Hasta La Gadget!

Make no mistake, we’ve seen an Eee PC 1008 before — but this whole “P” thing is just getting official today at CES. It’s the same machine we saw leaked a few weeks back, and thankfully for those who dig the whole “vivacious” scene, it’ll be available in both hot pink and coffee brown. Designed by Karim Rashid, ASUS’ latest netbook gets powered by Intel’s new Atom N450 processor and features a 10.1-inch display, Windows 7 Home Premium, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11n WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, 1.3 megapixel camera, a 3-cell removable battery and a 2.5 pound chassis. We’ll keep you posted on a price and release, but for now, have a gander at the press shots below.

Update: We nabbed a quick hands-on and took a video of the new removable battery, check it below.

Continue reading ASUS gets official with Eee PC 1008P Seashell: available in hot pink and coffee brown (updated: with video!)

ASUS gets official with Eee PC 1008P Seashell: available in hot pink and coffee brown (updated: with video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What happens when you combine a smartphone with a netbook? You get what Lenovo calls a smartbook. The company on Tuesday announced its first smartbook product, the Skylight.

The Skylight is basically a “notbook” (i.e. a netbook that refuses to be labeled a netbook) incorporating some of the guts you’d normally see in a smartphone. It’s an ARM-based computer equipped with Qualcomm’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor and a 10-inch high-resolution screen. It features built-in Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, meaning Lenovo expects you’ll mainly use this product with an internet connection. Thus, the Skylight includes a 20GB flash drive as opposed to the traditional beefy hard disk drive; the notbook supports various external memory formats if you wish to expand on the storage.

Some more specs:

• Operating System: Linux
• Resolution: 1,278-by-720 pixels
• Battery life: 10 hours, according to Lenovo
• Connectivity: Two USB ports, Micro SDHC (with card installed), SIM slot, multimedia card slot (SD, SDHC, MMC), mini HDMI connector, headset jack
• Camera: 1.3-megapixel webcam
• Colors: Earth red and lotus blue

The Skylight will cost $500 and begin shipping later this year. Lenovo also plans to offer the Skylight through AT&T, which would likely involve carrier subsidy with a two-year data contract. A video demonstration of the Skylight can be found at Lenovo’s website.

See Also:

• Nokia Booklet 3G
• Netbooks Mutate to Meet Market Challenges

Photo courtesy of Lenovo

And just like that, the CES 2010 on-switch has been well and truly pressed. After HP, Sony and Lenovo all exposed their hardware to the world prematurely, it was inevitable that other companies would “accidentally” follow suit. Thanks to CNET‘s snooping, we’re now staring at a trio of new Core i3 models from Dell, Toshiba and Gateway — highlighted by an unannounced ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 powering a 1600 x 900 15-inch display on the Gateway, which also squeezes 500GB of storage under a shockingly low $692 price tag. On the Atom front, the Mini 210 is joined by a Toshiba NB305 — sporting the N450, 250GB HDD, up to 11 hours’ claimed battery life, and a $438 sticker — as well as Gateway’s effort with a smaller 160GB HDD but also suitably reduced $285 asking price. Hit the links below to get freshened up on all the juicy details.

Read – FutureShop.ca (Gateway NV5905H)
Read – FutureShop.ca (Toshiba Satellite L500-00F)
Read – Costco (Dell Inspiron 15)
Read – FutureShop.ca (Gateway LT2102H)
Read – FutureShop.ca (Toshiba NB305-00F)

Dell, Toshiba and Gateway Core i3 laptops get revealed early, joined by Pine Trail netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been more than a year since NVIDIA announced its Ion platform, promising to bring HD video and gaming to the underpowered Atom CPU. After all the hold ups, we started to wonder if we’d ever see the platform packed inside a netbook, so imagine our surprise when no less than four Ion-based machines launched in the past few months. With bigger screens, better specs, more graphics muscle and, of course, the resulting higher price tag, each of these Ion machines promises quite a bit, but which one lives up to the hype? We got them all together and spent the past few weeks testing the ASUS Eee PC 1201N, Lenovo IdeaPad S12, HP Mini 311 and the Samsung N510 — follow on past the break for our complete faceoff.

Continue reading Ion netbooks head-to-head: Atom, overcharged?

Ion netbooks head-to-head: Atom, overcharged? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netbook sales have been on a solid upward tick for about as long as the product category has existed, so it shouldn’t come as much surprise that research firm DisplaySearch is now forecasting that shipments will exceed a hefty 33.3 million units by year’s end, which translates to a full 103% jump in growth over the previous year. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that the firm is also predicting that growth will slow considerably in 2010 (down to “just” 20%) as more and more laptops with ultra-low voltage processors dip under the $500 mark. Of course, 20% growth still means that netbook shipments should be in the neighborhood of 40 million for 2010, and DisplaySearch even estimates that growth will hold steady at about 20% for 2011, so we wouldn’t be so quick to put them on deathwatch just yet.

DisplaySearch says netbook sales will slow as ULV laptops get cheaper originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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