Netbook News

The Litl Webbook is a $399 internet appliance that’s sort of a cross between a netbook and a souped up digital picture frame. When the company first introduced the product with a $699 price tag, I was skeptical. And to be honest, now that the price is $399, I’m still a bit skeptical that there’s a market for the Webbook — or at least that the market isn’t already being better served by products like the iPad. But the folks at Litl are pushing ahead with their vision of an internet-connected device that’s so easy to use that you can hand it to your non-tech-savvy grandparent or a toddler.

The company’s latest announcement is that Litl has partnered with Skype to let users make voice and video calls using a Litl Webbook.

The concept behind the Webbook is that users won’t have to (or be able to) install third party apps. So the Skype app will be baked right into the operating system. New customers who pick up a Litl Webbook this fall will have Skype preloaded. Existing users will get it through an automatic software update — although you’ll have to reboot the Webbook for the software to initialize the first time.

The software isn’t quite ready yet. I got a chance to check out a demo unit this week and only voice calls were up and running. But the full version should be ready in the fall.

TCL is a Chinese manufacturer that’s famous for its TV sets. Now the company brings a non-TV product: a 5 inches Android powered MID called Touchlife. The device looks sleek and very nice, thin and clean. But when coming to its specs, It doesn’t gets much to talk. It’s just another MID that’s based on Rockchip’s 600Mhz RK2808 chip, which has been seen on most China brand Android MIDs or tablets. So It will only gets Android 1.6. Like other RK2808 based device, it can handle 720p MKV(XVID/px/H.264)  videos. Another advantage its has is its Flash support, giving you complete access to  Flash relied contents.  Other specs are still not disclosed, neither are its price and availability.

Lenovo may have put its innovative Skylight tablet and IdeaPad U1 Hybrid notebook with a detachable screen/tablet on hold indefinitely — but it looks like the projects aren’t entirely dead. As the company hinted a few weeks ago, Lenovo is looking at Google Android as an alternative to the Skylight operating system that had been developed in-house for these devices.

Tablet PC Review caught up with some Lenovo reps who explained that the company isn’t killing off the Skylight and U1 form factors… but is indeed working on bringing Google Android to these devices.

So it looks like Lenovo is scrapping the Skylight OS, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the company spent a fair bit of time and energy developing the custom Linux-based operating system and it would have been nice to have another choice for this type of device beside iOS, MeeGo, and Android. On the other hand, there are thousands of third party apps available for Android, which makes any device running the operating system instantly much more useful than one running a proprietary OS that nobody else uses.

There’s still no release date for the IdeaPad U1 or Skylight, but it looks like these products aren’t exactly dead yet.