Unfortunately I don’t get to do reviews here, I just can’t afford the toys. The people at PCMag aren’t as unfortunate. They have got their hands on the damn powerful VGN-SZ791N, and they really liked it. They gave it a hefty 4.5 out of 5 circles. It even earned the Editor’s Choice branding. Unfortunately, even the best can’t run Crysis, with a lousy frame-rate of 6 at 1024×768.
For the compete review, click over to PCMag.
Isn’t it amazing that Lenovo had some ultra thin notebook coming, just as Apple had one coming? Unlike the Apple, the Lenovo doesn’t sacrifice any features to do what it does (other then looks). Now it is out and about and a bunch of people have reviewed it.
The all over feel of the reviews is that they really liked it. Most of them directly compared it to the Air, which it truly is aimed at it, and feel that the slight fatness was better then losing features. They liked the keyboard layout, they like the screen, they like the cooling and they like the sound system among other things.
They didn’t like the price and lack of HDD space, but considering the Air is around the same price, you don’t really have a choice. The biggest choice you really have to make between the notebooks is, do you want MacOSX or Windows (XP or Vista)?
Now for my rant (sorry). I think both notebooks are a good step forward in technology, but that Lenovo doesn’t challenge anything. It just makes things as small as possible, which Sony and a bunch of other manufactures will be doing right now.
Sony’s challenge with the TR1 was a ultra small 10-inch notebook. Asus challenge was the EeeCP with a 7-inch with Linux and SSD. Apples challenge was with the Air’s feature sacrifice for size. The Lenovo is an attractive package, but it isn’t anything particularly different.
Unfortunately for Lenovo other companies will soon release products that are similar and possibly cheaper or more attractive (looks and features). I would enjoy the spotlight while I had it Lenovo.
To read the complete reviews, go to PCMag, CNET, CMP Channel, Notebook Review and Walt Mossberg.
Thank you Gizmodo for doing the hard work.
In the middle of writing a fabulous article on the reason why you love Apple so much, and all of a sudden the dreaded battery low icon pops up. Mad creative flow is at stake here, and your nowhere near a power point, so what are you going to do? Inventor Ric Richardson’s has a solution for this problem, with hotswapable notebook batteries.
The solution works very elegantly, and basically has a connector at the back of the battery, which plugs into the power connector giving the notebook power while you remove the old battery and insert the new battery. Then simply unplug and the battery doesn’t have any downtime.
He has also gone and patented the idea (damn it) and is already negotiating with companies such as Lenovo and HP. Expect to see Ric driving around in Ferrari before the end of this year.
For more info, click over to Engadget.
It is about time Seagate released their 250GB notebook drive. They are only a few months late really. 250GB Momentus 5400.4 is priced a $US165, but considering there is now another competitor in the 250GB 2.5-inch drive market, you can expect everyone to start shredding the dollars. They’re available now.
For more info, click over to Engadget.
There are a million articles out there that explain to you what you get in the new Macbook Air, so I’ve decided to skip all that and do a pro’s and con’s on the device. If you don’t believe me or want for more info, go to Apple.
What is the Apple Macbook Air, and what does it mean for Apple? It is another niche product and a shot at the current ultra light notebook market. It is the worlds thinnest notebook, it is also very attractive. The list of features is great with pro’s such as -
- 5 hour battery life with everything running
- LED backlit display
- Minimalist design, means you get what you need
- 802.11n wireless, so fast wireless speeds
- Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, gives you the latest Bluetooth
- Unique multi-touch trackpad
- Core 2 Duo Processor (much smaller design then what other notebooks have)
- Option for SSD (64GB)
- It’s better for the environment (bromide and PVR free, packaging is 56% smaller and mercury and arsenic-free glass)
It is a very interesting feature set and for people who just want ultra small and light, you can’t go past. Not everything is good in Apple town though, because there are issues with this design.
- 1 USB port
- No HDMI
- No removable battery
- No user upgradeable memory
- No user upgradeable HDD
- Built-in speaker is mono
- No built-in mobile internet card (HSDPA or whatever it is called)
- No externel PCi-E connector
The features missing is a gamble for Apple, and seeing that lately they can’t be faulted, hoping the trade off will keep consumer interest. The major problem is the asking price, which is $US1799 (or a ridiculous $AU2499). If Apple didn’t know already, America, your major buyer base, could quite possibly go into recession (if they aren’t already in one) and people will be look to save money.
