Hasta La Gadget!

Readers have been asking about the promised EeePC T91, an innovative convertible tablet netbook that Asus showed off in January at CES. Since then there’s been no word from Asus about the availability of what promised to be like a cool, low-cost portable with a touch-sensitive screen.

Now there’s a report that the T91 will be available within a month, in the U.K. at least. Reports are that it will cost £449, or in American, about $667. That’s a lot of money for an Atom-based netbook, even if it does have a swiveling touchscreen, a TV tuner and integrated GPS. On the other hand: Want!

Via Gizmodo, Mirror.co.uk and Electricpig

Photo credit: Dylan Tweney/Wired.com

Whether or not Windows 7 does launch in October as previously suggested, those who have (or plan to get) Release Candidate will be happy to hear that Microsoft won’t be pulling the plug until June 1, 2010, well over a year from now and 11 months after its initial expiration date. After that, you’re gonna have to fork over the Benjamins for one of the retail SKUs if you wanna keep 7 alive. As for those still living in Redmond’s past, the company’s also extended the life of XP, at least for OEMs. Companies using the older OS will still be able to install it on netbooks for up to one year after 7’s official shape date. Seeing as the new system’s likely to have a more expensive licensing fee, it’s probably the best move if the company plans on keeping that 96% grip on the netbook OS market.

[Via gadgetmix]

Read – Windows 7 RC extension
Read – Windows XP extension

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Windows 7 RC and XP given extensions on life well into 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 00:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Is hacking a netbook to run Mac OS X really worth the trouble? Two tech journalists today expressed grief with their Hackbooks, so I felt like chiming in with my thoughts about my somewhat controversial MSI Wind Hackintosh. In short, my Hackintosh and I have been pals for six months, but it’s been a pretty bumpy ride.

When I first bought my Wind in October, I was thrilled after successfully hacking it to run Mac OS X Leopard. I loved the netbook so much, in fact, that I almost stopped using my first-generation MacBook Pro altogether. To express my delight, I even made a custom wallpaper for my netbook featuring my favorite childhood ice cream flavor (Superman). The Wind was a great companion device: I use an iMac in the office, so when I got home the dumbed-down, lightweight netbook was perfect for web surfing, chatting and general unwinding.

But over time the problems started surfacing. Like Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel, I grew to despise the Wind’s dinky trackpad: Whoever designed it had in mind an infant’s hands; navigating became so tiresome that I started carrying around an external mouse to make it tolerable.

Second, the software issues. Seeing as this netbook was hacked to run OS X, of course it didn’t work perfectly. I accepted that, and with some tweaks I got most software utilities working properly. But while I was traveling in Europe, my netbook’s Wi-Fi suddenly stopped working. The Airport utility simply wouldn’t light up, and I discovered a few fixes that worked temporarily, only for the connection to fail again. As you can imagine, a netbook without the net in a foreign country was a huge drag — a piece of useless plastic added to my luggage. I ended up barely using my netbook during my trip, and I instead heavily relied on my problem-free iPhone.

When I returned home, I completely reinstalled OS X, and Wi-Fi worked once again. And then the hardware issues kicked in. Minor ones, actually: Screws at the bottom of the clamshell kept falling out, even after I screwed them in as tightly as possible. I inspected the case more closely and realized it no longer clamps all the way shut, which is why the screws aren’t staying in. This issue was probably a result of cheap plastic or shoddy clamshell design. Unfortunately this created another annoying problem: The battery kept popping out of the case ever so slightly — just enough to shut off the computer whenever I nudged the netbook. I eventually resolved the problem with some double-sided tape, but I wasn’t happy about it.

Given all these issues, I became pretty jaded about my netbook — hence my lack of mentioning it here at Wired.com in recent months. I ended up selling my MacBook Pro and buying the latest unibody model refurbished, and now I rarely use my netbook. So unfortunately, I have to agree with Dave “MacSparky” Sparks and The Unofficial Apple Weblog’s Steven Sande, who both grew frustrated with their Dell Mini 9 Hackintoshes. It’s a fun hacking project, but it’s like the fixed-gear bicycle you built but left sitting in the garage, because over time you realized it was too impractical.

Photo: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com

One of the major complaints about netbooks, especially the early ones, concerns the battery life. A three cell battery gives barely an hour and a half on the MSI wind, for example (although this can be improved by not installing Mac OS X on it).

