Dell has come up with certain ideas to regain its top position, which it recently lost to HP, and boost its market. Dell has planned to launch 500,000 sub-$500, 15-inch notebooks with AMD Turion processors by next month, followed by 17-inch models next year. Dell has also announced that it has engineered the energy smart setting in its new OptiPlex desktops, which will provide with a better energy efficiency keeping in mind company’s commitment to the environment. Regarding the environment, it’s heartening to see tech companies taking responsibility for the recycling of their products, and Dell has been including such free recycling with its computers for some time. The recycling program aims to recover 275,000,000 pounds of equipment by 2009-nearly one pound for every American.
Laptops
Everex has teamed up with Via and the duo has launched a new series of Laptops the NC1500. The laptop is claimed to be the most energy efficient notebook as it has a 3-cell lithium-ion battery, which gives you an extra 90 minutes of mobile computing, when compared with other notebooks of its class. NC1500 has a 1.5GHz Via C7-M processor, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD, DVD burner, 1280 x 800 15.4-inch LCD display, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and includes VIA UniChrome Pro integrated graphics and weighs just 5.3lbs. The Laptop is not whooping fast but its value for money when compared to its price as the NC1500 costs just $498…
The Epson is offering new laptops in built to order (BTO) category. The Endeavor NJ2000 one of the laptops in this new BTO series is a professional laptop with a 15.4-inch display and screen resolution of 1280×800. It has got integrated 945GM Express graphics, up to 2GB RAM and a 160 GB SATA disk. The laptop has 3-in-1 memory slot, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi with the battery support of 5.5 hour. It weighs only 2.8 kg and you can switch between 4:3 and 16:9 display modes. The price of the laptop starts from Rs. 98,700 which comes to around $831.
The Chinese computer manufacturer, Quanta has developed the first 10 prototypes of the Linux-powered OLPC XO-1 laptops. The declaration was made by Mark Foster, the One Laptop Per Child project’s onsite supervisor. Well, Quanta is the company that has won the bidding to assemble 900 OLPC machines. They have assembles the first ten to perform systems-integration testing. It looks like that the effectiveness of the prototypes will ensure that whether they are ready for the remaining. This is indeed a signpost for the upcoming 900 OLPC XO-1 laptops.
In a marked deviation from their earlier Notebooks and desktops the Lenovo presented its new brightened-up range of notebooks and desktop PC’s. There were total of four products launched two in notebooks category and two series of desktop PC’s. All the products are slated for a Mid-December launch. The Y-series of notebooks have taken a complete makeover from the earlier notebooks by Lenovo. The Y-300 has a 13-inch widescreen LCD with NIVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 graphics card (Hmm…) a webcam that has the ability to recognize the owners face to log in. the notebooks weighs only 4.85 pounds. The Y-400 also flaunts the same design makeover as the above but has a 14-inch LCD with a flush mounted touchpad, a webcam and 2-watt subwoofers. The desktop range was also boosted with the introduction of Q-series lineup which will offer customers a webcam ATi Radeon X1300 graphics card with a Sonic GearHS555 headset. The range starts at $1,017. There are two options in monitors either you can buy 19-inch or 20-inch monitors. Similarly the H seriesof Desktop PC’s will provide cheap option for those who are tight on cash with price range starting from $699. The PC comes with a anti bacterial keyboard but there is not much info on its configuration. The trend of cheap pricing of PC’s and Notebooks seems to catching up in the industry as Dell has also announced AMD based cheap PC.
The Korean companies named Kohjinsha have presented two new laptops in the market. The series will be called SA series and the two models have been named SA1F00A and SA1F00B. The laptops have 7 -inch wide screen and support AMD Geode LX800 and CS 5536. Both the laptops have 512 MB RAM which is extendable to 1 GB and have resolution of 800 x 480. They can also be connected to external monitor and the resolution will enhance to 1600 x 1200. The model SA1F00A will have a 40 GB hard disk and the SA1F00B will have an 80 GB hard disk. The laptops also have a USB -enabled T-DMB receiver, HSDPA model, navigation software, car use cradle and DC adapter. The SA1F00A has been priced at $754 and the price of SA1F00B is $ 930.
Oakley Networks have developed a useful tool known as SureFind to locate missing laptops and wipe its hard drives remotely. There are other such applications that help to locate the lost or stolen laptops but this application is a part of Oakley’s “Total Behavioral Visibility” insider threat mitigation suite. The product line includes endpoint monitoring and a behavioral analysis appliance, and is targeted at Fortune 1000 and government agencies. The tool will be really useful as it can immediately track the system and delete the data from its hard drive operating at a remote location. The biggest advantage of this application is that it works even if a new system has been installed. So now, you can ensure that your data is safe even if your laptop is stolen or lost. The only disadvantage with the tool is that it works only if the lost system is connected to the internet and if not then this tool has nothing to do with it.
The tablet PC’s may not be a new phenomenon but the style and configuration wars are still gong on. The Fujitsu has launched two tablets PC’s ST5111 and ST 5112 in the market. it is the first tablet PC to have Intel Core Duo Mobile Technology. The ST5111 has 10.4-inch XGA TFT display and the ST5112 flaunts a 12.1-inch XGA TFT display. The configurations of both the tablets are almost same and both support U2500 procs, 4GB RAM and a 100 GB SATA HDD. They also have got Intel950 graphics card under the hood. The XGA TFT display provides better viewing in direct sunlight. They have got touch buttons navegation and a pen with erasing capabilities at the other end just to ensure that you get most out of them. As for the connectivity front both models support Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, Firewire and PCMCIA slots. Despite all of the above feature they weigh only 3.5 pounds and have a battery life of 6 hours which can be extended to 9 hours with the optional 9 cell battery. The ST5111 is priced at $2,429 and the ST5112 will cost $2,199.
Sony landed itself in a soup last year when its batteries started exploding and had to recall millions from the market for replacement. Not only did the overall image of Sony took a beating but the laptops are now being viewed with suspicion. The guys at CRN thought to have a look at the laptops that did not suffered a recall and to find out which ones the best. The criteria’s on which they evaluated were battery life / air vent temperature and overall performance of each laptop. The laptops they selected were 1) PANASONIC Toughbook CF-51 2) Jetta International’s Jetbook 9700P 3) Velocity Micro’s NoteMagix L80 4) HP Compaq nw8440 5) Asus’s F3Jv notebook 6) Twinhead Durabook D13RI The winner not only surprised them but we were also in for a shock. The PANASONIC Toughbook CF-51 came as an overall winner in the showdown. Its battery lasted whooping 5 hours and 15 minutes and it drew the least amount of power of only 22 watts. Its air vent temperatures reached 97 degrees and battery surface temperature only touched 76 degrees which were much less than the other 5 laptops that were tested. The laptop has been ruggedly built and weighs 6.8 pounds. Its priced at $1675 in the market.
It has been a bad year for laptops from bursting batteries to now Screen Flickering problem of Apple. The Apple discussion forums are reporting that the Macs are having a trouble and the screen flickers apparently due to heavy load on the CPU. One of the users is reporting that when he contacted the help desk of Apple he was told to disconnect the power, remove the battery then hold on to power button for 5 seconds and then restart the laptop. Once the power is up press Alt-options-P-R until the second reboot. He further says that it worked for the first time and now the problem is back again.
