optik

Sprint's $99 ZTE Optik pushes the cheap tablet envelope

ZTE and Sprint hope their new $99 Optik tablet's rock bottom price can lure buyers eyeing the Kindle Fire.

Amazon certainly created a hit with its low-cost $199 Kindle Fire, which aggressively undercut the iPad 2's steep $499 starting price. Now Chinese electronics maker ZTE has stepped up to try to burn the Fire at its own game. With a much-reduced $99 sticker price and February 5 availability, the 7-inch slate runs Android 3.2 Honeycomb, plus two HD cameras (5-megapixel rear, 2-megapixel front).

I do like that the Optik's display has a sharper resolution (1,280 by 800 pixels) than the premium Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (1,024 by 600 pixels), another compelling 7-inch Honeycomb tablet. Of course the Tab uses an LCD with Plane Line Switching (PLS), which typically offer higher contrast and wider viewing angles than their standard LCD cousins. No word yet on just what type of LCD the Optik ships with. … Read more

Sprint's next tablet to be $100 ZTE Optik

Details for Sprint's next Android-powered tablet have leaked online and if you thought the carrier was going high-end you'd be completely wrong.

According to a leak obtained by SprintFeed, we can expect to see the ZTE Optik arrive in early February with a $100 price tag. You'll still have to sign a two-year agreement with a minimum rate plan, but things could be worse.

Hardware for the 7-inch ZTE tablet is impressive for the money and includes a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 16GB storage, and 1GB RAM. Running Android 3.2 Honeycomb, its additional specifications include a … Read more

Q&A: Mark Abene, from 'Phiber Optik' to security guru

Mark Abene first started using computers when he was about 9 years old, and by 12 he was exploring the electronic frontier from his home in Queens, New York. On bulletin board systems he swapped information with other phone phreakers and hackers, who formed the "Masters of Deception" group and inspired a book.

Abene, whose handle was "Phiber Optik," later received a one-year prison sentence for computer-related activities committed when he was a minor from a judge who said he wanted to send a message.

Featured in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, radio shows, and in … Read more

Performance glasses vow to save your fried eyes

Six out of seven people here at Crave Asia are bespectacled, and the last time I checked, everyone had their eyes glued to at least a 19-inch LCD monitor. Some have it worse with gigantic plasma screens, while others have to squint at pathetic QVGA displays.

It doesn't take an Einstein to know that our eyes go through an obscene amount of stress daily. Less work and more play obviously wouldn't sit well with our editors or HR policies. And citing risks of developing Digital Eye Fatigue or Computer Vision Syndrome, at best, will earn you a few … Read more