The Inquirer

Behemoth laptops bound into view

Paul Taylor — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:44:36 GMT

Paul Taylor the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 22:15:00

Hardware Rounds Asus M70s, Acer Aspire 8920G

ASUS RECENTLY ANNOUNCED a laptop with a gargantuan 1TB storage capacity, the M70S. Naturally these things come in DTR format, and storage is split between 2x500MB drives. They're not supposed to be carried around, nor are they in the least bit cheap. Notebook Review tested it to exhaustion and came out with a warm and fuzzy feeling from the experience. It's got just under the "best-of-everything" you can stick under the hood of a laptop - except maybe SLI graphics, as this comes with a HD 3650 1GB part. The laptop also comes with 4GB of RAM *AND* Windows Vista 32-bit....

Sharp boosts methanol fuel cell power density

Sylvie Barak — Fri, 16 May 2008 15:48:10 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 16:34:00

Cell it to me

SHARP HAS unveiled a high density, 0.3Wcc direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC), which boasts the highest level of power density yet achieved. The diminutive cell volume, whose tiny frame measures 50 x 30 mm, has a longer lifespan than commonly used lithium ion batteries and is well matched for notebooks, mobile equipment and even electronic dictionaries. Sharp showed off the device at the 15th Fuel Cell Symposium in Tokyo. At 0.3Wcc the cell's power density is about seven times more than Sharp's previous attempt. Fuel cells use energy produced by the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, and are claimed or have a small impact on the environment....

Atom based eee pc tips up

Sylvie Barak — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:58:26 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 14:34:00

Costs its weight in gold

JUNE THIRD IS THE launch date of the Asus's new Atom-based Eee PC 901, which will also have Bluetooth for the first time. The company will apparently be selling the new 8.9 inch model for slightly less than $650, which is fairly expensive considering its new, 10-inch rival, MSI's Wind, sells for $250 cheaper. Even worse news for Asus is that MSI Wind has purportedly said that it will be releasing its new Atom-based offering running Linux on the exact same day. But Asus says that its new model will have features that make it stand out from its competitors, including the new Bluetooth module and sticking some metal bits to the keyboard and touchpad....

OLPC goes with XP - official

Andrew Thomas — Fri, 16 May 2008 12:41:01 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Friday 16 May 2008. 13:32:00

Giving up sugar

AFTER FALLING OUT BIG TIME with Intel a few months ago, the One Laptop Per Child project has signed up with Microsoft to make Windows XP available on the OLPC. The move will only bump up the price of the low-cost device by $3, says Microsoft. The deal is a shot on the arm for the low-cost laptop after its credibility plummeted following the Intel spat and the departure of several key employees including company president Walter Bender. Bender had maintained that Linux was a better choice for the project as XP was rapidly-approaching its end of life. Now that educational software designed to run on Windows can be used on the machine, it will undoubtedly make it more useful and acceptable to schools....

DIY notebooks make a return thanks to OCZ

Wily Ferret — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:23:09 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 09:12:00

Mod your own portable gaming rig

OCZ TECHNOLOGY has always been big on giving hardware geek enthusiasts exactly what they want - high-spec parts that look fairly bling at a decent price. Although known more for memory, since its listing on the Alternative Investment Market in London a couple of years back, it has been working its bottie off to expand its market presence. Hence this latest release - a DIY notebook for gamers looking to customise their own gaming-on-the-go experience. OCZ is basically selling a bare bones ODM machine from Taiwan along with a complement of portable parts to power it up. Users can switch out processors, MXM graphics modules, memory, optical drives, hard drives etc thanks to the fact that most standard factory designs have those parts user-accessible these days....

Intel updates gaming notebook chips

Charlie Demerjian — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:23:09 GMT

Charlie Demerjian the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 09:19:00

Quads at 35W and Montevina on June 22

INTEL IS GOING to launch a raft of 35W 'desktop' parts on June 22 of this year, but no one thinks they are going to go into many desktops. What you are seeing is the new line of XTReeM(1) gaming laptops. The new parts are going to replace the X9000, X7900, and a lot of T series parts from the 7xxx to 9xxx range. New in June are the X9100@3.06GHz, T9600@2.80, P9500@2.53, T9400 also @2.53, P8600@2.40 and the lowly P8400@2.26. All but the last two are 6M caches, those have 3M, but all are on a 1066FSB. The costs on them are $851, $530, $348, $316, $241, and $209 respectively if you order enough to use as building materials....

