We’ve seen roughly 2,743,138 companies introduce Google Android powered tablets over the last 6 months or so. But very few have actually made it to market in the US. While we wait for big name companies such as Toshiba, Lenovo, Asus, and HP to launch Android tablets, there are a handful of options available. Archos and Camangi already sell 5 and 7 inch models in the US. And some companies have started importing the cheap Chinese tablets we keep seeing to sell in the US.

WiiPad is one of those companies. While the company from having a ridiculous name that looks like someone threw darts at a consumer electronics buzzword chart, the tablets actually look kind of interesting.

First up is the WiiPad Slim 7 inch Android tablet, which has a starting price of just $155.02. This model has 128MB of RAM, 2GB of solid state storage, and an SD card for additional storage. It has a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel display, 2 USB ports, WiFi, and a 2500mAh battery.This model runs the increasingly outdated Google Android 1.5 operating system.

I’m a bit confused about the processor, which is described as both 600MHz and 1.1GHz.  My money is on the former. WiiPad says the tablet can play 720p HD video. The most exciting thing about this model is probably the low price tag.

The company is also taking orders for a 10.2 inch tablet called the WiiPad Neno. This model has a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8-based processor, 256MB of RAM, and 2GB of storage. It has a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and support for WiFi or an external 3GB modem.

The 10.2 inch tablet runs Google Android 2.1, has 3 USB ports, an SD card slot, and can handle 1080p HD video playback.

If the 10.2 inch model looks familiar, that’s because it may just be a rebranded version of the Zenithink 10.2 inch tablet we spotted a few months ago.

Pretty much every PC that ships today uses a system called BIOS to allow the operating system to interact with your computer’s hardware. The BIOS software is basically the firmware that’s loaded on your motherboard. And it looks like something that was designed decades ago… because it was. When you want to change BIOS settings, you have to load up a text-and-arrow-key based user interface and navigate through a series of clunky menus. But there’s an alternative in the works, called UEFI.

UEFI has a graphical user interface, which means you can navigate the settings with a point-and-click device like a mouse. That’s kind of cool. But what’s even cooler is that UEFI is designed to work better with modern PC hardware including hard drives larger than 2TB. And as Lenovo points out, you can configure UEFI in a way that could dramatically improve Windows boot times.

Lenovo loaded up a ThinkPad T400 laptop with UEFI and demonstrated that the  machine can now boot Windows 7 in just over 10 seconds. Like, cold boot. As in, you hit the power button and the operating system loads that quickly — not just resumes from sleep. That’s pretty cool.

You can check out the video after the break. It’s worth noting that even though Lenovo had replaced the T400 with a faster, more powerful T410, the ThinkPad T400 with its 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU is still a heck of a lot more powerful than your typical netbook — so don’t expect 10 second boot times on a machine with an Atom processor anytime soon. But it looks like hardware that can support UEFI may benefit from improved boot speeds.

Ever notice how a normal sized mouse looks absolutely enormous when you set it down next to a 10 inch or smaller netbook? That’s one of the reasons I’ve been using a tiny travel mouse for the past few years — that plus it takes up less space. But the problem with an itty bitty travel mouse is that it’s a bit harder to grip than a full sized model. Swiftpoint’s latest travel mouse has a fix for that.

The company’s new Swiftpoint mouse is a wireless mouse that features a pen-like grip.

You can dock the mouse on the side of your computer with a USB connector, which also charges the mouse. Swiftpoint says that just connecting it for 30 seconds gives the battery enough energy to power the mouse for up to an hour.

It’s nice to see someone try to shakeup the portable input device space. It would be nice if that shakeup also included a reasonable price though. The Swiftpoint mouse sells for $69.95.

Sure, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seems pretty confident that we’ll start to see Windows 7 Slates from big name PC makers before the end of the year. But that doesn’t mean Microsoft doesn’t have anything to learn from the Apple iPad. In fact, the company is inviting iPad users to come to Microsoft’s Redmond campus to participate in a study.

If you happen to be an iPad user living in the area, you can hit up the Facebook page for the event and let Microsoft know if you’re available for two hours sometime between July 16th and July 21st.

