Lifehacker has done an article showing people new to the netbook world how to maximise their usage of them. As we all know, netbooks, even those powered by the new Intel Atom Pine Trail aka N450 processors, are still under-powered machines with a small screen and a low-ish resolution display. The guide shows people how to make their netbooks “faster”, how to maximise screen space, and even how to use the netbook, assuming it is not heavy and hot after extended usage, as an e-book reader by rotating the screen. Click here for the guide.
Posts Tagged ‘netbook’
Making The Most Of Your Netbook
Sunday, January 17th, 2010
HTC To Make A Netbook?
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
CNET Asia picked up on an interesting tidbit during an interview with Peter Chou, HTC’s CEO, last week during the HTC HD2 launch in Taipei. Chou says that the netbook market is worth taking a look at, saying that HTC is ”carefully looking into that category and how it can be part of that“. I’m thinking it’s a bit late in the game to be “getting in”, unless Chou also lumps in the thin-and-lights with the netbooks in the same “netbook” category. The thin-and-lights are growing in popularity, with the low powered Celeron processors as well as the lower end Core 2 Duo processors providing a much user experience compared to the Atom-equipped netbooks.
If you recall, HTC has dipped its toes into the notebook/UMPC market before, with the HTC Shift – a revolutionary device with two processors inside – an Intel proper notebook processor, as well as a mobile processor. The Shift can run two operating systems – Windows and Windows Mobile. Sadly, it was sold at an astronomical price. Even more sadly, I was one of the idiots who bought it! But the device is highly usable with Windows 7, save for its short-ish battery life – it’s well made, solidly constructed, and thus far, reliable, performance wise – not even a need for a visit to the service centre for anything! Here’s a picture of it sitting on top of my computer table.
Windows 7 Bad For Netbook Battery Life?
Thursday, August 27th, 2009
The laptopmag website recently did some quick tests to determine whether the rumours floating around on the internet with regards to netbooks running Windows 7 having a poorer battery life compared to Windows XP were true. And sad to say, the rumours were true, unless there were some major flaws in the testing methodology employed by the website. The test was performed on a mixture of notebooks and netbooks, from Toshiba, Dell and Gateway. While the traditional notebooks didn’t show significant degradation in battery life, the Toshiba netbook suffered a 3 hour reduction in battery life on Windows 7! Granted, device drivers may not have been updated to make the netbooks work more efficiently, so the situation hopefully will improve once Windows 7 is in the market, and hardware manufacturers release optimised device drivers for these netbooks. But it is still a worrying development though. The website also tested using an MSI Wind netbook, and the result was the same – degradation in battery runtime, but not as bad as the Toshiba’s.
So, the advice was to wait and hold off on the purchase of a new netbook until after Windows 7 is released, and the manufacturer releases device drivers specifically for it.
nVidia ION At The Computex
Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
If you’ve been following the happenings at the ongoing Computex in Taiwan, you will notice that there are three major news items that a lot of people are following or commenting on:
- nVidia ION
- nVidia Tegra
- Qualcomm Snapdragon
I will try to explain what’s the big deal with these three topics, in separate posts so as to keep them “clean” and “organised”. So, let’s start with nVidia ION.
nVidia ION is the name given to nVidia’s graphics chip which is capable of much better graphics performance compared to the Intel integrated graphics solution that ships with almost all netbooks today. It is typically paired with the Intel Atom processor on small form factor PCs (nettops,all-in-ones) and netbooks. So, what the hardware manufacturers will do is to buy just the Intel Atom processor from Intel (who doesn’t like this very much, and who is reputed to be charging more if you just buy the Atom processor, compared to buying the Atom processor + Intel integrated graphics chipset!), and buy the ION graphics chip from nVidia, and produce what is called an ION based netbook.
Why would you buy an ION based netbook?
- better graphics performance which will allow you to play some games, albeit at a lower frame rate.
- better graphics performance in playing 720 pixel (“HD”) and 1080 pixel (“full HD”) high definition videos, whether on video streaming sites such as YouTube, etc. or playing HD DVD movies.
- better graphics performance to do video editing. Netbooks with the integrated Intel graphics chipset is so poor at this job to the extent that you wouldn’t even want to attempt this!
