Hasta La Gadget!

How do you fit a full-sized keyboard into a netbook? Acer is achieving this seemingly impossible feat by simply making it bigger. But not that much bigger: The new Aspire One 751 has an 11.6-inch screen, only slightly bigger than the standard 10-inches but also not far off the magic 12” of Apple’s beloved 12” PowerBook of old.

And it’s not a bad idea. The Register, Britain’s cheeky-chappy of tech, has a video showing the sleek new machine and the larger size doesn’t seem to kill the portability. In fact, those extra inches bring a few other advantages along with the (obviously) bigger screen and keyboard.

The battery is larger, too. Acer claims five hours for the standard and nine hours for the optional six-cell. Even with the power-optimization of the latest netbooks, that’s pretty good. Remember that the gen. 1 Wind has less than two hours on a three-cell.

Another bonus is that, with the extra area, the internals can be spread thinner and the 751 has a very slim body because of it. From then on, things remain resolutely standard, with the usual three USB ports split over the two sides, a card reader, Atom processor, 160GB hard drive and a gig of RAM.

It’s an interesting move. Spiritually, this is clearly a netbook but physically it pushes the boundaries of the category while still keeping a good price. The notbook will be on sale this month in five candy colors for £380 ($570, but expect it to be less in the US).

Acer 11.6in notebook-not-netbook demo’d on camera [El Reg]

With a name like PeeWee, you might not expect to find this rebadged Intel Classmate PC very kid friendly (I’m talking Paul Ruebens PeeWee, not the kids’ sport kind). And you’d be wrong. Despite the price, which at $600 is around $100 more than the Intel, this tough little mother is perfect for the little ‘uns.

First, specs. It’s a netbook, which means a 1.6GHz Atom processor, which is coupled with a memory card reader, 60GB HD (which is, very weirdly, PATA not SATA — beware if buying upgrades) and 1GB RAM.

The differences are a water-resistant keyboard and generally toughened exterior and a rotating, flip-around screen which turns this into a tablet. And right there is the reason this works for kids — they can scrawl and draw just like they would with paper and, instead of having to put their crap up on the fridge you can simply start their lifelong lessons in computer use by claiming a “hard drive crash” or “corrupted file”.

The PeeWee also comes loaded with kid-friendly software. Unlike the usual meaning of kid-friendly, which really signifies low quality, feature-stripped junk an adult wouldn’t touch, the PeeWee actually has proper software, from Microsoft Works (although OpenOffice would be better), ArtRage 2, FBReader for e-books and, amazingly, Evernote for note-taking.

The only thing missing is Etch-a-Sketch.

$600 might be steep, but if it’s tough enough to last, it’s probably going to end up cheaper than two or three regular netbooks. Available now.

Product page [PeeWee. Thnks, Matt!]

Dell’s newly released Adamo laptop has been compared to the ultralight Apple MacBook Air and HP’s Voodoo Envy notebook. But is the Adamo’s as beautiful on the inside as the outside?

iFixit.com and TechRepublic have done a teardown of the Adamo beast. Adamo is nearly not as light as the MacBook Air, they say, but it offers more in terms of technology features.

Dell has also created a clever locking system that snaps the bottom plate of
the computer into place. That means no screws at the bottom giving the Adamo a cleaner look than the MacBook Air.

Adamo’s basic model comes with a 13.4-inch screen, a 1.2-GHz Intel
Core 2 Duo processor, 2-GB memory and 128-GB solid state drive. It also
offers two USB ports, one USB/eSATA port and a display port. And it carries a not-recession friendly price tag.  The basic version of the Adamo will cost $2,000, while
a more expensive model costs $2,700.

Other highlights from the teardown: 

• Adamo’s 11.1 V battery is rated at 40 Watt hours, better than
  MacBook Air’s 7.2 V, 37 Watt hour battery. Overall operating time for
  the Adamo is 5 hours, beating the MacBook Air by 30 minutes.
• At 489 grams, the battery represents 27% of Adamo’s weight. Compare
  that to the Macbook Air’s battery that weighs in at 287 grams or just
  21% of the Air’s total weight.

Photos: iFixit and TechRepublic

Apple’s computers are slipping in reliability compared to 2008, a report suggests.

Computer support hotline RescueCom on Tuesday issued its computer reliability report, announcing that Asus and Lenovo tied for the No. 1 spot while Apple dropped to No. 2.

To measure computer reliability, RescueCom looks at the number of consumer service calls made to its hotline (1-800-RESCUE-PC) regarding a tech manufacturer’s products while taking into account the company’s market share. The fewer the calls made about each vendor, the better — and this quarter Asus and Lenovo nabbed the top spot.

It’s worth noting, however, that this is just RescueCom’s quarterly report; the service also conducts a yearly report. Apple secured the top spot overall for 2008. We’ll just have to wait and see if Apple regains the lead over the rest of the year.

RESCUECOM Releases First of Quarterly Computer Reliability Reports [PR Newswire via Gizmodo]

Photo: Jase n tonic/Flickr

Problems with faulty Nvidia graphics chips that caused large numbers of notebook computers to fail last year may not be over yet — at least for some.

Some HP users are complaining that their laptops, which were not included in the company’s official list of affected machines, are facing problems similar to what other users experienced last year.

"When I boot up my laptop, it says there’s no driver and I can’t install one. That means my machine locks up and shuts down," says Dana Hight, a HP notebook user who runs a web development company. "It is clearly related to what happened with Nvidia chips last year." Hight has bought his laptop about a year and half ago.

But he, along with other users in one of HP’s online support forums, say the company won’t recognize his laptop model as one of the versions affected by the faulty Nvidia chips. Hight has the DV9549US model. HP did not respond to a request for comment about the complaints.

Last year many consumers saw notebooks and desktops PCs that refused to boot up, did not detect wireless networks or offer any video on the monitor. HP acknowledged problems with about 38 desktops and 14 notebook models. In October, 2008, HP issued BIOS fixes and a limited extended warranty for these machines.  Nvidia has said a problem with the packaging material for some of its chipsets led to the high failure rates. Dell and Apple also reported problems with Nvidia chips in 2008.

But Hight and other users in HP’s forums complain that their notebook models from the dv95xx series are facing similar issues.

"About two months ago I started noticing flickering and the system locking up, shutting down and rebooting," says Hight. "It started getting worse but HP told me their technicians are not aware of anything with my chipset."

Hight, who had bought extended warranty with the now bankrupt Circuit City says he has two options: to pay up to $400 to get a new motherboard, but with the same chipset from Nvidia; or buy a new machine that will cost hundreds of dollars.

A quick look through a thread on one of HP’s online support forums reveals similar complaints. HP technicians, say the users online, will not acknowledge their problems as being related to the bad Nvidia chips.

HP has not responded to Wired.com’s request for comment.

Hight says HP should step up and replace the faulty laptops instead of offering piecemeal fixes. "I would expect HP to give us a solution," says Hight. "Why should users who paid $800 to get a HP laptop have to pay now because they got a bad machine?"

Photo: (DeclanTM/Flickr)