Hasta La Gadget!

You’d think after running into ASUS’s next generation Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE over five months ago at CeBIT, our excitement may have waned for the stylish netbooks. Oh, but it’s actually the opposite, and when the brand new netbooks arrived last week, we grabbed the X-Acto knife (safely, of course) and eagerly unboxed them to see if the aluminum clad little laptops were as svelte as we’d remembered them. Sure, the $350 1018P and 1015PE have standard netbook internals (an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 Starter), but without a doubt they’re some of the best quality netbooks ASUS has made in quite a while. Hit that read more link for an in-depth look at these two, and to see if they’re all we had hoped for and more.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE review

ASUS Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you are willing to take a screwdriver to your computer, Pixel Qi’s low-power displays that can switch between color LCD and black-and-white screens could be in your netbook.

The 10.1-inch displays available through makershed.com look like standard LCD screens inside the room. But take them outside and they turn into low-power e-paper like display.

Pixel Qi first showed the screens in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The display called 3Qi operates in three modes: a full-color LCD transmissive mode; a low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a transflective mode that makes the LCD display visible in sunlight.

Pixel Qi has started selling the displays directly to consumers though the company is also working with with PC manufacturers.

For now, Pixel Qi says it can guarantee the compatibility of the displays, which cost $275 each, with only two models of netbooks–the Samsung N130 and Lenovo S10. But the screen  works in most other models, says the company.

Swapping out existing netbooks screens for those from Pixel Qi is a simple DIY tweak, says Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen.

“Changing the screen of your netbook is easy, the process takes about 5-10 minutes using a small screwdriver. It’s simple,” she wrote on her blog.

Users have to remove the front plastic bezel of the existing display in their netbook, unlatch the screen, plug Pixel Qi’s display in its place and snap on the screws.

But if you like to see what the process really is like, check out this video from Make magazine.  The 10-minute long video shows how to remove the display off an Acer Aspire One netbook.

Seems like this will be a breeze to do at home and the results should be worth it. Pixel Qi screens consume 80 percent less power in the reflective e-paper-like mode, says Jepsen.

See Also:

• Up Close and Personal With the Pixel Qi Display
• Pixel Qi Offers DIY Swap-In Screens for Notebooks
• Pixel Qi Promises Cheap, Readable, Low-Power Displays

Photo: Pixel Qi screen/Priya Ganapati

[via Ubergizmo via Liliputing]

ASUS’s newest netbooks may just be hitting the US market, but Digitimes is reporting that both Acer and ASUS are currently in somewhat of a holding pattern in regards to their new mini-laptops. The report says that both companies are holding off on releasing new netbooks until current inventory is depleted, and demand has built up for new models. Though the reasoning is hazy, it does seem this has something to do with holding off until Intel releases its dual core Atom N550 CPU during the third quarter as the price delta between it and the weaker N455 / N475 processors isn’t much. That would actually make a lot of sense considering most — including us — would certainly opt for faster netbooks with the dual-core action over the same old single core Atoms we’ve grown tired of. Either way, this would mark somewhat of a new strategy for the companies, which have, in the past, often added new models so quickly that choosing between them could be difficult. All we can say is, we shall see.

New Acer and ASUS netbooks not coming until the middle of August, says Digitimes report originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba and Intel have announced that they’re partnering up to deliver the latter’s convertible Classmate PC to Japanese youths — just in time for the new school year. Sporting a 1.66GHz Atom N450 and an overhauled design, this latest iteration of the educational use netbook will start filtering through Nipponese school corridors this August. It packs 160GB of storage room and 2GB of RAM under a nice 1,366 x 768 10.1-inch touchscreen. The latter flips around to facilitate pen input with an included stylus, while the whole package is protected by a well rubberized and ruggedized case. Now if only it had some multitouch and one of those crazy 15-hour batteries, we might have considered going back to school and using it to finish our floristry studies. Full PR after the break.

Continue reading Intel Classmate PC becomes Toshiba CM1 in Japan

Intel Classmate PC becomes Toshiba CM1 in Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looking for a netbook with a little more oomph, or perhaps a thin-and-light laptop that doesn’t break the bank? We’re not quite sure which category the Acer Aspire 1551-5448 falls under, but we reckon it’s liable to satisfy both camps with an 11.6-inch LED-backlit display and a 1.5GHz AMD Turion II Neo K625 CPU. Like the single-threaded Aspire 521 and 721 cousins we’ll be reviewing later this week, this dual-core machine sports a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4225 GPU for stutter-free 1080p playback, and extra memory to boot. Here, Acer crammed 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, 802.11n WiFi, HDMI-out and a six-cell, five-hour battery into a package weighing just over three pounds. If you’ve got $550 to drop, there’s an Aspire 1551 with your name on it, available now practically wherever laptops are sold.

Acer Aspire 1551 hits retailers with 1.5GHz dual-core Turion II CPU originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Jun 2010 02:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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