News Archive

Asus Eee PC 1005P/PE pinetrail netbook up for preorder

Published: December 18, 2009Tags: Pinetrail

Well Asus’ first Pine trail netbook is finally available for pre-order, but it’s in Italy. The official launch date for the Pine trail processor is at CES on Jan 15th, but manufacturers are already stockpiling netbooks with the new processor and getting them ready to start shipping.

Here are the specs for the newly emerged Asus Eee PC’s with the Pine trail processor:

Asus Eee PC 1005P

Processor: Intel N450 Pine Trail 1.67GHz
1GB RAM
160GB hard drive
Windows 7 starter

The 1005PE will share the same specs only with a 250GB hard drive and bluetooth. The price looks to be around $345 for the 1005P and $382 for the 1005PE, but expect these prices to come down after launch.

There’s also a cool carbon fiber look to the lid.

1005p-1

New Sony Vaio W spotted again at FCC

Published: December 17, 2009Tags: Sony

In our daily troll through the FCC website we found some interesting documents, the test results for a Qualcomm wireless module mounted inside an unreleased Sony netbook. The model number PCG-2121xx has shown up before, but now we know that the last 2 numbers only vary with the color, and we have a diagram of the bottom of the netbook.

vaio

As you can see it looks like there are some very large access ports on the bottom (which we like for modding). And you may remember that this netbook will also contain a 3G module and bluetooth. Here’s a few other specs we found in the documents:

spec

We look forward to more details emerging on this new netbook from Sony.

Nvidia Ion 2 delayed a few months

Published: December 17, 2009Tags: Nvidia Ion, Nvidia Ion 2

We were all awaiting the launch of Nvidia’s next-gen Ion platform at CES on Jan 15th. Well it will still be showcased but the official launch has been moved back until sometime in the first quarter 2010. The big vendors (Asus, MSI, Lenovo and HP) are said to be responsible for the delay due to strong sales of the current Ion models.

As we all know the N450 and N470 Pinetrail processors coming in Jan will be much faster than the current setup of the N280 + GMA graphics. Well the next generation Ion platform will be 5 to 10 times faster than the Pinetrail. This will lead to netbooks with the abilities of full laptops, and with only slightly shorter battery lives.

Just like the HP Mini 311 blew all other netbooks out of the water with its Ion graphics and DDR3 RAM, we’ll look forward to the first netbooks featuring the next-generation Ion platform to do the same to the Pinetrail platform, and there should be plenty of previews at CES 2010 in January.

via Fudzilla

DDR3 support coming for Intel Atom N450 and N470 chips

Published: December 16, 2009Tags: Pinetrail

Intel’s new Pine Trail chips (launching in January) are going to be getting an added performance boost sometime mid-2010. That is when their model numbers will be upgraded from the Atom N450 and N470 to N45x and N47x to siginify their new-found support for DDR3 RAM.

The new chips will already be a big improvement over current Atom models, and when the supported memory goes from DDR2 to DDR3 we can expect to see another jump in performance. This will be even more exaggerated due to the new architecture having both the CPU and GPU on a single chip, and having faster available memory will greatly add to processing efficiency.

The N470 chip (1.87GHz) will be going into full production in mid-January, while the N450 chip (1.67GHz) is already in netbooks and waiting for a January release.

Nvidia Tegra 2 coming in Jan

Published: December 16, 2009Tags: Nvidia Tegra 2

Nvidia Tegra is a mobile architecture that powers things such as the Zune HD and other small mobile devices. Well Nvidia is planning the Tegra 2 which will be twice as fast as the current version and will feature a dual-core Cortex A9 CPU.

They’re going to give us a sneek peak of this badboy at CES in january, and we’ll see it in devices such as the next-gen Nintendo DS, Zune HD 2, and netbooks of course (remember the mobinnova smartbook).

This new architecture will be fast enough for HD video and depending on the processor should be able to handle most computing tasks. And because of the mobile architecture it will also lead to increased battery life, just what we need in our netbooks.

If you thought the Intel Atom was small and energy efficient, take a look at this.

intel_tegra_atom_size

As you can see the Tegra is 10 times more energy efficient, and also about that much smaller.

via engadget

M815P Style-note netbook spotted at FCC

Published: December 14, 2009Tags: FCC

Another off-brand netbook is passing through the FCC today. It’s made by Huwaei technologies and is a Windows 7 sporting 10.1″ netbook. Here are the specs I can gather from the FCC documents:

Display: 10.1″
Intel Atom N270 processor
Windows 7
3 cell battery
3G wireless
card reader, headphone and mic out/in
vga out
2 usb ports

fcc2

This netbook will feature the older N270 processor and Intel GMA950 graphics. If you’re living in China then you can look forward to a new flood of cheaper netbooks coming your way.

via FCC

Asus Eee PC 1201N hands on

Published: December 14, 2009Tags: 1201N

Well the Asus Eee PC 1201n won’t be shipping until Jan 15th but you can preorder one now for $499. The specs on this netbook/notebook are pretty impressive, it features the N330 dual core processor and Nvidia Ion graphics. This beast has no problem outperforming other netbooks and pushing HD graphics.

The folks at blogee have already done a review and found that the 1201n is capable of playing games with the graphics settings turned up to a reasonable level, and HD videos are no problem. With the dual core processor comes a lot of power consumption though. Looping an HD video resulted in a 2 hour and 45 minute battery life from a 6 cell unit. At a more reasonable setting of half rss reading and half video watching the battery lasted 4 hours and 45 minutes, which is a little more realistic.

The dual core processor does put out a little heat as you can imagine, the heat map looks like there’s a hair dryer inside the netbook.

asus_eee_pc_1201n_heat_output-540x377

Apart from some comments about the battery not fitting very snugly the overall impression was that this is definitely a perfect in-between if you can’t decide between a powerful netbook or a cheap laptop. And the $499 price tag doesn’t hurt either.

via blogee

Super thin and light LG X30 spotted in FCC filings

Published: December 12, 2009Tags:

A new netbook from LG has been spotted passing through the FCC today. This netbook has some very impressive specs:

Weight: 1.7 lbs
Processor: Intel Atom
Windows 7
11.6″ 1366 x 768 display
Intel GMA 500 graphics
802.11 b/g/n wifi
Solid State Drive

As you can see this netbook is super light at under 2 pounds and with it’s SSD drive is going to be one of the most portable netbooks to date. We can assume it will feature the new Atom N450 processor but the spec isn’t listed.

All of the ports are in the back of the netbook, and there are only 2 usb ports instead of the usual 3.

back

There is one large port on the bottom that looks like will allow for easy upgrade of the RAM, SSD drive and maybe the wireless.

bottom

LG doesn’t have alot of netbooks here in the US, but it looks like they’re going to be off to a pretty good start with the LGX30.

via wirelessgoodness

Acer Aspire One with Pinetrail processor

Published: December 10, 2009Tags:

It looks like Acer’s first Pinetrail netbook has been officially listed on the drivers page on their site. The Pinetrail is the much-anticipated new version of the Atom processor used in netbooks today, and promises much better performance.

Besides the new processor the model looks to have an updated graphics chip as well, the 3150. All of the other specs look normal, except for the resolution (1280 x 720) which is kind of strange for netbooks.

Processor: Intel Atom N450 Pinetrail
Graphics: Intel GMA 3150
1GB RAM
160GB hard drive
Windows 7 starter
10.1″ 1280 x 720 display
802.11 b/g (no N?)
3 cell battery (I hope there’s an option for 6)

The exact model number is the AO532H and colors listed are red, silver, black and blue. The price looks to be around $350 as well, and we’re definitely looking forward to running some test on this when it gets released.

via netbooked

Onkyo DX dual screen netbook

Published: December 10, 2009Tags:

The Kohjinsha dual screen netbook we wrote about earlier has been rebranded and slightly improved upon as the Onkyo DX. This netbook has dual 10.1″ 1366 x 768 screens that slide out when in use. Here are the specs:

processor: AMD Athlon Neo MV-40
2GB RAM
320GB hard drive
Windows 7 Home Premium
802.11 b/g/n wifi
ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics
Gigabit ethernet

It looks like this device will never be sold outside of Japan, and the price runs around $966. Want to see what it looks like in operation? Here you go: