Techiton

Samsung is soon going to bring out a new version of netbook which will be powered not by Intel's Atom chip but by Via's Nano processor. The NC20 is their second model of netbook in the NC series after the NC10 which made entry a couple of months back.

The NC20 netbook is powered by Via's U2250 Nano processor clocked at 1.3 GigaHertz and comes with 160 GigaBytes of capacity, 1 GigaBytes of memory and a 12.1 inch screen display. Other features include Wifi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, 3-in-1 card reader and a 1.3 Megapixel Web camera. The netbook weighs in at 1.5 Kilograms and is expected to launch somewhere around February 2009.

Samsung NC20 Specifications:
CPU: Via U2250 Nano processor (1.6GHz)
HDD: 160GB
Weight: 1.5 Kgs
Screen size: 12.1 inch
Other Features:

• Intel 802.11 b/g/n Wireless LAN
• Bluetooth
• 10/100 Ethernet LAN
• 1.3 Mega Pixel Web Camera.
• 3-in-1 Card Reader

Price: around $642

Source: GenzoMedia

Intel has started shipping its 160 GigaBytes solid-state drives (SSD) as it competes with Samsung and Toshiba to deliver more storage capacity SSDs but Toshiba has already released SSD of 512 GigaBytes capacity just recently.

Intel recently said that it will add 160GB versions of its X25-M and X18-M Serial ATA (SATA) SSD. The X25-M is a 2.5-inch version of the 160GB drive for standard sized laptops and the X18-M is a 1.8-inch model for ultraportable laptops, the latter will start shipping next month.

Solid-state drives are much faster at getting data than hard-disk drives and also much more pricey. Intels SSD are expected to be very costly with the prices starting at $945 for less than 1,000 units.

It was just last week that Nvidia announced their Ion platform which will combine the power of Nvidia's graphics and Intel's Atom processor for making small power packed PCs. A news article reported by Digitimes says that Intel is knocking back their support by selling Atom processors only with their Intel chipsets and not in a separate single bundle.

Nvidia's push for the Ion platform, which combines its GeForce 9400 mGPU with the Intel Atom CPU, is heavily reliant on Intel being willing to abandon its current Atom pricing system. Under the existing scheme, Intel will only sell Atom CPUs and corresponding chipsets in a bundle, but if hardware vendors are unable to buy just the Atom CPU, the Ion platform becomes too expensive for most applications. Nvidia executives recently visited local PC makers, in an attempt to drum up support for allowing its MCP7A and MCP79 chipsets into the Atom ecosystem.

When asked to comment, Intel indicated that it has no plans to validate the Nvidia MCP79 chipset on Atom-based nettop or netbook platforms. Intel also has no plans to form a partnership with Nvidia to support nettop or netbook platforms based on the Intel Atom CPU, the company added.

Laptops have finally overtaken Desktops in global sales recently. A while back we saw this being achieved in the United States market. This is the first time notebooks have overtaken desktops, a research firm said.

Laptop shipments increased by nearly 40% in this quarter compared with the same period last year to reach 38.6 million units, according to iSuppli. Desktop shipments dropped by 1.3% to reach 38.5 million units. The PC market meanwhile did not have much impact from the global financial meltdown which saw an overall increase of 15.4% to 79 million units. There was no change in the rankings of the top five PC makers in terms of shipments. Hewlett-Packard led the market with an 18.8% share, followed by Dell, 13.9%; Acer, 12.2%; Lenovo, 7.5%; and Toshiba, 4.6%.

Lenovo (spin-off of IBM) has recently announced a mobile notebook workstation with 2 LCD screens. The Lenovo ThinkPad W700 series are a class of laptops which targets to replace desktop PCs. A few months back we saw the launch of their W700 mobile workstation in this same series.

The W700ds is powered by Intel's mobile quad-core processor and NVidia's Quadro FX mobile graphics. The main LCD screen measures a massive 17 inches and the secondary screen measures in at 10.6 inches. The laptop weighs a staggering 5 Kilograms which is 5 times that of a netbook. It even comes with 2 hard-drives in RAID configuration, upto 8 GigaBytes of high speed DDR3 memory and a storage space expandable upto 960 GigaBytes.

"This is the nitro-burning drag racer of ThinkPads," said Craig Merrigan, vice president of global consumer marketing at Lenovo. "Why two screens? Most people are using two monitors at their desktop. So we wanted to give them all the things they are used to on their desk," said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager for ThinkPads.

The ThinkPad W700ds mobile workstation will arrive in the market in January next year, 2009 and will be pricey starting at US $3600.

Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds Specifications:
CPU: Intel QX9300 3.0 GHz Core 2 Extreme Quad
RAM: upto 8 GB DDR3
HDD: Dual HDD in RAID configuration (upto 960GB)
GPU: Nvidia 1 GB Quadro FX 3700
Weight: 5 Kgs
Screen size: 17 inch (primary) and 10.6 inch (secondary)
Other Features: DVD burner, card reader, Wi-Fi, fingerprint reader, bluetooth, integrated camera, separate number pad.
Staring price: US $3,600

Source: IBM

Western Digital is expected to soon launch an internal hard-disk drive with a capacity of 2 TeraBytes. We have seen bigger drives than these in their external drive series called ShareSpace which has a storage space of upto 4 TeraBytes, but this time its internal drives that are getting bigger.

The 2 TeraByte drive is a SATA II interface drive and a part of their CaviarGreen series. The disk rotates at 7200 rpm and contains 32 MegaBytes of cache. The drive is expected to be launched by the end of this year.

Toshiba has introduced what it says is the first 2.5-inch, 512-GB solid-state drive for notebooks.
The drives will also be available in capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB, which will be enclosed in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch enclosures.

Toshiba’s second-generation SSDs include a multilevel cell controller that achieves read/write speeds of 240 MBps and 200 MBps, respectively. The drives also offer data encryption that complies with the Advanced Encryption Standard. Other specs include a serial ATA-2 interface and a mean time between failures of 1 million hours. Depending on the model, the drives weigh from a half-ounce to about 2 ounces. Samples of the new products will be available in the first quarter of next year, with mass production scheduled for the second quarter. Toshiba did not disclose pricing.

SSDs are typically lighter, are more durable, consume less power, and deliver higher performance than traditional hard-disk drives. The technology, however, costs much more per gigabyte than HDDs. As a result, SSDs are used in select applications, such as mini-laptops where less weight and more durability in a storage device are important.

Source: InformationWeek

Nvidia is going to launch a new platform called Ion which is going to combine the GeForce graphics processor with an Intel Atom processor. This combination (codenamed Ion Platform) enables the smallest premium PC experience available today, making it ideal for the exploding category of mini-notebooks and compact PCs.

Nvidia will combine the GeForce 9400 GPU with an Intel Atom CPU which according to Nvidia
will deliver up to ten times the graphics performance, play full-spec 1080p high definition video, support the full Windows Vista user interface and the upcoming Windows 7, and also run popular PC games such as Call of Duty 4. The GeForce 9400 GPU does all of this in about one-half of the space of today’s Atom CPU-based solutions with minimal affect on battery life.

Nvidia is set to supercharge the fastest-growing segments of the PC market – netbooks, small form factor and all-in-one PCs – by enabling these products to play rich media and popular games in high definition. At the same time, the Ion Platform will create new and exciting premium PCs that fit in the palm of your hand.

A quote from Drew Henry, Nvidia's GM of the MCP business unit, “The Ion Platform pairs the GeForce 9400 with a truly great Intel Atom CPU and lets consumers surf the Internet, play top games, edit photos, and watch videos all in high definition. This will really energize the PC market in 2009!”

BenQ is a new maker to join the nebook scene with its JoyBook Lite U101. Just launched in the market and currently available in 4 colors but only 3 reasons given by BenQ to love the new netbook which are:
Reason 1:
An exceptional 10.1 inch 16:9 LED display that touches your heart.
Reason 2:
At 1.05 kilogram, it's ultra-portable because love should be light and fun.
Reason 3:
Extra battery power for love that lasts longer.

