Technology Spot

The biggest hardware trend marking the launch of Windows 8 is the proliferation of touch-screen laptop/tablet hybrids. Some have screens that pull apart to become separate tablets, while others have screens that flip, twist, or rotate to give you a tabletlike shape to hold. We call those latter models convertible laptops, and one of the best examples to date is the new Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13.

The name Yoga is suggestive of the system's big selling point, that the display flips fully over to become a tablet. In fact, it has four basic usable positions -- clamshell laptop, tablet, stand, and tent.

The reason the Yoga stands out from the suddenly crowded touch-screen laptop scene is that it does something other convertible or hybrid laptops do not. When set up as a traditional laptop, the 13.3-inch Yoga doesn't compromise the all-important clamshell experience. The excellent double-hinge design means that it looks and works the same as any other ultrabook laptop, unlike the complex and often clunky mechanisms in systems such as the HP Envy x2,Sony Vaio Duo 11, or Dell XPS 12.

The Yoga works best as a full-time laptop and part-time tablet, because when it's folded back into a slate, you still have the keyboard pointing out from the back of the system. Although the keyboard and touch pad are deactivated in this mode, it's still not ideal. Plus, despite the hype, Windows 8 is still not a 100-percent tablet-friendly OS, and there are some frustrations that span all the Windows 8 tablet-style devices we've tested.

The Yoga certainly seems to be everyone's choice for a great Windows 8 ambassador -- both Microsoft and Intel have touted it as a best-in-class example, and Best Buy is currently featuring it in a television ad. At $1,099, you're paying a bit of a premium, but not outrageously so, for an Intel Core i5/8GB RAM/128GB solid-state drive (SSD) configuration (note that our early review unit had only 4GB of RAM installed), but a less expensive Core i3 version starts at $999. If I had to pick a single first-wave Windows 8 convertible touch-screen laptop, the Yoga would be at the top of my list.

Design, features, and display
Despite its reputation as a maker of buttoned-down business laptops, Lenovo can always be counted on to produce intriguing designs. Most of those end up, like the Yoga, as part of the company's consumer-targeted IdeaPad line of products.

We've seen similar attempts at laptops that can double as tablets over the years, usually with a rotating center hinge that swivels around to let the device change forms (or more recently with a screen that slides down over the keyboard). Before Windows 8, most of these experiments weren't particularly successful, thanks to a combination of poor design, underpowered components, and an operating system that wasn't touch-friendly.

The other problem with those traditional convertibles has been that the single rotating center hinge was a potential weak point in the design. Lenovo says the Yoga's full-length hinge has been rigorously tested and is stronger than the older rotating convertible design, and in practice that definitely seems to be the case.

When opened into its clamshell position, the Yoga would be tough to pick out of a lineup of recent ultrabooks. The minimalist interior is dominated by a large buttonless clickpad, along with a island-style Lenovo keyboard, which means the flat-topped keys have a small curve along their bottom edges for easier typing.

As good as Lenovo's reputation is for excellent keyboards, I had a surprisingly amount of trouble with the Yoga's keyboard. I narrowed most of my issues down to the half-size right Shift key, which meant I often hit the up arrow when aiming for Shift. The end result was a lot of frustration and retyping, but after a few days one would naturally adjust to this specific layout. The touch pad is the same as you'd find in other clickpad Lenovos, including the recent high-end X1 Carbon. It offers plenty of space for multifinger gestures, but isn't as effective for manipulating the touch-centric Windows 8 UI as a finger would be.

When you flip the Yoga's screen back, the physical keyboard doesn't disappear from view, as it does on most other convertible laptop/tablet combos, but it does get automatically disabled. A slightly raised layer of leather over the wrist rest and keyboard tray lets you rest the tablet on a table, keyboard-side down, without worrying too much about damaging the keys. Some buttons have been moved to the sides so they can be accessed no matter how the system is folded, and the outer shell has a soft-touch coating for easy gripping. While the Yoga isn't particularly comfortable to hold in tablet form, as your fingers are pressing up against the exposed keyboard and the touch pad, you do get easy access to a volume rocker along one edge and a rotation lock button along the other.

Beyond the slate mode, I especially liked the stand or sharing mode, where the screen is folded back 270 degrees or more, turning the system into something like a small touch-screen kiosk. It's great for sharing video or presentations in a group setting, or for just getting closer to the screen while keeping the keyboard out of the way.

Its fourth position is standing upright like a tent, but I can't think of too many reasons you'd want that.