It’s interesting that the study isn’t asking for tablet PC users… but rather for iPad users. While Microsoft isn’t spilling any details about the study, it sounds like the company is interested in finding out how people use the Apple tablet, what they like about it, and what they don’t like about it.

Or maybe Microsoft just wants to hand these people shiny new Windows 7 slates and see how they compare. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if they handed them Windows 7 Slates and told them they were new versions of the iPad with special software to see what they think… it wouldn’t be all that different from the Mojave Experiment Microsoft pulled a few years back when researchers told people they were using the “next Microsoft OS” without mentioning the fact that it was really the much-maligned Windows Vista.

Then again, perhaps this is an indication that Microsoft really is developing software for the iPad… or plans to launch a Windows Phone 7-based tablet to compete with it. Only time will tell.

Texas Instruments’ OMAP4 Blaze platform uses an ARM Cortex A9-based chipset which is capable of handling HD video. It also features support for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, and cellular data. In other words, it has everything you need to develop a nice healthy smartphone… or a tablet.

SVTronics will start offering a Texas Instruments Blaze tablet development device in August. The tablet is aimed at developers, not the general public. But it looks pretty interesting, with a 1GHz OMPA4430 CPU, 10.3 inch, 1024 x 768 pixel multitouch display, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage, and 2 USB ports and HDMI output.

There’s also an accelerometer, gyroscope, temperature sensor, ambient light sensor, and proximity and pressure sensors. The tablet has a memory card slot, SIM card slot, a headset jack, and a miniPCIe slot for a modem — the tablet can support 3G, LTE, or other wireless technologies.

There’s a 5MP camera module that can be connected externally.

The tablet has an aluminum frame and measures 10.5″ x 8.3″ x 1.1″. It has a 4100mAh single-cell battery.

Nettops may have started out as the spiritual cousin of netbooks, with low power processors, tiny cases, and low price tags. But you know what piece never really fit? That underpowered CPU. Because let’s face it, nobody really buys a mini-desktop because they want it to be able to do less. They just want it to cost less, and take up less space — maybe with some energy savings thrown in for good measure. And that’s why the Tranquil PC iXL is such an interesting looking machine.

This mini-laptop isn’t much larger than an ASRock ION nettop. But instead of an Intel Atom processor, this little guy has a 2.93GHz Intel Core i3-530 CPU. The computer still manages to use just over 30W of power while idle. While that’s high by netbook/nettop standards, it still makes this little computer more comparable with a laptop than a typical PC in terms of power consumption.

The Tranquil PC iXL also has DVI, HDMI eSATA, and USB ports, as well as an optical drive bay for a DVD or Blu-Ray drive. There are 2 DDR3 memory slots and a hard drive bay.

Prices start at £389, or about $576 US which seems reasonable — until you realize that the price doesn’t include RAM, a hard drive, operating system, or Blu-Ray drive (It does, however, include a DVD drive). Adding 1GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium brought the price up to $812.

Still, while the price could be lower, I appreciate that companies are starting to put out small form factor computers that you could use as home theater PCs, low end gaming rigs, or workhorse computers.

Want a touchscreen tablet computer, but don’t feel like purchasing any of the pre-configured options already on the market? No problem, you can pick up a $400 kit that will let you build your own tablet.

Liquidware is selling a kit to build a “Beagle Tablet,” which is based on a BeagleBoard with a 1GHz processor and a 4.3 inch OLED touchscreen display. You also get a 4G SD card and Angstrom Linux, but you can install your own operating system including Google Android or many other Linux-based operating systems.

The Beagle tablet is primarily aimed at DIY enthusiasts and developers looking to write their own software. It’s clearly not for everyone. But a kit that you can snap together yourself and configure rather easily sure seems a lot more attractive than other DIY tablet options I’ve seen, which generally require disassembling a netbook and putting it back together with a touchscreen display and without the keyboard.

The biggest down side is that the Beagle Tablet is just 4.3 inches, which makes it hardly any large than a smartphone. The display has a resolution of 480 x 272 pixels. On the bright side, it weighs just about half a pound.The kit comes with a 2600mAh battery pack.