Posts Tagged ‘Notebooks’
Lenovo Wind and Moon IdeaPad S10-3 Series
One popular alternative to designer netbooks and expensive mobile phones are 10-inch netbooks, you can run pretty much everything on them, they’ll fit in a backpack, and the newest ones can run up to 10 hours, if tweaked well. Specs and design wise, the S10-3 looks fairly up to date, this 10-inch netbook running on the Intel Atom N475 series chip, it runs on DDR3 memory, it also features a full-size chiclet keyboard and a 6-cell battery and runs Windows 7 Starter.
The trend of netbooks with stickers or even Ferrari branded ones won’t make up for the fact that most of them are running on an Atom or a single core, which is not apt for professional use. We’ve looked at many alternatives, but the most compelling aspect of the Lenovo S10-series is its price – starting at 19,625 plus taxes. The Wind and Moon series won’t cost an arm, leg, or a kidney, and is a lot more customisable than smartphones, if not as handy.
A functional and cheap alternative to tablet PCs would be a tablet upgrade – the S10-3T previewed by Engadget here integrates a touchscreen for a $100 more. If you’re feeling adventurous, also in the cards is a PixelQi screen upgrade, for $275. You could run Jolicloud on it, which now supports touch screens.
The S10-3 series netbooks also boasts of Dolby Headphone technology, Lenovo Veriface – that employs face recognition technology to ensure that the netbook is for your eyes only; and OneKey Rescue and Quick Start that helps you be up and running in seconds.
Product Specification
Processor: Intel Atom N475 1.83 GHz
Memory: 1GB 667MHz DDR3
Memory Slots: 1
Maximum Memory: 2GB
Storage: 250GB 5400rpm hard drive
Display: 10.1? WSVGA
Resolution: 1024×600
Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150
Ports: 3x USB 2.0, VGA?Card Reader: 5-in-1 (MMC/Memory Stick/PRO/SD/xD)
Communication: 10/100 Ethernet, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth
WebCam: 1.3MP
Operating System: Windows 7 Starter
Battery: 6-cell
Dimensions (WxDxH): 268 x 168 x 16-38mm
Weight: starting at 1.5 kg
Sony Vaio Z and Y Series Laptops are First With Wi-fi Sharing Feature
The VAIO Z and Y Series PCs are the world’s first out-of-the box laptops that act as a personal hotspot. Select models of these series feature the exclusive new Sony embedded wireless technology called Share My Connection (SMC). With SMC you can turn your laptop into a mobile wireless access point that can connect up to five other PCs or networked devices, such as smartphones, mp3 players, and cameras. Of course a subscription is required.
The Z model offers premium portability and serious power as it weighs in at just 3.0 lbs. It features a durable carbon fiber and aluminum casing and is supposed to deliver up to seven hours of battery life for true mobile freedom. It incorporates a 13.1-inch high-resolution LED backlit widescreen display, that should deliver a bright picture with 100 percent color saturation. The extremely thin unit also comes with an optical drive (Blu-ray optical drive optional).
The Y Series laptops comes in five colors including purple violet, fuchsia pink, pear green, teal blue and black. With a thin 1.2-inch profile and 13.3-inch LED backlit widescreen display, the sleek Y model offers lower power consumption for improved battery life for that active student lifestyle.
They’re priced at about $770 for the VAIO Y Series and $1,950 for the VAIO Z Series.
Toshiba to Develop Tablet PC with Two 7-Inch Screens
Toshiba is reportedly developing a tablet with two 7-inch displays, which folds like a book. That would make it the latest in a long line of companies-both big names and start-ups-who have toyed with these dual-display devices.
The concept makes some sense. A design with two displays maximizes the screen real estate while keeping the size down. You can mix-and-match different display technologies and operating systems to serve different applications in a single device. And the success of touchscreen smartphones, and more recently the Apple iPad, demonstrates that many users are willing to forgo a physical keyboard. But so far the dual-display has been DOA.
Asus, HTC, MSI and Sony among others have all experimented with these devices, either as full-blown tablets or e-book readers, but there’s no sign any of them are coming to your Best Buy anytime soon. The Microsoft Courier project generated a lot of excitement, but never made it out of the incubator. One Laptop Per Child scrapped its XO-2 dual-screen tablet, and instead plans to release updates to its standard XO netbook. OLPC will eventually offer a standard low-cost tablet, the XO-3.