The netbook is basically similar to other netbooks seen previously, for detailed specifications see below:

BenQ JoyBook Lite U101 Specifications:
CPU: Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz (533Mhz FSB/512KB cache)
RAM: 512MB (supports upto 1 GB) DDR2 667Mhz
HDD: 80/120/160GB SATA, 4GB SSD
Chipset: Intel 945GSE
Weight: 1.05 Kg
Screen size: 10.1 1024 x 576 resolution LED backlight
Other Features:

• Intel 802.11 b/g Wireless LAN card
• Ethernet 10/100 Mbps LAN
• Optional Bluetooth v2.0
• Optional 3.75G HSUPA
• 4-in-1 Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MSpro)
• 1.3 MegaPixel Web Camera
• Integrated stereo speakers
• Includes Windows XP Home or Linux lite
• 3-cell lithium battery or 6-cell lithium battery

I/O Ports:

• 3 x USB 2.0
• 1 x Integraded 10/100 LAN (RJ45)
• 1 x 15-pin VGA video connector
• 1 x line out
• 1 x mic-in
• 1 x Card Reader
• 1 x AC adapter connector

Price: approximately US $500

Other Netbook related posts:
Samsung NC10
Acer Aspire A110X
LG X110
NEC LaVie Light
Lenovo IdeaPad S10
Dell Inspiron Mini 12
HP Mini 1000
MSI Wind

AMD's next generation processors - Phenom II X4 which is a part of AMD's next generation "Dragon" platform was earlier announced with the launch of AMD 920 and 940 processors. These first two processors will launch early in January 2009 and is based on the AM2+ socket and more processors will follow around the first quarter of next year which will be based on the AM3 socket.

The Phenom II X4 codenamed as "Deneb" is a quad-core 45 nanometer chip which supports new technologies including MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64 (AMD's x86-64 implementation), Cool'n'Quiet and more. The prices are still not available but the specifications of 7 processors of this series are listed below.

Phenom II X4 805 Specifications:
Speed: 2.5 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 4MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM3
Power TDP: 95 W
Price: N/A

Phenom II X4 810 Specifications:
Speed: 2.6 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 4MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM3
Power TDP: 95 W
Price: N/A

Phenom II X4 910 Specifications:
Speed: 2.6 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 6MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM3
Power TDP: 95 W
Price: N/A

Phenom II X4 920 Specifications:
Speed: 2.8 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 6MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM2+
Power TDP: 125 W
Price: N/A

Phenom II X4 925 Specifications:
Speed: 2.8 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 6MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM3
Power TDP: 95 W
Price: N/A

Phenom II X4 940 Specifications:
Speed: 3.0 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 6MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM2+
Power TDP: 125 W
Price: N/A

Phenom II X4 945 Specifications:
Speed: 3.0 GHz
Cores: 4
L2-Cache Size: 2 MB (4x512KB)
L3-Cache Size: 6MB
Hypter Transport speed: 2000 MHz
Socket: AM3
Power TDP: 125 W
Price: N/A

Intel is going to launch a new Pentium Dual Core processor on January 18, 2009. Intel is also goign to launch a Core2Duo processor and 3 low power Core2Quad processors on the same day.

The E5400 CPU is clocked at 2.7 GigaHertz with front side bus frequency of 800 MegaHertz and 2 MegaBytes of cache. The chip will cost $84 at launch. Detailed specifications are listed below.

The prices of E5300 and E5200 will drop on the same day as a result of this launch, E5300 will cost US $74 down from US $86. And the E5200 chip will cost US $64 down from US $84.

Dual Core E5400 Specifications:
Speed: 2.70GHz
Cores: 2
Cache Size: 2MB
Bus Speed: 800MHz
Socket: LGA775
Price: $84

Source: DailyTech

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) will release Bluetooth version 2.2, a new specification of the Bluetooth standard, in mid-2009. This new release will include a specification for High Speed Bluetooth, allowing for Bluetooth-enabled devices to transfer data at greatly increased speeds and giving Bluetooth-enabled handsets many compelling applications beyond voice transmission to a headset.

The High Speed Bluetooth specification will utilize Bluetooth technology in conjunction with either WLAN or UWB for improved data rates, and the two technologies will be marketed as Bluetooth 10x and Bluetooth 100x respectively, nomenclature that refers to the respective data rates of the technologies. This new standard will allow mobile handset users to utilize the pairing and interoperability advantages of Bluetooth technology and the increased throughputs of WLAN or UWB for wireless video streaming to computers or set-top boxes, wireless printing, and wireless peer to peer content movement, among other applications.

Source: IMS Research