- better graphics performance to do graphics editing and manipulation, for example, using Adobe Photoshop without feeling the need to tear your hair out!
nVidia announced at the Computex that at least 21 devices from manufacturers in various product categories have signed up to use ION:
Manufacturer
|
Type
|
Product Name
|
Acer
|
Desktop
|
AspireRevo
|
AsRock
|
Desktop
|
ION 330
|
ASUS
|
Motherboard
|
C2N7A-I
|
ASUS
|
All-in-one
|
EeeTop ET2002
|
Colorful
|
Desktop
|
iHTPC
|
ECS
|
Desktop
|
7AT-3L
|
ECS
|
All-in-one
|
Morph-I
|
Flextronics
|
All-in-one
|
Cobra-2
|
Flextronics
|
Desktop
|
Dove-2
|
Funtwist
|
Desktop
|
FION 330
|
ICD
|
All-in-one
|
Kitchen PC
|
Lenovo
|
Notebook
|
IdeaPad S12
|
MSI
|
Desktop
|
Windbox D200
|
MSI
|
All-in-one
|
Windtop AE2201
|
Pegatron
|
Desktop
|
IPP7A-CP
|
Pegatron
|
All-in-one
|
IPP7A-DF2
|
Pegatron
|
Motherboard
|
IPX7A-ION
|
TCL
|
All-in-one
|
Ruiyi 1010
|
Telcast
|
Notebook
|
TL-1000N
|
Weibu
|
Notebook
|
N10A
|
Zotac
|
Motherboard
|
ION-ITX
|
So far, we only know of the Acer AspireRevo nettop which is available commercially, although I haven’t seen one in Malaysia yet. We also know about the new Lenovo S12 which is supposed to begin shipping next month. While the rest may not be known names in the IT industry, they may in fact manufacture for other “big names” in the industry, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned up under another name!
New iPhone Likely (Very Soon); Mac Tablet/MediaPad Later?
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
The Mactalk website of Australia reports that they have information that the current iPhone 3G 16Gb model has reached its end of life on the Vodafone network. This is based on a notification Vodafone received from the supplier of the iPhone, and the supplier states that the stocks of the 16Gb model will run out soon. Strangely however, the 8Gb version will still be available, which has led to speculation that there will be two models going forward – the cheapest one with 8Gb, and a “premium” model of 32Gb capacity. And here’s a “placeholder” screen capture for the 32Gb iPhone before T-Mobile took down the page at T-Mobile Austria’s website.
Meanwhile, another website – appadvice.com reported the specifications for the new rumoured iPhone to be released this year. It includes:
- 32GB and 16GB to replace current capacities
- US$ 199 and US$ 299 price-points to be maintained
- 3.2 Megapixel camera
- Video recording & editing capabilities
- Ability to send a picture & video via MMS
- Discontinuation of the metal band surrounding the edge of the device
- OLED screen
- 1.5X The battery life
- Double the RAM and processing power
- Built-in FM transmitter
- Apple logo on the back to light up
- Rubber-tread backing
- Sleeker design
- Built-in compass
- Revolutionary combination of the camera, GPS, compass, and Google maps to identify photo and inform about photo locations.
- Turn by turn directions
- July 17th, 2009 release date
While Apple has neither confirmed nor denied that a new iPhone is imminent, I think that they have no choice, given what’s happening in the marketplace:
- Palm is releasing a new handset, the Pre, on 6th of June.
- a handful of new Android devices are going to be released soon.
- Nokia and Samsung are releasing their next generation Symbian based handsets.
- HTC, as usual, is releasing its own plethora of premium devices running Windows Mobile.
Meanwhile, rumours of a Mac tablet, Mac netbook or Mac media pad continues unabated. The general consensus seems to be that we will not see a Mac tablet or whatever it’s going to be called before 2010. Screen size is reportedly 10 inches, the processor is likely not to be an Intel Atom but an ARM11, the same processor type that powers the iPhone, and it will likely run a derivative of the iPhone operating system. Even a respected website like techcrunch is saying that the Mac tablet is likely to be real.
