In terms of form factor, there’s no denying that the AOpen XC Mini (Google Translate link) is pretty similar to other nettops currently available with an optical drive. The XC, however, is hiding some serious horsepower beneath its glossy black shell.

The 18CM x 16CM x 6CM XC barebones unit supports Intel’s Mobile Core 2 Duo (Penryn) processors. That gives the XC a serious edge in the horsepower department, though it’s going to set you back a few more bucks than a similar Atom-powered device.

Still, if you’re after a set-top box that can provide a reasonably good gaming experience, this is certainly an excellent option. The XC has room for a 2.5″ SATA drive, gigabit LAN, 6 USB 2.0 ports, NVidia ION graphics, and also features HDMI output and an eSATA port at the back.

AOpen shows impressive benchmarks using an Intel P7450 on their site – a 3D Mark 03 score of 2023 and Windows 7 experience index of 4.7 overall (4.7 on the CPU and 5.4 for 3D graphics).

So where do you see the XC Mini fitting in? Entry level gaming, or high-end nettop? Maybe it’s a little of both.

Post from: Liliputing

AOpen XC Mini rocks, but is it fair to call this thing a nettop?

Flash storage keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. You can often find bargains on 32GB USB flash drives for $60 or less, and 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB sticks are far cheaper. But not all flash drives are created (or priced) equal. Some are faster than others, and some have other gimmicks, like password-protected file encryption.

Kingston recently launched a new DataTraveler Locker+ USB flash drive line that features 256-bit AES hardware encryption. Basically you can’t access the data on the sticks without a password. And you enter the wrong password 10 times, the card will automatically reformat the hard drive. That’s great if you accidentally lose the flash drive and don’t want your data leaking out to the world. But it also means you’d better be darn sure you remember the password.

The Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ USB flash drives range from 4GB to 32GB in size and run between $36 and about $154. They’re compatible with Windows, OS X, and Linux.

via Electronista

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Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ USB flash drive for corporate/paranoid users

Looking to replace that “vintage” SATA HDD in your netbook? Why not upgrade to a snazzy new SSD? Imation wants you to, and they’ve got a host of new upgrade kits designed for just that purpose.

The kits include either a 64 or 128 gigabyte 2.5″ SSD as well as an external USB enclosure into which you can slide your netbook’s existing HDD. It’s a thoughtful inclusion as it allows you to get some use out of the hard drive you’re replacing, but I’m not sure the pricing makes these kits an attractive buy.

The 64Gb variety is retailing for $211.99 over at Buy.com and the 128Gb kit will set you back $359.99. By comparison, you can DIY a kit like this for about $170 or less – similar external enclosures sell for less than $20 and you can find 64Gb SSDs for around $150, saving you a cool $40.

via Slashgear

Post from: Liliputing

Imation unveils new 2.5″ SATA SSD upgrade kit

Brad’s written before about the Asus EEE 1005HR – it’s the first of the 10″ Seashell netbooks to feature a high-resolution 1366×768 display. Other than that, the hardware under the hood remains the same as its siblings: an Atom N280 processor, 1GB DDR2 ram, 250GB SATA hard drive, 802.11b/g/n wireless, bluetooth, and a .3 megapixel webcam.

Netbooked has gotten their hands on one, and as Peter points out it might actually be a bit too much resolution for some users on a 10″ screen, but there will certainly be plenty of buyers. Personally, I’d love the additional screen real estate even if it does require occasional squinting.

Check the unboxing video on YouTube (sorry, embeds are being troublesome at the moment!)

Post from: Liliputing

ASUS Eee PC 1005HR Netbook unboxed with 1366 x 768 pixels of HD display

There’s no question that PC makers and wireless carriers are getting ready to unveil a whole slew of low power smartbooks with ARM processors and Linux, Google Android, or Windows CE operating systems. What is still in question is whether there’s any real demand for these devices.

I still kind of think that if you hand somebody a device that looks like a cellphone they won’t care what OS it runs as long as it does what they expect it to (make calls, maybe surf the web, take pictures, etc). And I think the same holds true if you hand somebody a device that looks like a laptop. The difference is that most people expect a laptop to be able to do things like run Office, Photoshop, and other programs that aren’t available for Linux. Sure, there’s OpenOffice, Firefox, GIMP, and even Skype. But unless users are ready to start using Linux on their primary computers, I don’t see them wanting to use these open source alternatives to Windows programs on the go.

