Announced: MSI Mega Book MS-1057

MSI has announced their latest ultraportable, the MSI Mega Book MS-1057, which is one of the first ultraportables to offer Intel’s Core Duo or Core Solo processors. It has a 12.1-inch widescreen display (1280×800), and weighs in just over 4 pounds (1.9kg). It can handle up to 2GB of DDR2 memory, and has a DVD burning optical drive (dual-layer as well).

Review: Acer TravelMate C200 (TabletPCReviewSpot.com)

TabletPCReviewSpot.com has a complete review from Barry J. Doyle, concerning the the Acer TravelMate C200. The C200 is a “convertible” laptop from Acer that uses a very unique “sliding-track” mechanism to convert from a notebook to a Tablet PC – it happens smoothly in one motion. Lots of good photos and benchmarks if you are considering one of the C200s (either the C203 or C204).

Toshiba M400 – Battery Life (Pringle.net.nz)

Craig Pringle has more first-hand information of the Toshiba Portege M400 The M400 is one of the very first ultraportablte notebooks to have Intel’s new CPU, the Core Duo.

This time, he took a look at battery life, saying at worst with the M400 you can expect 3 hours running time. Turning down the brightness and tweaking the power settings using the Toshiba Power Management tool I would expect that you could stretch this to over 4 (have not tried it).

Microsoft Reveals Windows Vista Versions

The BBC has a story on the next major release of Microsoft Windows, Windows Vista or just Vista, which is expected by the end of the year. Microsoft has broken it out into six versions – three targeted towards home (including one that can has PVR functionality), two for business/corporate useage, and one for “emerging markets”.

This was interesting:

Microsoft pointed out that the current version of Windows, XP, is available in six different versions though most of these are tuned for the different types of hardware, such as a Tablet PC, people are using.

By contrast Vista versions are organised by what people plan to do with their computer.

So it looks like there won’t be a dedicated Tablet PC version, rather you will use one (or more) of the other versions, probably one of the home and one of the corporate versions has the functionality, to install/run on a Tablet PC. It could be that the functionality is built-in all versions of Vista.

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