HP 2133 Mini-Note – Sequel with VIA Nano CPUs?

A week ago, we saw rumors of HP moving to the Intel Atom, with the addition of a 10.2″ panel to their 8.9-inch HP 2133 Mini-Note lineup. DigiTimes is reporting that Hewlett-Packard has placed orders for VIA’s new Nano CPUs (which are currently shipping). Keep … Read more

OCZ Core Series V2 SATA II SSD

OCZ announced a new series of 2.5″ Serial ATA (SATA) Solid State Drives (SSD) yesterday, with a cool twist. OCZ claims the new series, the OCZ Core Series V2 SATA II SSD, will cost half as much as existing comparable SSDs (although no pricing was … Read more

Dell Mini Inspiron = Inspiron 910?

Dell Mini Inspiron There is a Brazilian site (Odontopalm) that claims to have details of the 8.9″ Dell Mini Inspiron, only they are referring to it as the Inspiron 910, (and they mention it was called the E at one point).

Now it wouldn’t surprise me if we get details from outside the US – it happens all the time that things get leaked by accident, and Dell’s netbook is definitely targeted towards exposing people to computers who might not have been exposed to them in the past (or at least lowering the barrier of entry). South America would definitely be a big market for them.

They are talking about a launch date of August 22 (next week). I consider that reasonable – we thought they would announce it earlier this week when they announced the new Latitude E series, however, in retrospect, it would have been foolish to do so. Much better to have them a week or two apart so that you can maximize the publicly for each series.

This is going to be a special device for Dell, given their push into the Indian and Chinese markets (Dell 500, etc.) as well as other developing markets.

It’s also the complete opposite of the Latitudes they just announced, which are at the high-end of Dell’s mobile products.

As far as the naming convention – the “910” could signify that it was a 9-inch model (8.9″ but many just round it up), and obviously they wouldn’t want to use 900 or 901 (or 90x anything) since that’s what Asustek is doing.

Things we knew that they mentioned:

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First Impressions of Acer Aspire One (SL)

Acer Aspire One I mentioned yesterday that I had an Acer Aspire One arriving, specifically the hard drive version of the 8.9-inch netbook.

Well it arrived yesterday afternoon, and I’ve had a chance to go through a few charge cycles and give it a good work out both last night and this morning on the way to work. This is a bit longer than most “first impressions”, but it’s due to the fact that I was able to do quite a bit right out of the box with it.

Construction

First off, the construction of the Aspire One. The build quailty feels very well made. It doesn’t feel like there is any wasted space. That said, now that I understand what’s involved in upgrading the memory and hard drive, I believe I’ll wait until this weekend. Both definitely need to be done at the same time. You don’t want to be taking the rubber feet off to get to the screws more than once.

It is incredibly lightweight – much lighter than I initially expected. I will trade off some weight for increased battery life, no problem, so moving to a six-cell battery when they come out (other than the price) won’t be an issue. The footprint of the Aspire One won’t be increasing too much.

Keyboard
The keyboard is solid and has no real give or flex. I would like a bigger Enter / Return key plus a larger delete key, but such is the sacrifices we make for something this small. I was surprised at how fast I was able to acclimate to typing on something that small.

Touchpad
I’m still getting used to the button placement on either side. The touchpad scrolling and zoom in and zoom out features are taking some getting used to. The touchpad scrolling works just fine with most websites as long as you pay attention to keeping your finger along the right side. Scrolling with Google Docs and Evernote works just fine as well. The touchpad buttons are a little loud – I find myself double-tapping on the touchpad rather than clicking on the buttons.

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MacBook Air Revision Soon?

Apple MacBook Air Could a revision of the 13.3-inch MacBook Air be just around the corner?

PhoneNews.com seems to think so. They are reporting that for the most part, the MacBook Air will still look the same. The internal components will change quite a bit from what we saw in the MacBook Air that was first released back in January of this year. A custom platform and CPU was being used in able to keep cooling and power requirements low. PN believes that they will move to a standard-sized Penryn Core 2 Duo, which could reduce the cost, while increasing the speed.

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