There’s an ongoing buzz created by a new study published by Square Trade regarding netbooks and notebooks reliability. The study revealed that budget-friendly notebooks and netbooks from Acer, Lenovo and HP are bound to breakdown faster than those machines created by ASUS and other brands. In addition, notebooks/netbooks manufactured by Toshiba, Sony and Apple did pretty well than their rival companies.
Highlights of the study centered on three points – 3 year malfunction rate per notebook/netbook brands, first year malfunction rate comparison between notebooks, netbooks and premium laptops and malfucntion rate by price.
In brief here’s what the study revealed:
HP branded notebooks/netbooks are most likely to fail within three years, while ASUS is the less likely to malfunction
Netbooks are most likely to fail than regular notebooks and premium laptops which is the less likely to malfunction one year upon purchase.
Obviously, netbooks are most likely to malfunction than premium priced laptops
With the growing concern about the current state of the environment, it feels good to know that even IT companies and PC manufacturers are doing things in their own little way to contribute to environmental protection.
Take the case of Dell which is using bamboo materials for the packaging of its notebook products including netbooks. In fact, Dell is the first IT manufacturer to use bamboo material of its product packaging. How noble right?
In case you’re wondering why Bamboo, well this lowly material is said to biodegrable and renewable and is a good alternative to molded paper pulp, foam or corrugated cardboard.
Dell use these bamboo materials for the upholstery of the Inspiron Mini’s packaging. And according to sources, Dell is looking for other ways to use these materials to their product manufacturing, hopefully they are not planning to use it as a body casing for netbooks.
Malata, a popular IT company in China has release a new tablet netbook called the R108T. From the way I see it, the Malata R108T looks pretty good in terms of form factor and you could say that attention was given to its design.
The tablet netbook sports several designs including Ferrari Red, Piano Black, Coffee, Gold and Champagne. So that pretty much gives you several options on which design to get.
Specs wise, here’s what you should expect from the R108T tablet netbook – 10.1-inch rotating screen with touch feature, Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 1.3MP webcam, and pretty much the usual netbook features.
An nice feature was added to the netbook for Chinese users – the Hanwang handwriting software making input of Chinese characters very convenient.
Price of this netbook according to Shanzai.com is a bit on the pricey side. But the site didn’t mention how much though.
If you’re anywhere in the UK, you might want to check out the MSI X Series site and print out a special coupon. This magic coupon will entitle you to get a free MSI Wind U100 that you can redeem when you purchase any of the MSI X-Slim series notebooks – X340, X400, X600 and Wind12 U200. That will get you the free MSI U100.
Sounds fair right? The gig is part of MSI UK’s Christmas promotion and will run until Dec. 31, 2009.
The MSI X600 laptop sells for £799 while the MSI Wind U100 is currently priced at £249. S
Is there any chance that MSI will bring this gig in other countries? It’s a pretty good deal!
Samsung is releasing the Samsung Go again, this time under AT&T’s mobile 3G plan. And to make it even more exciting, the new Samsung Go was upgraded to Windows 7 Starter Edition.
Samsung Go will be available on AT&T starting November 22. And in case you’re interested to get it, be it known that you will have to be tied up to an AT&T service agreement. If you don’t mind at all, the Samsung Go will give you the following key features – 2.8 lbs, pebble-style keyboard, LED-backlit, borderless glass display, 4-cell battery with 4 hours battery life, Intel Atom N270 CPU.
If a Viliv X70 MID isn’t quite your thing, you might like its smaller counterpart–a Viliv S5 which works in about the same as it but comes with a smaller screen. In the above video, Intel’s Dan Sakols can be seen using it with a cool-looking lightweight “flight sim” game and with a program called live videocaster with which a user can broadcast live video via an Internet connection. That might sound cool on paper, but it’s even cooler when you see it in action, which you can by watching the video above.
Need a cool mobile Internet device running Windows XP? Look no further than the VIliv X70 MID. Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group marketing manager Rama can be seen in the above video playing with it and showing off its programs on top of the Windows XP operating system. The video description on YouTube goes:
Rama from Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group shows how she optimized an Intel Atom processor powered Viliv X70 mobile Internet device for microblogging, accessing entertainment and touch screen finger writing recognition apps for enjoying the full Internet on the go.
Hit play on the above video yourself to learn a thing or two about the Viliv X70 MID with Windows XP.
The rather unimposing xpPhone that a company called ITG is currently working on has just gained new features ahead of its (as of yet still unknown) release date. While it’s already known that it will have a 4.8-inch WVGA touchscreen display, AMD Super Mobile CPU and Windows XP pre-installed, ITG is set to offer upgrade options for everyone who orders, which include adding a 5-megapixel camera onboard, a 7-inch touchscreen, and even Windows 7 for an OS. Sounds pretty neat, but only time will tell if a device such as this really clicks with consumers (and not to mention our wallets). If pricing and release info come out in the next week or two, we’ll let you know.
Just when you thought you could forget about the RAmos W7 tablet, here comes a hands-on session in the form of a video. It doesn’t tell us anything new about the said tablet, though it shows just how fine Android looks on a 4.8-inch 800×480 touchscreen display and sort of confirms the use of a 600MHz “Rockchip” processor on the device. The video shows the RAmos W7 navigating the menus as well as the Web with ease. See the full video for youself after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
If at this point in time you still haven’t found your mobile Web surfing device of choice, you might want to take a look at Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad again as there are quite a few new updates regarding the said device. First, Michael Arrington himself has confirmed that the Crunchpad is already steamrolling and that the costs keep coming down so expect it to be launched very very soon. Second, it’s going to cost about $300 to $400 USD plus advertising in the form of sponsorships, and while I’m not sure what exactly that means I’m willing to bet it’s just another way of saying, “We’re going to show ads on the screen whenever, wherever,” though of course I could be wrong.
Also, it’s going to be sold only on the Web. So clearly Michael Arrington knows what he’s getting into with the somewhat ridiculously high pricing, considering how much already existing mobile Internet devices like the iPod touch and Archos Internet tablets cost (clue: somewhere around half the price of the CrunchPad. Right now, the CrunchPad isn’t available anywhere online or offline but expect a big announcement to come out about it soon.
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