn’t pay a cent for it.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Amazon also fuels competition among reviewers by making their rankings public. And top reviewers do get a lot of free stuff.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

When their ranking depends on the kind of review they give, do you really think you’re going to get anything resembling an honest review?

This is where I remind everyone to go read my FTC Disclosure.

And to further remind everyone that there are vendors who have enough confidence in their products to risk showing them to me — so far, the only one has been Asus.

Today’s Must-Read

The Logic of Stupid Poor People

You have no idea what you would do if you were poor until you are poor. And not intermittently poor or formerly not-poor, but born poor, expected to be poor and treated by bureaucracies, gatekeepers and well-meaning respectability authorities as inherently poor.

This was brutal:

When she left my VP turned to me and said, “did you see that tank top she had on under her blouse?! OMG, you wear a silk shell, not a tank top!”

A minor error of not knowing can keep you down.

Barnes & Noble’s New, Dumber, Final Nook

It’s fitting that Barnes & Noble (or Nook Media, or whoever the hell they are now) made this latest eInk Nook device white.

White like a tombstone.

They did away with the microSD card slot. Thus making the prior model more useful to people than this one.

This isn’t even worth my time to grab someone else’s photo. Go see it here:

Engadget: Barnes & Noble’s Nook GlowLight is lighter, brighter, whiter, with less Simple Touch for $119

The Verge: Barnes & Noble’s new Nook GlowLight is lighter, faster, and full of ideas

Techcrunch: Barnes & Noble Outs The $119 Nook GlowLight, We Go Hands-On

Chinese Products: Spying Inside

Via @stroughtonsmith:

Russia: Hidden chips ‘launch spam attacks from irons’

State-owned channel Rossiya 24 even showed footage of a technician opening up an iron included in a batch of Chinese imports to find a “spy chip” with what he called “a little microphone”. Its correspondent said the hidden devices were mostly being used to spread viruses, by connecting to any computer within a 200m (656ft) radius which were using unprotected Wi-Fi networks. Other products found to have rogue components reportedly included mobile phones and car dashboard cameras.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

I never expected this.

It would be easier to plant software like that in a tablet made in China.

Do you still want to buy a Chinese tablet now?

The Big “WRONG! You Moron!”

One year ago on this date, I was poo-pooing what turned into Superstorm Sandy: The Future Is Filled With Bullshit Panic Based On Software.

In my weak defense, we went through this before with Hurricane Irene and nothing happened (here; but other states got devastation): Hurricane Irene Hysteria In New York City.

To rub salt in the wound of my wrongness, the two small businesses in that Irene post were destroyed by Superstorm Sandy (one has since re-opened after months of cleanup and renovation).

To see my collection of post-Sandy photos of destruction: Index Of Superstorm Sandy Photo Posts

I don’t want to go through another thing like Superstorm Sandy for the rest of my life.

Tablet Notes

They don’t cite the source, but 1Pad reports that Steve Wozniak wants an iPad with 256GBs of storage [Google English]. He cites the difficulty of finding good wireless connections. My own concern is that I will not use the Cloud after all the NSA spying revelations. When your data is in the Cloud, the Cloud provider can be served with a warrant to examine your stuff without you ever being notified. The hell with that. I want to be notified and the only way for that to be more likely to happen (it’s no longer guaranteed since they’re now regularly violating the Bill of Rights) is if I store everything on my own premises.

Ramos K1: Bizarre Screen Problem

It looks like the Ramos commitment to quality is still full of holes.

I won’t bother to reproduce the photos, so just go see the post where K1 tablet screens have been displaying something weird due to Ramos not unchecking a box in Settings [Google English].

The Ramos K1 seems to still be in short supply, with most tech blogs not yet furnished with a unit for review.

For those interested in the 3G K2, there’s been no word on its release.

Previously here:

Quality Control Failure At Ramos
Ramos K1 Gets A Review
Ramos K1 Gets A Botched Review
Second Video Of Ramos K1 Tablet
First Video Of Ramos K1 Tablet
Ramos K1 Tablet Unboxed
404: CPU Not Found
I Love The Smell Of Chinese Revisionism In The Morning
First Evaluation Of Ramos K1 Tablet
Allwinner: Fraud Inside?
Ignore China, Get Punk’d
Ramos Makes AnTuTu Claim For K Tablets
Bizarre Ramos K Series Demo Model
Ramos K1 Tablet: So Pretty, So Sad
Ramos K2 Tablet Leaked

Stop. Watching. Us.

They’re smart enough to create the world’s most formidable surveillance apparatus.

But too goddammed stupid to understand why the Constitution of their own country was created.

Videos: Tomato T2 Unboxed, Evades AnTuTu

It’s never a good sign when any tablet refuses to install the AnTuTu benchmark.

A seller has posted three videos of the Tomato T2 tablet. This is an iPad Mini clone with Samsung tablet styling, a 7.9-inch 1024 x 768 IPS screen, 1.8GHz octa-core Exynos 5410 CPU, 2GBs of RAM, 16 or 32GBs of storage, 3G via Huawei UltraStick, GPS, microSD card slot, USB 3.0, microphone, headphone jack, top-mounted dual speakers, 2MP front and 5MP back cameras. Specs are here.