Archive for Notebook
Aug
01
Acer Timeline 8000 Series Arrives At Office Depot
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Well, that didn’t take long. Less than a day after Acer announced the new Timeline 8000 series, the 14-inch AS4810T-8480 has popped up on an Office Depot shelf for $699. It’s not bad for the money — you’re getting a 1.4GHz Core Solo SU3500, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB disk, and eight hours of battery life — but we’d wait to buy until next week, when our tipster says it’ll be on sale for $549. Anyone planning to pick one up?
Jul
29
HP Beginning Production Of New 10.1-inch, 11.6-inch Netbooks / Ultralights
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This is about as early and unofficial as it gets, but DigiTimes is reporting that HP has contracted Quanta to begin production of an apparently all new 11.6-inch netbook in August, and another new 10.1-inch before the end of the year, which SlashGear rightly speculates could well be CULV ultralights rather than standard “netbooks.” That’s further bolstered by the fact that HP has separately contracted Inventec to build a revision to its current 10.1-inch netbook at the end of September. It’s not all netbooks and ultralights for HP, however, as Quanta has also landed a deal to produce some new 15.6- and 17.3-inch laptops, while Compal will be handling HP’s new 13.3- and 14-inch enterprise notebooks.
Jul
27
Acer’s Aspire Timeline 1810T Gets a Price
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If you’re in Europe and you love Acer laptops, today is your lucky day. The company has gotten totally official with its Aspire Timeline 1810T notebook, at least according to ComputerBase in Germany. If you’ll recall, the laptop boasts an 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display, a 1.4GHz ULV CPU, can support up to 4GB of RAM, and sports a GMA 4500MHD graphics chipset. The base model includes a 250GB hard drive, and all the systems come with an HDMI out, Bluetooth 2.1, a 3G option, and are preloaded with Vista — just in case you were worried. For the low-ish starting price of €499 (or about $708) you can take one of these puppies back to your flat soon (they’re on preorder now and should be available in two or three weeks). Hit the read link for all the nasty details… if you dare.
Jul
06
Sprint First To Offer a 99-cent Netbook,Is It Worth It?
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We knew we’d see cheap / free subsidized netbooks eventually, and here we are: Best Buy and Sprint are offering up a Compaq-branded HP Mini 110c for just 99 cents when you sign a two-year data contract. Yeah, it looks good on paper, especially since AT&T and Verizon will ding you $199 for the same machine, but we just don’t think it’s worth it: at $60 a month for service, you’ll be spending $1,440 for two years of pain with that 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM and three-cell battery. We’d say you’re way better off grabbing a 3G USB stick you can use with multiple machines, or, if you’re feeling particularly baller, throwing down for a MiFi and kicking it mobile hotspot style — it’ll cost the same $60 a month from Sprint, but you’ll be able to get five machines online at once. But that’s just us — any of you particularly hot for this almost-free netbook?
Jun
16
Disney And ASUS Announce Netpal Netbook For Kids
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Past Disney gadgets may have been heavier on the Disney than the gadget, but we’re guessing there’ll be at least a few parents out there a little envious of ASUS’s new Disney-branded Netpal netbook for kids, which will be available in your choice of “Princess Pink” or “Magic Blue” colors (the latter replete with tiny Mickey Mouse icons). In addition to that eye-catching exterior, each netbook also packs a custom, kid-friendly Disney interface, along with a range of built-in parental controls, and some customizable themes based on Mickey Mouse, Toy Story, Wall-E, and other Disney properties. As you might expect, however, the netbook itself is just a standard 8.9-inch Eee PC, but it is at least available with either a 16GB SSD drive or a standard 160GB hard drive. No word on a release date just yet, but it looks like this one will set you back $350.
Jun
15
DosPara’s Prime Note Cresion NA
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Apparently not one to be confined to the usual “netbook” considerations, Japan’s DosPara has now gone out and broken a few rules with its new Prime Note Cresion NA model, which not only packs a larger than usual 12-inch display, but a nettop-specific dual-core Atom 330 processor as well. That gets paired with NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, along with 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, your choice of built-in optical drive, a memory card reader, and an HDMI port, to name but a few less than standard netbook features. Of couse, all of that comes with a fairly significant increase to the size and weight of the laptop, but at least the ¥59,980 price tag (or just about $600) isn’t too unreasonable.
Jun
14
VAIO P Gets Whole New Lease On Life With Atom Z550 Processor
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A whole new day is dawning for the never-ever-a-netbook Sony VAIO P — those new processor and drive upgrades apparently have the little PC churning through benchmarks at twice the pace of the original. Most of the benchmark help comes from the SSD drive, but the Atom Z550 doesn’t hurt. Meanwhile, Japan is getting a WiMAX version to churn through stereotypically Japanese websites in record time. We’d be jealous if only we lived under 1,000 miles from the nearest WiMAX signal.
May
23
Tiny UMID Mbook M1: A Mini-Netbook With Mini-Features
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We spotted Korean manufacturer UMID’s new MID back in November, but now it’s finally seeing release, with a few changed specs and a $599 pricetag. But it probably won’t change MID-haters’ minds.
Occupying that perennially awkward space between a smartphone and a netbook, the mbook M1, like the Viliv S5, packs standard netbook components into a teeny space while remaining too large to be pocketable. It’s a nice enough design, and the price is fair, but the sacrifices made to keep the gadget small are sure to annoy owners. Everything’s been miniaturized: The headphone jack is a 2.5mm rather than the standard 3.5mm, and it includes only a mini-USB port, so you’ll need an adapter for both audio and hardware input. Even the expansion slot has been miniaturized from the cheap and ubiquitous SDHC to micro-SDHC. The 16GB version will run you $599, and doubling your storage will cost an extra $150.