Apple shares took a dive after the keynote, but I wouldn’t worry to much, Apple fanboys will just go around robbing people to get their crackbook fix. If they could do this for around $US500 cheaper, it would have stormed the market and could become the perfect ultra-portable, unfortunately for Apple for about twice the thickness (which isn’t much really) you can get a whole lot more for your money.
We talked about the Hitachi 500GB 2.5-inch notebook drive a few days ago, but now Samsung have released their competitor to that drive, this time making fit inside the standard 9.5mm height. The Samsung Spinpoint M6 500GB HDD, features 5400rpm spindle speed, a 8MB cache, and 3.0Gbps SATA interface.
This drive will fit into all existing notebooks, as long as they support the SATA interface, according to Samsung. There is no price available as yet, but with the March release date a price can’t be to far away.
For more info, click over to the Laptoping Blog.
$US400 for a 2.5-inch notebook drive is going to be felt in your wallet. I must admit it is nice to see notebook hard drives catching desktop drives. Maybe one day, the 3.5-inch drive will be discontinued just like the older harder drives (5.25-inch anyone?).
Hitachi have shown off their Travelstar 5K500, which at 500GB is very impressive. It isn’t due to an advance in HDD technology though. This drive cheated and simply added another platter on top of the other platters. It does make the drive sit 3mm higher then the other current competitors (9.5mm), but keeps inside the industry standard for 2.5-inch drives. With that said do expect it to fit in most current notebooks or portable HDD cases.
Hitachi’s new drive will be available in February, and is already scheduled to be inside of the upcoming Asus M50 and M70 notebooks in dual configuration (that’s 1TB in a portable computer). There will also be a enterprise version created for blades and very small server, titled the E5k500.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog.
Now that Asus have done such a successful launch of the EeePC, it is time for them to follow it up with the real bread and butter, the accessories. Unfortunately, unlike the EeePC (or maybe like the EeePC for some people), the accessories aren’t all that exciting.
There will be a mouse, headphones, power adapter, and extra battery. The mouse will be USB (is there any other standard?), have a 1000dpi and be available in 5 different colours (to match your EeePC). The noise-isolating headphones feature a 1.15m cable and 3 sizes of earbud gel tips. Power adapter gives power I would say, and the battery will come in 2 flavours, a 4 cells with 5200mAh or 6 cells with 7800mAh (coming soon and could possibly give you 6-7 hours life).
I’m sorry Asus but this is pretty weak. Where is the docking station? The screen protector and 20 different types of EeePC branded cases? Where are the Bluetooth and other wireless add-ons? Hopefully we will get more useful addon’s as the year progress’s and with the release of the 10-inch EeePC.
For more info, click over to the Laptoping Blog. For more info on the accessories go directly to Asus.
If you aren’t familiar with Penryn, don’t worry neither am I. I had a quick look up on good ol’ Wikipedia, and they said it is basically an upgrade from the Merom of old (basically the T5000 and T7000 series of mobile processor’s). So if you haven’t worked it out, this is pretty big business for Intel. The Merom’s are freaking awesome (poor AMD never had a chance) and will be dearly missed (though they will probably be seen in notebooks for months/years to come).
You can’t pick one up in a store quite yet, but soon you will see offering from HP, Sony, Fujitsu, Acer and surely many more (Asus will release info any second now). From HP you will see the 6820s (17-incher with a Core 2 Duo T8100 CPU at 2.1GHz or T8300 at 2.4GHz), Sony will have their FZ31, SZ71, CR31 and AR61, Fujitsu will have Amilo Xi 2550 and 2428 and Acer will have an array of five with the 2920, 4920, 5920, 7720 and 9920.
The new processors will use less power and run cooler, meaning thinner quieter notebooks with longer battery lifes. When the benchmarks start coming in it will be interesting to see if the new Intels can create as much of a storm as the old. I will try and keep you up to date as more companies announce more notebooks.
For more info, click over to the Gizmodo and Laptoping Websites.
I don’t care who win this whole ATI/AMD Vs Intel battle (Intel is killing them at the moment), as long as it is ATI/AMD. Their newest weapon, which is more focused at Nvidia, is the Mobile Radeon 2700. It features 120 stream processors and a 128-bit memory bus, making it a competitor for the M8600 from Nvidia (I thought the HD2600 was the competitor for the M8600?). No one other then Fujitsu seems to have picked it up, but there really hasn’t been an official announcement so only time will tell. It will be interesting to see what the performance gains over the 2600 are, and if anyone actually makes a notebook featuring it. Good luck ATI.
For more info, click over to the Inquirer Website.