Technology News

Sahara Computers has expanded its Book Series laptops with the entry-level 8-inches model S-NB522434-EB00.

All of 1.1kg, the notebook, according to Sahara, qualifies as one of the smallest in its class. Significant features include a 60GB hard drive and an 8-inches TFT LCD display. The S-NB522434-EB00 is a Linux-based, Wi-Fi enabled notebook targeted at entry-level users, students, and frequent travelers. It comes with an AMD Geode LX 800 processor, a PCMCIA slot, and an extended battery life of 4-and-a-half hours.

Speaking at the launch, George Van Der Merwe, chief operating officer of Sahara Computers, expressed the view that unlike other notebooks in the same segment, this one comes with a hard drive and offers more features.

The S-NB522434-EB00 is immediately available through Sahara’s authorized channel partners as well as ITJ stores for a MRP of Rs 14,999 plus taxes. It comes encased in a leather carry bag, and enjoys a one-year carry-in warranty.

It’s the computer that almost wasn’t. Microsoft’s Surface—a touch-sensitive table that could redefine the way people interact with machines—got its start in company research labs five years ago, though backers considered putting the project on ice several times.

Engineers wanted to build technology that would let users tell a computer what to do by moving everyday objects, such as a digital camera or a game piece, around the screen’s surface. Yet some managers viewed the system as an unmanufacturable toy. “Probably every year I thought about killing it,” said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices group, picking over dinner at a San Francisco restaurant recently as he recalled budget meetings. “We struggled with the business model.”

Microsoft (MSFT) has overcome many of those initial challenges. And the company intends to bring Surface, initially intended for niche markets including stores, casinos, and hotels, to consumers. Research into tactile, or tangible, computing is one of the most fertile areas of electronic-product design. The systems incorporate familiar objects such as toys, game tokens, cell phones, or wine glasses—and even substances like sand and clay—into the computing experience. By taking advantage of people’s natural sense of touch and spatial orientation, the systems can offer more precise control over what’s happening on the screen than pointing and clicking with a mouse.

Done right, tactile computing could help users design products, play games, and complete business tasks. Microsoft is working on a giant, 6-ft. by 4-ft. version of Surface that lets groups of four or six people gather around it to collaborate. Hiroshi Ishii, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, has designed systems that let architects shape landscapes and buildings using sand and clay, then see the results of their models on a computer screen. His Tangible Bits group has also devised a system that lets users move magnetic pucks to design cell-phone networks, and computerized animals that remember and replay the shapes they’re twisted into. “Tangible Bits is an attempt to defy the gravity of the pixels,” Ishii says.

Touch Pioneers
Apple (AAPL) has brought “multitouch” technology from its music-playing iPhone into its ultra-slim MacBook Air, and could in the future adapt it to specialized desktop computers. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Mitsubishi Electric, and IBM (IBM) have also done work in the field of tangible user interfaces. Anchors on CNN (TWX) manipulate maps, charts, and photos with their hands on the network’s computerized “Magic Wall.” And touchscreen technology for PCs is already showing up in products including Hewlett-Packard’s TouchSmart PC (BusinessWeek, 6/25/08), which can recognize gestures like the flick of a finger for choosing albums to play or selecting photos to view.

Though the market for dual-core processors has seen some rapid development this year with regard to price drops and VFM status, this trend has not reflected in budget dual-core processors. Since the last time we featured this roundup, prices have not dropped much – the only things to change were the processor and a couple of accessories. Keeping this in mind, we shall unveil the latest avatar of our sub-Rs 25,000 machine. As usual, wherever prices/specs have remained unchanged, we have simply carried the products forward.

CPU:Intel E2180

The E2180 is similar to the E2140 that we used in our earlier roundup. The only difference is the clock speed – it runs at 2GHz. Other specifications are similar to the previous model: it’s based on a 65nm process, offers 1MB L2 cache and runs at a FSB of 800MHz. Like all its previous predecessors, this processor is also 64-bit capable, and at its cost is the perfect base of our budget system.