MSI follows Asus with desk-based Wind

Wily Ferret — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:52:06 GMT

Wily Ferret the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 08:47:00

There's a joke in there somewhere

NOT CONTENT WITH aping Asus' Eee PC with its latest portable - dubbed the 'Wind' - MSI is also catching up with its Taiwanese rival in the mini-desktop stakes, too. We previously showed you the Asus Eee Box, a desktop small form factor version of the Eee hardware due to be unveiled at Computex. MSI, it turns out, also has a desktop version of the Wind in the offing. No version on what it will be called yet, but expect something inspired if 'Wind' is anything to go by. The box looks fairly bland, lacking the pizazz of the Eee Box, but will pack an Intel Atom chip and 945 chipset as is becoming customary - along with 1GB RAM, a 3.5" HDD and a DVD combo drive....

Updated Macbook Pro gets touchy feely

Stewart Meagher — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:41:40 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 14:15:00

Multitouch and speed bump sneak in

APPLE HAS QUIETLY updated its Macbook Pro laptop range while no-one was looking. There wasn't even a press release. The new versions which come in five fruity flavours ranging from a 15 incher with a 2.4Ghz Intel dual core Penryn processor, up to a 17-incher with 2.6GHz under the bonnet. All come with the usual Apple bells, whistles, software and gorgeousness, but the most interesting new addition comes in the form of Multitouch, previously only seen on the bank-balance-battering Macbook Air. This allows the trackpad to be used with multi-finger gestures letting you pinch, stretch, scroll and rotate onscreen assets in a new and strangely satisfying way....

'Back to My Mac' snaps a thief

Egan Orion — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:32:55 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Monday 12 May 2008. 11:54:00

Alert owner gets lucky

TWO ALLEGED BURGLARS got nabbed in a New York City suburb last week after a laptop owner used Apple's "Back to My Mac" feature to snap a photo of one of them online. Two weeks ago, thieves hit an apartment in White Plains, New York and made off with flat-screen TVs, Ipods, DVDs, computer games, a box of liquor, a set of car rims... and two laptops. Then one of the light-fingered geniuses made the mistake of getting online with Kait Duplaga's purloined Mac. A friend sent her a text message congratulating her on recovering her laptop. When she said, "I don't know what you're talking about," her friend replied, "Well, you popped up as being online." Ms....

Rock Group gets the administrators in

Paul Hales — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:50:15 GMT

Paul Hales the Inquirer, Thursday 8 May 2008. 16:38:00

Laptop shifter shuts up shop

UK LAPTOP specialist Rock Group Plc has gone tits up. The remains of the firm appointed Deloitte & Touche LLP as administrators today. The has-beencounters said they would work with the management of Rock to "attempt to secure a sale of the business as a going concern". According to a notice pinned to the door of the firm's web site, Rock ran into cash flow difficulties faced "as a result of stock misappropriation by a former employee". Suppliers had subsequently reduced credit limits, and in the end Rock had to throw in the towel. The role of entertainment firm Rok in whole the Rocky affair is a bit obscure....

Asustek washes hands of exploding non-certified batteries

Sylvie Barak — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:55:48 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 7 May 2008. 19:37:00

Boom and bust

MAKER OF THE Eee PC, Asustek Computer, has warned customers that shoving third party batteries into its tiny laptops is not a great idea, and that the company's warranty will not cover any damage caused by doing so. Asustek's warning that it will not take responsibility for hardware damage caused by non-certified batteries, comes after as of yet unconfirmed rumours, in China, that a third party battery exploded. Of late, second and third-tier battery manufacturers have been ramping up production of copycat batteries that can be used inside the Eee, with some even offering batteries with 10,400mAh, or five and a half hours of battery life....

Battery shortage to last months

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:24:13 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 5 May 2008. 19:08:00

Keeps on going

ACCORDING TO A SENIOR EXECUTIVE at the notebook battery maker, Simplo Technology, the shortages in lithium-ion batteries, which are currently badly affecting the sales of laptop computers, should have passed by Q3 of 2008. Last month a destructive fire at LG Chem in South Korea sent stocks of the batteries up in smoke, ironically just as demand for notebooks and portable computers heated up. Maker of the Eee PC, Asustek Computer, has already admitted that the scarcity of batteries has affected its shipping potential, especially painful in a year where the company could have easily exceeded its 5 million unit shipment target....