The second wave of netbooks usually sport six-cell batteries, giving a life much closer to that of the regular-sized notebooks we use. And then there is the freak-show: nine-cellers so big in both physical dimensions and battery life that the market is distinctly specialist. Who on earth would buy one of these monstrosities? Me, of course.

After over a month of waiting, I finally got the call from the computer store this week. I ordered the nine-cell after concluding that my hackintosh was almost useless as it was. Even leaving it in sleep mode would kill the battery in a day or two, meaning that I was constantly tethered to a wall wart. And if I’m not taking it on the road, why the hell would I use this tiny cramped device instead of my spacious MacBook?

The battery was expensive, coming in at almost a third of the price
of the machine. It cost €114.84, or around $150. I could have ordered
online but I figured I’d rather order from the store in case things go
wrong. An exploding battery isn’t something that’s fun to deal with.

You do, though, get your money’s worth. Look at the size of that
thing! The guy in the store laughed when he saw it, although when the
machine booted into OS X he shut up a little. Oddly, the extra inch of
height makes the netbook easier to use, if not to slip in a bag. The
wedge-angle brings the keyboard up to a similar angle you get using a
laptop stand, and the extra air underneath means the fan spins ip less
often and further improves battery life.

And what life! The unit came 75% full and showed that it had five
hours of remaining charge. Macs are dynamic in determining how much
time you have left — it goes up and down depending on how hard you are
using the machine. But in normal use I’m getting a good six hours.
Normal use here means streaming Spotify music to an Airport Express and
reading web pages. Watching movies would shrink that time, but —
watching the number — not by much.

Talking of numbers, here are the specs. The battery is a nine-cell
model from MSI itself, named MS-N011. According to my system profiler
(and the excellent application Coconut Battery), the capacity is 6600
mAh, or rather it was. The maximum has already shrunken to 6482 mAh.

You may have noticed one other oddity — the color. After waiting a month, I wasn’t going to complain that it didn’t match, and I’m hoping that by wearing black pants and putting it on my lap, the monstrous carbuncle will disappear. That won’t help with carrying it, though. The weight isn’t bad, but the Wind is now L-shaped when closed, which doesn’t make it easy to slip into a man purse. Stlil despite these problems, I love it. I still need a 3G USB dongle to make it truly useful outside (blogging from the beach, for instance), but as a photo-shoot companion it’s a winner.

There is one final irony, though. At 3.2 pounds, it weighs almost as much as my MacBook, at 4.5 pounds.

See Also:

• Wind Nine Cell Battery Tested: Same Life As 1995 Cellphone …
• Nine Cell Netbook Batteries Showing Up in the Wild
• MSI’s Second Wind: Hybrid Drive, Low-Powered CPU
• Hybrid Wind Runs for More Than a Day on a Single Charge
• 10-Cell Netbook Battery Almost as Big as Computer Itself

Skytone’s Android-based netbook is either bunk or junk. The specs of the Chinese company’s Alpha 680 read as if they are either made up or just plain weird. Take this, for example: “Internet Connection (Optional): ADSL, WiFi,（ GPRS, CDMA,EDGE,WCDMA”

What? The big news is that the OS is listed as being “Google Android”, and the product page is indeed peppered with pictures of the Android logo. But if we delve closer into the specs we see hardware that has more in common with a cellphone than even a modest netbook. The CPU is a slow 533MHz ARM-11, RAM is a ridiculous 128 MB and storage is poor even for a pen-drive at just 1GB (apparently upgradeable to a whole 4GB). There is, though, a trio of USB ports and an SD card slot, and flipping to a second spec page tells us that the Alpha actually comes with Wi-Fi and ethernet.

A webcam is optional, and the “User Interface” consists of “built-in keboard and mouser pad”. Finally, the netbook kicks it Eee-Old-Style with a little 7” display, although it does spin to make a tablet-style unit without, it seems, an actual touch screen.

Weirdest of all is the inclusion of a couple of gaming controls, a D-pad and four buttons, on either side of the screen. This machine is nothing if not schizophrenic. Finally, the talk says that this could cost as little as $100, which would firmly kick the ass of the OLPC. The inclusion of Android and these low, low specs make us think that this has more in common with an old Psion Series 5 than with a modern netbook. If Skytone gets the keyboard and battery life right, this could actually be a surprise hit.

Product page [Skytone via Laptop Mag and Liliputing]