Hasta La Gadget!

Come on, you had to know that one of our first stops at CeBIT was going to be the ASUS booth to see if we could get a glimpse at the leaked 10-inch Eee PC 1018P and 1016P. Though they will be officially announced at ASUS’s press conference tomorrow we got some time to play around with the new aluminum netbooks, and they sure beat any of the plastic Eee PCs we’ve been groping for the past few years. The overall build quality feels great, and with the flush battery they are both seriously slim and light. We wish ASUS had equipped the systems with metal keyboards to match the expanded aluminum touchpads, but the plastic keys felt plenty sturdy under our fingers. As for specs, the placards claim that they will have the new Intel N470 processors (and some peculiar N455 and N475 CPU choices), 2GB of RAM and 10 hours of battery life. We’re still trying to figure out the difference between the two models, but our guess is that the 1016P will have 3G, while the 1018P sticks just to WiFi. Also, no confirmation yet on that rumored USB 3.0, but until we find out more details at tomorrow’s press conference we’ve got you covered with the hands-on pics and video below.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC 1018P and 1016P quick hands-on

ASUS Eee PC 1018P and 1016P quick hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel introduced the new Atom N470 netbook CPU back in September and then Lenovo showed off its S10-3t with the new processor at CES, but chipzilla’s taking the time today to give its newest Pine Trail CPU a proper unveil. The 1.83GHz N470 joins the 1.66GHz N450 as an option for netbooks, and like the rest of the Pineview integrates the GMA 3150 graphics controller on the same chip and supports hyperthreading. According to Intel, the major OEMs are expected to introduce new netbooks based on this processor soon, but if our experience with the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t is any glimpse into the “performance boost” of this processor we’re not sure there’s anything to wait for. Our full review of the S10-3t netvertible is almost done cooking, but we can tell you right now the system didn’t feel faster in use even with its 2GB of RAM, and on PCMark05 it scored in the same range as other N450 netbooks. While the slightly faster clock speed may be a nice bragging right, at the end of the day Atom N470-based netbooks are still, well, netbooks.

Intel officially adds Pine Trail Atom N470 processor, early performance results don’t impress originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The world’s first e-reader and netbook hybrid is set to start shipping next week. The dual-screen eDGe, made by Entourage, comes with a 9.7-inch E Ink screen on the left half, and a touchscreen LCD on the right, meaning you can use it as an e-reader, a notepad, or a regular netbook — at the same time.

“Pre-orders received by January 12 will start shipping at the end of this week. New orders will ship in March,” says Doug Atkinson, Entourage’s VP of Marketing and Business Development, in an interview with E-Reader.info.

The other big news is that Entourage launched its own e-book store to compete with the bigger boys, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the upcoming Apple iBooks store. Why not simply partner with someone already in the book business?

“Having our own e-bookstore allows us to offer books and documents based on our customer demand,” says Atkinson in the interview. Entourage is mostly aiming at public domain books – about a million of them in a partnership with Google – but have also managed to sign up publishers like Oxford Press, Ingram Digital and LibreDigital.

As reported by Gadget lab in January, the device will come with 4 GB storage, 2 USB ports and a SD card slot, weighing roughly 2.5 pounds. Which, when you consider Macbook Air’s 3 pounds, isn’t that light.

The $490 device runs on Google’s Android OS and will be able to handle Microsoft Office documents.

There seem to be some pretty cool features, though, especially when it comes to playing around between the two screens. You can drag a grayscale image from the E-Ink screen and view it in full color on the LCD one, or attach video (on the right screen) to a passage from an e-book (on the left screen).

When using two screens, or primarly the LCD screen, the battery life is 6 hours. When only using the E-Ink part, you can squeeze out about 16 hours out of your eDGe, the company claims.

Note: In case you were wondering why the weird capitalized letters, Entourage people say the “DG” in eDGe stands for “Digital Generation”. Edgy.

Looks like there won’t be a shortage of new laptops and netbooks next week at CeBIT, and if Blogeee is to be believed ASUS will be showing up with at least three new 10.1-inch Eee PCs. The most exciting of the bunch seem to be the executive-aimed 1016P and 1018P, which will both apparently have an aluminum chassis and 14 hours of battery life. The .7-inch 1018P is said to be the thinnest netbook ASUS has ever created, and sport an integrated fingerprint reader and USB 3.0. Uh, USB 3.0 in a netbook? We don’t see why not. Finally there’s the 1015P, which seems to just be an refresh of the 1005PE with a matte display and a wider touchpad. It sounds triple E exciting, but we promise to find out more on these little guys next week when we are live in Deutschland.

ASUS Eee PC 1018P, 1016P and 1015P prepping for a CeBIT debut originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rejoice, owners of netbooks with Intel GMA 500 graphics: Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 is here, complete with hardware video acceleration for your machines. That should make Hulu and YouTube HD usable on machines like the Sony VAIO P and VAIO X, the Nokia Booklet 3G, and the previous-generation Dell Mini 10. The new build also bring support for the Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator found in Pine Trail Atom machines like the newest Dell Mini 10 and HP Mini 210 — support we found sorely lacking when we reviewed the Dell. We just tried it out on our review HP Mini 210 and it managed 720p YouTube just fine, although 1080p was a no-go — we’re waiting on some updated Broadcom drivers though, so don’t take that as gospel quite yet. We’ll have much more on that in our full Mini 210 review; for now you should all get downloading and let us know how it’s going in comments.

Update: Success! We updated the Broadcom drivers on our Dell Mini 10 and downloaded the fresh Flash 10.1 Beta 3, and as you can see in the video below 1080p YouTube HD content plays smoothly. It’s almost everything we’ve ever dreamed of for our netbooks. We are still having issues with the HP Mini 210 which uses the older BCM70012 Crystal HD card, but will have an update on that in our full review soon.

Continue reading Flash 10.1 beta 3 released, adds support for Intel GMA 500 and Broadcom Crystal HD chips (Update: 1080p Flash on a netbook!)

Flash 10.1 beta 3 released, adds support for Intel GMA 500 and Broadcom Crystal HD chips (Update: 1080p Flash on a netbook!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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