Recently we told you about the online manual for the new Lenovo IdeaPad U150 that showed up at the Lenovo website. Well, it is finally out, at least in Japan. Our friends at Netbooked.net were lucky enough to be getting their Lenovo IdeaPad U150 and they now know the price of this Lenovo machine – around $792.
And like we told before, the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 is going to have an Intel CULV processor and 11.6-inch display. Finally, they are done with the Atom CPU.
As a review, here are the specs of the Lenovo IdeaPad U150. Some more photos follow after.
If you’re planning to get a new netbook before the year ends, you might want to hold off for a couple of months more until January. Especially so, if you still have an old netbook that you can use. Why? Because come January 2010, we expect to see more new netbooks to come out that would surely be loaded with the new Intel Atom N450 processor.
What makes this new Atom CPU interesting is the fact that it will now integrate the graphics and the rest of the chipset on to one chip. This means it will need lesser space and would probably give way for thinner and slimmer netbooks.
Unfortunately, there will be not too much difference in terms of battery life since the new Atom CPU is almost the same in performance as currently available ones.
Expect for another onslaught of new netbook releases either t before the year ends or early next year. For sure, once Intel releases its new processor that will replaced the Atom CPU that we find in most netbooks nowadays, netbook manufacturers will be rushing to beat each other in coming up first with a Pineview netbooks/nettops.
Intel confirmed this during the IDF earlier this week. And even gave some information about what to expect from the Pineview CPU once it gets into the insides of our beloved netbooks and nettops.
Pineview would make netbooks and nettops’ CPU smaller and would allo w manufacturers to come up with thinner netbooks. Power consumption will also improved hence longer battery life.
Aside from these, communication between the processor and memory will also be faster, so future netbooks will be much much faster than current netbook models. Multimedia capabilities will also be enhanced so expect manufacturers to explore and on this. Perhaps make their netbooks HD capable.
But most important of all Pineview CPU will cost less than Atom so we might be seeing cheaper and yet powerful netbooks in the future.
Going back to the basics of a netbook, small, portable, affordable and capable of word processing and web browsing, those are the features consumers first looked for and loved about netbooks. As technology has grown, so have the specs of netbooks and the wants of consumers. High end netbooks, while they feature larger screens, typically 10 inch, can still be too small for some and the lack of an optical drive is an issue for some potential netbook owners especially when the price is on average $600. For the same, or a little bit more, a full notebook with many more specs can be purchased, but losing some of portability factor. CULV could be the next portable notebook craze, which looks set to take on the high end netbook market.
CULVs (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) will run in the same price range as the high end netbooks and up to $1000, but feature a larger display as well as longer battery life. CULVs are also smaller than notebooks, both in display and dimensions. Typically a CULV notebook will feature a 12-13 inch display giving a middle option between netbooks and notebooks. Consumers who want more from their netbooks may well look to CULV notebooks when they arrive in August.
In September, Intel will be holding an event in San Francisco showing off a number on new technologies. One that’ll interest netbook users, is that netbooks will be shown with the N450 CPU. Today’s netbooks with an Intel CPU use either the N270 or N280 which is pretty much just as fast as the upcoming processor. However one main difference is that the newer processor consumes less power keeping the netbook cooler for longer and on for longer with improved battery life. The N450 is also smaller in size, meaning the netbooks taking advantage of the new technology will be thinner than current netbooks.
Version 1.1 of Easy Peasy has been released which fixes some bugs as well as coming with a new splash screen, login screen, wallpaper and a new icon theme. Easy Peasy is based on Ubuntu 8.10 but made for netbooks. This specific distro is designed to work on netbooks with an Intel Atom processor, which is the majority of the netbooks on the market.
Pre-installed on the Operating System is OpenOffice 3 and Firefox 3, as well as the Ubuntu Netbook Remix program launcher.
Earlier today we reported on the Skytone netbook which comes pre-installed with Google Android. The Skytone is the first netbook that comes with Android as the standard operating system, without any hacking required. The HP Mini 2133 and Eee PC 1000H have already been hacked to run Android and now another netbook follows in the Android OS hacking trend. The Pantum iBuddie is also capable of running Google’s operating system.
Specs of the netbook are pretty standard. It comes with a 10.2 inch screen, 1GB of RAM, Intel Atom N270 processor and a 160GB hard drive. GeunSik Lim, who hacked his iBuddie has uploaded a video of the netbook running Android which you can view below.
We know Acer will soon be delivering its recently officialized 10.1-inch Acer Aspire 103 netbook, but after that, it’s not clear what other products the company will offer in the netbook category. Well, we have a somewhat informed answer now, courtesy of a patent application found on the USPTO web site pertaining to an Acer-designed mobile Internet device that we’ve got pictured here. This MID doesn’t come with a spec sheet in the patent application, but from its photos, we gather that it has a wide touchscreen display, dock connector, several ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. If it features an Intel Atom processor at release, we wouldn’t be surprised. We’ll update you with more info on this find when we find them.
We really leave it up to you folks to determine whether the M&A Companion Touch Convertible PC is the 2Go Convertible Classmate PC that we reported not so long and which was launched by CTL Corp. during the CES. Back then the expected price of the 2Go Convertible Classmate PC was supposed to be around $549. But M&A is selling their Companion Touch for only $499.99. We checked CTL’s site and the price of its 2Go Convertible PC is now at $499.
Specs-wise, the Companion Touch sports the same specs of the 2Go Convertible Classmate PC that we reported to you. These includes:
Laptopmag has just published a comprehensive review of the Intel Convertible Classmate PC which was released recently. The review highlighted the fact that the said netbook sport a kid-friendly lunch box handle and very well looks like a child’s laptop. Despite of this, the netbook would still appeal the matured users.
Among the good points pointed out by the review include:
Hassle-free tablet experience
Attractive touch interface
Built-in accelerometer
Durable design
Good battery life
While only few negative points:
Keyboard not big enough for adults
Sluggish hard drive
Underside gets very warm
You may head out to laptopmag to read the full review or check out our previous write-up about the 2GO Convertible Classmate PC here first.
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