Tech News and Reviews
Laptops
Litl Easel ‘web computer’ is cute as a baby-blue button
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Sorry Litl, but the FCC just spoiled your surprise party. Described as “a web computer” running Litl OS (sorry Microsoft), the 3.38-pound Litl Easel (built by FIC) packs a 1.86GHz Atom Z540 processor beneath that 12.1-inch 1280×800 pixel display, a meager 2GB of storage, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 802.11b/g WiFi, and webcam all powered by a 2600MAh battery. There’s also HDMI, a single USB jack, and an IR receiver for a Litl remote. A dedicated baby-blue “Litl” key on the keyboard would appear to act like a home key that takes you back to the “Card View” home page. Based on the description from the manual, the Litl OS will present information in stacks of cards: blue cards are “permanent” cards for the card catalog, family and friends, and settings; white cards are web cards displayed in a Mozilla browser; and black “channel” cards (known as widgets everywhere else) feature a Litl alarm clock, New York Times headline ticker, and weather channel. And if the cutsie-wutsie factor of the Litl Easel is lost on you then perhaps the “best results if plugged in” label on the power brick will help drive the message home. Litl already has a teaser page up so we expect this to launch Stateside sometime before the holidays.
Lenovo gets official with Win7-powered IdeaPad and IdeaCentre machines
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Lenovo already got official with a couple of its Windows 7-powered machines last week, but it looks like the rest of the crop is landing today. Of course, we’ve already seen the 11.6-inch IdeaPad U150 and 15.6-inch U550 pop up in various corners of the globe this month, and the IdeaPad U350 has been around since the summer. That said, we’ll take the OS refresh and minor spec bumps any day of the week (along with new colors on the S10-2), and that’s exactly what we’re getting. We’ll spare you the rehash (it’s all there in the read link if you need a refresher), but over on the desktop front, we’re pretty stoked about the stylish (and previously rumored) all-in-one IdeaCentre B500. Packing a Core 2 Quad CPU, 1TB of HDD space, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 23-inch LCD, this thing may actually perform fairly well in tasks more strenuous than checking email. The business-minded K300 and bargain-priced H230 ($299 starting point) are less thrilling from a hardware perspective, but they’ll certainly fit their respective molds quite well. The whole lot should be available to order soon directly from Lenovo, and there’s bound to be plenty of options for those not content with base configurations.