Asus is going to feature 11.6 inch wide screen in its upcoming EEE series netbook. Despite offering a larger screen than its previous EEE siblings, Asus EEE 1101HA is portable, cheap and thin. However, the machine seems to be little slower than a typical netbook because it features 1.33GHz intel Atom Z520 CPU in stead of Intel Atom N270/N280 or 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor.
It is a really a matter of worry for those who would like a faster machine. A clear line can be drawn here that you have to sacrifice a faster laptop for getting a larger screen in the same price range. However, there is a possibility the company could later on feature 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 in the same model.
Asus’ market rival Acer already came up with its 11.6 inch version of netbook: Acer Aspire One 751- which also features the same Intel Atom Z520 CPU, alongside 1GB of memory and 160GB of storage. However, Asus provides 7-hour back up for the battery which is an attractive offer for those who would like to work longer hours on the go. Now, let us see if Asus EEE 1101HA brings out similar success that its predecessors brought for the company.
This is a keyboard from Asus which will provide you with most of the functionalities of a standard laptop. The Asus EEE keyboard would feature a 5-inch touch screen at the right side through which you can shop online, communicate with people via email as well as many more things. You can control a media center for a living room or a office or an entertainment area.
First introduced in CES 2009, Asus EEE keyboard come pre-loaded with a 1 GB DDR2 RAM as well as 16 to 32 GB SSD storage. You can connect the keyboard with a monitor or a television through wireless HDMI output or HDMI port. It runs Windows XP operating system. The keyboard also features three USB, VGA, and audio I/O ports. Though the company is not yet confirmed how to market the device, it is expected that Asus EEE PC would hit the market in August with a yet-to-be announced price tag. However, reports available in the media suggest that the wireless version of the keyboard will come with a price tag of $600, while the other version with HDMI port would be priced at $400.
It is really very to predict about the performance of such a keyboard which is still rare in technology world. One thing is for sure that many people will be curious about the keyboard. However, I do not think many people will jump on it right away after the release mainly because of its price range. Many quality netbooks are available in this price range, I do not think that many people would initially like to sepnd $400 to $600 for a keyboard which does not feature any standard display, even though the keyboard provides portability and touch screen for the users.
Toshiba has come up with six new Satellite L Series laptops in four different sizes. With a starting price of $549, these budget laptops seem to pretty much attractive. There are two models: Satellite L510andL515- coming with 14-inch screen, while Satellite L500 and L505 features 15.6-inch and 16-inch displays. Well, if you are looking for bigger screen, then you should go for Satellite L550 and L555 laptops which boast of 17.3-inch screen.
Let us focus on some other specifications of these new Satellite L Series laptops from Toshiba. First of all, all the six models offer HD TruBrite (16:9, native 720p) display screen, alongside an USB Sleep-and-Charge facility. You can choose your processor between Intel or AMD. These budget laptops offer hard disk capacity ranging from 250GB to 500GB.
Toshiba’s new Satellite L Series laptops look really gorgeous as the machines feature the company’s “Fusion” finish as well as “Breeze” pattern on the interior. Depending on the models and specifications you choose, price may vary from$549.99 to $649.99. Comparing the price tag and the features, I think, newly launched Toshiba Satellite L Series laptops could be attractive for those who are looking for a standard laptop with standard screen for an affordable price range.
Ultraportable laptops are becoming the next big thing these days. Lenovo, the famous Chinese computer manufacturer, brought out Lenovo ThinkPad T400s, the latest lightweight laptop in the T series. The T series notebooks is quite popular and has a loyal follower base. Compared to the regular T400, the new T400s comes with some major upgrades in its design. The “S” suffix stands for upgrade. The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s is lighter compared to its predecessor. The exterior of the notebook is made of cabon fiber. Notebook Review reports:
Lenovo changed the shape of the palmrest around the touchpad, with the touchpad resting flush with the palmrest instead of being slightly recessed. The screen bezel is smooth all around the perimeter of the display, unlike the T400 which shows rough plastic grids near the built-in antennas and cutouts near the light and webcam. Even when compared to the ThinkPad X301, the new T400s looks more refined. The speaker grills are larger and look better suited to the design. Even the fingerprint reader manages to blend in better, with an all-black design instead of gold and silver like past models.
