Tech News and Reviews
Laptops
Shuttle laptops hands-on
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Shuttle’s press announcement of its new mobile platform was accompanied by a booth’s worth of demonstration units and we went over for a quick peek. What we saw was a selection of rather conventional looking machines — certainly the new internal layout is not going to affect the way machines will look on the outside. There was an Atom N450 netbook in among the chunkier devices, which — though they sported Shuttle branding and model names — seem to be just sample machines to entice OEMs into picking up the Shuttle design. This was demonstrated best by the ridiculously creaky keyboard on one of the laptops and its hapless monitor frame. Closing and opening the lid led to the display casing splitting open (see here), which was as damaging to our love of Shuttle as it was to the unfortunate plastic.
ASUS / Pegatron Neo with Tegra 2 hands-on
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ASUS may be in the process of spinning off the Pegatron brand, but for now it’s still the same company behind this here slick white smartbook. Running the inevitable Android OS on a 10-inch display, but offering the never-boring Tegra 2 combo of 1080p playback and up to a “full day” of WiFi-enabled battery juice, the prototype machine was being shown off to give us a hint of what’s to come. We’re told the Neo is definitely coming later in the year, though the particulars of the price tag and distributor badge are not yet revealed. For our money, this was a spectacularly thin and light pseudo-laptop — it’s hard to overstate just how deprived of weight this thing is. Opening it up shows an appealing layout and keyboard, which were rather spoiled by a number of creaky and unstable parts. We found deep flex in the keyboard panel and around the hinges, but our optimistic souls are willing to put those things down to it being a demo unit. If this featherweight design makes it to market without sacrificing any of the good bits while getting rid of the bad ones, we’d recommend it in a hot and sweaty second.
Freescale smartbook prototype is a dockable tablet, we go hands-on
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Oh look, another tablet! Except this time it’s in the guise of a “smartbook,” thanks to the keyboard it docks into. This is Freescale’s reference design for its new i.MX515 processor, and it’s decently responsive for running “full” Linux. Unfortunately, the Milos version of Linux onboard isn’t quite a finger friendly distro (despite the resistive screen’s relative sensitivity), so we’ll either have to get a stylus or just wallow in our frustration. The build quality of the unit isn’t exactly stellar, and neither is the keyboard, but we’re sure there will be plenty of tweaks before a manufacturer bites and brings this to market, and the $200 proposed pricetag is always hard to complain about. Check out a video after the break.
HP dv4i leaks out: it’s a $799 dv4 with a Core i5
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Not sure why HP didn’t announce this Core i5-powered dv4i with the rest of its CES laptops, but hey — we didn’t get an official announce of that slate last night either, so maybe HP just hates interesting things. Anyway, it’s a dv4 with a Core i5, 2GB of DD3 RAM, ATI Mobility 4550 graphics powering a 1280×800 14-inch display, and an optional Blu-ray drive for $799, so yeah, we’d really want one if it didn’t have the same terrible chrome trackpad as the rest of the dv line. Swing and a miss.
LG X300 hands-on: thin, light, and handsome
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Impressively thin and light, and that’s really all you need to know about LG’s X300. The touchpad and chiclet keyboards are comfortable, but what’s really gonna seal the deal is the as-of-yet unknown price tag. Direct your eyeballs this way, why don’t ya?
Sony bumps out Vaio Z, F, W and Y series laptops
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Sony‘s just announced a ton of new laptops. And by a ton, we mean a ton. First up, the 13.1-inch Vaio Z high res backlit screen and weighs in at just around three pounds. Boasting switchable graphics, this one should get more battery life for your money, and it also packs an HDMI output, optional built-in Verizon Wireless 3G, WiFi, and Bluetooth. All Vaio Z models are sold with SSDs — up to 512GB. Moving on to the Vaio W (the most interesting of the lot for sure, in out opinions), this laptop’s cashing in on the eco-friendly game by being… eco-friendly. The Vaio W Eco Edition 212AX is a 10.1-incher with a backlit widescreeen display and a 250GB hard drive. It’s made from a reprocessed plastic chassis, and environmentally friendly, reusable packaging, so you can feel great when you drop $480 on this sucker. Finally, the Y series netbook is ultra-thin with a 13.3-inch LED backlit widescreen display, an optional Intel Core 2 Duo, ultra low voltage processor, and up to 8GB of RAM. This bad boy can be yours for a starting price of about $800. All of these are available for pre-order now at Sony Style.
Fujitsu LifeBook UH900 hands-on
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We just got a short and sweet look at the UH900 and, lo and behold, it’s pretty much what you expected: The keyboard size seemed sufficient for short bursts of creativity (if not composing your entire epic pome or tome), but the display seemed to be too little payoff for the bulk of the thing. Multitouch is a blessing, but we’ll have to see how well it performs in the real world (and we imagine we will find out, soon enough). But that’s enough blather — get a closer look in the gallery below.
Acer rolls out new budget-focused Core i3 and Core i5 Aspire laptops
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Those Intel Core i3 and Core i5 mobile processors we’ve been hearing about for quite awhile now are finally finding a home, and one of their first stops is Acer’s Aspire lineup. Notoriously known as solid performing and affordable rigs, both the new 15.6-inch Aspire AS5740 and 17-inch Aspire AS7740 will start at under $800. Not too shabby considering the $750 AS7740 configuration includes a 2.14GHz Intel Core i3-330M CPU, 4GB of RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium and a Blu-ray drive. While the $750 AS5740 doesn’t have Blu-ray, its got a 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-430M processor, 4GB of RAM, and discrete ATI graphics. Acer will offer lots of variations on the specs, but at the end of the day these guys are talking performance and a price we can get behind.
HP Mini Android smartbook hands-on
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Okay, so it isn’t the HP Slate, but this Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered, Android-running Mini is definitely a departure from all the netbooks they’ve been putting out lately. At this point, this is just a concept and the white plastic chassis is far from pretty or final, and frankly it just looks like a last generation HP Mini. The 10-inch resistive touch display was responsive to finger taps from what we could see in our brief fondling. Oh and the Android OS we know and love was, you know, running. It all looks interesting, but for now we were way more impressed with Lenovo’s Skylight.
Samsung’s 14-inch transparent OLED laptop
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If you thought the XPERIA Pureness was wild with its meager 1.8-inch transparent screen, wait’ll you get a hold of Samsung Mobile Display’s prototype 14-inch notebook — complete with what’s being touted as the world’s first and largest transparent OLED prototype. When the thing is off, the panel is up to 40 percent transparent (as opposed to the industry average of below twenty-five percent). Not much more to say about it (we’ll let you know as soon as our friends from Korea tell us more), but there is plenty to see: so get a load of the video after the break.