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Not much to say here, just an Atom N270 1.6Ghz processor, 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 LCD, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD and a dash of Windows XP, doing what they always do. There's a nice complement of completely standard interfaces, like three USB 2.0 plugs, 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet, mini VGA out and a multicard reader, all stuffed into a slightly frumpy 1.5-inch thick enclosure, but let's not get off message: Epson's new Endeavor Na01 mini is all Microsoft-proscribed netbook and nothing more. The Japan-only computer is available today for the completely palatable price of 46,800 Yen (about $484).

News Source: Engadget

Following the example set by Asus, netbook maker MSI is releasing an all-in-one desktop computer designed with netbook-like specs. The MSI Wind Neton M16, M19, and M22 nettop computers range in size from 15.6 inches to 22 inches, sport single or dual core Intel Atom processors, and run Windows XP or Windows Vista.

While the 15.6 inch model consists of a base connected to a display, the 18.5 inch and 22 inch models are basically just large monitors with all the computer components hidden away in the case. In other words, each is sort of like low end versions of Apple’s iMac.

The 18.5 inch M19 model should be available in January for about $500, while the 15.6 inch M16 will follow in February for $400. Both models will have 1366 x 768 display resolutions. The high end M22 with a 22 inch 1920 x 1080 pixel display will be available in March for $799.

News Source: Liliputing

We've already seen a few shots of MSI's forthcoming Wind U120 netbook, but our pals at Engadget Chinese have now taken in one of its first public appearances and, naturally, they've provided plenty of pics for folks to dive into. That includes some close-up shots of the netbook's slightly revised port situation, some comparison shots with the non-two tone U100, and even another glimpse of that 9-cell battery we've already seen floating about. MSI also had it's full-fledged Bravo EX620 laptop on display, though it's a pretty safe bet that we won't be seeing it 'round these parts anytime soon.

News Source: Engadget

Can you feel it? That dull sense of ennui isn't the result of the diminished hours of daylight, oh no, it's the sensation of the Eee Top's imminent launch in Taipei. ASUS has a news conference scheduled for Thursday to out the ET1602 and ET1603 XP PCs into the wonderfully erect world of all-in-ones. Something we've been expecting since January of this year when we first heard about ASUS' Eee branding promiscuity. We're still looking at 15.6-inches of touchscreen LCD, a 160GB hard disk, 802.11n WiFi, a pair of 4-watt speakers, and 1.3 megapixel webcam all propped up by a tepid 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor -- a CPU that ASUS knows a thing or two about. The ET1603 packs a better ATI HD3450 graphics card and battery for 4.4-kilograms (9.7-pounds) of luggable PC. We'll have to wait for the pricing and country details but we can speculate that it'll arrive in the US pronto after seeing its wireless (EK-C2) keyboard slip through the FCC yesterday. Could be a holiday winner if it hits for the $499 price rumored way back when.

News Source: Engadget

AMD plans six platforms: "Yukon", for the netbook market, due in the first half of 2009; "Tigris," for the mainstream notebook, due in the second half of 2009; "Kodiak," for business desktops, scheduled to be released at the same time; and Pisces, a similar stratregy for consumer desktops, also planned for the second half of 2009. In the near term, however, is "Maui", due this quarter for home theater PCs, and "Dragon," for the entertainment PC category, which will be released in the first quarter of 2009.

AMD also added six new cores to its processor roadmap, extending it into 2009.

For mini-notebook and netbook enthusiasts, the key additions are "Caspian" and "Conesus," both 45-nm cores apparently built on the same architecture as the "Shanghai" processor AMD introduced on Thursday and its desktop counterpart, Deneb, which will be launched early in 2009, at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, according to a leaked roadmap. That roadmap did not identify either Caspian or Conesus by name; speculation had been that the two would be based on the Geode processor. Randy Allen, the senior vice president of AMD's Computation Solutions Group who identified the new cores here, did not specify whether the two new chips are indeed Geodes.

