Netbook News

Samsung has developed an 18.5 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display that can run on just 6.3W of power — which it can draw from two normal USB ports. That means you could plug the display into a desktop PC without bothering to run yet another cable to your wall jack or power strip, which probably already crowded enough as it is.

What I’d really like is to see a display like this that you could throw in a bag and carry with you along with a netbook or even a small nettop so that you could assemble a fully functional battery powered computer in a coffee shop, at the library, or in another location without relying on wall jacks at all.

The display has a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and 250 cd/m² brightness.

Ablecom Technology plans to showcase the HEC-13 Intel Atom powered nettop at Computex next week. Spec-wise, this little desktop PC looks like standard fare. It has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom D510 dual core processor, integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics, and up to 2GB of memory, and a 2.5 inch hard drive bay.

But design-wise it’s… well, interesting. I can’t decide whether the lines along the outside of the lastic case are designed to be stylish or if there’s actually part of the nettop’s cooling system. I imagine it’s an acquired taste.

On the bright side, there are a ton of ports on this guy, including a total of 6 USB 2.0 ports, mic and headphonejacks both on the front and back, VGA output, a 10/100/1000 LAN port, and even 2 PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard. The nettop also sports 6 channel audio.

There’s room for an optional WiFi module and you can plug in a WiFi antenna on the back of the unit. If you don’t need WiFi, you could use the Mini-PCIe slot for something else, I suppose.The nettop will be available with Windows XP or Linux, although it can also handle Windows 7.

Much consumers like the Haier adding new members of the family digital camera DC-T70, it has a 4x optical zoom and 28mm wide-angle focal length, COSCO could panoramic view close-range. 3.0-inch LCD touch screen to look simple and elegant body, no complicated button operation, between the fingers touch the process can easily take pictures. As the perfect blend of practicality and fashion element, Haier T70 camera a listing, immediately attracted the attention of consumers, has won countless praise.
Haier T70 digital camera developed by a new CCD image sensor and high-speed imaging CPU, maximum support 12.2 million effective pixels, and further enhance the level of color reproduction and rich tones, and add a beauty, Skin synthesis of the complex image processing functions. Haier T70 camera is equipped with a 4 in particular and the 28mm wide-angle optical zoom lens focal length, with the common market, 3 times more light changed cameras, taking pictures at the same distance and shooting angle, the undoubtedly more practical experience sex. Haier T70 in the video shooting in the same good job, up to 720P HD video capability can bring life interesting fragment of a perfect record.

The Eee Box EB1007 is one of the newest mini-desktop computers from Asus. It sports a 1.66GHz Intel Atom D410 single core processor and Intel GMA 3150 graphics. In other words, it’s basicaly what you would get if you took a typical netbook, ripped out the display, added a few USB ports, and added a stand for holding up the computer on a desk.

The nettop doesn’t have an NVIDIA ION graphics card or Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator. In fact, it doesn’t even appear to have Windows 7. PC Watch reports that the EB1007 runs Windows XP Home Edition.

What it does have are 6 USB ports, an eSATA port, Ethernet, VGA, and audio ports, an SD card slot, and built in 802.11b/g/n WiFi. The nettop has 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive and should be available in Japan starting tomorrow for about 31,800 yen or about $355 US.

That Pioneer DreamBook Lite E10 mini-laptop isn’t the only new Google Android device powered by a 533MHz VIA ARM-based processor. Chinese PC maker Blue sky has introduced the BL10, a tablet with a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 576 pixel display, and the same VIA WM8505 processor as the DreamBook E10.

The Blue Sky BL10 also has up to 32GB of flash storage, 128MB to 256MB of memory, a 0.3MP webcam, and 802.11b/g WiFi. It has mic and headphone jacks, a USB port, and an SD card slot.

The tablet weighs 2.2 pounds and has a 2400mAh battery and runs Google Android.

No word on pricing — but I don’t expect to see the Blue Sky BL10 outside of China anytime soon anyway.

While it will be a little while before see Palm’s WebOS officially ported to tablet or notebook-style devices, it’s probably going to happen soon. In the meantime, you can sort of kind of do it yourself if you have an older PC.

Basically, Palm offers a WebOS emulator for Windows PCs. While the version of the operating system that runs on mobile phones is designed for ARM-based processors, the desktop emulator works with x86 processors like those used in Windows computers. So a member of the PreCentral Forums decided to see what would happen if he took the emulator image, threw it on a hard drive, and tried to boot his computer. It turns out, it boots.