Dimension and weight:
Legth: 13.27"
Width: 9.49"
Breadth: 0.83"
Weight: 3lbs
Other specifications:
OS: The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s comes with Windows Vista Business with SP1.
Screen: The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s has a 14.1 inch LED backlit, matte finish screen with 1440X900 pixels. The screen has a better color reproduction.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo P9600 processor aka SP9600 with 2.53GHz clockspeed. The processor has a FSB speed of 1066MHz and 6 MB cache memory.
Memory: The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s can support upto 2GB DDR3 RAM.
HDD: The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s has 128 GB Samsung solid state drive. The new hard disk is 1.8" compared the 2.5" hard disk in T400 notebooks. Geek.com reported a 1.8" 128GB Toshiba SSD. It also says,”Aside from the 128GB SSD, other options include 5400RPM hard drives, smaller and larger SSDs, and even FDE SSDs in 128GB and 256GB.”
Keyboard: The keyboard has larger function keys including the "escape" and "delete" keys. Lenovo, through a research, found out that those two keys are frequently used. So they doubled their heights and moved the position of the F1 key and insert key. Instead of showing at the bottom of the screen, the power switch and mute keys light up when you put on the notebook. The capslock button has a “translucent window with an LED.” Upon activation, the LED lights up. The Lenovo added a new mute button that turns of the speaker and microphone. It would come in handy when you are having video conference. There is also a radio on/off switch.
Ports: Compared to T400, the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s features better port selection.
Three USB ports including one eSATA/USB combo port for storage expansion and one USB port for charging peripheral devices such as BlackBerry.
One display output port.
One VGA port for projectors.
Due to its decreased thickness, the Lenovo ThinkPad T400s has no dual card slots. It has one ExpressCard/34 slot.
One docking station connector on the bottom
One microphone/headphone jack
One modem jack
Wireless features:
3G WWAN
GPS receiver
Intel’s WiFi Link 5300 a/g/n WiFi
Bluetooth
Graphics: Intel X4500 integrated graphics card.
Optical Drive: DVD reader and writer. You can also upgrade to Blu-ray.
Camera: There is a built-in 2.0MP web camera.
Security: The Lenovo ThinkPad T400s comes with a fingerprint reader.
Battery: Compared to the T400 series, the battery of the new T400s is not so powerful. The 400s is fitted with a 6 cell battery with 11.144 watt-hours. The battery has a back-up capacity of five hours and forty eight minutes. When run by battery only, the screen brightness decreases to 70%. Lenovo plans to offer “ultra-bay” battery that will extend the battery-life upto three hours.
Price:
The new Lenovo ThinkPad T400s will cost $1599. However, the price can go up based on the components you want to have.
Windows 7 is known first for its integrated support for Touchscreen devices and this feature has made it totally different and identified before its final version appears in the public. Well the Linux developers are now more active than past because of the recent great growth of Linux market been achieved by vast spread of netbooks.
A development group at ENAC in Toulouse, France, have developed a demo of a Native Multi-touch support for Linux Kernel to walk alongside the important touch feature of Windows 7.
The followinging video of this demo shows this concept is more like the multi touch used in iPhone.
This “technology is billed as being true native multi-touch support for Linux” works with Linux 2.6.30 kernel.” The technology supports a simple set of multi touch gestures including resizing, rotating, desktop scrolling, flipping, and making water ripple-effect (with two fingers).
According to the source, the demo code can be run on any Linux platform as well as Google Android.
Windows 7 comes equipped with integrated Touch feature supporting touchscreen devices. Of course it is more handy and powerful than what you see in the concept made for Linux. The whole W7 is totally compatible with touch features even when your keyboard and mouse are plugged. while touch supports high DPI, it helps you to do use a set of gestures to do almost everything including the basics of tap and drag, as well as scroll, right-click, back, forward, zoom, and rotate.
It also makes you able to work with the taskbar very easily. The taskbar buttons and thumbnails are ideally sized for pressing with touch, and specific behaviors are tuned for touch input. For example, the Jump Lists can be accessed with a simple drag up from the taskbar, and when opened with touch, the shortcuts in the Jump Lists are drawn with extra vertical spacing to make them easier to select.
Aero Peek has been tuned to work with touch as well as Sizing and positioning windows and virtual keyboard when you are bored from your real keyboard (or when you are in tablet mode). IE8 supports Touch feature, as well.
