Laptop

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Laptop sales are rocking fueled by netbooks sales

People might not be buying houses and cars at the pre-recession levels, but laptops are flying off the shelves led by netbook sales. (Quiet, don’t tell John. He hates netbooks.)

Consumers clearly want mobility. Laptop shipments are up 43.4% over last year with 20% of them being low-cost netbooks. The notebook segment as a whole made up 13% of the total PC sales in the first three months of 2009.

But it was the netbook numbers that’s most surprising. We’ve been hearing for weeks that netbooks are dead, no one buys netbooks, blah, blah, blah. However this Gartner seems to say differently by finding netbooks sales are up 71% over last year.

Nvidia Unveils World's Fastest Laptop Graphics Chip

Today Nvidia has formally announced the 'GTX 480M GPU' for laptops and it achieves a number of significant milestones for the company. Firstly it brings true DirectX 11 support with tessellation, secondly it sees Fermi architecture's debut on laptops and thirdly it is quite simply the fastest mobile GPU to date.

Raw stats? How about 352 CUDA cores, a 425MHz GPU clock, an 850MHz processor clock, a texture fill rate of 18.7bn triangles per second and 256bit memory running at 1200MHz generating 76.8GB/sec of bandwidth! Yes it's monstrous and there's full PhysX and OpenCL support in there too while 1080p video playback can be done in its sleep and you'll even be ripping Blu-rays (royalty free ones, of course) in no time.

Nvidia has shipped the GTX 480M GPU to partners already and gaming specialist Clevo will be the first company to market with laptops based on the new graphics chip. Numerous other manufacturers will soon follow.

Given the inability to substantially upgrade a gaming laptop I've never been their greatest fan, but if money is no object and you want the best of the best you won't be able to beat a GTX 480M equipped laptop... at least for the next few month

Smallest Laptop Sony VAIO UX

NEW: Thinnest Laptop 2008 - Only 0.76 inch thick!!!

Check out the top 3 mini laptops (10 inch laptops) I recommend to my friends

GOOD NEWS: You can save $100 instantly on the world smallest laptop SONY VAIO® UX Series from the Sony's official web site today!

My previous laptop review was written mainly for the "serious" computer users. For those of you who dig the "coolest", "fanciest" gizmos outa there, here is a new toy:

This is got to be the smallest laptop available today - Sony VAIO UX. With a dimension of 5.91”×3.74”×1.50”, Sony VAIO UX is equipped with a 1.2 GHz Intel Mobile CPU, 512 MB DDR2 PC2-3200 400 MHz RAM and 32 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive at 4200 RPM. Of course it comes with all of the network gadgets like blue tooth, wireless modem, etc. Sony VAIO UX combines the best features from mobile phones, PDA, and Laptop computers. For example, it has two built-in cameras! one on the back can be used as still photo camera and the one in the front can be used as a web camera. This laptop also has a stereo speaker built in! The sliding keyboard makes it slick and small. Oh, did I mention, it is a tablet PC? And it comes with USB 2.0, IEEE 1394 / Firewire, VGA and AV output! It has a slide-out keyboard! For normal typing, it's more than enough!

The battery is weight 1.2 lb which can last 3-5 hours and the Intel graphic media accelerator 950 supports maximum resolution of 1024 x 600. Yes, it is a PC which means it's attached with MS Windows XP Pro.

sony-vaio-vx-front-view sony-viao-vx-combo-view sony-viao-vx-combo-viewsony-viao-vx-side-view

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Mobile Phone TV Subscriptions Spread in China

A joint effort between the local television companies and the wireless service providers, Cell Phone based television programs is now spreading out in China. Many Chinese now have an option of subscribe to monthly TV programs which enables them to watch TV programs (mostly news and entertainment programs) from their mobile communication devices (PDA, Phones etc.) any where, any time. Cell Phones like Motorola A780 (like mine) has a built in Real Media player which support streaming and progressive downloading media that belong to the standard Internet formats. Have I ever mentioned about many (over 50% in the major cities) of the public transit systems (Taxis, subway, bus, ferry) have Plasma TVs installed in them and broadcasting TV programs at all times?

TV on Cellphones

Thinnest Laptop Apple MacBook Air

One of my co-worker is looking for a “small and thin” laptop and I think her search is over. Apple MacBook Air was announced at Mac World this week. Check out the dimensions first: 12.8" wide, 8.94" deep, and 0.16" to 0.76" thin and weight: 3.0 lbs (1.36 kg).

Thinnest Laptop in the World - MacBook Air

The entire laptop is only 0.76” thick! That is the base + lcd for less than 2 centimeters! This makes this laptop to be the thinnest laptop in the world today. But the immediate trade off is that there is no CD/DVD drive attached and only one USB port. However, the MacBook Air seems to have a new generation of wireless solutions: 802.11n2 and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technologies. Remote Disc option allows you to easily access other Mac computers’ DVD drive.

To me, the real eye catching component is the multi-touch trackpad, yeah, just like the iPhones…

Another thing worth to mention about the “thinnest laptop” is the 13.3”” widescreen LED supports resolutions up to 1280 x 800. This means you gonna get crystal clear images and good coloring from it.

What’s need to be noticed is the CPU power is not so great considering you can only upgrade it from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz, and the price nearly doubled (originally at $1799, now $3,098). But you also get an extra of 2GB RAM memory though.

Here are the full specs of the default model: $1799
13.3" Widescreen LED Backlit (1280 x 800)
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz and 1.5GHz (4MB L2 cache, 800MHz frontside bus)
1.8" 80GB HD (same type in iPod) or 64GB SSD option
Multi-touch trackpad
2GB RAM (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)
Intel X3100 graphics
Magnetic latch
1 USB 2.0 port, Micro-DVI, Audio out (analog)
802.11n wireless
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
iSight camera built-in
37 watt-hour lithium-polymer battery
No optical drive built-in, but SuperDrive accessory available for $99