Hasta La Gadget!

Eyeing that $400 netbook? How about getting one for half the price in just a few months?

Freescale is racing to get netbooks out this summer, featuring the company’s chips, that would offer up to eight hours of battery life, be significantly thinner than existing designs and priced under $200.

"We are taking dead aim at the netbook space," says Glen Burchers, marketing director at Freescale."The value proposition that Freescale brings is dramatically lower power consumption and even lower prices."

Netbooks have become the fastest growing segment in the PC market, with about 15 million devices sold worldwide in 2008. This year, despite the economic slowdown, sales could double says ABI Research. So far Intel’s family of Atom-based processors released last year have overwhelmingly dominated the market. But Atom processors offer just about three hours of battery life while users are clamoring for more.

Freescale hopes its new line of chips could make a dent in Intel’s market share. Last month, the company introduced the i.MX515 processor that is based on the 1GHz CPU from Intel rival ARM. The chip includes high performance multimedia processing and supports embedded 3G connectivity. "We can combine processor, graphic chips and memory bridge into a single chip, which means netbooks based on the Freescale platform will be just about 15-mm thick," says Burchers.

On Tuesday Freescale said it has tied up with additional partners to expand
operating system options for netbooks based on its processor. Freescale processors will support Android and Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Xandros.

The company says its hopes to have its processors-based netbooks in production by the middle of the year and hopes to have the products in retail stores in time for the 2009 holiday shopping season. But Freescale is yet to announce any manufacturing partners for netbooks with its chips.

It won’t be an easy ride for Freescale as it tries to catch up to Intel’s Atom processor, which has an 18-month head start. Yet Freescale is betting that its lower prices and promise of higher battery life will draw in buyers.

"When end users are presented with a differentiation that dramatic, they won’t be concerned with how early a processor was available in the market," says Burchers.

Photo: (Hiltch/Flickr)

According to a recent online survey conducted by a market research firm, AT&T is at least considering carrying netbooks in their stores.

Survey materials tease not only a wide variety of netbook models at AT&T, but 30-minute in-store consultation for those who may need a tutorial to get up and running. While AT&T is already in the netbook-subsidy business, the company has relied upon third parties like RadioShack to sell the hardware and service. Now it looks like AT&T is gearing up to geek out on their own accord. [Thanks tipster!]

Here at Gadget Lab we were thoroughly impressed with Micro-Star International’s latest netbook, the Wind U120. We’re delighted to see that MSI has added another color option for the netbook: A classy looking charcoal.

The Wind U120 is the successor of the popular Wind netbook. The main difference with the new model is its design, which MSI reworked to appeal to professional users. The other option is a white model with black accents.

The U120 features a 1.6GHz Atom processor, a 10.1-inch display and a six-cell battery. It ships with 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. Customers have the option to purchase a 3G modem.

The new charcoal model is already on sale on Amazon for $350. Check out Gadget Lab’s first impressions of the device.

Via Liliputing

See Also:

• Puny, Trendy Netbooks Are Growing Up to Suit Business Users …
• MSI Wind U100
• Second Generation MSI Wind Goes on Sale

Photo: Amazon

A netbook may be too weak and puny for serious computing, but it makes a pretty good jukebox.

Thanks to the massive amount of music available online, a two-pound computer can access and play nearly every song ever recorded by mankind. The trick is getting the software needed to make it convenient to tune into the cloud instead of cramming your tiny hard drive with MP3s. Here’s how to do it.

I decided to turn my piece of junk MSI Wind into a jukebox because it was useless for most other computing tasks. My Wind actually comes with a rather capacious 160GB hard drive, but this project, as you will see, is particularly suited to netbooks of rather more limited storage. And of course, all of this will work for a "normal" computer too.

Here we use a Wind Hackintosh running Mac OS X, but you can just as easily use the stock Windows XP version. In fact, in one sense this will actually work better. The important thing is a net connection.

So, you have iTunes, but only a 4GB SSD drive. That won’t hold much music. It barely even holds my podcast directory. So for this project I will use iTunes solely for podcasts and grab all the rest of our music from the internet, specifically streaming it from the ether rather than engaging in disc-filling downloads.

There are several internet "radio" stations, sites which will let you pick one artist or genre and then compile a playlist for you. Pandora is one, and apparently very good, using as it does a database compiled by real people to select tunes for you. Sadly, it is not available outside the US, and is therefore dead to me over in Spain.

