Netbook

Dell has released a big brother for its Inspiron Mini 9. Perhaps aiming for the customer that thinks a 9 or 10-inch display is too small, but a full size laptop is overkill for their needs, the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 features a bigger-than-your-average-Netbook 12.1-inch WXGA display, and runs on Netbook standard Intel Atom CPU. The hard drives are of the traditional platter variety in 60GB or 80GB sizes instead of the SSD drives found in the Mini 9 and the Mini 12 comes with 1GB of RAM, a built-in webcam and Windows Vista Home Basic – although XP and Ubuntu variants are due by year’s end. Read More

ExpressCard brings high-bandwidth (2.5Gbps) PCI Express connectivity to laptops, and allows you to connect a range of audio interfaces, hard drives, wireless broadband modems, and (if you buy an adapter) FireWire 800/eSATA devices. So far, three manufacturers have managed to squeeze an ExpressCard/34 port into their 9/10" netbooks, opening up a range of possibilities for the road warrior. Read More

Fujitsu has officially announced the first installment in its new M Series line-up, the Fujitsu M1010 netbook. Weighing in at 1kg (2.2lbs) with an 8.9-inch widescreen display, the M1010 has a touchpad and mouse button layout designed for use with one hand and features integrated wireless LAN, a PC Express card, 3G USB dongle support, 4-in-1 SD card reader and built-in 1.3 Mega Pixel web camera. Read More

The suspense surrounding Apple’s rumored Netbook announcement is quite extraordinary. The collective mood swing towards more convenient and usable wireless devices now seems overwhelming. People want more productivity on the move without the weight ,and the recent eeepc has only served to warm up the crowd for whatever Apple might be ready to announce later today. Just to add intrigue, a start-up named OLO Computer is getting set to launch what appears to be an iPhone-powered notebook/netbook which uses the iPhone as the CPU and the iPhone docks flat with the keyboard surface to offer its touch-screen as a trackpad. Read More

October 13, 2008 With rumours suggesting Apple has an ultralight computer ready for announcement tomorrow, the category is certain to capture a lot of attention over the coming months. One recent entrant in the cateogrythat looks really promising is the ASUS Eee PC™ S101, an exquisitely designed Brown, Champagne or Graphite netbook that weighs just a kilogram and is slimmer than most fashion magazines at just 1.8 cm. It is expensive but with 802.11n, Bluetooth V2.0, an encrypted 20 GB Internet storage facility known as Eee Storage, and a 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD) it is stylish and above all, easily portable. Read More

April 9, 2008 Making personal computers more accessible to school students is both a worthy cause and an emerging target market. HP has now entered the arena with the announcement of the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, a full-function, small-format laptop PC priced from under US$500. Read More

April 4, 2008 Intel Corporation has shown the second-generation design of its classmate PC - a low-cost, Internet-oriented, child-sized laptop computing platform designed to take the punishment dished-out in school environments and broaden access for the 95% of children worldwide who are currently deprived of the benefits offered by such technology. Dubbed a "Netbook", the classmate PC blueprint was unveiled this week at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai and is aimed at giving manufacturers the freedom to tailor laptop models for a variety of education needs. Based on an Intel® Celeron® M processor with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and mesh network capabilities, top of the line models will feature a 9-inch LCD screen, extended battery life, 512 MB memory, a 30 GB HDD storage and an integrated webcam. Read More