That said, there are some pretty exciting things about smartbooks. They use very little power, so the batteries last for a long time. Many will feature always-connected capabilities so that you can receive emails and instant messages even when the laptop is closed. And as Nicole from Netbook News shows, some, like Inventec’s upcoming smartbook will feature the NVIDIA Tegra chipset which enables 1080p HD video playback while using 1W or less of power.

Inventec is looking for companies to rebrand and redistribute the smartbook, so it won’t likely have the Inventec name on it if and when it makes it to market. The laptop boots in just about 12 seconds and runs Windows CE. It has no on-board storage space to speak of, but you can run media from a flash drive or SD card. You can check out Nicole’s hands-on video after the break.

Post from: Liliputing

Inventec Smartbook almost makes me think Smartbooks have a shot

Netbooks and Notebooks

• ASUS Eee PC 1008HA Atom 1.66GHz 10″ Netbook for $290 after rebate + free shipping – Adorama
• Samsung N110 10.1 inch netbook w/6 cell battery, Win XP for $314.95 + free shipping – Amazon
• Asus Eee PC 1005HA-VU1X-WT w/8.5 hour battery, Win XP for $319.99 + free shipping – Amazon
• Acer Aspire One AOD250 bundle with wireless mouse, USB optical drive, protective bag for $329.99 - TigerDirect
• Refurbished Gateway LT3103u 11.6″ w/1.2GHz AMD Athlon CPU, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Vista for $299.99 – Buy.com

Accessories

• IOGEAR 4 Port Ultra-Wideband Wireless USB 2.0 Hub and Adapter for $34.95 + free shipping – Buy.com
• 10″ Reversible Neoprene Netbook Sleeve for $3 + free shipping – Meritline
• Refurbished Linksys WRT110 RangePlus-N WiFi router for $24.99 - TigerDirect
• HP Bluetooth Wireless Printer and PC Adapter- 2-Pack for $19.99 + free shipping – Buy.com
• Mini All-in-One Memory Card Reader for $5 + free shipping – eForCity
• Verbatim Nano Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse – Graphite for $12.95 + free shipping – Buy.com
• EVGA InDtube USB 2.0 HDTV Tuner for $32 after rebate + free shipping – Dell Small Business (coupon: KX0T0NGTSSM32)

You can find more deals on netbooks, gadgets, and accessories in the Liliputing Deals section.

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Deals of the Day

I’m going to be traveling over the next few weeks and my friend and colleague Lee Mathews has agreed to step in and help me run Liliputing over that time.

Lee and I have worked together on Download Squad for some time, and long-time Liliputing readers may recognize his name, as Lee has written a few articles in the past, including one of the earliest articles about installing Windows 7 on the MSI Wind U100.

I’ll still be popping in as frequently as I can. You can’t get rid of me that easily. But you’re going to start seeing a lot more of Lee starting today.

And while the daily post volume might dip a bit until early December, I’ve got some really cool things planned including a series of pre-holiday gear giveaways, a few new reviews, and a kick-ass look at gaming on netbooks from freelance video game journalist Joe Rybicki.

So stick around. Things are about to get interesting. And CES isn’t even until January!

Post from: Liliputing

Introducing guest blogger Lee Mathews

Let’s go ahead and file this squarely in the rumor category for now, because Intel doesn’t like to talk about unreleased products and because 2011 is an eternity away when it comes to the tech world. But hot on the heels of yesterday’s rumor that the successor to the upcoming Intel Atom Pine Trail platform would be called Cedar Trail, Fudzilla has a few more details:

• The platform could be based on a 32nm process and support DDR3 1066 RAM.
• Cedar Trail chips could support HD video and DirectX 10.1.
• Cedar Trail will launch in 2011, and the following generation of Atom processors won’t be available until 2013.

Probably the most exciting news is that Cedar Trail chips should get a significant performance bump at least in terms of HD video playback. The upcoming Pine Trail platform is expected to use less power than existing Intel Atom processors, but we’ve been cautioned not to expect a major change in performance.

via Netbook Choice

Post from: Liliputing

Intel Atom Cedar Trail platform to support HD video?

There’s been a lot of talk about so-called smartbooks in 2009. These netbook-like mini-laptops have low power ARM-based processors and are designed to get excellent battery life while maintaining a constant connection to the internet via WiFi or a 3G cellular connection. In other words, they’re a cross between a netbook and a smartphone, thus “smartbook.”

Chip-maker Qualcomm recently announced that Lenovo would be making one of the first smartbooks to hit the market, and it will be available in the US through wireless carrier AT&T. But despite the fact that Qualcomm and other chip and PC makers have been showing off demos for the last year, not a single ARM-based smartbook has hit the market yet.

