Always a big event at IFA, Showstoppers this year was again a great place to go for food, drink and networking. Oh, and a few new products! The showcase takes place in Hall 15 of Messe Berlin and remained a busy throng up to and past 11pm.
Launching a new processor platform at IFA called Core M (Display Monitor Vol 21 No 23), Intel was keen to demonstrate the technology to the attending journalists. Showstoppers saw the company demonstrate a 10.1″ convertible reference design tablet utilising it. Nearby another tablet, with a Baytrail-T processor, was attracting a lot of attention, as it was made of wood! Alpenelectronics produces the Alpentab using ash and walnut: “Naturally air-conditioned woods”, said development director Thomas Svacha. A Core i3 model is also available. The tablet’s body is specially built for Alpenelectronics and then fitted into the wooden frame. It will be available in October.
Intel’s Realsense depth-sensing platform (Display Monitor Vol 21 No 3) was being demonstrated with two demonstrations. One was a holographic, gesture-controlled display; the other used a tablet and IR camera to track the dimensions of an object for, e.g. 3D printing.
Several notebooks and hybrids were on show by HP, the first being the Chromebook 14; a 14″ unit with 1920 x 1080 or 1366 x 768 resolution and a touch option. Running on an Nvidia Tegra K1 chip, the Chromebook 14 is available in 16GB or 32GB models, with 100GB of free cloud storage for two years. Owners will also be able to use 250MB of mobile data each month, for free. Starting at