Montevina with Vista could put memory makers back in the black

Nebojsa Novakovic — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:04:12 GMT

Nebojsa Novakovic the Inquirer, Thursday 1 May 2008. 10:47:00

Vast amounts of mobile DDR3 needed

IN ABOUT A MONTH, when Intel's "Montevina" chipset platform for FSB-1066 Core 2 mobile Penryns appears, it will bring along quite a few new things like usable 3-D graphics, full HD video, Wimax option and so on. One important change, to go along with faster FSB, is bringing DDR3 memory to notebooks. Micron, Samsung and the rest are already churning out DDR3-1066 SO-DIMMs at 1 and 2GB capacities, and the 4GB ones are about to sample. In fact, you might see some custom memory vendors doing faster SO-DIMM modules with heat spreaders for the discerning crowd: DDR3-1066 CL5 doesn't sound bad....

Details of 31,000 customers lurk on Bank of Ireland stolen laptops

Ambrose McNevin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:45:04 GMT

Ambrose McNevin the Inquirer, Tuesday 29 April 2008. 11:44:00

The bank that can't count

IT SEEMS it wasn't just 10,000 life insurance customer policy details that went missing when the Bank of Ireland kept getting its laptops nicked. No, it was details of 31,500 customers. Last week, the bank admitted that missiing laptops contained the details of 10,000 customers. But now it has been forced to say that a breakdown in procedure had meant that senior management hadn't been told all the details of the stolen laptops. There were four of them. And they contained 31,500 policies, policy applications and a "small number" of mortgage customers. But now the details were known and we're seeing the Bank of Ireland management in action in a crisis....

Laptop giant boosts shipping targets

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:42:07 GMT

Stewart Meagher the Inquirer, Tuesday 29 April 2008. 11:22:00

Quanta sees demand at all-time high

THE WORLD'S BIGGEST manufacturer of laptops, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer, has raised its shipping targets for this year by a whopping 25 per cent. The company - which makes laptops for just about every box-badger you'd care to mention including HP and Dell - shipped 32 million units last year. Projections for this year were originally set at 36 million units, but a recent revision in the company's outlook raises the ante to 40 million. The most surprising aspect of the new numbers is that they don't include any provision for what is expected to be the biggest growth sector in the laptop market, the ultra low-cost thigh-tops being announced in ever-increasing flavours by world+wife....

Dell goes to Carrefour in Italy

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:10:38 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 28 April 2008. 15:15:00

Indirectly

MEGA SUPERMARKET chain Carrefour has announced that as of April 24th, it will be selling a new product line of Dell brand computers. Bravo, Bravo, the crowds cried out in collective consumer frenzy. The mighty direct-selling computer maker has now come to Italy to eat hunble pie, it seems. Nine Carrefour mega stores have begun selling Dell notebooks including the Inspiron 1720 and the Xps 1330 in various configurations. The Inspiron 1720 is apparently being flogged by the mega chain for 899 euros, whilst the Xps 1330 is going for 990 euros, or a hundred less for a lower performance model with a 120GB hard disk and an Intel GMA x3100 graphics chip....

Get touchy feely with the new Eee PC

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:46 GMT

Stewart Meagher , Wednesday 26 March 2008. 10:39:00

Second-gen dinky fingered

ASUS SALES VP Kevin Lin has told Digitimes that the next iteration of the Eee PC will sport an 8.9-inch touchscreen panel and may have GPS capabilities built in (which could come in handy if you lose it down the back of the sofa). The little lappy is expected to retail at around the $500 mark, whilst its desktop-dwelling big brother, the E-DT, will hit the shelves simultaneously this May or June priced at a measly $199. RAM on the Eee will be bumped to 1GB and the SSD will be upgraded by 40 to 50 per cent. µ

Intel releases cut price PCs

Nick Farrell — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:46 GMT

Nick Farrell , Thursday 3 April 2008. 07:25:00

OLPC rival hits the shops

CHIPZILLA has announced the release of a new range of computers designed to be peddled in the third world and to kids who need a cheaper machine. The Classmate laptops hit the shops in April and will set you back $300 and $500. For the first time Intel says that it will be targeting the US market and not just trying to flog it to third world countries. They are part of something that Chipzilla marketing clones have dubbed 'netbooks' which they say are not full laptops, but are closer to mobile devices. The range will include 7-inch and 9-inch screens, a 30 gigabyte hard disk drive and an integrated Web camera....

Laptop lid cooling returns

Charlie Demerjian — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:46 GMT

Charlie Demerjian , Saturday 5 April 2008. 11:37:00

IDF Spring 2008 Want an Air II preview?

SEVERAL IDFS AGO, COMPAL was showing off lid-cooled notebooks. Intel has taken it a step forward and shown off a lid cooling mechanism with a vapour chamber cooler on the back of the screen. It doesn't look like much, just an anodised aluminum case lid, and that is the point, you don't notice anything. The hinges are the tricky part, they transfer heat from the computer to the back of the screen. From there it is just a big thin vapor chamber, pretty standard fare for cooling. Two lid cooled laptops If it is as ready as it was portrayed at the show, expect it to show up in the MacBook Air sooner rather than later, and expect Apple to claim all the credit....