So, as you see Windows 7 is much more advanced than Linux when it comes to touch. However, the progress of Linux distributions have been pretty fast recetly especially to give particular support and apps for netbooks. This news is very happy news for Ubuntu and Moblin users surely when its final version releases.
In the following you will find two videos; one video shows the native gesture feature for Linux and the other one shows the touch feature of W7.
In the following video the Pegatron showcased at Computex is based on Nvidia tegra chipset (ARM-based processor plus Nvidia graphics card). The netbooks is able to play back 1080p HD videos through its HDMI port. The netbooks comes equipped with a non-removable battery with long hours runtime and some customizable shortcut keys. These four keys located atop the keyboard are for instant bringing Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Skype or you can customize them to call other websites instantly for you.
Although I don’t like the combination of white keyboard with pink palm rest, I love the matte screen of this netbook. Matte screens are really idea for long time work without bothering and tiring your eyes.
Microsoft office suite is expensive and a big application for netbooks although it is very essential and necessary for everybody.
ThinkFree Mobile Netbook is an office suite application made for any sorts of netbooks based on Windows, or Linux even for the netbooks running Mac OS (or MacBook laptops)!
The system requirement includes:
Operating systems: Windows XP/Vista, Linux kernel 2.6.17 or higher, Mac*
CPU: Intel architecture based device (including ATOM)
HDD drive: 60MB of disk space
RAM: 256MB or higher
Display: Flexible screen resolution support
ThinkFree Mobile Netbook edition is designed to help you manage and sync all your documents easily. It allows you to upload documents to your netbook withdisplays featuring at least resolution, 1024 x 600 pixel and share them with all your PCs, office software and operating systems whenever you need to edit or create. laptop, mobile internet device, netbook or desktop PC.
Normal price is US$39.95. if you buy now, you will be able to save $15. (Use coupone code "thinkfree") Also if you buy ThinkFree Mobile and you will get additional 1GB of online storage at ThinkFree Online.
Asus Eee PC 1005HA will soon be available in American market. If you are a regular visitor of my blog you have already red the entry of comparison between Eee PC 1005HA and Eee PC 1008HA.
As I have mentioned before, Eee 1005HA is a heavier and chunkier netbook than Eee 1008/ha that comes with a removable batter with up to 10.5 hours runtime and full VGA out port.
Eee PC 1000H is the first laptop in Eee PC 1000 line up netbook. It doesn’t have super-glossy screen, island-like bigger and comfortable keyboard and comes with shorter battery life.
In the video, you will see that Eee PC 1000 is bigger and taller than Eee 1005HA although it has 10-inch display and smaller keyboard. Surely, Eee PC 1005HA looks more stylish and glossy.
G210M, GT 230M, GT 240M, GTS 250M and GTS 260M GPUs are the new graphics card from Nvidia that are fit to Windows 7, based on a 40-nanometer technology and incorporating 512MB to 1GB of on-board memory to deliver up to twice the performance and half the power to prolong the batter life.
These five GPUs feature Microsoft's drag-n-drop transcoding and DirectX Compute API for Windows 7 users to be able to edit and transfer HD videos smoothly and quickly and PhysX to enhance the realistic environments.
“According to Nvidia, the new GPUs "run up to 20X faster than the CPU" with certain applications.”
Desktop PC computers normally use one, two or more fans inside to keep the system cool. So, cleaning the inside of case from dust is a usual experience for every computer user. WE have to clean inside of computer case because dust gradually closes the venting system and causes overheating and locking up the system after all.
What about laptop computers? Do they need cleaning from dust like the thing we do for desktop PCs? Surely, it is needed for laptops as old as 2 years or more. Dust turns a quiet laptop to a noisy and overheated one.
If you are suffering from this problem you do not need to be worried whether your laptop runs down soon.
It is very easy to remove dust of fan of laptop. First of all you have to find the location of the outer air vent of your laptop. For this, first unplug the AC adaptor, flip over your laptop and remove the battery. After finding the air vent search for an access panel placed by the air vent.
Now, you just need to follow the steps one by one:
1- Take a suitable screw drive and open the screws to open the panel.
2- After removing the panel you must see the fan of laptop there.
3- Tap the fan from different angels the way that the blown dust gather by the air vent.
4- Use an air compressor with low pressure and hold it some far from the fan to prevent any possible damage.
That is it, now replace the panel again and fix it with the screws. Replace the battery and plug the adaptor and power up the system. You laptop must work quietly and cool.
The Java update for Tiger fixes Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 and 1.4.2 and the Java update for Leopard makes changes in Java SE 6, J2SE 6.0 and J2SE 1.4.2.
ASRock Multibook G22 only launched for Japanese market is a netbook with unique striking features:
First of all the netbook is more powerful than all the conventional netbooks in the market thanks to its Nvidia ION chipset keeping a dual core atom 330 processor in its heart.
Another important feature of this netbook is its built-in DVD burner! Which you can hardly find on netbooks. The netbook also comes with 2GB of RAM what is not typical feature in netbooks. So, I may call this netbook a low cost ultra laptop rather than netbook?
ASRock portable computer incorporates:
- a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display,
- 2GB of RAM,
- a 320GB hard drive,
- a 10-in-1 card reader
- a VGA port, 3 USB ports,
- HDMI output,
- audio jacks, Ethernet and a 56k modem, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth. -- a 6 cell, 4400mAh battery
Ever seen a laptop with a 17.3 inch screen? Recently, Samsung launched its new 17-inch laptop Samsung R720 is not an ultra-portable laptop but if you are looking forward to get rid of your big ugly desktop computer then this is the ideal product for you. The prominent feature of this laptop is its 17.3 inch widescreen with 16:9 aspect ratio. The Samsung R720 is powered by ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650 graphics card. This is not a powerful graphics card but powerful enough to play Blu-ray discs without any problem. The laptop supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with Shader Model 4.1 which also means that you can also play games. The laptop is powered by Intel Centrino 2 processor. The Samsung R720 can be fitted with 512 MB or 1 GB DDR3 RAM.
Another problem of watching movies on laptop is sound quality. When you watch movies in laptop, the sound is not clear. To get rid of this problem, the new Samsung R720 has 4-watt stereo speakers with 3DSRS (Sound Retrieval System) and sub-woofer. With headphone, users will get the effect of a virtual 5.1 surround sound system. The Samsung R720 will be equipped with four USB 2.0 ports and one of them will be able to charge external devices and another is “USB/eSATA combo port.” The Samsung R720 will hit stores in Europe in July and it would cost £599. The laptop will be shipped with Windows Vista.
At the recently finished Apple Worldwide Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in West San Francisco, Apple revealed its upgradedproducts including Apple iPhone 3G S and the MacBook Pro 13-inch laptop. The 13 inch MacBook Pro is the newest member of the MacBook Pro family. The laptop comes with FireWire port, Secure Digital slot and a bigger non-removable battery that runs for 4 hours 44 minutes but in its official website Apple claims that it runs for seven hours.
Dimension and weight:
Height: 0.95 inch
Width: 12.78 inches
Depth: 8.94 inches
Weight: 4.5 pounds
Specifications:
Processor: The new 13 inch Mac Book Pro is fitted with Intel Core 2 Duo P7550 processor. There are two different categories of this processor. One, Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 2.26GHz capacity(MB990LL/A) and the other is 2.53GHz capacity (MB991LL/A). Both the processors have 3M L2 cache memory.
System bus: 1066MHz.
Memory: The 2.26 GHz MacBook Pro has two 1GB SO-DIMMs slots and they can support upto 8GB. The 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro has two 2GB SO-DIMMs slots and they can also support upto 8GB.
Screen: The MacBook Pro 13 inch comes with 13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy display that supports millions of colors.
Resolution: 1280 x 800.
Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 9400M.
HDD: (2.26 GHz) 160GB(2.53 GHz) 250GB.
Networking Options: 802.11n.
Primary Optical Drive: DVD+R DL.
Webcam: Built in iSight camera.
Keyboard: The MacBook Pro is fitted with built-in full-size backlit keyboard.
Trackpad: The new MacBookPro is fitted with multi-touch trackpad that supports two-finger scrolling, pinch, rotate, three-finger swipe, tap, double-tap, and dragging.
Battery: The 13 inch MacBook Pro is fitted with lithium-polymer battery. It also has a 60W MagSafe Power Adapter and MagSafe power port.
Ports: Though small the new 13 inch Macbook pro comes with several ports:
MagSafe power port
Gigabit Ethernet port
One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
Mini DisplayPort
Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
SD card slot
Audio in/out
Kensington lock slot
Communications:
The new 13 inch MacBook Pro has integrated Airport Extreme Wi-Fi wireless networking system.
