Once again it’s time for the Top 10 Ultraportable/Small Notebooks of the month, for April 2006. This list is based on reader interest (which is in turn based on page views, links, etc.). Not the most scientific, but surprisingly it’s been fairly consistent. The only major changes occur when a new notebook is released, but unless it’s an outstanding notebook, the list goes back to what it was before.
Sotec has announced the Sotec WinBook WS334 and WS334B ultraportable notebooks. These are not to be confused with the WinBook notebooks that are produced/sold in North America (although they may work together). It is powered by a Intel Celeron M 380 (1.6GHz) CPU, has a 12.1-inch non-widescreen display, and weighs in at around 3.5 pounds (with an internal optical drive no less).
CNET Asia has some information about fuel-cell setups that many of us have been anticipating:
Its UC25 deploys readily available, low-cost methanol fuel in a compact package, and features twice the energy density of Lithium batteries at 25 watts of continuous power. In short, that means you can get nearly two days of juice for your laptop.
It should come out at the end of this year, and it looks like you could use it to power/recharge an existing notebook through an adapter (I’m hoping that’s the case). This has only been talked about for the last few years.
How small is too small? TechJournalSouth.com is running an article from the Associated Press that attempts to address that very question. The article takes a fairly comprehensive look at the Flybook V3 and Fujitsu LifeBook P1510D /P1500. Both are “convertible” laptops – they have the ability to convert to a Tablet with some, if not all, of the Tablet PC functionality, and both have 8.9 inch displays.
CNET News.com has a writeup for the bug in Windows XP Service Pack 2 that causes issues with battery life and USB 2.0 devices. More and more information is coming out.