Amazon.com - Deal of the Day - Samsung X360-34G ($1049.99)

This is kind of a surprise. If you are in the US and have been thinking about the ultraportable 13.3-inch Samsung X360, Amazon.com has the X360-34G as their “Deal of the Day” today. This is probably one of the cheapest ultraportable deals with an Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) CPU - Samsung claims it’ll get you up to nearly 8 hours of battery life.

List Price: $1,899.00
Price: $1,049.99 & eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime
Save: $849.01 (45%)

Note: There is a $300 rebate listed, however that expired yesterday. The deal today is much better.

Specifications:
- 13.3″ 1280×800 LED-Backlit display
- Intel Ultra Low Voltage SU9300 Core 2 Duo (1.2GHz)
- INtel GMA 4500MHD Graphics
- 3GB DDR3 (1066MHz) RAM
- 1280 GB HDD (1.8″)
- 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi
- Bluetooth 2.0
- 6-cell Battery
- Microsoft Windows Vista
- Fingerprint Reader

The listed weight is 2.9 pounds - lighter than some netbooks/ultraportables with smaller displays. It partially achieves this by ditching the optical drive, similar to Apple’s MacBook Air, so there is not an optical/DVD/CD drive included.

Read: Amazon.com - Samsung X360-34G

NVIDIA Ion - Certified for Vista, Runs Windows 7

There was a joint press conference held today in Taipei, Taiwan between Microsoft and NVIDIA, showcasing the new NVIDIA Ion platform for netbooks/nettops and other ultraportable or low-power devices. It was hosted by NVIDIA’s general managers for their MCP and notebook business units, and involved Microsoft’s Senior Director for OEMs and Senior Manager for the Windows client business group. It was announced that the Ion platform (NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M graphics chipset and Intel’s Atom CPU) has been officially certified by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows Vista Premium.

NVIDIA also showed off the Ion running Microsoft Windows 7. Existing chipsets (namely the Intel 945G) do not fully support DirectX 10 and other graphics features, while the Ion platform/chipset is able to handle them very well. In fact, the demonstration involved running a full 1080p move in the background while NVIDIA was giving the Powerpoint demonstration. They also described being able to encode/transcode video in the background while watching HD video. They also demonstrated “Left 4 Dead” running in 720p video (the game is very graphics-intensive).
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More on 10.2-inch Acer Netbook

We’ve been hearing about a 10.2″ version of the 8.9″ Intel Atom-based Acer Aspire One for a while now. TG Daily is reporting that Acer has slightly different plans for taking the larger members of the Asus Eee PC family. This includes a 10.2-inch netbook that is different from Acer’s current offering, with a slightly higher price, as well as slightly upgraded options.

Among the differences:
- Referred to as “N-series”
- Higher price ($500) than Aspire One
- Up to 320GB HDD
- Microsoft Windows Vista

If it’s true, it will be interesting to watch it unfold, as part of Acer’s success has been due to keeping a simple product line, with the only major changes being battery and hard drive sizes.

Read: TG Daily

Netbooks a “Headache” for Microsoft

Netbooks have apparently caused Microsoft some concern, for a couple of reasons. Number one of course, they are introducing a lot of people to Linux, since up to 30% of netbooks currently shipping are shipping with some form of Linux. The second reason, they have put Microsoft in a position where they have to continue supporting Windows XP (XP Home to be precise) on large numbers of new machines past the date when they wanted to discourage or discontinue such support. Another, they eat into sales of other versions of Windows that would normally be selling on full-sized laptops:

Small laptops are becoming a big problem for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows business.

The devices, which usually cost less than $500, are the fastest-growing segment of the personal-computer industry — a trend that’s eating into Microsoft’s revenue. Windows sales fell short of forecasts last quarter and the company cut growth projections for the year, citing the lower revenue it gets from netbooks. When makers of the computers do use Windows, they often opt for older and cheaper versions of the software.

They managed to catch Microsoft off guard, with a Microsoft spokeswoman mentioning they didn’t even have a true netbook policy a year ago, and with Citigroup Inc and others estimating that netbooks will account for over 30% of PC Growth for 2008 alone, with a 60% growth rate by 2010 (close to 30 million units).

Windows 7 is discussed, with Microsoft Senior Vice President Jon DeVaan saying “People will be pleasantly surprised and excited…….We’ll do well on those kinds of machines.”

Read:
- Bloomberg
via Austin-American Statesman

Windows 7 Pre-Beta on HP 2133 Mini-Note

We’ve already seen a few instances of Windows 7 on netbooks. Now HP Mini Guide has loaded a Windows 7 Pre-Beta on a VIA-powered HP 2133 Mini-Note. Keep in mind the VIA CPU used (C7-M series) was underpowered compared to the Intel Atoms, etc., that we’ve seen powering netbooks with Windows 7 this week.

It only took them less than half an hour to install (which is a good sign) to the point where they were at a desktop. Only a few drivers were initially missing (ethernet among others), but Windows Update fixed those issues (there were video driver issues). Booting looks good - faster than Windows Vista, but slower than XP.

They did have some issues with sleeping and video (due to drivers), but overall it’s looking good, and running faster than Vista. Not something you would use day-to-day at this point (until the video driver issue is fixed), but as they point out - if Windows 7 Pre-Beta is looking this good, there may not even be a netbook specific build (or rather a need for one).

Read: HP Mini Guide

Microsoft Extends XP Deadline to July 2009

At first, Microsoft backed off on the restrictions it had placed on Windows XP Home for netbooks. By now, Microsoft had wanted companies to stop installing Windows XP on their PCs, with the exception of netbooks. They had already began discouraging individuals from buying it and installing it (although it’s still available here and there).

Netbooks were still prime candidates for Windows XP since they were running older chipsets and CPUs and graphics chipsets that weren’t exactly made for Windows Vista. It had looked like January 31, 2009 was going to be the final date any of us could buy a machine that came with XP (or rather that we could downgrade to Vista with new machines).
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MSI Wind U100 and Windows Vista

Kevin Tofel over at jkOnTheRun has loaded a 10″ Intel Atom-powered MSI Wind U100 with Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate and is putting it through its paces.

He makes a point, and I agree, that you really need to bump up to 2GB of RAM to get the most out of Vista on netbooks. He got a base Windows Vista Experience Index score of 2.7 (because of the graphics), but it wasn’t as bad as it sounded - Aero ran much better than expected.

He was able to get drivers for most components of the Wind installed through Windows Update - everything but the Bluetooth, and it was a smooth install process.

Read: jkOnTheRun

Samsung and Microsoft: Let’s Speed up Vista on SSDs

Just last month, Samsung announced the mass production of cheaper and larger Solid State Drives (SSD)s.

There’s been some criticism over the performance (or lack thereof) when it comes to SSDs and Microsoft Windows Vista.

Now it appears that Samsung and Microsoft are going to work on that. InfoWorld reported that last Wednesday, Samsung announced that they were discussing with Microsoft how to improve the performance of SSDs under Windows Vista.

The differences in how data is streated on conventional rotating hard-drives and flash memory-based SSDs has caused problems for some OSes, especially Vista, where optimization involving file sizes and sector (or page) sizes has been lacking, to say the least.

Read: InfoWorld

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