A Slimmer Acer Aspire One with SSD?

Could Acer be positioning itself to offer different models in its Acer Aspire One line? According to some information and photos that Macles (an Acer Aspire One enthusiast site) has obtained, it could that Acer is offering a special model that is thinner and possibly … Read more

Intel and NVIDIA Ion – It’s Looking Ugly

NVIDIA Fudzilla is discussing a document released by Intel called “Nvidia Ion Competition Position Guide”, and it’s definitely not a good sign of things to come. Intel goes after the Ion platform.

As Fudzilla points out, some of the arguments don’t make much sense – Intel mentions that Ion is not a new chipset, and is instead derived from the MCP79M/NCP7A chipset family.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. Intel’s 945GSE/GM chipset is nearly 4 years old. At this time last year, we were still a few months away from Intel Atoms being widely available, and were still using older Intel Celerons (that probably predated the 945 chipset). From the beginning, these devices were based on older technologies in order to keep the costs down. As shocking as it may seem to some, the whole point of these devices was not to include the latest and greatest technologies – most of those would severely impact the battery life on these devices, given that the batteries are smaller.

Intel also argues that Ion will consume more power and add to the cost (or Bill of Material). So what? The Ion has been positioned from the beginning as being for people wanting better performance than what’s currently available and what will be available later this year (Intel’s GN40 chipset). I include myself in that group – I would gladly give up a little battery life for something that can spit out smooth HD video and that has a much better graphics chipset than anything we currently have. That does fall well outside of the range of what netbooks were originally meant for, but there shouldn’t be a problem with having offerings that are $50-$100 more, unless you are worried about it really eating into conventional low-end laptops powered by normal laptop CPUs (which I can see Intel being concerned about that).

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VIA Launches How To Be Mobile Website

VIA Technologies has launched a site, How To Be Mobile, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The tagline is “Your guide to geting the most from your mini-notes, notebooks, and ultra mobile devices” and it looks to be aimed at how-to types of articles. … Read more

11.6-inch Netbooks Later This Year?

DigiTimes is reporting that companies such as Acer and Asustek will be rolling out 11.6-inch netbooks later this year, based on sources discussing plans from LCD panel makers. The resolution would be 1366×768 and there would be a definite boundary between current 10.1-inch netbooks (which … Read more

Samsung NC20 – In-Stock/Shipping Soon in UK

If you are in the United Kingdom and are interested in the new 12.1-inch VIA-powered Samsung NC20, you are in luck. The resolution listed is 1280×800 as well. Amazon.co.uk has the NP-NC20-KA01UK listed as being in stock and shipping on February 28, 2009, and other … Read more