Motherboard: Zotac NF610i

Our first choice had been to retain the board we had used previously – the Biostar. However, on checking up, we found that most retailers were no longer stocking the board. Hence began the search for a replacement. Luckily we didn’t need to look far. The answer lay in Zotac’s NF610i board. For those who have not heard the name, Zotac is a long-time PC-based OEM company that has recently entered India. Since their entry they have introduced a bunch of Nvidia-based products, in both GPUs and motherboards.

We at Tech2 have been using their products and found them to be top-notch, easily rivaling products from other manufacturers – and at competitive price points. The NF610i is based on Nvidia’s GeForce 7050 / nForce 610i chipset, offers full support for Intel’s C2D processors, and comes with a single PCIe 16x slot, 1 PCIe x1 slot, 8 USB slots, 2 PCI slots, and 4 SATA 2 (3.0 GB) slots along with a single IDE connector.

RAM: Kingston DDR2 (2×1GB)

Kingston is a well-known brand, offering significant value for money products. We have chosen one of their budget RAM sticks in a 2GB package. This way if your budget permits, its possible to upgrade to 4 GB of system memory at a later date and extend the life of your PC.

For years at airport security checkpoints, passengers have heard the refrain, almost a dirge: “Laptops must be removed from their cases and placed on the belt.”
Get ready for a change. The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead for passengers to use newly designed carry-on bags that will let them pass through security without having to take their laptops out for the X-ray inspection.

Kip Hawley, the agency’s director, told me Monday that the T.S.A. would accept the new laptop cases as soon as they come on the market.

Two of the biggest luggage manufacturers — Pathfinder Luggage and Targus — say they are rushing to produce the new “checkpoint friendly” laptop cases and expect them to be available by late September or early October.

Two problems with the existing laptop cases are that security officers have difficulty seeing inside them with X-ray equipment, and many of the cases are so crammed with extra gear — power cords, a mouse and the like — that the computer is obscured.

The new cases include either a fold-down section in a bigger briefcase or a stand-alone protective sleeve that contains no extra clutter and can be readily viewed through the scanner.

More than a half-dozen luggage manufacturers, among about 60 that initially responded to a T.S.A. request for proposals about three months ago, have submitted prototypes for testing at checkpoints at three airports: Dulles, outside Washington; Austin-Bergstrom in Texas; and Ontario, near Los Angeles.

The agency says that more than a quarter of all air travelers carry laptops through security.

Along with having to remove shoes, the requirement to take a laptop out of its protective case has long rankled business travelers, who worry about damage to exposed computers as well as potential loss in the pileup of various travelers’ possessions on the other side of the X-ray station.

Mr. Hawley, meanwhile, has often said that confusion at checkpoints is itself a security problem. Designing laptop cases that can improve customer service while keeping security at a high level is a way to better ensure a “calm and predictable” checkpoint environment, he said.

“Threats have a hard time hiding in a calm environment,” he said. “Chaos is great camouflage.”

Mr. Hawley said the agency had been working with various manufacturers to develop the new luggage designs. He predicted that various new laptop cases that conform to government requirements would be in wide use by the holidays in December.

“On a conference call with industry representatives, I said that the T.S.A. will not be your gatekeeper on this,” Mr. Hawley said. “It all depends on how fast you can get to market. We won’t slow you down.”

Ron Davis, the executive vice president of Pathfinder Luggage, said that his company had just started producing its two new cases at a plant in the Philippines. He said both had been tested at checkpoints to ensure that they met government specifications.

“They don’t want anything obscuring the view of the laptop,” he said. “In our case, the material is nylon and foam, and the X-ray machine will see right through that.”

Pathfinder is making two models but plans others. One is a briefcase in which the attached laptop holder is exposed when the case is unzipped. The other is a wheeled carry-on with a removable laptop case.

Mr. Davis estimated that the briefcase version would sell for $100 to $150 and the wheeled version for $150 to $200.

Targus, the largest maker of cases for laptops and notebook computers, is about to begin production at factories in China of four new models of checkpoint-compatible bags, said Al Giazzon, the vice president for marketing.