In any of these positions, the Yoga is well-served by its 13.3-inch display, which has a native resolution of 1,600x900 pixels. That's arguably the perfect resolution for a 13-inch laptop, giving you plenty of screen real estate without making onscreen text appear too small, as can happen with 1,920x1,080-pixel resolutions on smaller systems. Off-axis viewing angles are great, and unlike with some Windows 8 convertibles stuck with 1,366x768-pixel screen resolutions, you don't feel like you're paying a premium price for a substandard feature.

Connectivity, performance, and battery life
Even for an ultrabook, this is not among the most connected laptops you'll find. There's a pair of USB ports, one 3.0, one 2.0, and it has an HDMI port, a combo audio jack, and an SD card slot. The lack of built-in Ethernet is understandable, but this is the first laptop in a long while I've seen with only one USB 3.0 port.

Samsung Electronics wants the spotlight all to itself for the Galaxy S4.

The Korean electronics giant will be holding off on any major announcements at Mobile World Congress later this month, according to a person familiar with its launch plans. As with last year, Samsung will likely hold its own separate event to launch the latest iteration of its flagship Galaxy S franchise.

The move is a continuation of the broader trend of larger technology companies utilizing their own events for major product announcements. Rather than battle through the noise of competing news, a solo event allows the product to get the full attention of consumers and media. Over the past year or so, Microsoft and Samsung have dramatically reduced their presence at trade shows, following in the footsteps of Apple.

BlackBerry just launched its next-generation smartphone at its own event this week, and HTC will hold an event a week before Mobile World Congress.

Last year, Samsung launched the Galaxy S3 at its own event in May, just days before the CTIAWireless conference. The move made for a relatively quiet trade show.

Over the past few years, Samsung has made frighteningly quick progress in establishing its Galaxy S franchise as one equal to Apple's iPhone. The latest Galaxy S device now garners the same amount of interest and hype as Apple's marquee smartphone, and the media will flock to wherever the company decides to hold an event.

That's a far cry from its start with the original Galaxy S, which ultimately was tweaked into four separate versions for each of the four national U.S. carriers. The Galaxy S3, as well as the Galaxy Note 2 were both sold by all four carriers unaltered.

While Samsung is the top smartphone manufacturer in the world, it recently lost its U.S. crown to Apple thanks to strong sales of the iPhone 5. Samsung will look to regain its title with the Galaxy S4.

Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona, Spain, in the last week of February, and will still feature plenty of announcements from the likes of Nokia and Huawei. 

The gist of it seems to be that Microsoft's GPS--which will reportedly be inserted into Windows Phones in the future--will use input from more varied and up-to-date sources in order to create suggested routes.

Among these sources are crime statistics. Which has led some to the thought that this will somehow be an insult to poor neighborhoods.

What is unclear, at least from my reading of the patent--which isn't written by anything resembling a human hand or mind--is what kind of crime statistics the GPS might choose to use.

It's one thing to avoid areas where there might have occurred physical assaults and gunfire. It's another to avoid, say, places where burglaries are popular, as one suspects quite a few allegedly nice areas are subject to burglars' desires.

With some areas, past performance isn't a guarantee of future results. What if someone using a route from this system does get mugged, shot, assaulted, or robbed? Would they feel entitled to sue Microsoft because the route was supposed to be "ghetto-free"?

The patent talks about the quality of the information. But quality is a subjective notion, so one wonders just whose assessment of quality will be deemed significant.

The patent also holds within it some other little gems. It seeks to help the pedestrian avoid "harsh temperatures." Some people like harsh temperatures, but this system will also store people's pedestrian information to offer, one assumes, a more personalized heat-level for the route.

How personalized should it be, though? My eyes perform slightly odd twitches when I read this sentence from the patent: "Various features can integrate with route presentment, such as integrating an advertisement targeted to a pedestrian with a direction set."

Is this suggesting that Windows Phones will give pedestrians a route that will take them past specific ads? What a curious and slightly mind-altering thought.

One wonders whether those who use the system might also be offered an "avoid ads" option

Will Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire reset the tablet market, rendering the $500 tablet obsolete?

Let me preempt any challenges from Apple iPad folks. Yeah, I know, Apple will continue to sell the iPad at $499, $599, and $699. And, yes, Apple is slated to ship more than 12 million iPad 2s in the current quarter. Android rivals like Motorola's Xoom or Toshiba's Thrive aren't even close.

With that out of the way, the most immediate impact will be on the pricey Android guys. "I think [the Kindle Fire] resets the bar," Carter Nicholas, CEO of market researcher eDataSource told CNET this week.

To expand on Nicholas' argument, why buy a $500 Xoom if you can get most of what you need from a $199 Fire or a $199 Samsung Galaxy Tab? Or a $249 Nook Tablet? Or a 10-inch Lenovo IdeaPad for $349.99?

But I'm guessing that the longer-term impact will be on Apple too, as immune as it seems today to price pressure--despite these results from a recent CNET poll (44 percent said they're sticking with the iPad).

