Apple Discontinues MacBooks for Consumers

I guess it’s no surprise. Several websites were reporting that Apple was going to discontinue the MacBook, and Apple has now removed the 13-inch Intel Core 2 Duo powered laptop from it’s main website as of yesterday, July 20, 2011. This was the last of … Read more

HP Introduces AMD Fusion-Powered Pavilion dm1

HP has formally announced the 11.6-inch HP Pavilion dm1. It’s powered by AMD’s new Fusion line, with a dual-core E-350 APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), and will be a rival to the Lenovo ThinkPad X120e with a starting price of $449 US.

One advantage it has over the X120e – it’ll be shipping next week.

While it’s not referred to directly as a netbook (and neither was the ThinkPad X120e), it definitely falls into that price and size range.

Thanks to the APU, the CPU and graphics processor are integrated into one chip, with hardware support for DirectX 11 (DX11) graphics, which is a Big Deal for laptops/ultraportables in this range. AMD refers to the graphics as a Radeon HD 6310

This dm1 features a redesign over previous Pavilions, with a “Grid Imprint” finish on the lid, as well as a redesigned touchpad (or clickpad). It does feature the same CoolSense functionality present in larger HP laptops, and the APU is placed under the keyboard instead of the palm rest which will help keep things cooler for the user. It looks like it comes standard with a 6-cell battery that provides up to 9 hours of battery life if you are not using WiFi. There is an option for a Solid State Drive (SSD) which can increase the battery life even further.

Other options include GPS and 3G/4G mobile broadband.

HP Pavilion dm1 Specifications:
– 11.6-inch display
– 1366×768 display
– AMD Fusion E-350 CPU (dual core) running at 1.6GHz
– HDMI/VGA Ports (weird)
– Full-sized keyboard
– 2GB DDR3
– HDD options from 250GB up to 750GB or SSD
– Weighs 3.5 pounds

LAPTOP Magazine has a hands-on preview:

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Lenovo Announces 11.6-inch AMD Fusion Powered ThinkPad X120e

As well as 12.5-inch Intel Core-based ThinkPad Edge E220s announced by Lenovo today, they have also announced another ultraportable, this one falling into the netbook category with an 11.6-inch display. It’s the Lenovo ThinkPad X120e, the successor to the X100e. The netbook-sized ThinkPad is based … Read more

Intel Reveals 2nd Generation of Core Processors (aka Sandy Bridge)

Earlier today, ahead of this week’s 2011 CES (Consumer Electronics Show), Intel revealed the second generation of its Core processors. Prior to this, these processors/architecture had “Sandy Bridge” as their codename. They will now be known as Core processors, and will follow the Core i3, … Read more