Author: Tarandeep Kaur

According to Digitimes, Compal has received order from Dell to make ultra-thin notebooks using Intel’s CULV CPUs. Compal is already making ultra thin notebooks for the Toshiba and Lenovo.

The notebooks are expected to ship in the month of August.

Dell has shaked hands with the China Mobile to let the users enjoy 3G services on the go. Not only China Mobile, Dell has teamed up with other global telecom providers including Vodafone in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, AT&T in the US, M1 and Starhub in Singapore, and Maxis in Malaysia.

It will retailed at $575 in China.

[via digitimes]

The Microsoft has confirmed that those who buy a PC with Windows 7 installed will be allowed to downgrade to Windows Vista or Windows XP. This downgrade offer is available to both businesses that buy bulk licenses as-well-as to the consumers that get the Windows 7 OS on a laptop/PC.

Yesterday, Windows XP entered into extended support only period. Luckily, the final release of Windows 7 is going to be somewhere in January, 2010. Before that, Microsoft will also release RC of Windows 7, which is more likely to be the final product.

This is a clever move by Microsoft and will convince more buyers to make the change to the new OS as the consumers as-well-as companies can always roll back to tried and tested Windows XP if they face any sort of problem with the Windows 7 OS. I personally have been immensely impressed by the Windows 7 performance on my EEE 1002HA as-well-as my 1000H. Vista is slow as snail on my EEE 1000H even with the 2GB RAM and all the performance tweaks. That is why I am dual booting between Windows 7 and EEEbuntu.

[via BBC]

Aware electronics is a Taiwanese based company, is showcasing its 7-inch netbook that has a detachable screen at the 2009 Electronics and Components China Sourcing Fair organized by Global Sources. The netbook is very cheap and retails at mere $150. The specifications are not impressive at all. It comes with just 512MB RAM and 8GB SSD for storage. The user has the choice to choose between either Windows OS or Linux OS.

Aware has plans to push their netbook in the emerging markets. That said, they have already made the Aware availbale in developed nations of Europe.

Netbook with detachable keyboard clears one thing for sure that the netboook is equipped with a touchscreen. I wonder why such design has not been so far used in the netbook industry. I hope it does not come with the 3-cell battery like the older A-VIEW netbooks.

The Fair is taking place in Hong Kong and ends today (April 15, 2009).

[Visit Aware.com] (the product is yet to appear on the website)

[via digitimes]

Contrary to the original concept of netbooks, which describe them as small and easy to carry around devices, the companies are now coming out with bigger and bigger netbooks everyday. We have already observed a slew of companies already coming out with 12-inch netbooks, which cost $600+.

Meet the HP DV2, a 12-inch sub notebook, which is almost the size of a typical 12-inch netbook. It just cost few dollars more and there are less tradeoffs in terms of speed and power as compared to full fledge notebook. The HP DV2 is often described as the cross between netbooks and notebooks. It has the features of notebook but comes at a price close to the netbook range. Its resolution is not netbook-ish (1280 x 800) and is equipped with an AMD processor instead of Atom processor, which is no match against the  AMD.

It even comes with a built-in BLU ray disk. I’m yet to hear any netbook manufacture to come out with a BLU ray drive.

However, the DV2 suffers from poor battery life, even with the extended battery (3 hours). This is something modern netbooks excel in.

[HP DV2 webpage]

[via TGdaily]

ASUS has made the bigger brother of sleek and stylish EEE S101 now official. Oddly enough, it is not carrying the EEE brand. May be it is due to the heavy price tag that it will carry.

Here are its specs:

• 12.1-inch display
• 1280 x 800 resolution
• Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz processor
• 1GB RAM
• 250GB HDD
• 1.3MP webcam
• 3 USB ports
• 1.45kg
• 4-cell battery li-poly (3600mAh)

Intel Atom Z520 processor for such a premium laptop/netbook? Why ASUS, why?

Also, for the first time, ASUS is giving the user the option to opt for the Windows Vista (basic version). Do not get scared, XP version is still available.

READ ASUS EEE S101 review

[ASUS S121 webpage]

After the great success of EEEbuntu and other custom linux distros for netbooks, KDE has announced that they will also produce a distro for netbooks. Netbooks, no doubt are one of the hottest selling tech-products in the market. However, KDE is not going to make a custom distro just by re-skinning the interface of the original distro.

We aren’t making an interface for a “smaller laptop” or a “larger handheld”; the interface is for a netbook, which has a unique set of use cases and should have a unique, if familiar, user interface. To our knowledge, nobody is really doing this yet. We feel that just as Apple made popular an interface style on handhelds that is for handhelds with their iPhone/iPod touch interface, netbooks deserve a similar treatment.

It is definitely nice to see a company like KDE understanding the strengths and limitations of a netbook. I personally cannot wait to try the special KDE version for netbooks. Clearly, such efforts would make linux even more popular as compared to virus-prone Windows.

[via osattack]

With other phone companies like HTC showing immense interest in the netbook market, how can the market leader in mobile phones (Nokia) be so easily forgotten by us? A Taiwanese manufacture is in talks with Nokia has complete with a date to seal the deal.

There is no information on what OS it would run or how it would look like. I just do not want to see a symbian based netbook. Anything else will do.

[via ubergizmo]

I personally feel the old ones looked better. The new ones look over-worked. The old ones looked simple and more professional.

[via blogeee(french)]