Sony VAIO GS at the FCC

This came out of nowhere – a new ultraportable laptop from Sony has shown up at the FCC to undergo various tests before it’s allowed to be sold in the US (most having to do with wireless networking). The reason why I said it came … Read more

Netbook Marketing – Costco and Office Max, HP Mini and Acer Aspire One

Netbook When Asus began selling the Eee PC line of netbooks/sub-notebooks, whatever you prefer to call them, they (and later Acer and MSI) seemed to have problems defining who they were for, or at least the message wasn’t clear. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Best Buy and other physical retailers (along with the online retailers) weren’t sure where they fit into the laptop family. Many of us had no problem defining where they fit in – basic internet use and mainly as a second machine.

That’s been changing over the past several months. I saw this in action twice today.

The first was at Office Max – they had an 8.9 Acer Aspire One AOA150-1635 on display, along with a placard below it describing why you would buy this. Their message for who should buy this and why is quoted directly below (as you can see from the photo below this):
Why Buy:
* Netbooks may look like regular laptops, but they do not have the full capabilities of one.
* Great for basic tasks such as email and internet use or a secondary unit.
* Netbooks are light weight and great for mobility at a great price.

Acer Aspire One

Costco had a rather prominent large and prominently placed display – an endcap, that was selling a 10.2″ HP Mini 1033CL from the HP Mini 1000 line for consumers. Their description was “Take Me With You” and “The small, light mobile companion keeps your friends, family, social networks, and websites close – wherever you go.

They then included a large comparison titled “IS A NETBOOK RIGHT FOR ME?” with a point-by-point comparison between the “HP Mini 1033CL Netbook” and a “Typical notebook” (typical = 14″ display, 5+ pounds, 2GB RAM, 250GB+ drive space, optical drive, etc.).

HP Mini 1033CL

Read more

Samsung NC20 – it’s got a VIA Nano in it!

About three weeks ago, some specifications of the 12″ Intel Atom-powered Samsung NC20 leaked out through online retailers. Yesterday, news came of the user manual for the NC20 being online, and it’s confirmed some things that surprised me. I mentioned that I thought the VIA … Read more

MSI to Launch MacBook Air Competitor with Regular CPU

It looks like the 13.4″ MSI X-Slim X320 won’t be going up against the 13.3″ Apple MacBook Air after all. The MacBook Air has a full (albeit lower voltage) Intel Core 2 Duo powering it, versus the single-core Intel Atom powering the X320, leaving the … Read more

NVIDIA Shows off Ion at CES

NVIDIA was showing off a demo model of the upcoming NVIDIA Ion platform, based around Intel’s Atom CPU. PC Perspective and HotHardware both have videos of the Ion platform, and you can get an idea of just how small it was, and how cool-running it … Read more