Asus Eee gets Atomized

Charlie Demerjian — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:46 GMT

Charlie Demerjian , Sunday 6 April 2008. 14:56:00

IDF Spring 2008 Same old all new crotchtop

WHAT IS THE next step for the Eee? Easy, Atomize it. As any fool can see, the smash hit Eee crotchtop with an Atom CPU looks, well, exactly the same as the older model. Same shell, new guts It should have a lot better battery life, a bit more CPU power, and cost more. The end result, a much more attractive version of an already attractive product. µ

HP launches school mini

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:45 GMT

Stewart Meagher , Tuesday 8 April 2008. 11:57:00

Via-powered sub $500 notebook coming to a desk near you soon

HP ANNOUNCED TODAY that its much-rumoured sub-notebook laptop will soon be available for purchase. Firmly aimed at the US education market, the full-function, mini notebook starts at under $500 for a Linux-equipped version. Rumours that a version with faster processors capable of running Vista would cost up to $1,200 could not be confirmed at time of writing. Weighing in at 1.13 kilos, the HP Mini includes a suite of wireless, multimedia and security capabilities, a movement sensor to prevent hard drive damage when junior throws his backpack in a huff and a specially-toughened keyboard. The HP2133 also features an 8.9-inch WXGA display, Bluetooth and a built in Webcam as part of the basic spec....

Now Dell wants to do a low-cost laptop

Paul Hales — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:45 GMT

Paul Hales , Thursday 10 April 2008. 13:15:00

Chinese whisper

NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE'S wind-up laptop certainly seems to have wound up an entire industry. While for years the focus has been on an upgrade cycle that puts more power on your desk or between your sweaty knees, the One Laptop Per Child initiative suddenly sent the hype skidding back up its own rear. Negroponte's idea was focused on enabling the unwired millions to join the wired world. The trouble for the established manufacturing giants turned out to be that first-world folk realised that they too were victims of the hype. Why spend a forune on some super-duper new fangled lump of machinery that'll pump out out billions of pixels per millisecond at a screen as wide as John Prescott's trousers when all I really want to do is noodle about on Ebay or Facebook and send a few emails, the well-heeled masses began to ask themselves....

First Centrino Atom portable coming to Japan in June

Sylvie Barak — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:45 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Monday 14 April 2008. 21:28:00

The catch? It's expensive and bulky

SHARP WILL BE FIRST off the mark to offer a mobile computer based on Intel's Centrino Atom chip. Its D4 is to be released and distributed by Japanese mobile operator Willcom, as early as June. The device, however, sadly doesn't quite live up to expectations of small sizes or 'small' prices according to MacWorld. Willcom, Japan's fourth largest mobile service operator, will purportedly sell the D4 for ¥39,800 (US$395) on a two-year service plan that comes to ¥2,100 ($20) a month. This means that the overall cost of the device is a rather expensive ¥90,200 ($893). When Intel had previously talked about their upcoming Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), the firm had tentatively priced them at only about $500....

MSI passes Wind

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:45 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk , Friday 18 April 2008. 14:16:00

"Low-cost" laptop to sport XP to drive up the price

MSI HAS released some more details about its upcoming low-cost laptop, the Wind. The one kilogramme laptop will run Microsoft's Windows XP on an 8.9-inch or 10-inch wide LCD display on a 1024x 600 resolution. The notebook will ship with a proper 80Gb 2.5-inch hard drive, which is unusual in this class of machine The notebook is expected to be available in Europe June at between €299 and €699 ($471 - $1100) according to Chinese sauces. According to the Taiwanese firm, "The internet has become the very bridge that connects the world. It is also the most effective way of receiving the latest of necessary knowledge and methods....

MSI passes Wind

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:44:17 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk the Inquirer, Friday 18 April 2008. 14:16:00

"Low-cost" laptop to sport XP to drive up the price

MSI HAS released some more details about its upcoming low-cost laptop, the Wind. The one kilogramme laptop will run Microsoft's Windows XP on an 8.9-inch or 10-inch wide LCD display on a 1024x 600 resolution. The notebook will ship with a proper 80Gb 2.5-inch hard drive, which is unusual in this class of machine The notebook is exected to be available in June at bewteen €299 and €699 ($471 - $1100) according to Chinese sauces. According to the Taiwanese firm, "The internet has become the very bridge that connects the world. It is also the most effective way of receiving the latest of necessary knowledge and methods....