It only works on hard drives with IDE connections, so if you have a SATA hard drive you’re out of luck at the moment.

There’s currently no support for mouse input, so you’ll have to navigate using a keyboard and touchscreen — if you have a touchscreen PC. And the user interface doesn’t scale to the size of your display yet. But the guy who figured out how to boot a PC from the emulator image is working on patches for those things.

You can check out a video of WebOS on a Dell Latitude C600 after the break.

Google Voice is a pretty awesome service that lets you give out one phone number that you can use to ring your home, mobile, work, and other phones. If you miss a call, Google Voice will not only take a message, but it will transcribe it (poorly), email it to you, and archive it in your account so you can search for messages later — just like you would with Gmail messages. And you can adjust your settings so that your phone will only ring from 9 to 5, or whatever other hours you choose.

There’s just one catch. Google Voice is invite-only at the moment while Google continues to beta test the service.

But today Google announced that it’s giving priority to students interested in signing up for Google Voice accounts. I imagine students make good beta testers… but they also tend to use their phones. A lot. For sending text messages, making calls, and everything else. So if you want to really test the system, what better way to do that than to invite students?

Anyway, the long and short of it is that if you’re looking for a Google Invoice invite, your chances just got a lot better if you happen to have an email address ending with .edu. Just visit the Google Voice Students web site and enter your address and Google promises it will send out an invite within 24 hours.

Chinese manufacturer Hongrun Electronic is ready to bring a new MID to the market with a name MID700. The device runs on Windows CE6.0 and is powered by a 800MHz Telechips TCC8901 chipset, packing a 7 inches 800×480 resistive touchscreen, 256MB DDR2, 2GB Flash storage, a USB port ,a mini USB port, and a SD card slot, no mention about the battery life. It support 1080p videos, and comes with a HDMI port to let you output HD videos if you think the 7 inches display is too small for video displaying. The resistive touchscreen definitely can’t bring the best use experience, but it also supports stylus input. The retail price is 980 Yuan (about $145 USD).

We already knew that Canonical was planning to overhaul the user interface for the next version of Ubuntu Netbook Remix — the version of Ubuntu Linux optimized for laptops with small screens and low power processors. But now it looks like Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.10 could also come with some new default applications.

The most noticeable change under consideration is swapping out the Firefox web browser for Chromium, the open source version of Google Chrome.

Firefox has been the default web browse for Ubuntu for ages. In fact, it’s the default browser for a huge number of Linux-based operating systems. But Chrome is a good choice for netbooks because it has a minimal design that takes up less screen space with toolbars and menus than other browsers. It’s also pretty darn fast.

The change hasn’t been finalized yet. Canonical will release a few test versions of Ubuntu Netbook Remix with Chromium before making a decision as to which browser will ship when the operating system is released in October.

via Ubuntu HQ

If you’ve been wondering how HP plans to make an operating system designed for smartphones usable on a laptop, the answers are now here. Kind of. While the Compaq Airlife 100 smartbook isn’t actually shipping yet, you can download the user manual, FAQ, Quick Start guide, and a few other documents from HP’s support site. There’s also information on how to import songs to the device from iTunes on your PC.

Here are a few things I learned:

• The smartbook runs Adobe FlashLite 3.1.7 out of the box — it’s not clear if Flash Player 10.1 support will come later.
• Like a smartphone, you can connect the Compaq Airlife 100 to a PC using a USB cable.
• You can print photos to a “compatible HP printer connected to a WiFi network” using the photo app.
• There’s a file manager app — something noticeably missing from most Android smartphones (although third party apps are available from the Android Market).
• The Airlife features 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS connectivity, and you can even send text messages over 3G.
• The device ships with RoadSync Mail for syncing email and calendar information with corporate accounts using Microsoft Exchange Server.
• When you close the lid the Compaq Airlife 100 goes into sleep mode, but you’ll receive audio notifications for alerts and new messages.
• The computer ships with QuickOffice for reading Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files.

While the Compaq Airlife 100 has a touchpad, it doesn’t work like a typical laptop touchpad — because there’s no mouse cursor. Instead you use the touchpad to scroll through screen items. You can tap the touchpad to click/select. The buttons on the side of the touchpad let you open menus, go to the Home Screen, and go back to the previous screen.