Dell launched new subnotebook: Inspiron Mini 12
On Sunday, the Dell Inspiron Mini 12, a larger version of the Mini 9, makes its debut—in Japan. Dell had reached an exclusive agreement with VIC Camera, Kojima, and SofMap—all Japanese retailers—to make the early announcement overseas. According to Dell, the Inspiron 12 will ship in the United States by mid-November. The Mini 12 is officially the first netbook to house a 12-inch widescreen; the largest so far have been 10-inch models such as the Lenovo IdeaPad S10and the MSI Wind. The screen offers 1,280-by-800 resolution, higher than the typical 1,280-by-600 netbooks. Its shape is like a wedge, measuring 9.0-by-11.8-by-0.92 inches, becoming thicker towards the back. The weight starts at 2.7 pounds, with a 3-cell battery. A 6-cell battery will be available later on and will likely bring the weight over 3 pounds.
Like the S10 and the Wind, the Mini 12’s feature set includes three USB ports, a multicard reader, Ethernet, VGA-Out, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Hard drives aren’t the meager solid state ones offered on the Mini 9; you have a choice of 40GB, 60GB, and 80GB spinning drives. Although it doesn’t have the antenna infrastructure to support WWAN, an empty slot is available for it, like on the Mini 9. In the meantime, the Mini 12 has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. Like the Mini 9, the new Mini uses Intel’s Atom platform: The 1.33-GHz Z520 and the 1.6-GHz Z530 Atom processor are both available come November. The Mini 12 is one of the few systems to run Windows Vista Basic, which will be the only choice for operating systems at this time. The Vista system starts at $550.
Source: Computer World
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New HP laptop: 24 hours on one charge
Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s largest personal-computer maker, introduced a notebook PC that can run for as long as 24 hours on a single battery charge. Customers would have to buy an optional battery, a special display and a so-called solid-state hard-disk drive to get the extended running time, Hewlett-Packard said. With those options, the EliteBook 6930p costs about $2,200. After an online discount, the price will be $1,816. Hewlett-Packard has added new PCs over the last two months to capture consumer demand for notebooks and extend its lead over Dell Inc. The new notebook will compete with Dell’s Latitude E6400, introduced in August, which can run for as long as 19 hours on a single charge.
The company’s notebook sales rose 26% in the quarter ended July 31, while desktop revenue increased 6%. PCs account for a third of the company’s revenue. Customers wanting the 24-hour battery life will also have to download additional graphics and system software, HP said. The machine will be available in October. A basic version of the PC costs $1,199, Hewlett-Packard spokesman Mike Hockey said. The additional battery costs $150, and the solid-state hard disk, which stores information on chips rather than a magnetic disk, is an extra $900.
Source: LA Times
Lenovo ThinkPad W500 and W700 Portable Workstations
These portable computers that resemble portable desktop replacements are classified under the portable workstation category, being equipped with workstation-class hardware and features that make them great companions of engineers, architects, or scientists on field-work that need abundant computing power that’s also portable. Lenovo released the W700 and W500 earlier this month. They are taking orders.
The W700 is the flagship part, and comes in various hardware configurations. Lenovo targets the Oil/Natural Gas, CAD/CAM/EDA, DCC/Photography and Science/Public Sector industries with this part. The company claims these to be their most powerful notebooks ever. Depending on your application and needs you can configure the W700 from the options available in the W700 company datasheet
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