Touch Book – nice little affordable slate tablet PC
After waiting for Viliv S7 for too long, as usual things go fast in semiconductor world and that is even faster on mobile computing. Today, upcoming ideal machine is coming. Close enough to all netbooks’ buzz with 8.9” screen; but if you may know Intel Atom which is considerably low power consumption on x86 world, it’s still by far to ARM CPU. Oh, yeah ARM on your mobile, PDA, or whatsoever is improving a lot lately. You will see ARM coming more and more I bet.
The specifications of Touch Book
- 9.4″ x 7″ x 1.4″ for 2 lbs (with keyboard)
- ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip 600MHz
- 1024×600 8.9” screen
- Storage: 8GB micro SD card
- Wifi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
- 3-dimensional accelerometer
- Speakers, micro and headphone
- 6 USB 2.0 (3 internal, 2 external, 1 mini)
- 10h to 15 hours of battery life
That looks like netbook, right? Look closer in variety of view:-
Screen is completely detachable and works like a slate tablet PC. That reminds me of HP Compaq Tablet PC TC1000, hybrid tablet pc one. Although Touch Book is sort of low power comparing to netbook or any UMPC, with $299 (or $399 w/ keyboard) price tag, it’s hard to beat. 10-hour battery life with no sleep/shutdown hassle—that looks like huge PDA replacement for me =)
Stay tuned!! I might have a chance to get this for review later on if Pandora will not be released anytime soon hahaha.
Check out more info or *PRE-ORDER* @ https://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/ & First hand-on by Gizmodo—over there there are such a nice set of photo and clip when Touch book ran. I think it’s quite impressive. If you ask me, I will take this over Viliv S7 I have waited for a while since battery life is more important than performance due to my usage.
Oh I forget to mention internal USB port it features! Kind of very cool idea! Instead of hanging USB dongle outside, why don’t we put them inside the chassis??
haha Logitech, with their nano receiver, might not think it’s cool though =)
Popularity: 5% [?]
Netbooks all around—what catch me most?
Only tiny bit over a year since the first “netbook,” Asus Eee PC 701, was released to the market. I don’t think anyone expected netbook to be this large market, but it is growing constantly and rapidly. However, it’s probably coming real close to saturated point so far. It just could not be anything more than this since there is almost no possibly significant improvement available. Low price? yes eventually Eee 701 and 900A reach $199 in brick and mortar store. If it’s lower than this, I bet Asus would better bundle with their hi-end motherboards which almost twice as that. Performance? I think Atom can only take you this far since intel won’t take any risk to destroy Pentium D indeed. Cheap stuff gives less margin; no business wants to destroy its own profit indeed. Size? 7” 9” 10” 12” what else do you want? smaller than this will be MID or PDA or even phone, larger than this is Notebook. There is just no more room to fit in. CDROM? we still need that? once a year usage won’t justify extra price and weight for this market.
What we have so far should be about the same as we will have in next 6 months or a year I guess and I’m really happy seeing all netbooks available in B&M store. In my opinion, if I have planned to buy another netbook besides Eee 702 I’m using, I will buy …
- HP 2133 Mini-Note – It fades out of the market for a while; although keyboard is big, it looks so cheap anyway. Passed! We’ll see if HP Mini 2140 will be better or not.
- MSI Wind 10” – this could be named as king of netbook because it’s just about right in everything. Sadly it’s too big for my taste.
- Acer Aspire 1 – this is another good netbook with a nice keyboard. No weird right-shift anymore, but it failed me in term of appearance.
- Eee Eee Eee – I don’t know what model they have anymore 900 900A 900HA 901A 902Z 1000HA 1000A whatever I don’t care them anymore, just because too many models and I don’t believe in quality of SSD from Asus from my own experience. For $300+ I expected to know what I will get, not luck.
- Dell mini 9 – it might be a good one, but by the fact that it is the only one I have yet to see in person and there is no dedicated F1-F12 keys. I would not get it anyway. Such a shame that most B&M stores carry Dell laptop, but it’s hard to find Dell mini 9.
