prime

Carl Zeiss today announced 15mm and 135mm members in its CP.2 family of adaptable lenses geared for both cinema and SLR uses and due to ship in the fourth quarter.

The CP.2 line of Compact Prime lenses can be fitted with adapters to Canon or Nikon SLRs, to PL-mount cameras common in the video and cinema industry, Micro Four Thirds cameras from Olympus and Pansonic, or Sony's NEX cameras with E-mount lenses. The CP.2 line is geared for cinema purposes, though, for example with a long-travel focusing ring.

The lens family spotlights the convergence of traditional … Read more

I had the chance to briefly play around with the latest Transformer Prime update. My impressions are thus:

System bar lock By enabling the system bar lock, the system bar (which lies across the bottom of the screen) will be unavailable until unlocked by the user.

This could prove especially useful if playing a game like Riptide GP where your fingers are usually locked into position at the bottom corners of the screen. With the lock on you'll no longer waste precious nanoseconds instantly popping back into the game after you accidentally tap the Settings icon. Say "thank you" gamers.

Not to say it works perfectly, though. Periodically, after locking the screen, it would revert back to an unlocked state after a couple seconds. … Read more

Amazon's Prime Instant Videos has added 3,000 new titles from Discovery Communications, bringing the total number of videos available to subscribers to 17,000.

The new programs, announced today, include series and specials from Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, among other Discovery networks, as well as shows from its 25-year programming library. Among the new titles available to Prime members: "Deadliest Catch," "Mythbusters," "Man vs. Wild," "Dirty Jobs," "Shark Week," "Cake Boss," and "Whale Wars."

In a note on Amazon's home page today, … Read more

Truth be told, if I purchase a tablet in the next few months, I'll be buying Apple's new 2012 iPad. Haters gonna hate, but from Bluetooth 4.0 support to the improved camera, incremental changes like this will likely lead to the best tablet on the market getting even better.

Even without the "I am the alpha and the omega" 2,048x1,536-pixel-resolution screen, I'd still choose the latest iPad. The ecosystem, app availability, and smooth and fast performance make it an easy choice for me.

That said, people have different tastes, and the new iPad, despite the hype, doesn't do everything. In addition, not everyone can afford to pay a minimum of $500 for a tablet, and even if you can, you may want a few features Apple doesn't natively provide.

That's where these five tablets come in. Each tablet on the list is a quality tablet that sports at least one feature the new iPad doesn't, be it a more affordable price or better port or feature support. … Read more

Editors' note: This list was originally posted on March 2 and is updated regularly. If sifting through long HTML tables isn't your thing however, skip over to our top tablets list or check out all our tablet reviews and features.

The tablet market is like that kid in school who, at first, no one really noticed. Then, a year later he starts the school year a foot taller, with a new wardrobe, and suddenly everyone wants to be his friend. But, does he deserve his newfound popularity?

I really don't know. Personally, I've yet to purchase a tablet, and I've still not seen a compelling reason to do so. Still, millions feel differently and have already dived full on into the tablet sector.

Yet, every day there seems to be a new announcement of another manufacturer's plans to release a tablet. It's getting confusing and a little crazy out there, and we at CNET wanted to provide you with a snapshot of not only the current tablet landscape, but a look into the near future and how it's evolving.

We've compiled a list of all the major U.S. released current tablets interwoven with all the tablets yet to be released in the U.S. Enjoy, and if there's any other information you'd like to see on this list, let us know in the comments or via e-mail. … Read more

The new iPad isn't waltzing into a competitive vacuum. That wow-worthy display notwithstanding, Apple still has to go head-to-head on performance.

Chip-review site Anandtech confirmed with Apple that sitting right next to the A5X's quad-core GPU (graphics processing unit) is a dual-core CPU (central processing unit).

Apple had nothing to say about the CPU (which typically garners the most attention) when it announced the new iPad, because the CPU really hasn't changed from the iPad 2.

The upshot is that Apple is pitting the A5X's quad-core GPU against a quad-core Nvidia CPU.

So, how does it … Read more

Apple should be blowing us away with the iPad 3, but it probably won't.

The latest rumors call for a higher resolution screen on par with the iPhone's Retina Display, a possible upgrade to the iOS software, and possibly a few other improvements. That's certainly enough to draw the Apple faithful and sell a ton of iPads. But with the rapid advances that the competition is making, will it be enough to secure the company's continued dominance in the tablet business?

Sure, the iPad has been a blockbuster franchise for Apple. In the fourth quarter alone, … Read more

Can e-readers help independent writers and publishers? Amazon thinks so. The e-commerce giant announced today that not only did it top 100,000 titles in its Kindle Lending Library but also that more Amazon customers are reading independently published books.

"After a year of marketing 'Whispers from the Ashes' in book clubs, genealogical magazines, and local newspapers with steady, but slow results, I joined the KDP Select program," author Patricia Hester said in a statement. "The results have been absolutely amazing - I have now accomplished every author's dreams: worldwide interest, fan enthusiasm, and wonderful sales.&… Read more

The Asus Transformer Prime is currently the highest-quality Android tablet on the market. It rivals and sometimes surpasses the the iPad 2 in games performance, has a fantastically bright screen, memory expansion, various CPU performance modes, HDMI, and a thin, sleek, and sexy design.

All that said (and I bet you saw this coming), it's not perfect. Since its release, the Prime has been saddled with reports of performance issues, bugs, and stuff just outright not working.

How severe are these issues, and maybe more importantly, just how widespread are they? As a new or potentially new Prime owner, just what are the chances they'll crop up for you?… Read more