“We’ve got to produce a lot of them,” he said. “We’re currently scheduled for a late September or early October delivery of our first bags.”

Among the bags Targus is producing is a backpack design. Mr. Giazzon said. He said that retailers were already clamoring for the bags, which will cost from $39 for a basic model to about $100 “for our corporate series, for heavy-duty travelers.”

Mr. Hawley said that the T.S.A. has deliberately avoided formally certifying various manufacturers’ bag designs.

“Everybody is aware that the process of the government certifying a piece of security equipment involves a lot of time and red tape,” he said.

Instead, manufacturers were encouraged to come up with designs that would pass muster, and perhaps adopt a universal slogan or logo that says, “This bag is checkpoint-friendly,” he said.

Mr. Hawley said he did not expect that the new laptops would create undue confusion after their introduction, since security officers would be well informed about them.

To make sure the cases are easily identifiable, the T.S.A. said in its request for proposals sent to manufacturers in March that bags should be designed with “self-evident features,” including an absence of buckles, pockets or zippers.

Manufacturers were also told that they could label the bags as “checkpoint friendly,” or use similar terms, but that they could not state nor imply that the bags were certified or approved by the T.S.A. or use a T.S.A. logo on them.

It will be immediately apparent if a laptop case is not properly designed for unobscured visual inspection because it will not give security officers a clear X-ray image, Mr. Hawley said. The case and laptop will be removed from the belt for a close look by security officers, he said.

Mr. Davis said that passengers who are forced to take a laptop out of its case and rerun it through the X-ray equipment will, in itself, encourage manufacturers to ensure that “checkpoint friendly” cases really are.

“If a customer buys the new case and sends it through security and the security officer said, ‘Sorry, this doesn’t work,’ then you’ve got a very upset customer,” he said.

If you’ve been waiting on the Eee PC’s big brother to hit the US, you’ll be happy to hear that your wait will be over before too long. The Eee PC 900 features upgrades in just about every department, which of course includes a bigger price tag.

Starting on May 12th, you’ll be able to pick up this slightly larger notebook from Asus. You’ll be treated to a 9-inch screen (which should still be comfortably small) running at 1024 x 600, 1GB of RAM and 12GB of hard drive space (for the Windows XP version, 20GB if you choose Linux).

While you’re still going to be expected to shell out more than the $399 price tag of its predacessor, $549 really isn’t a bad deal for everything you get. If you were hesitant about the size or disk space of the original, this one might just ease your fears.

If there’s one thing parents don’t mind spending on their kids, it would be education. Of course, health comes first, but getting a good education is of utmost importance no matter which part of the world you’re from. With the introduction of classroom PCs by Intel, it makes perfect sense for Daewoo Lucoms to jump onto the bandwagon with its low-cost education-use mobile computer equivalent known as Lukid. It has the Intel Celeron 900MHz processor running at the heart of things, powered by Windows XP. The 9″ LCD display, 512MB RAM and 30GB hard drive round off the list of specifications. Lukid is tipped to retail for slightly more than $500 in Korea.

(CNET) — The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 looks more like an object of art than a piece of consumer electronics.

The tendril pattern etched into its aluminum lid (available in black or red) and the patterned vents on its base both bring to mind an illuminated manuscript or a fine textile.

But a laptop it is, and for its $1,899 price tag, the IdeaPad U110 is a pretty good ultraportable.

Despite its compact size, the IdeaPad U110’s screen and keyboard are comfortable to use for long stretches.

Its case is stocked with current-generation components and a decent set of features–though media fanatics should note that its DVD burner is an external drive.

The fastidious should also note that the very shine that makes the laptop so appealing is easily dulled by fingerprints.

Despite these imperfections, the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 offers a combination of price, features, and performance that’s competitive with such ultraportables as the Toshiba Portege R500 and the Sony VAIO TZ150, inside a package of unparalleled beauty.

Design

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is imperceptibly smaller than one of our favorite 11.1-inch ultraportables, the Sony VAIO TZ150. It gives up 2 inches in screen size to the 13.3-inch MacBook Air, but the U110 weighs a full pound less (when using its four-cell battery).

