The HTC Droid Incredible is in many ways the new standard-bearer for Google’s Android operating system.  It is the most advanced phone on America’s top carrier, Verizon Wireless.  In fact, it is so advanced that Google decided to forgo releasing its own Nexus One phone for Verizon after the Droid Incredible came out.  This was probably a smart decision on Google’s part, because the Incredible matches or outdoes the Nexus One almost spec for spec.

Those specs on the Incredible certainly are impressive.  The main hardware might sound pretty familiar if you have been looking at any other high-end smartphones lately: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 3.7″ WVGA (800×480) OLED capacitive touch screen, 8-megapixel camera with dual LED flash, 8GB of built-in flash storage, and Android 2.1 (Eclair) with HTC’s Sense UI overlay.  For many folks, this combination of hardware alone will keep  iPhone envy away from Verizon’s customers.

So how does the Incredible actually perform in day-to-day use?  Is it, well, incredible?  In many ways, yes, but incredible might be a bit strong.  However, we certainly consider it impressive.  See what we mean below.
* First off, from a hardware design standpoint, the Droid Incredible is slimmer and smaller than it looks in pictures.  When I first picked it up, I was surprised by its svelte frame and that the screen is not nearly as monolithically huge as I expected from photos.  Also misrepresented in photos is how stepped and contoured the back cover is.  The layered look on the back cover is much subtler and less dramatic than pictures make it appear.  I came down on the side of liking the overall design of the Incredible, and if anything found it a little plain vanilla, which is a common feeling I get from recent HTC smartphones.

* After turning on the phone, the first thing you will notice is how vibrant the OLED screen is.  The truer black levels really make the color contrast pop.  However, the display is not very good in sunlight though.  Even cranking up the brightness all the way still results in a pretty washed out image.  Looks like we will have to wait for Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen in the Galaxy S to fix the outdoor readability issue.

* Although it is nice that the Incredible has 8GB of built-in flash storage, I still find it annoying that Verizon did not decide to bundle a microSD card, not even a small 512MB one.  This is particularly annoying since some apps, such as Evernote, require a microSD card to fully work.

* Most of our other thoughts relate to the Android OS in general and the custom Sense UI that HTC includes with the Incredible.  Overall, we like Android but must concede that it lacks the polish of webOS or the iPhone OS.  It feels a little geekier to use than those other systems and for some people, it is a good thing to have greater control over their phone.  However, we feel most consumers do not care for the additional complication.  Android’s biggest flaw is the lack of continuity between apps, the interface from app to app lacks coherence, so the learning curve for the OS is greater.  The addition of Sense UI, which makes many aesthetic upgrades, further confuses this lack of unity.  Sometimes there will be 2 versions of the same app or widget (one from HTC, the other from Google).  Finally, the on-screen keyboard for the Incredible is spacious and easy to type on, however it is lacking multitouch for ‘Shift’ or ‘Alt’ usage, which really holds in back.

* There are many I like about Android and specifically this Sense-ified version.  For instance, the Leap feature which you get by pinching on a homescreen is great.  It is like Expose for your home screens and shows miniature versions of each one.  HTC has really out-Appled Apple.  Another feature that Apple should have done long ago is widgets.  Widgets have been on Mac OS X for years, so there is really no excuse why they are not on the iPhone.  Widgets really make Android much more powerful and easy to use.  It allows pertinent information to be easily glanecable.  The combination weather/clock widget that HTC puts on the Incredible also has some really cute active graphics (such as a wiper for the screen that pops up when it is raining).

* Finally, despite the smaller number of apps available on the Android Market, as compared to the iTunes App Store, I did not feel like I was missing out.  All the general bases for smartphone apps are covered by the Android Market.  Also, Google’s laissez faire style to apps allows for developers to be imaginative with their apps.  For example, the lack of restrictions allowed for the creation of the Metal Detector app, which actually works alright!

* While doubleTwist is pretty good for managing music and videos, it is not as complete as iTunes is in managing the content that goes onto Android phones, coming up short mostly in the areas of podcast and app management.  I wish there was a more closely integrated solution to connect Android phones with the PC/Mac.

Overall, we think despite some of the nitpicking above, the Droid Incredible is still the best smartphone on Verizon and one of the top Android phones to date, probably 1a if the HTC Evo 4G were number 1.

For now, feast your eyes on our gallery below.  But stay tuned for our full review.

We tested the Pre Plus on Verizon’s network, but it will soon be coming to AT&T as well.

At first glance, the Palm Pre Plus seems very plain, almost non descript.  It is a rounded block of shiny plastic.  Turned on, the 3.1” touchscreen display emerges from the darkness of the phone, and beneath it appears a strip of LED light that marks the gesture area.  The Pre Plus runs webOS, which is distinctly different from the user interfaces of iPhones, BlackBerries and Android devices.  While webOS has apps that open up on the screen much like those devices, the apps are contained in windows called cards.  The benefit of this approach is that you can have multiple apps open and at the same time, have things running in the background and very easily switch between all this activity.

Frankly, using webOS on the Pre Plus is a great experience.  Being able to multitask makes it feel a generation ahead of the iPhone, and the interface has a continuity that phones like the Droid just lack.  Something in particular about webOS that I appreciated was the way it handled notifications.  Unlike the iPhone, which throws a pop up at you whenever something happens, the Pre Plus has a notification tray that can show and hide multiple notifications at the same time.  This is a much more intelligent and useful way of handling notifications.  The webOS notification area is even more flexible than Android’s window shade of notifications because you can change songs from the notification area and selectively dismiss notifications.

One thing I particularly enjoyed about using webOS was the real sense of thought that went into the PIM (personal information management) apps.  You can really feel the Palm OS roots in those apps.  PalmPilots were great at managing contacts, calendar and to-do lists, and this history lives on in webOS.  The calendar and to-do apps, in particular, are much better than the alternatives (or lack thereof) that come with the iPhone.

While webOS provides the Pre Plus with a unique and intuitive experience, it is also probably the Pre’s greatest weakness.  Unfortunately, there are not nearly as many apps available for the Pre Plus as there are for the iPhone or even Android.  This shortcoming is hard to overlook because it is the extensible nature of apps that really separates today’s smartphones from the dumbphones everyone used just a few years ago.

There is one app Verizon makes available for the Pre Plus that gives it a leg up on the competition though.  The Mobile Hotspot app is a revelation.  It takes the Verizon’s 3G service and turns it into a Wi-Fi network available for up to five devices.  Best of all, this service is completely free, which is amazing considering a separate device (the Verizon MiFi) that has only this feature costs at least $40 a month.  I found this feature completely invaluable while traveling recently, both to stay sane on Amtrak and to avoid paying for internet at hotels.

At the end of the day, I came away thoroughly impressed with the Palm Pre Plus.  Especially when you take into account that it only costs $30 with a new contract, it really is a steal, considering a comparable 16GB iPhone 3GS costs $199.  The Pre Plus is a good phone in its own right, and with HP’s recent acquisition of Palm, I can only hope there will be more good products to come (and maybe even a resurrection of the long dormant iPaq line).

Below is a rundown of some of our notes from our time spent with the Palm Pre Plus:

Pros

• It has Cut & Paste and it works well enough, though it is not as intuitive as the iPhone’s system.  Still it is much more elegant than Android’s solution.
• Mobile Hotspot is a godsend.  The fact that this is now free amazes me.  I really believe for some people this feature alone might push them to this phone over a BlackBerry Curve 8530/8520.
• Hardware keyboard is a must for some and I like the portrait slider form factor.  The feedback from the keyboard is not the best though.  Palm has definitely made much better keyboards on previous Treos.
• webOS is really nicely rendered; the UI looks good and cards work well.  This is how multitasking should be.
• Synergy works well, though I wish you could be selective about which contacts get downloaded.  It is all-or-nothing right now.
• Camera has flash, autodetects portrait/landscape, geotags, video recording
• Classic app allows you to run huge back-catalog of Palm OS apps
• Hardware design feels very nice and organic in the hand, soft-touch back feels reassuring
• Adobe Flash is coming
• Placement of power button is great
• Gestures are pretty intuitive, some very useful, dragging up the quick launch bar has a lot of wow factor
• Real easy ringtones
• Search done better than in iPhone
• Airplane mode/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth on/off easier to get to than iPhone, even Android
• Integrates multiple email accounts better than iPhone, has universal inbox

Cons

• webOS experience could be better on faster hardware, Qualcomm Snapdragon please?
• Picture quality only okay
• no microSD card slot
• battery life less than stellar, usually lasted around 16 hours of normal use, but sometimes I got as few as 10 hours
• slider not always the easiest to maneuver, have to put thumb in middle of screen to get a good slide
• No virtual keyboard.  For short bits of typing, I wished I could pull up a virtual keyboard instead of sliding the phone open just to put in a few letters

The ThinkPad Edge represents Lenovo’s attempt to capitalize on the budget ultraportable trend that has been popularized by Acer’s Timeline, Asus’ UL-series, HP’s Pavilion dm3 and dv2 before it and Dell’s Inspiron 11z.  These laptops offer the slim size and stamina of traditional ultraportable laptops but at a fraction of the price by running slower processors.  Think of them as supercharged netbooks, if you will.

The Edge is quite a departure for the corporate executive companion ThinkPad line.  If anything, the Edge straddles the division between the conservative ThinkPad and consumer oriented IdeaPad models.

This ambivalent nature can be seen in the design of the Edge.  For the first time ever, the back lid of the Edge is available in glossy red and glossy black, in addition to the standard matte black option.  Also, the edges of the ThinkPad Edge are wrapped in silver plastic and the hinges for the screen are plastic as well, not metal as is typically the case with ThinkPads.  All this lends the Edge a slightly chintzy feeling.  While it seems well constructed, it feel generic and lacks the stellar, bulletproof feel ThinkPads have come to be known for.

All is not bad though.  The Edge preserves the ThinkPad line’s reputation of having awesome keyboards.  The Edge has one of the best chiclet-style keyboards I have ever used.  The keys are slightly scalloped and have a firm, responsive action that lends itself to fast, comfortable typing.  Even better, Lenovo has thought about the little things, such as making the ‘PgUp’ and ‘PgDn’ buttons depressed to prevent accidental presses.  Typing on the Edge was a dream, and I regretted the day I had to part with it.  My only wish for the keyboard is that it adopt the double-sized ‘Esc’ and ‘Delete’ keys like the new T-series ThinkPad have.  Below the keyboard is a very comfortable and wide multitouch trackpad that tracks movements very well.  It is amazing to me how many companies (mostly HP) fail at making a usable trackpad.  Of course, this being a ThinkPad, you can also choose to use the red TrackPoint nub and its set of three buttons directly below the keyboard.

The review unit Lenovo sent me came pretty loaded.  It has a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive and Windows 7 Professional.  Even more impressive is the number of wireless radios packed in this particular Edge.  Not only does it have the standard Wi-Fi (802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth, it also has EV-DO and HSPA wireless broadband, courtesy of Verizon and AT&T respectively, in addition to WiMAX and GPS.   That is a lot of wireless radios.  In fact, the only thing missing is Wireless USB, which you probably do not care about anyways.

The processor inside the Edge is of the ultra-low-voltage variety, so it does wonders for battery life.  I was able to get over 6 hours of a full charge without too much difficulty.  While this means there is a trade-off in terms of performance, the Edge was more than capable at handling email, the internet, Microsoft Word and even some hardcore statistical regression tests that I ran.

Below are a number of small points I noticed or observed while testing out the ThinkPad Edge.  They are not necessarily pros or cons, but just little things I picked up on:

* The keyboard has no numpad at all, not even the customary remapped one, and in turn no ‘Num Lock’.  I did not really miss it, since remapped numpads tend to not work very well, but I know some people will bemoan this omission.

* In addition, there is a real lack of lights on the body of the Edge.  There is no light for ‘Caps Lock’, nor are there any status lights for hard drive activity or power/sleep or wireless.  There is also no ThinkLight above the screen (much less a backlit keyboard).  The only light there is is a small green L.E.D. on the right hand side that glows when the computer is plugged in.  While one can argue that there is nothing really necessary about any of these lights, I did miss them a little.  There is a sense of reassurance and an air of quality that the status lights and such lent to previous ThinkPads that the Edge just lacks.

* Along those same lines, I really would have liked to have seen a hardware wireless switch, especially on this model with all the wireless radios.  In addition, there is no latch for the display and at times the lid felt a little loose when closed.

* The webcam above the screen is said to be low-light capable, and they are not lying.  I tried it in a dimly lit room and it performed quite admirably, much better than I was expecting from a 1.3-megapixel integrated webcam.

* The speakers, which are below the front edge, are just okay.  They sound a little hollow and do not get very loud.

* The screen is reflective, really reflective.  With the screen off you can clearly see what is behind you, much like a black mirror.

* I appreciate that the Edge comes with an HDMI port and that one of its USB ports is powered, so you can charge a device even when the computer is asleep or off.

This brings me to the one sticking point that prevents me from whole-heartedly recommending the ThinkPad Edge: its price.  My review unit retails for $899, but prices start at $549.  While that sounds pretty good, the budget options are equipped with a slower, less capable AMD processor.  The version with the Intel chip starts at $799.  The AMD version actually provides very decent performance, especially with its ATi graphics, but you lose out heavily when it comes to battery life.  While those prices are reasonable, it is at least $150 more than comparable systems from Acer and Asus, so the Edge does not offer the best value.  On the other hand, the ThinkPad is less than half the price of high-end ultraportables such as Lenovo’s own ThinkPad X200s and X301 and performs almost as well.

In more ways than one, the Edge finds itself caught in the middle.  It is somewhat awkwardly in between the ThinkPad and IdeaPad, and it is also in between its competitors in terms of price.

Update: Lenovo just released last week the ThinkPad Edge 14 and 15 (with 14.1″ and 15.6″ screens, respectively).  These new laptops share the same general design as the Edge 13 (and more importantly, the same great keyboard) but also add to it an optical drive and a fingerprint reader.  The Edge 14 and 15 are also powered by the new Intel Core i3 and i5 chips, which are a generation ahead in terms of performance.  Finally, the Edge 14 and 15 both start at just $650.  These new prices and additional features make the 14 and 15 a great deal, and more competitive from an economic standpoint than the Edge 13.

Sometimes you need to send someone a file (or group of files) larger than the attachment limit of your email service (it is 25MB for Gmail).  Instead of splitting up the file and sending it over multiple emails, I use File Dropper.

There are a number of file hosting websites out there.  We have even mentioned how you can use Dropbox to share large files with others.  However, I like File Dropper for a number of reasons:

• It shares files up to 5GB.  That is significantly more competitors such as drop.io (100MB) or MediaFire (200MB).
• It is easy.  After you upload the file, File Dropper gives you a short URL that you can give to whomever you want to share the file with.
• There is no need to register or install an uploading program.  This helps make File Dropper quick and easy to use.  There is no need to create yet another account on the internet nor do you need to bog down your computer with yet another program.
• It keeps files ‘forever’.  I’m not sure how long forever is for File Dropper, but that is better than some other services where the files expire after a set time period.  Also, File Dropper has no limitations on the number of people you can share the file with or the number of times the file can be downloaded.

The simplicity, anonymity, but mostly the sheer capacity of File Dropper are what make it so appealing to me.  It does one thing and does it well, which is something we can all appreciate.