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.
10/100/1000BASE-T gigabit ethernet.
Price: The 13 inch Mac Book Pro is priced $1,149.00 and there will be one year warranty.
India is a growing market for laptops. Well, it is true that economic recession caused some problem for the economy of the country but reality is that most people do not own a PC and there is a lot of room for growth. In fact, it has the second largest market in mobile phone. So, there is no reason that someday it can have the second largest PC and Laptop market. Acer and Intel have targeted this market seriously now.
Leading notebook player Acer and leading chip manufacturer, Intel, announced the launch of the ‘Aspire Timeline Series’ (ATS) of
featherweight notebook models in India.
The notebook models have over eight hours of battery life and is based on Intel’s Ultra-low Voltage (ULV) platform.
The power smart adapter enters the adaptive charging mode automatically when the battery is fully charged and stops consuming energy. It is a “disruptive” model that leverages Intel’s ULV platform, has LED backlit display with 16.9 aspect ratio, 1366 X768 HD resolution, which has been engineered to ensure 40 percent measurable benefits to the customers, he said. The series is available in three form and the price ranges from Rs 39,999 to Rs 44,999.
This is good news for the consumers. Now, they will hope that other companies come forward like Acer and offer them attractive price.
One of the important facilities that netbook makers try to add to their netbooks is the easy replacement of 1GB of RAM with higher Capacity RAM.
Most of the time the style is a small single access panel underneath the netbook easily opened and accessed to RAM. But in Mini 10v you will find opposite style. The access panel on the bottom side the netbooks is for replacing WLAN rather than memory!
Actually, Dell has nearly made impossible the changing RAM for ordinary consumers. Of course the enthusiasts and geeks are always able to do it!
In the following, you can find three YouTube files made by Anguish ( a member of MyDellMini forum) to show the step by step of disassembling the Mini 10v to access RAM ( after taking away keyboard, palm rest, and motherboard) and reassemble it again.
The second part is always tricky. So, if you don’t have any experiment for disassembling and reassembling laptops I recommend you not to do it!
Apple launched Safari 4 browserandannounced the release dateand details of Snow Leopard Update (aka OS X 10.6 coming out in Sep.) along side the launch of new Mac Pro and Mac Air laptops at WWDC
The new Safari 4 browser that is available for download, comes with new striking features including:
- fixing 51 separate vulnerabilities, some of them quite old (the oldest is CVE-2006-2783 an error in the parsing of Unicode text).
-Top Sites view: to show users’ most visited websites in 3D framewoek view.
- It works easily with Leopard, Tiger, and Windows OSes.
-The performance of this new browser is 7.8X times faster than IE8. Apple has also claimed it is faster than Google Chrome browser. A test done by PC Magazine shows that they (Safari 4 vs. Chrome 2) were neck to neck when it comes to speed.
- embedded in Snow Leopard
- iTune-like Cover Flow interface for viewing history
Snow Leopard Update OS that will be available in September will only cost $29 for the Mac OS users to update their Leopard to the latest version. Surely the new Mac laptops and computers will be shipped with the new Snow Leopard Update. This version of Mac OS only works on Intel-based Mac.
Although, this update doesn’t provide many new features for end users, it is more reliable and responsive than the previous version. It has faster overall performance with taking advantage of “64-bit, limitless of memory support and multicore CPUs, along with faster graphics processing hardware.”
Here are some of the highlighted features:
- It has supports for Chinese characters
- Faster mail performance and support for Microsoft Exchange mail, contacts, and calendars
- Quick Time X player comes with new HTTP streaming feature and takes advantage of hardware acceleration. Now, it is installed 45% faster than the Quick Time and is able to open JPEF image files twice as fast and PDF documents 1.5 times faster than the previous version- Quick Time. Quick Time X is able to organize and share video files.
- Easy moving of content across windows; like to drag and drop a video into an email.
- Viewing Office doc even when you don’t have this application by the means of Microsoft Exchange User. Exchange support has made Mac OS more handy and better replacement for Windows OS.
-iCal can find next available time when other people in the group you have made are busy
- Grand Central Dispatch is a new tool which provides “a programming environment that breaks up tasks into multiple threads based on the number of cores and threads available” to take advantage of multi cores. It also supports OpenCL.