- Lenovo S10 – look good; quite good features; small keyboard for 10”; somehow I just don’t feel S10 better than anyone else on the market, how weird is that?
- Samsung NC10 – the first contender for Wind 10” throne. Fantastic >6-hr battery life on 6-cell; nice design; matte finish chassis. Ohh I like it very much. It seems to be real solid machine in my opinion.
- HP Mini 1000 – damn! I couldn’t believe that HP can improve 2133 this much. Same design but look much much more solid than the predecessor. Its lid looks like normal HP, but once open it. What a nice job from HP! Everything is about the same with others IMO but it looks much better with matte finish. Just about 3-hr battery life—no larger battery available due to design—not so bad, but it wins me completely.
Although I’m not a person who buy things by its look, when comparing HP Mini 1000 to the rest, it just shines. If you don’t see it in person yet and are looking for netbook, I highly recommend to see and play HP Mini 1000 by yourself. Alternatively, Samsung NC10 could be on the top of the chart in term of functionality. Again if I were you, I definitely pick HP Mini 1000. Hey! sometimes look can just win functionality without any logical reason.
** I can’t believe I like HP product this much since I hate glossy design so badly. HP Mini 1000 is just an exception.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Netbook & Notebook gap getting darn too close with Dell Mini 12
The day netbook will merge with notebook is closer than you and I think–next month!? Since Dell will unleash Dell Inspiron Mini 12, the successor of Mini 9, with $600-$700 price tag depending on configuration. 6-cell battery one probably last 6-hour (let’s say 4-5 in practice) according to LaptopMag.com.
Brief specification of this mutant netbook:-
CPU: Intel Atom
RAM: 1GB of RAM
Hard disk drive: 60/80GB
OS: Windows Vista Home Basic
Screen: 12.1" Glossy WXGA (1280×800)
Connectivity: Bluetooth, WLAN 802.11b/g
Ports: 3*USB, VGA, Card reader, Mic & headphone jack.
Extra: Webcam
Thickness: 0.92" – 1.09"
Weight: 2.72 lbs
I am amazed of what netbook is going to be–from 7" Eee 70x to now in only less than a year!! No more portability in that sense. Not that I don’t like this, but this should mean things equipped Intel Atom shouldn’t belong to only netbook no more. Then it will make sense
IMO, eventually expensive ultra portable will fade away from the market. No matter how good they are, they are just like Vertu which offers none to other, but extraordinary price that no one considers buying one. Sad that some of them are such a great thing–Sony TZ. The question is whether we will see less and less innovation in that area too? probably so. :-/ [but we will see innovation in low-end side instead!! I don't know which is better honestly.]
check out more pics @ LaptopMag.com
[via Notebookreview.com & LaptopMag.com]
Popularity: 3% [?]
Eventually, Asus could not keep hiking the price of Eee up like gasoline. This will effect Eee 900 series on both Linux and Windows XP model. Though Intel Atom version will not included. I guess it’s due to shortage supply as well. By the way, in practice, it doesn’t seem that Atom performs much better than Celeron, so I don’t think it will be an issue.
For the time being, Asus Eee PC 900 8.9″ 16GB, 20GB SSD 1GB RAM Linux will cost you around $400 and $450 (after $100 mail-in rebate for some stores) respectively while Windows XP version will be $50 extra. Oddly, there is no price cut on Eee 700 series which means Eee 701 4GB is about $399 and 702 model (8 GB) is still $499. It seems like no one would buy 700 model intentionally =) By the way, I still expect to see either another $100 off for 700 models or fading out of this series pretty soon. If you are interesting in the King of Netbook, this is such a nice time to grab one. Every popular online stores I know have this in stock.
Nonetheless, $100 off of Eee 900 is yet to tell if Asus will be able to retain the crown since $399 with 8.9″ Intel Celeron is almost the worst spec on paper. There are many arch rivals like Dell E, Acer Aspire One, and MSI Wind with this price tag and better spec. We will see how Asus is going to do with this.
Note: I just have a chance to see HP 2133 Mini-Note physically; it is such a toy!! I can believe that its keyboard looks really cheap–a lot cheaper than Eee PC, I must say.
Popularity: 2% [?]