Toshiba’s Portege R500, on the other hand, weighs less–just 1.7 pounds–and gives you an extra inch with its 12-inch screen.

Aside from its diminutive size and stunning design, the IdeaPad U110 is remarkable in its sturdy construction, thanks to an aluminum cover and magnesium-aluminum case.

The sturdy construction seems to owe something to Lenovo’s business-focused ThinkPad line. But the IdeaPad U110 is considerably different from the company’s other flagship ultraportable, the $2,476 ThinkPad X300. The latter maintains the familiar ThinkPad DNA–rectangular black case, great keyboard, and such corporate-friendly features as WWAN and a Trusted Platform Module–while still allowing for innovation in design and cutting-edge components.

The IdeaPad U110, on the other hand, is focused on the consumer market, and as such gives Lenovo more freedom to experiment with design while still incorporating new technologies.

Speaking more concretely, the 11.1-inch, 2.4-pound IdeaPad U110 is considerably smaller than the 13.3-inch, 3.4-pound ThinkPad X300. The entire keyboard deck on the IdeaPad U110–including the keyboard, touch pad, mouse buttons, and quick-launch keys–is one flush surface, all in a glossy piano finish.

At first the flatness of the keys, and the lack of space between them, had us worried about typing comfort. But closer inspection revealed that the keys have a slightly concave surface, and while the keyboard did feel noticeably less than full-size, typing was remarkably comfortable and error-free.

Part of the reason: Lenovo extended the keyboard quite nearly to the edges of the system, similar to the HP 2133 Mini-Note, to accommodate larger keys than would ordinarily be found on such a compact laptop.

Unfortunately a concession had to be made when it came to the touch pad; the IdeaPad U110’s narrow depth means the touch pad sits uncomfortably low on the keyboard deck, and its mouse buttons are part of the laptop’s front edge.

We were able to complete a day’s work with this setup, but would likely want to pack a travel mouse for better ergonomics on lengthy trips. Also, the meticulous among us might be put off by the shiny interior, which easily picks up fingerprints. (Lenovo does include a chamois cloth to help you keep the IdeaPad U110 looking sharp.)

Features

Above the keyboard you’ll find another stunning aesthetic touch: a row of glowing orange launch buttons, framed with a curling ivy design evocative of the IdeaPad U110’s etched lid. The keys, which include a button to launch an audio manager as well as two keys that launch programs of your choice, appear only when you run your finger across the black panel above the keyboard.

To the right of these “hidden” keys sit light-touch volume controls (mute, volume up and down) that are always illuminated. On the far left side are the power button and the Novo button, which provides quick system recovery should you lose the battle against a computer virus; during times of peace the Novo button toggles among different power settings to help you manage battery life.

We like the IdeaPad U110’s display, which measures just 11.1 inches diagonal but features a sharp 1,366×768 native resolution. The result is a screen that has plenty of room for Web browsing, e-mail, and office applications, though we did find ourselves squinting as the day wore on.

Some of the discomfort that comes with working on a small laptop is mitigated by the fact that the IdeaPad U110’s lid is slightly angled, so there’s a little extra distance between the screen and the keyboard. This setup is adequate for working on the road, but if the IdeaPad U110 is your primary computer you’ll likely want to hook it up to an external monitor when you’re at your home base.

The display itself is what Lenovo calls a “frameless screen,” meaning the screen surface is flush with the edges of the lid. The designation is a bit inaccurate, because there is still a black bezel around the screen; nevertheless, the flush surface mirrors that of the keyboard deck and enhances the overall aesthetic appeal.

Our only real complaint lies in the screen’s highly reflective finish, which proved particularly distracting when we were working close to a window. Above the screen sits a 1.3-megapixel Webcam, which works with the included VeriFace face-recognition software to let you use your mug to log into Windows.

