notebooks

If you liked the sound of yesterday's $399 Dell Vostro desktop but wanted something a little more portable, here's your answer: For just $30 more, you can snag the Dell Vostro 1000 notebook.

This well-stocked, 6.25-pound laptop features a dual-core AMD Athlon TK-57 processor, 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, and a 15.4-inch screen. You also get a discrete graphics processor (ATI's Radeon Xpress 1150) with its own 256MB of RAM, so you could actually fire up a few games on this baby.

Dell provides a 1-year warranty and free shipping. You can order … Read more

Via Technologies is shipping samples of the new Isaiah processor targeted at low-cost compact computers.

Via's current C7 processor is already used by Everex in its CloudBook, by OQO in the Model 02, and by Hewlett-Packard in thin-client computers and in certain models that the computer maker sells in China. Both the C7 and Isaiah are x86-compatible processors, meaning they can run the same software that Intel amd AMD chips do.

Samples of the Isaiah-architecture-based x86 chips are now being shipped "aggressively" to customers with a release timeframe of May-June, said Glenn Henry, CEO of Centaur Technology, … Read more

Before the Intel Atom processor, there was the A110. This chip spawned the 2007 UMPC (Ultramobile PC) category which in turn spawned some unsightly designs.

The Intel A110 and its lower-performance sibling the A100 were launched in 2007 with the intention of jump-starting the UMPC market. But that market stalled. Intel is still promoting the UMPC as a broad, somewhat amorphous category for business, while pushing the Mobile Internet Device, or MID, for fit-in-your-pocket consumer-centric designs and the Netbook for small, inexpensive, Internet-centric notebook form factors (both of which, as I will discuss below, have a better chance of success).… Read more

Dell is refuting a report by Avian Securities claiming return rates for solid state drives (SSDs) are high due to performance issues and failures.

"The recently published analyst report estimating a high return rate for Solid State Drive technology (SSD) in Dell products is unfounded and wholly inaccurate," Dell said Tuesday. The Avian Securities report had stated that "failure rates for SSDs are running a full order of magnitude higher than that of disk drives."

Dell disagrees. "Our global data on SSDs (to date) shows reliability rates that are equal to or better than HDD … Read more

The MacBook Air focused global attention--for the first time with prolonged intensity--on a small, thin notebook. Until now, this kind of design simply wasn't on many users' shopping lists. (Particularly Americans who choose performance over portability.) Here's a brief look at this notebook category, both past and present.

A few prefatory notes: Because I use a MacBook Air, the topic of ultraportables has taken on more importance for me. But the impact of this category of notebooks goes much further than personal interest. Ultraportables now contain fast Core 2 Duo processors, snappy solid state drives (SSDs), and better … Read more

Intel will roll out its first wave of mainstream 45-nanometer "Montevina" Centrino 2 mobile processors by June then follow this up in September with additional chips including the first quad-core mobile processor.

Montevina--which Intel recently branded Centrino 2--will offer the option of integrated Wi-Fi and WiMax wireless technologies. The platform will also have a new Cantiga chipset with better integrated graphics, among other features.

Though some Montevina processor specifics are out there already, scheduling and other details have now been confirmed by sources close to Intel. In short, schedules posted on the site Vr-Zone, among other sites, … Read more

Intel doesn't enter markets gently. Its new high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs) are expected to jolt a market currently dominated by Samsung, Toshiba, and SanDisk.

At the moment, Intel offers small-capacity chip-level (what are called Thin Small Outline Packages or TSOPs) technology that provides end-product sizes ranging up to 16GB. But this modest line of products will get a big boost in the second quarter when Intel offers 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs ranging from 80GB to 160GB in capacity, said Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel. Intel's new SSDs will compete with … Read more

Though rumors have been out there for weeks, Intel has confirmed that upcoming Montevina mobile technology will be branded Centrino 2. The chipmaker also said the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 is shipping.

This follows the official rollout of the Atom brand for ultrasmall devices on Sunday. As part of the Atom platform, Intel will offer a combination CPU-chipset wireless solution called Centrino Atom, with device suppliers shipping products next quarter.

Now Intel has added the Centrino 2 brand to the mix. The branding will break down into Centrino 2 for consumer notebooks and Centrino 2 vPro for business portables.

"… Read more

Japanese engineers were quick to pour scorn on the MacBook Air. This critique comes courtesy of Nikkei Electronics, a major Japanese electronics monthly, which did a teardown of the Air.

Here's the seeming challenge: The Japanese PC industry must come up with a reason why their own PC suppliers--NEC, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu--don't have a riveting 0.75-inch-thin notebook design on the market in the U.S. The answer, for them, is simple: a Japanese company would never approve of the design.

(Actually Mitsubishi did design an Air-thin notebook called the Pedion back in 1997, but the shallow keyboard … Read more