[LINK to File Dropper]

Paint.NET is one of our favorite free image editors available for Windows.  While it does not have anywhere near the features of Adobe Photoshop, it does have many more features than Microsoft Paint.  So as a whole, we find it to be a very good (and very free) option for non-hardcore image editing.  Now there is an open-source program that seeks to mimic Paint.NET in appearance and features, while adding support for Mac OS X and Linux.

Pinta (which means Paint in Spanish) is literally almost a carbon copy of Paint.NET.  However, I mean that in the best way possible.  In other words, it is free, very useful, and easier to learn to use than Photoshop.  Those are admirable qualities to have.  Pinta is especially nice for those who use Ubuntu Linux and openSUSE, since there are special versions of Pinta for those platforms.

[LINK to download Pinta.]

KompoZer, like Dreamweaver, is an all-in-one solution for managing a website.  With it, you can take care of the design, updating and editing.  There is a built-in FTP client to shuttle your changes on to the servers, and the HTML editor is WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) so it is just like editing a Microsoft Word document or PowerPoint presentation.

KompoZer to its benefit, works on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux machines and it is based off the Mozilla Gecko engine, so any websites you create with it should be standards-compliant and look fine in any browser on any computer.

Many people do not have the need for Dreamweaver’s advanced toolset when creating a website.  Even more people do not have the money to pay for a full version of Dreamweaver.  KompoZer is a worthy option for both of these camps.

[LINK to download KompoZer.]

Seashore is open-source, like GIMP.  In fact, Seashore is built off of GIMP technology.  However, the difference is that Seashore was coded from the beginning to be a program for Macs.  This means the code is native Cocoa, so Seashore will not require X11 to run, like GIMP does.  This means Seashore will run faster and smoother on Mac OS X than GIMP will.  This also means that for the most part Seashore is easier to use than GIMP.

The only downside to Seashore is that it does not carry over all the features of GIMP.  Some advanced tools are left out.  However, for many people, Seashore will be more than capable of handling their image editing needs.  Plus, since Seashore is free, there is no harm in trying it out.

[LINK to download Seashore.]

The WikiReader is exactly what it sounds like.  It puts all of Wikipedia into the palm of your hand in a dedicated touchscreen device.  While this may sound a little pointless in the age of smartphones and wireless broadband, there is more appeal to this device than meets the eye.

Hardware wise, the WikiReader is nothing special.  It is a 4 by 4-inch square-shape powered by 2 AA batteries.  The front of the device is a capacitive touchscreen monochrome LCD as well as three buttons for search, history and a random article.  All the articles are stored locally on an 8GB microSD card, so there is no need to connect to the internet to look up an article.  Updates to Wikipedia corpus can be downloaded for free or mailed to you on an microSD card for a price.  While the choice of a black-and-white screen may seem archaic, I believe it is the right choice because it is the most legible solution that also uses the least power.  Plus, a color screen for Wikipedia does not add a great deal to the experience.

At $99, the WikiReader might seem a little pricy for a device that is so single-minded in its abilities.  However, it is an example of a product that does one thing and does it very well (such as the Flip video camera and Peek email handheld).  The WikiReader is well aimed at families and younger children with its built-in parental controls.  This allows kids to look up Roman emperors without hogging the computer or looking up inappropriate topics in the process.  And that is certainly worth the asking price.

The choice of a capacitive touchscreen really makes quite a difference in the user experience of the WikiReader.  The whole device just has a high quality feel in you hand.  The screen is precise and is thankfully devoid of the mushiness that is all too common on touchscreen products these days.  From my brief experience using the WikiReader, I can say that it is very straightforward and built like a product costing many times more.

While there are those naysayers that will scoff at the WikiReader for being such a one trick pony, I can think of many people I know who would love a device like this.  And at the price of $99, it falls just within gift-giving territory.  Finally, since the WikiReader is based off the open-source OpenMoko project, you can imagine that the features of the WikiReader can only get better from here on out.