News Source: Extreme Tech
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News Source: Gizmodo

News Source: Engadget

APC Magazine reports that the NEC Versa N1100 (which is the name the netbook gets when its shipped to the Asia Pacific region), is built with a magnesium alloy which can withstand pressures of up to 150kg or 330 pounds for up to 5 seconds. In other words, if you sit on it, you probably won’t break it.

In fact, the folks at NEC went a step further and tested the netbook by throwing some fake sweat on it to see if the finish on the case or keyboard rubs off when wet. You know, in case the big guy sitting on your netbook in the subway happens to be sweating up a storm.

Of course, while NEC claims that this netbook is more durable than others, the company is not putting its money where it’s mouth is. NEC offers a standard warranty which does doesn’t cover “impact damage or physical abuse.” In other words, don’t sweat anywhere near your netbook. Just take their word that you could without causing any real damage. Mmm hmm.

News Source: Liliputing
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Asus and MSI have already released low cost, small form factor nettops that are sort of like desktop versions of the Asus Eee PC or MSI Wind netbooks. Now DigiTimes reports that Acer is preparing to launch a nettop. But unlike Asus and MSI, the Acer computer will likely use an AMD or VIA processor isntead of the seemingly ubiquitous Intel Atom processor.

Acer hasn’t ruled out the Atom CPU altogether. But the chip is in high demand for netbooks from Acer and other computer makers. So it’s possible the company could choose an alternate processor to miniize the imapct on Atom availability.

News Source: Liliputing

Other retailers, including Amazon are still taking pre-orders, but if you’re wiling to wait a bit longer, Amazon is charging just $488. My guess is we’ll start to see the Samsung NC10 show up on a number of online stores over the next few weeks. No word on whether it’ll make an appearance at bricks and mortar locations in the US.

News Source: Liliputing

News Source: UMPC Portal

HP Shopping has updated the shopping page for its Mini line of netbooks to show that the Mobile Internet Experience version of the HP Mini 1000 will be available in January.

News Source: Liliputing

Well, it turns out Digitimes was wrong (on one front). According to ZDNet, who spoke with an ASUS rep, there are no such plans to phase out smaller netbook sizes. They may get a “refreshment on the specifications”, but won’t go the way of the dodo. Apparently Mr. Shen was misquoted.

News Source: Laptop Magazine

The one drawback is that the Best Buy unit only has 3-cell battery, which, as we pointed out, will only give you about two hours of life. Pair it with the 9-cell battery we talked about yesterday and the total is still less than $550.

News Source: Laptop Magazine

Also interesting to note is that hard drive units are out-shipping SSD units and “the ratio of Eee PCs preloaded with Windows XP to those with Linux stands at 7:3.”

In 2009, Shen expects to grab a 30% share of the netbook market. ASUS may end up exceeding that goal as well if its claims of being able to bring out a $200 Eee PC finally come to fruition. We’re not sure how the company is going to pull that off since, according to Digitimes, ASUS is phasing out the 7 and 8.9-inch products in favor of 10 inchers.

I still think there’s plenty of need for the 8.9 inch size, though, I will admit that the netbooks with the more impressive keyboards tend to be 10 inches. A 10 inch $200 Eee PC might be the closest we can get to a “dream” netbook. But one has to wonder what will be sacrificed to get to that price point.

News Source: Laptop Magazine

At long last, HP has finally released a follow-up (actually, two) to its flagship netbook, the 2133 Mini-Note. The newest model, the Mini 1000 (starting at $379 with Linux, $399 with XP), won’t replace the 2133; while the first was intended for educational and small-business use, the Mini 1000 which is now powered by an Intel Atom processor is clearly a more consumer-friendly netbook.

Available in 8.9 and 10-inch configurations, it looks the part: the 92 percent-full-size keyboard forgoes the 2133’s silver DuraFinish for a simple, matte black one. The speaker is built into the hinge, but alas, the touch buttons still awkwardly flank the touch pad. On the bright side, its 2.25-pound body feels light in the hands, and it’s less than an inch thick (the 2133 weighs 3.2 pounds and is 1.1 inches thick). To top it off, it has HP’s Imprint Finish, which is black with a swirl pattern. Check out our full review for more of our thoughts on the new netbook.