But now Taiwan’s Pegatron Technology says it’s received a large number of orders for smartbooks that will launch in early 2010. Pegatron makes devices that tend to get rebranded and resold in the US and other western markets by big name PC vendors. So it’s likely that we can expect to see a small flood of announcements during the first quarter of 2010, perhaps with some coming as early as the CES show in January.

Pegatron says the ARM-based smartbooks could sell for around $200, although that’s probably the subsidized price that you’ll get only when you sign up for a long term wireless service contract. Pegatron’s smartbooks are expected to run Linux-based operating systems rather than Google Android or Windows CE. Google Chrome OS-based devices could hit the market later in 2010.

Meanwhile, the folks at Shanzai got to spend some hands-on time with a 10 inch Pegraton smartbook prototype with an ARM processor. The laptop was running Ubuntu Linux and had a fairly large keyboard and touchpad.

Post from: Liliputing

The Smartbooks are coming in 2010

There’s been a bit of confusion about Google’s new operating-system-that’s-really-just-a-browser. While Google did announce yesterday that the OS would be designed for upcoming “netbooks” with larger screens and keyboards and solid state disks, the most important thing Google announced was that the project was open source. And the code is available today. And that means anybody that knows there way around a Linux command line interface can go in and tweak to their heart’s content. And that’s why last night geeks around the world started building the pre-release version of Chrome and installing it on virtual machines and netbooks.

For instance, want to know how Chrome OS looks on an Asus Eee PC 701 with a 7 inch screen and a keyboard that’s decidedly not full size? Just check out the video after the break, courtesy of Brad Kellet.

It doesn’t quite live up tot he promised 7 second boot time on this relatively sluggish hardware. And the login screen doesn’t really scale well to the 800 x 480 pixel display. But the OS does boot relatively quickly, all things considered, and as you’d expect it looks almost exactly like the Google Chrome browser for Windows.

So if you want to try it out, you can go and grab a pre-compiled disc image. Gdgt has a VMWare disc image, and The Pirate Bay has at least one pre-compiled disc image. Or you could, you know, install the Chrome browser on an existing system.

Post from: Liliputing

Google Chrome OS image now available, tested on netbooks – Video

When Apple released OS X 10.6.2 last week, the company offer Mac users a number of bug fixes and security updates. Apple also broke support for Intel Atom processors. It’s not clear whether this was intentional or just a side effect of the fact that Apple doesn’t currently have any devices that use the CPU and therefore no reason to test the chipset’s compatibility with OS updates. What is clear is that netbook users that were running OS X on so-called hackintoshes found that upgrading to OS X 10.6.2 basically caused their computers to go into an endless reboot loop.

The easiest way around this was to simply not update to OS X 10.6.2. Some users also figured out how to roll back to an earlier version of the OS X kernel, keeping some of the benefits of OS X 10.6.2 without destroying Atom support.

Now there’s another way. A Russian hacker developed a kernel patch that lets users update safely to 10.6.2.

Bear in mind, this trick is not supported by Apple or your PC manufacturer. So you have nobody to blame if you brick your system. But the same is pretty much true for installing OS X on an Intel Atom powered netbook in the first place, so if you’re still reading this you probably didn’t need my warning.

via TUAW and Insanely Mac

Post from: Liliputing

Unofficial patch adds Intel Atom support to OS X 10.6.2

ViewSonic introduced three new computers this week, including a relatively inexpensive Windows 7 all-0in-one PC with a touchscreen display and two mini-PCs that are too powerful and expensive to really consider nettops. So I’m kind of ignoring the $750 VOT530 PC Mini and the $950 VOT550 for now and focusing instead on the upcoming $VPC101 all-in-one that should be available in December.

Like the ViewSonic VPC100 that I got a chance to check out a few weeks ago, the VPC101 features an 18.5 inch, 1366  768 pixel display. But the new model has a touchscreen and runs Windows 7 Home Premium which includes touch-friendly features.

The computer has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU, integrted GMA 950 graphics, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. So it’s basically a netbook dressed up in a desktop’s clothing. But like a netbook it also has 802.11b/g WiFi, which I’m starting to think should be a standard feature in all desktop computers. After futzing with setting up a new router in my house last weekend, I realized that life would be a lot simpler if I didn’t need to connect any desktop PC in the house to the home network using an Ethernet cable. For now I’m using Powerline adapters, but I digress…

Anyway, the VPC101 has a list price of $650 and it should be available in December. But keep in mind, the VPC100 lists for $600, but it’s already available for as little as $469.