Instead, we chose Last.FM, a British site that is happy to share with our colonial brethren. Last.FM uses computer wizardry to compare your tastes with those of others who listen to the same music. It then builds eerily accurate playlists. You can then stream these playlists via a web browser or better still, pipe them directly into iTunes using the iScrobbler plugin.

IScrobbler not only monitors your iTunes usage and sends the info the the Last.FM servers (thus building your listening profile), it also takes the streams from Last.FM and plays them in iTunes itself. This means you get to use the remote control and keyboard shortcuts you are used to, along with track info displays. It also means that Last.FM is the only streaming service you can use with AirTunes — Apple’s over-the-air music streaming protocol which beams tracks from iTunes over Wi-Fi to an Airport Express (itself hooked up to a stereo).

At least, its the only one that will do this natively. More on that in a moment.

The real reason for this how-to article is Spotify, a new music service which is so good it made me dedicate a whole computer to it. Spotify is being called a "celestial jukebox". It is essentially an iTunes-like piece of software with a quite ridiculous amount of music in it, all accessed via your internet connection:

In the future we aim to have all the worlds music available, however, we are currently in beta and are updating our catalogue so it’s possible that you won’t be able to find some of your favorite artists or tracks.

This is the Holy Grail of online music — every track ever made accessible all the time. Better still, Spotify is free in its ad-supported version, and an ad-free premium version costs €10 per month. I’d probably sign up for this but the ads are so unobtrusive there seems no point.

Spotify has all of the big labels signed up, plus some indies: Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music, Merlin, The Orchard and Bonnier Amigo. The catch? The free service is invite only and available in UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Sorry US! For once you get left out, although you can get the paid version at any time.

The Spotify software is simple and fast. Faster even than iTunes. The music is piped over the wire in the the open source Ogg Vorbis q5 codec, running at 160 kbps, and it is all managed by P2P, much the same as BitTorrent, to keep the mothership’s bandwidth costs down.

Next, you need to hook your netbook up to a stereo. With Windows XP, just plug a stereo cable into the mic socket. With a Wind running OS X, you’ll need to do some hacking. Better, as this is so far completely free, is to buy Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil, a piece of software (Windows and OS X) which will stream sound from any application and send it to an Airport Express. This is my setup, and it means that the netbook can be anywhere in the apartment and stream music to the big speakers over my Wi-Fi network.

The best thing about this is that you don’t need a remote control — a netbook is so tiny it is a remote control. Even if you don’t have an Airport Express hooked up to your stereo, Airfoil can stream to another computer on the network and take command of its speakers. It’s neat and costs just $25.

There are surely many other ways to get music from the web to your speakers, but the netbook is particularly convenient, especially as you can have an almost infinite library at your fingertips. Any further recommendations should, of course, go in the comments.

Product page [Spotify]
Product page [Last.FM]
Product page [Airfoil]

See Also:

• Gadget Lab Hackintosh: Now With Added Sound Output
• How To Stream Music To Your iPhone
• MobileScrobbler: Streaming Music for iPhone

Cheap, tiny netbooks are about to get a little more powerful.

Intel this week confirmed it’s shipping a new version of its low-powered Atom processor designed for netbooks.

Dubbed the Atom N280, the processor’s most notable improvement will be seen in high-definition video playback. The N280 is paired with a GN40 chipset, which includes a hardware-based HD video decoder for viewing 720P HD video.

That seemingly minor upgrade could significantly change the netbook experience by making the devices competitive with much more expensive machines on video playback. A common complaint about netbooks is choppy video playback, and the N280 should address that issue. Heck, you might even consider buying one to use as a portable video player — a device between a video iPod and a full-sized notebook. (Think airplanes or family road trips.)

With the N280, the Atom processor is also receiving a minor speed boost: 1.66GHz compared to its predecessor, the 1.6GHz Atom N270.

Interestingly, Asus’s upcoming Eee 1000HE netbook is already going to include the N280. We received a test unit of the Eee 1000HE this week, and we can tell you the Atom N280 is making a pretty significant difference. The Eee 1000HE is leaving other netbooks we’ve tested in the dust, and video is noticeably smoother. Stay tuned for a review of that netbook next week.

Intel Now Shipping Atom N280 Processor [PC World]

Photo: Asus