Whereas the 2133 is available with downgradeable Vista and SUSE Linux, both the 9 and 10-inch versions of the Mini 1000 will be offered with either XP or Mobile Internet Experience, a proprietary OS built on top of Ubuntu. (See our hands-on post for our first impressions of MIE. Suffice it to say, we’re impressed.)

The Mini 1000 will be available with an 8GB or 16GB SSD, or a 60GB 1.8-inch hard drive. It will initially come with a 3-cell battery, which HP says will deliver between 3 and 3.5 hours of battery life. An extended battery will follow by January 2009. The 10-inch version has a 16:10 display, and both have a unique slot into which users can stow away a proprietary HP-branded flash drive. HP also promises mobile broadband/3G solutions later in the year.

News Source: Laptop Magazine
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Sure, Asus may have promised to add the Splashtop “instant” on interface to every computer with an Asus motherboard. But it looks like Lenovo is going to beat Asus to the punch when it comes to adding Splashtop to netbooks. Today the company announced it’s working with DeviceVM, the company behind Splashtop to add the interface to the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbook.

According the press release, the S10e is “now shipping.” But it looks like this particular model is aimed at educational markets, not consumers. So it’s not clear if and when you’ll be able to pick up an S10 with Splashtop preloaded.

The IdeaPad S10e is available with Windows XP Home, or SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and comes with either a 4GB SSD or a hard drive with up to 160GB of storage.

SplashTop software basically lets you boot a light weight operating system in a matter of seconds which gives you quick access to frequently used applications like Firefox, Skype, and Picasa. If those are the apps you plan to use, you can boot your system in around 5-10 seconds instead of waiting 30-60 seconds for a full Windows or Linux desktop to boot up.

In related news, when I checked the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 order page to see if there was any information about Splashtop (which will actually be called “QuickStart” on Lenovo machines), I noted that Lenovo has apparently cut the price of the red S10 model by $20. At $409, it’s stil $10 more than the white or black models, but it’s cheaper than it was last week.

News Source: Liliputing

Now it looks like Asus could be preparing an Eee PC netbook with a dedicated graphics card. If the rumored netbook is anything like the N10, Asus will offer users the ability to switch between dedicated and integrated graphics. You can use the lower power integrated graphics processor when battery life matters more than GPU performance. And when you want to blow up some aliens, you flip a switch and reboot your system.

No word on pricing, availability, or if this is actually going to happen or if it was just some guy at Asus mouthing off. But if it does come to pass, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that Asus will charge more than $399 for an Eee PC with a fancy graphics card.

News Source: Liliputing

HP's obviously getting ready to expand its netbook line beyond the well-received Mini-Note 2133 -- the company recently started teasing the Vivienne Tam Digital Clutch, and now images and pricing for a "Mini 1000" have appeared on the HP shopping site. As expected, the new rig is basically a non-glam version of the Digital Clutch, and specs appear to be right in line with what we've seen: 10-inch screen, sub-1-inch thickness, and 2.25-pound starting weight -- and we're guessing the Mini 1000 also gets the upgrade to an Intel Atom over the 2133's VIA C7-M. Not bad at all for a starting price tag of $399 -- hopefully we'll find out a lot more soon.

News Source: Engadget

Still haven't found an Eee PC to your liking? Then perhaps ASUS's new 10-inch Eee PC 1002HA model will be more to your liking, with it bringing some of the S101's stylings to the company's standard 1000 series. Otherwise, you can expect most of the usual specs that now haunt our dreams, including a 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor,1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and, apparently, a two-cell, 4200 mAh battery. No word on a release 'round here just yet, but it looks like this one will be available in Europe in the not too distant future for €449, or about $565.

News Source: Engadget