netbook

"Fujitsu's stylish little Lifebook MH380's just popped up over on the company's site for sale. The 10.1-inch, Pine Trail Atom N450-boasting netbook's specs include 2GB of RAM, a 250GB HDD, built-in Bluetooth, six-cell battery and a 1366x768 resolution screen. It also seems to be available in brown, white, black, and red -- though the only one that seems to be available to buy on Fujitsu's site as of now is the Glossy Red model. Let us know when that cute little brown number's up for grabs and we'll probably be back." source

"The Hivision PWS700CA is based on a Rockchip RK2808 600mhz ARM926 processor, 128SDRAM, 7″ 800×480 screen, 720p Video playback support, WiFi, Ethernet, audio input/output and weights only 650grams.

The price has not yet been announced officially because Hivision is looking for worldwide distributors who will then decide how much it will be sold for to end consumers. But you can understand that if Hivision was able to sell those types of laptops for $98 to distributors more than a year ago (when I filmed my popular video from IFA 2008), then surely the mass manufacturing price has not gone up since then. My expectation is that if a giant consumer electronics reseller such as Walmart or Best Buy approaches Hivision today to order huge quantities of this laptop, it could be sold below $100 to end users." source

"Intel is updating its Classmate PC netbook models, adding new processors and shrinking the devices to make them sleeker and easier to carry.

The chip maker's Convertible Classmate design, which includes 10.1-inch touchscreen that can swivel to turn the netbook into a tablet PC, is undergoing a complete overhaul, said Agnes Kwan, an Intel spokeswoman. The newer model will be upgraded with faster Atom processors and will be announced in the first half of this year, Kwan said." source

"The kids at Liliputing finally got a chance to put the 8.9-inch, AA-powered NorhTec Gecko Edubook through its paces and, you know what? It's slow. Like, every bit as slow as you expected a 1GHz, 512MB of RAM, 8GB SD card storage device to be. The review unit sports the lightweight WattOS (Ubuntu based) Linux distro, although this guy will also support Windows XP if that's what floats your boat. Sure, it's cheap (under $200), so if portability is a premium for you, and you don't really need things like video or Google Docs (which is particularly painful to watch on the included video) you might want to give this one a second look. See for yourself after the break." Source

"Keeping the news flowing fast and furious, Samsung has come out with a quartet of new netbooks, distinguishable primarily by their battery life. The N210 and 220 take the lead with a purported 12 hours of "connected mobility," while the NB30 (11 hours) and N150 (8.5 hours) are none too shabby either. The N150 differentiates itself with an "integrated hinge," while the NB30 focuses on durability with a HDD protection sensor and a water-tight seal that protects the netbook from up to 50cc of water. Still, the machines do share a lot, including an Atom N450 at their heart, and a 10.1-inch anti-reflective screen, plus -- you'd be better sit down for this -- mark- and scratch-resistant casing. Does this mean the end of the fingerprint-loving netbook? We can only hope so. Full PR blurb after the break." Source

"Taiwan-based connector maker Foxlink has recently partnered with Taiwan-based art design studio DEM to develop a netbook under its TCD own brand name, according to a Chinese-language Apply Daily report.

The netbook is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2010 targeting the luxury market, the paper added." Source

"We've already seen that early builds of Google's Chromium OS can be hacked onto existing machines, but those Chrome OS netbooks that the software giant has planned for next year have remained curiously elusive until now. According to both IBTimes and Netbook News, the company is in talks with a number of outfits in order to bring at least a few sub-$300 options to the market that are well suited to power through its first non-mobile operating system. For starters, we're told that the 10.1-inch machine will be ARM-based, while NVIDIA's Tegra platform (likely the second generation) steers the graphical ship. " source

"There's a big scorch mark on Hannah's floor. It appeared last week after her Dell Mini 9 began suddenly sizzling and smoking and melting. We have pictures, and questions.

Dell said they had received the crispy laptop but had no further information about what caused it to malfunction. The company said it was not aware of any overheating issues with the Dell Minis." source

"In an interview with Laptopmag Intel director of netbook marketing Anil Nanduri said Nvidia's ION is too expensive and unnecessary for netbooks.

Nanduri believes big graphics chips are overkill for netbooks, as third party HD decoders, such as Broadcom's part Fudo wrote about here, can do the job at a fraction of the cost. " source

"Industry research and analysis firm DisplaySearchestimates notebook PC revenues to top $109 billion in 2009, down almost 7% year over year.

The company’s most recent Quarterly Notebook PC Shipment and Forecast Report also shows a huge increase in the size of the netbook market, having grown its revenue share of the overall portable computer market to 11.7% in the third quarter of 2009." source