We may not see the impact on Apple--the torchbearer for $500-and-up tablets--until late next year or even 2013, but it's as inevitable as the $999 MacBook Air. Remember, the MacBook Air started at the $1,800 to $3,000 price range and stayed in rarefied pricing tiers for a couple of years.

No, the iPad is not the Air but it competes with low-end laptops as well as the cheaper tablets. (Even the iPhone 4's pricing with a carrier contract is $99 now.)

And I think this will go beyond downstreaming old iPads. At some point, even a new $500 iPad 3 or iPad 4, not to mention a $700 one, is going to seem too pricey for iPad owners who aren't necessarily wedded to Apple products.

But until that day comes--however distant--here's the latest crop of alternatives to the iPad and pricey Android tablets. These tablets are already doing their part to hasten the demise of the $500 tablet.

Sub-$350 tablets: 

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--Two men pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor theft charges in a case involving an iPhone 4 prototype the pair are accused of selling to gadget blog Gizmodo last year.

At an arraignment here this morning, lawyers for Brian Hogan, the man who allegedly found the prototype in a bar after it was left there by an Apple engineer, and Robert Sage Wallower, who is accused of that charge as well as possessing stolen property, entered their pleas before Superior Court Judge Jonathan Karesh.

Karesh scheduled a pretrial conference for October 11 and a trial date of November 28. He said that neither defendant would be required to post bail and the men could be released on their own recognizance, which is common in non-felony cases.

Jeff Bornstein, a criminal defense lawyer at K&L Gates in San Francisco who is representing Hogan, told CNET after the arraignment that he welcomed the district attorney's decision to file the charges as misdemeanors rather than felonies. That shows prosecutors are "sensitive to the facts and circumstances" of the case, he said.

The iPhone prototype in Hogan and Wallower's case shouldn't be confused with an investigation involving another unreleased iPhone. CNET reported yesterday that an employee lost control of the device at Cava22, a Mexican-themed establishment in the city's Mission District, and Apple security tracked it to a nearby home but did not find it.

Wallower, a former Navy cryptologic technician who was scheduled to graduate from University of California at Berkeley in 2010, told CNET last year in an in-person interview at his home: "I didn't see it or touch it in any manner. But I know who found it."

In early August, San Mateo County prosecutors filed misdemeanor criminal charges against the two men. They allegedly obtained the prototype iPhone 4 after Robert Gray Powell, an Apple computer engineer who was 28 years old at the time, left it in a German beer garden in Redwood City, Calif.

Prosecutors obtained a warrant to search the home of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen, and indicated they might prosecute Gizmodo, but eventually decided not to file charges.

Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be--but "appropriates such property to his own use"--is guilty of theft. In addition, a second state law says any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year.

Travel marketplace Airbnb is making changes to its policies following a recent incident in which a member's apartment was ransacked by a guest.

The company plays matchmaker to people looking for a place to stay on vacation and those renting out their own homes or apartments. Airbnb has grown in popularity, but a recent vandalism and theft highlighted the pitfalls of using such a service.

A woman known only as "EJ" rented out her San Francisco apartment to a guest through Airbnb in June. After her guest left, EJ discovered that her home had been vandalized and that personal items had been stolen.

Though the victim contacted Airbnb to report the incident, she says the company was unresponsive and did little to help. Airbnb said it did reach out to EJ and also worked with San Francisco police, eventually leading to the arrest of a suspect.

Since late June, EJ's original blog on the incident went viral and eventually forced Airbnb to respond publicly to the incident.

Yesterday, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky apologized to the victim and to Airbnb members for not handling the incident properly and announced policy changes to guard against future such incidents

In a blog post, Chesky said that starting August 15, the company will offer a $50,000 guarantee designed to protect the property of hosts from damage by Airbnb guests. The guarantee will be extended to EJ and other hosts who may have been victimized in the past, Chesky said.

The company is also setting up new support options, offering a 24-hour customer hotline starting next week, expanding its customer support team, hiring a director of customer support, and creating an in-house team to look into suspicious activity.

Airbnb has also updated its user profiles so that members can find more information about a potential host or guest, including reviews about that person from other members. Hosts will also now be able to set certain parameters for potential guests designed to weed out ones who haven't provided certain details.

Chesky noted that the company already offers certain safety measures, including a secure reservation system, verified photos, and fraud detection. But the recent incident was apparently a wake-up call.

"We've built this company by listening to our community," Chesky said in the blog. "Guided by your feedback, we have iterated to become safer and more secure. Our job's not done yet; we're still evolving. In the wake of these recent events, we've heard an uproar from people, both inside and outside our community. Know that we were closely listening."