Then there are the dual-display e-readers. Start-up Kno demonstrated its device at the D8 conference, but its unwieldy tablet, which consists of two 14-inch displays, has puzzled reviewers. The Entourage Edge is a hybrid device-the company calls it a “dualbook”–with a 9.7-inch E-Ink display on one side and a 10.1-inch LCD tablet running Android on the other. It’s a novel concept, but the device is much thicker than an e-book reader or tablet, and doesn’t really excel at either.
Aside from Apple, no company has yet figured out how to deliver a great experience on a standard tablet, let alone one with two displays-sometime using different technologies and input mechanisms. Google is still working on versions of Android and Chrome OS tailored for tablets. And Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently admitted that the company has a lot of work to do on Windows 7 tablets to catch up with the iPad.
Computer Sales in India Up 24 Percent in July-September Quarter
In another sign of recovery in Indian industry, the sales of personal computers in the country were up 24 percent in the quarter that ended Sep 30 and touched 2.19 million units, according to leading market research firm IDC.
“The July-September quarter experienced strong boost from new found consumer confidence that reflected in increased demand during the festive season,” said Kapil Dev Singh, country manager of IDC India.
“Overall consumer personal computer sales recorded a 28-percent growth, quarter-on-quarter. This performance underlines the recovery in the India personal computer market,” Singh said, releasing the survey.
The IDC survey shows that desktops accounted for nearly two-third of the total sales of personal computers and grew 15.2 percent to 1.46 million, while notebook sales expanded faster at 46.4 percent to cross the 700,000-unit mark.
In desktops, HP retained its top position with a market share of 12.2 percent, followed by HCL and Acer, while in the notebook segment, too, HP retained the top spot with a market share 27 percent, followed by Dell and Acer.
“Commercial personal computer sales can be expected to steadily improve as the economy recovers,” said Sumanta Mukherjee, analyst with IDC India.
“Even though the consumer personal computer segment recorded a faster 28 percent growth, industry will need to watch how the recovery in consumer PC shipments unfolds in the quarters ahead.”
The analyst said the emerging mini-notebook personal computer segment, however, needed to evolve in terms of processing power, graphics capabilities, innovation and functionality to compete with mainstream notebooks.
Desktop PCs are Dead What is Next
Over the past few years, technology pundits have been decrying desktop PCs as dead or dying. It’s certainly true that due to the recent bad economy, along with greatly reduced laptop prices, desktop PC sales have dramatically dwindled. As a result the writing is on the wall for the desktop PC that it will soon be nothing more than a fading memory.
This ideology is complete and utter nonsense, and the tech pundits should be ashamed of themselves for being proponents of it.
In many aspects of business, and even consumer usage, the desktop is unnecessary. You don’t need a desktop for email, documents, spreadsheets. Programmers usually don’t need a desktop for their work. Most mundane tasks can be handled with a laptop, a netbook, and even a smartphone in some cases.
But let’s face it — laptops just aren’t as powerful as equivalent desktops. Hard drives are slower. CPUs run hotter, so they can’t run as fast without burning up. Graphics chipsets aren’t as beefy. And internal expansion and upgrade of components is not an option.
Laptops are static systems. You can add some RAM, you can put in a bigger hard drive. But you can’t upgrade the CPU or graphics. You usually can’t put in more than one hard drive. You can’t replace the screen with a bigger one, although you can plug in an excternal one. Portable computers’ main advantage is that they are portable.
The average business worker doesn’t need a desktop. They can perform all of their daily tasks on a laptop. They can plug in a keyboard, mouse and monitor and have a desktop-like environment at their desk, and unplug the laptop when they need to be mobile.
With the exceptions noted above, the business community could dump the desktop and save a ton of money on electricity — the laptop draws much less power than a desktop system. They take up less space, they generate less heat, and they’re easy to repair or replace when needed.
Now consider a graphics design shop. They need high-end desktop systems, either Windows or Mac, driving high end design programs. A typical graphics designer or computer artist needs a lot of RAM, a powerful CPU and a high-end graphics card, possibly even a RAID array for storage to provide improved hard drive speed. And quite often they will need to upgrade these components.