Hasta La Gadget!

Steve Jobs isn’t the only one at Apple who isn’t in love with the whole netbook phenomenon. COO Tim Cook, who’s running things during Jobs’ health leave, seems equally unimpressed by the selection of low-priced notebooks, slamming the devices during yesterday’s earning report.

For us, it’s about doing great products. When I look at netbooks, I see cracked keyboards, terrible software, junky hardware, very small screens. It’s just not a good consumer experience and not something we would put the Mac brand on. It’s a segment we would not choose to play in.

The comments certainly seem to put a damper on all of that talk of a 10-inch touchscreen netbook rumored for a summer release along side the iPhone. But then “not playing” that space doesn’t necessarily rule out a low-priced tablet, does it?

From the French company Be.ez (which is meant to be pronounced “be easy”) comes a stylish line of netbook sleeves for your favorite portable. The LArobe line comes in either 10.2-inch or 8.9-inch sizes and should fit a variety of netbooks. The sleeves are available in nine colors, some all-business and some that look like they’d glow when the lights are off.

The 10.2-inch LArobe sleeves comes in the more electric shades and fit MSI WIND, ASUS 1000, ASUS S101, Medion Akoya mini E1210, ECS G10IL, Samsung NC10, and Samsung 310 netbooks. The 8.9-inch sleeves come in more conservative tones and fit the Aspire One, Dell Inspiron 910, Fujitsu Amilo MiniSize and HP2133 netbooks. All the sleeves list for $19.99. You can purchase them on Amazon or learn more from the Be.ez site.

We’ve heard a lot of talk about the concept of Android netbooks. Some PC manufacturers have been discussing Google’s mobile OS’s potential as an alternative to Linux and Windows on low-powered notebooks. So far, however, there hasn’t been much more than talk.

A small company called I-Buddie, however, is apparently taking the idea very seriously, and is edging closer to the release of a system. As proof of concept, the company released a demo video of the device in action.

Frankly, we’re beginning to wonder just how many iterations of the Wind U100 MSI can dish out before it’s forced by riots and a bombardment of Molotov cocktails to come forward with a completely revamped Wind netbook. At any rate, today the company has just unveiled its U100 PLUS, a familiar looking fellow with a 1.66GHz Atom N280 processor, a hamstrung 945GMS chipset, Intel’s GMA950 integrated graphics, up to 2GB of DDR2-533 RAM, a 10-inch LCD (1,024 x 600), 160GB hard drive, 4-in-1 multicard reader, VGA output, three USB 2.0 sockets, an optional 6-cell battery (3-cell is standard), WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. Crazily enough, MSI asserts that users can see upwards of 7 hours of use with the standard battery, which is easily one of the most unbelievable statements we’ve heard in the past 4.32 hours. Per usual, pricing and availability will come in due time.

[Via iTech News]

Continue reading MSI debuts Atom N280-equipped Wind U100 PLUS netbook

Filed under: Laptops

MSI debuts Atom N280-equipped Wind U100 PLUS netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Not that Fujitsu’s totally new to the netbook arena or anything, but we’ve got to hand it to the outfit’s design team on this one. The newfangled LOOX M netbook is definitely handsome, even though the innards contain a list of hardware components that we could rattle off in our sleep. Ready? Here goes. A 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160GB hard drive (yawning yet?), WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, three USB 2.0 sockets and a multicard reader. If you’re suddenly overcome with déjà vu, you’re definitely not alone — ’tis a shame Fujitsu has the nerve to charge ¥59,800 ($611) for something that’s no more advanced than the original line of Eee PCs.

[Via Engadget Japanese]

Filed under: Laptops

Fujitsu’s 10.1-inch LOOX M netbook looks good, positively average originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments