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Lenovo’s latest tablet has been announced and it looks like what anyone would expect. While you may expect sheer awesomeness/lightness based on the x200 designation, you’d be wrong. It’s heavier due to a few differing components, like battery and other internals. The system maxes out at 1.86GHz SL9400, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD. Lenovo claims 10.5 hour runtimes with the optional 8-cell battery. Differences from its predecessors include improved ink sensitivity, the ability to swivel in both directions, and stereo speakers, but I doubt the business users buying this will care too much about speakers or an optional webcam.

I currently own and use an x60t during the day and I bought its successor, the X61t, for my sister in college. I think OneNote (and Evernote) + tablets make a winning combination for anyone in school. If only Apple would join the tablet fray (ModBook if you’re interested in a 3rd-party solution.) I’ve been waiting for the x200t to be released so I could order a few of them for my dad’s practice. They’re solid laptops and if you love ThinkPads, you’ll love the x200t. If you’re not a fan of the mundane, yet functional styling, and the iconic red trackpoint, then you’ll probably want to look elsewhere. But seriously, if you’re a student, check out the OneNote + tablet combination. It’s heaven.

Order them next week, they’re shipping in October!

Regardless of the cheesy copy (With EFI-X^TM you will be able to enter a new computing dimension), I am so excited about the possibilities of EFi-X. EFi-X allows you to build a PC and run Mac OS X without any modifications. The supported list of motherboards is small at the moment (limited to Gigabyte mobos), but I’m sure it will grow in time. EFi-X promises the ability to install from a retail Leopard DVD, firmware updates within Mac OS X as well as the ability to install Mac OS X software updates via, well, Software Update.

Every time I run a Mac OS X updater, I fear for my Hackintosh’s well-being. It’s upgraded fine so far and I have my SuperDuper bootable image + Time Machine backup in case things go awry, but it would be nice to be able to update my software like I do on my real Macs.

I’m not sure who the target market is (people that know enough to install Mac OS X on a PC don’t need EFi-X, and people that want a Mac that know nothing of the Hackintosh world will probably buy a real Mac.) I could see enthusiasts building these hassle-free Hackintoshes for their non-technical family/friends or. Whatever the case may be, I decided to be a guinea pig and pick up the EFi-X v2. I’ll let you know when I receive it and will try it on my current Hackintosh (my mobo is not supported) as well as a supported Gigabyte mobo and let you know how it goes.

I’ll leave you with this nugget from the EFi-X US website.

It costs a lot to us, and it costs a lot to you.

EFi-X is selling for $155 +$5 shipping.

I recently preordered the Popcorn Hour A-110 ($215, popcornhour.com). It’s basically a media streamer that can play any media type you can throw at it. Seriously. A-N-Y. Check it out. One of the best media streamers I’ve used thus far is my trusty modded XBox loaded with XBMC. Unfortunately (for the XBox), I’ve started to download some HD files, including the .MKV container, which the XBox 1 cannot play. I currently use a hacked TV (it has Perian, Sapphire and nitoTV installed) but even with the modifications it’s unable to play .mkv files due to hardware limitations. I got some great use out of my new-ish quad core Hackintosh, using VisualHub to convert the .mkv files to something my TV will take. The only nice thing about using TV to playback my files was being able to use Lostify to properly tag my video files and add episode/movie descriptions. However, the encoding wait time and the multiple copies of files I have are starting to bother me.

Currently, in my living room I have my Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, TV, and my TiVo Series 3. I’ve started to rip my DVD collection and store it on my Hackintosh. I’d love to stream my DVDs to any of those devices but to the best of my knowledge, none can stream VIDEO_TS folders. OK, well theoretically my softmodded TV with nitoTV should be able to play VIDEO_TS folders, but I’ve had mixed results and nothing is more frustrating than having the movie cut out in the middle. I’ve thought about picking up a Mac Mini and loading Plex, an indie fork to my beloved XBMC. The UI looks elegant and beautiful. However, it’s a little out of my price range and having a Mac Mini just sitting on my entertainment center seems like overkill when I just want to stream my media.

Enter the Popcorn Hour. It has a robust online community over at networkedmediatank.com and the reviews are nothing but extraordinary. It doesn’t come with (or need) a hard drive, but you can add one or enjoy streaming out of the box. One downer for some people is that there is no built-in WiFi, but all of my networking stuff sits behind my TV. The ethernet port is 10/100, so no gigabit here, but based on the bitrates of the stuff you’ll be streaming, you won’t miss it, unless you spend time transferring files to the Popcorn Hour’s hard drive.

Popcorn Hour also has the older brother for sale, the A-100, for $179. The A-110 is merely an update, rather than a replacement, to the A-100. The differences can be found here. The worst thing is that there is a waitlist. As of September 10, they’re shipping preorders from August 5-10. Argh. The wait is killing me.

After prematurely releasing a comic book declaring its existence, Google finally ‘fessed up about its entry into the browser market, Chrome, coming tomorrow.

Looks like Windows users get first crack at the beta tomorrow, which seems like a good idea as this browser seems to be aimed squarely at Redmond. I am most excited about Chrome’s “sandbox” concept, which isolates tabs to their own processes so one crash or slow-loading page won’t force you to quit/restart the browser. With the new V8 Javascript engine that it has built, Google could make its online apps much more feature-rich and the user experience more desktop-esque if the performance is as good as they say it is. Time will tell.

My only question is how much money is Google going to make from itself from the little search box in the corner? I kid, I kid.