With a laptop this small, there are inevitably concessions to be made when it comes to ports and connections. Fortunately, the IdeaPad U110 squeezes in a healthy selection that includes three USB ports and an ExpressCard slot. The latter will be particularly useful to those who need mobile broadband, because Lenovo currently does not offer a built-in WWAN option with the IdeaPad U110. (The option is available on the company’s business-oriented ThinkPad line.)

More of a concern to some users will be the laptop’s lack of a built-in optical drive. Every IdeaPad U110 does ship with a relatively lightweight external DVD burner, but those who want to travel light will have to do without the capability to read discs on the run.

Performance

Inside the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 you’ll find a low-voltage 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo L7500 CPU. Use of a low-voltage processor, designed to reduce heat output in small cases, often results in sluggish performance. But the IdeaPad U110 ran faster than Lenovo’s recent business ultraportable, the ThinkPad X300, on some portions of CNET Labs’ performance benchmarks, most likely due to its processor’s faster clock speed.

Neither Windows system could keep up with the Apple MacBook Air when it came to our Multimedia multitasking test; because this test uses a handful of Apple applications, the MacBook Air reaped some benefits from running OS X.

However, the gap narrowed when it came to our Photoshop and iTunes tests, and we can say anecdotally that during our use the IdeaPad U110 juggled Web surfing, document typing, and music streaming without hiccups.

It’s worth mentioning that the IdeaPad U110 is currently available in only one fixed configuration, which simplifies the shopping process but also prevents users from customizing their system with higher-end components, such as a solid-state hard drive (as found in the MacBook Air and the Toshiba Portege R500).

When it comes to battery life, the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is both disappointing and satisfying. That’s because Lenovo ships two batteries with every IdeaPad U110: a four-cell battery that lasted 1 hour, 27 minutes on our drain test, and a seven-cell battery that lasted nearly 3 hours. (Our drain test is particularly taxing, so you can expect more life from typical Windows use. In fact, we were able to squeeze about four hours out of the extended battery during our use.)

The lightweight, four-cell battery sits flush with the IdeaPad U110’s case, while the seven-cell battery (which is, realistically, the primary battery) adds some bulk–and a half-pound of weight–to the back of the laptop.

Still, we applaud Lenovo for giving users the freedom to choose between longer battery life or maximum portability. And the IdeaPad U110’s power brick offers some small consolation; almost identical in size and thickness to the fourth-generation iPod, it won’t take up too much room in your bag.

Lenovo includes an industry-standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty with the system, with affordable upgrades for up to three years of coverage.

We do wish the consumer-focused IdeaPad line included some variation of the company’s suite of support and configuration tools (called ThinkVantage on ThinkPads and Lenovo Care on the Lenovo 3000 line).

However, the company’s support Web site is above average, providing easy access to features such as an online knowledge base and driver downloads. Support is also accessible through a 24-7 toll-free phone line and an online chat tool.

Intel Unveils 16 Next-Generation Processors, Including First Notebook Chips Built on 45nm Technology

Intel Corporation unveiled 16 products today, including the company’s first 45 nanometer (nm) processors for Intel® Centrino® Processor Technology based laptops.

All of these new chips include the company’s new transistor formula and 45nm manufacturing process that boost a PC’s speed, reduces power requirements, saves on battery life, helps the environment and comes in smaller packages for more fashionable and compact computer designs. With the introduction of the new processors, Intel will be offering a total of 32 desktop, laptop and server processors based on these industry-leading innovations.

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Lenovo to launch IdeaPad U110 laptops in India

Lenovo plans to introduce the IdeaPad U110 laptops in India soon, the company announced recently. Banking on the successful launch of the IdeaPad U110 in the US, Lenovo expects similar if not better response from the IT savvy Indian market and one of the fastest growing economy in the world.

Lenovo laptops go red

NEW DELHI: Lenovo recently announced the launch of its IdeaPad U110 notebook PC, the star of Lenovo’s IdeaPad entertainment and fashion-oriented notebook collection.

Enhanced by an 11-inch frameless screen display and weighing less than 2.5 pounds (1.13 kgs) and measuring between 0.7 and 0.9 inches, the notebook’s thin and light frame caters to the highly mobile user.

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