Post from: Liliputing

ViewSonic VPC101 all-in-one coming soon with Windows 7 + touchscren

The last USB DVD burner from Lite-On that I checked out was the slim, light, and USB bus-powered eTAU208. It’s a good solution for someone looking for a portable disc burner for under $50. The company’s latest entry into the USB DVD burner space isn’t as light, portable, or cheap. But it’s fast.

The new Lite-On eHAU424 can burn DVDs at 24x speeds, making it one of the fastest USB DVD burners around. It also includes LightScribe technology for labeling discs. But it doesn’t run on USB bus power, which means you’ll have to lug around a power cable. And it’s a bit chunkier than the eTAU208, which means you’re less likely to shove this drive in your bag on your way out of the house.

The eHAU424 has an MSRP of $69.99, but you can pick it up now for about $55.

Post from: Liliputing

Lite-On launches eHAU424 USB 24x DVD burner

Google held a press event this afternoon to talk about the company’s upcoming Google Chrome operating system. Here’s the short version: It’s a light weight OS built to support the Google Chrome web browser. The only apps that you’ll be able to install will be web apps, although Google is working to ensure that Chrome OS can interact with desktop hardware such as video cards and webcams.

Since the OS basically only exists to boot a web browser, the whole thing loads in about 7 seconds on a system with an Intel Atom processor, and you can get online and launch web apps in another 3 seconds.

You can read more about the operating system and see additional screenshots at Download Squad.

But here’s the interesting part for netbook users: Chrome is set to launch initially for netbook-like devices. That means clamshell devices with a full sized keyboard. In fact, Google representatives said that they expect the devices that run Google Chrome OS to be larger than today’s netbooks and to have high resolution displays. They say they expect those netbooks to be in “price ranges people are used to” seeing from netbooks today, which to me means $200 to $400.

As an interesting side note, Google showed a demo of Chrome OS running on a netbook. When asked, a Google rep said that it was an Eee PC. It wasn’t. As you can see from the image below, it’s clearly an Acer Aspire One.

What’s really intriguing about all of this is that I’m starting to think that Chrome OS is going to make Google Android look like a good choice for netbooks. While Android was designed for cellphones, not notebooks, the operating system can run native applications and works whether you’re online or off. ChromeOS won’t be able to run Google Android apps, or any apps that aren’t available on the web.

That’s the same model Steve Jobs promised for the iPhone when it was first introduced, but Apple eventually opened up the iPhone to third party development for native applications. Google says the difference is that notebooks with Intel Atom or more powerful ARM-based processors are better suited to surfing the full web and handling powerful web apps than the iPhone ever was. So while Apple designed its built-in apps for the iPhone to run natively, the only native app that will run on Chrome OS is the Chrome web browser.

Finally, here’s a little video Google put together trying to explain exactly what Google Chrome OS is:

It’s not a good sign that they need to spend 3 minutes explaining what a new operating system is, is it? What do you think? Is the lack of local storage and native apps a feature? Or is it a a disadvantage?

One attendee asked whether Google would try to position Chrome OS as an instant-on OS that could be a companion to Windows or another operating system. In other words, it would function like Splashtop or HyperSpace, giving users a choice of loading a limited, fast-boot OS or a full version of Windows  when they hit the power button. The Google reps kind of skirted around that question, but I could definitely see Chrome OS making a lot more sense as a companion OS rather than a standalone operating system.

On the other hand, Google, and many others, see netbooks as companion devices. The idea is that you don’t expect a netbook to be your primary computer, and you might not expect Chrome OS to be your primary operating system. Instead, it’s the OS you use when you’re interacting with web apps from your netbook. And in that case, it doesn’t necessarily have to do everything that a desktop OS does or even be all that useful when you can’t get online.

Post from: Liliputing

Google explains Chrome OS: What it means for netbooks

Netbooks and Notebooks

• MSI Wind U100 10” netbook w/Atom N270 CPU, Win Xp Home for $265 – Superbiiz (coupon: SUPERSTEAL25)
• Refurbished Gateway LT2021u 10.1” netbook w/Win XP, Atom N270, 3 cell battery for $239.99 – Buy.com

Accessories

• HP SimpleSave 1TB USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive for $92 + free shipping – HP
• Airlink101 802.11n Wireless Mini USB 2.0 Adapter for $17 + free shipping – Meritline
• SanDisk 4GB Cruzer USB 2.0 Flash Drive for $10.95 + free shipping - Buy.com

You can find more deals on netbooks, gadgets, and accessories in the Liliputing Deals section.

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Deals of the Day