X2

COLOGNE, Germany -- Leica may not have the mass-manufacturing clout of Samsung or the retail footprint of Canon or the electronics know-how of Sony. But the German camera maker has got one thing in spades: a brand.

And nowhere is that brand more obvious than at Photokina, the camera show that takes place every two years here in Germany, Leica's home turf. Canon and Nikon had bigger crowds, but the Leica had the better ratio of booth visitors to customers as it introduced a new top-end rangefinder camera with new electronic abilities, a lower-end rangefinder that's not quite … Read more

The venerable laptop is under assault.

And leading the assault is Apple -- which has no qualms about cannibalizing a piece of its own MacBook laptop line with the iPad.

And Apple's tablets will get even harder to resist in October when it brings out a smaller tablet, probably priced well below $399.

The $199 Google Nexus 7 and the new Kindle Fire starting at $199 -- or $159 for the original Fire -- are making it even harder to fork over $699 for a new laptop.

At the risk of stating the obvious, consumers often opt for the … Read more

The designers at Samsung and HP sure love Apple's laptop design philosophy, but the duo may want to take a step back next generation and innovate a little bit. CNET found several new computers from these companies that look just like an Apple MacBook Air. Can you tell which one is the real Apple product in the picture above?

Our more discerning readers might easily spot the differences between each of these devices, but Crave decided to make it a little more challenging by shrinking the pictures down a bit. Readers who participated in our guessing game on Facebook had a pretty easy time spotting the real Apple, but the pictures were also much larger. … Read more

Windows 8 is about to unleash a tsunami of strange devices upon us all. Call them tablets, ultraportables, hybrids, convertibles, tiny touch-based mobile computers...they're everywhere, and they're multiplying.

HP has them. Samsung does, too. So does Dell, and Lenovo, and Toshiba, and Asus, and Sony. Everyone has them. That's because Windows 8 promises a better environment for touch in mobile computing, and the promise is too tempting not to experiment. Or, alternatively, all these companies need a product out there to plant a flag into this strange soil -- a territory that Microsoft's already visiting via the Surface.

The big problem I see with them is that for every device that emerges, the landscape gets ever-more-cloudy. … Read more

Although we haven't reviewed this phone on C Spire's network, you can read CNET's Motorola Droid X2 review for Verizon, which is the same phone.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program was the first to win 11 national championships and the first to win seven Heisman Trophies. Now, it'll be among the first to try out a new protective mouthguard that records and reports impact data to help battle concussions.

Pro and college football are much more concerned with head injuries than they were even five years ago, with more data supporting the theory that multiple concussions--even in youth--can lead to long-term depression, permanent memory problems, and dementia later in life.

The "intelligent mouthguard" by Seattle's X2IMPACT records the g-force … Read more

Verizon Wireless's Android lineup grew a little stronger today when the carrier began deploying 2.3 Gingerbread to the Motorola Droid X2. The 101MB software update features a number of bug fixes and general enhancements plus improvements to existing applications. As is the case with nearly all recent Verizon updates, the addition of a new Download Manager app provides a central place to handle downloads.

Other details in the 1.3.232 update include calendar enhancements, improved copy and paste, and geotagging capability for the camera app. The home screen and user experience also get a revamp with new widgets, icons, screen transitions, and home customizable tray icons.

It will be interesting to see how this software update is received by Verizon's user base considering the carrier's concerns over Motorola's recent Gingerbread updates. Less than one month ago, for example, we heard that the carrier was shelving all 2.3 updates from Motorola over issues arising with other handsets.

Indeed, a quick look at the Motorola Support forums tells us that Droid X users have been plagued with multiple issues since they updated to 2.3 last month. … Read more

DoubleTwist Product Wizard Lucas Dickey joins us in the studio this week to talk about syncing and streaming your media to and from an Android device. In the news, Google closes a WiFi security hole, AT&T opens its restrictions on 3rd party apps, and Motorola announces an amazing phone--save one missing feature. All of that plus the answers to your questions on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly with Justin Eckhouse and Antuan Goodwin.

Story… Read more