Check out some of these links for some interesting points about the new IPad:

• 8 reasons why the IPad sucks (link)
• What we learned about apple (link)
• What Apple left out (link)

I also couldn’t help but post this funny:

Related posts:

1. The IPad, First impressions, Specifications and Photos
2. IPad prices and release dates for Europe

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

MediaMarkt the giant european electrical retailer has announced this morning (via twitter!) that I will be selling the Apple IPad for €899 from the first of March.

At this price, will it effect netbook sales? If anything considering the two based on functionality and price, I’d go for a netbook…. but i’m still on the fence till I get my hands and eyes on one.

Related posts:

1. Criticism for IPad
2. The IPad, First impressions, Specifications and Photos

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

IPad image gallery

Related posts:

1. Criticism for IPad
2. IPad prices and release dates for Europe
3. Lenovo S12 ION Netbook Photos

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Among words like ‘Versatile’, ‘Diminutive’ and ‘Pioneering’ they managed to give away the spec:

• 10.1” TFT
• 11-hour battery life with the 6-cell version (impressive!)
• 1.33kg weight
• 3x USB
• 250GB hard drive
• 802.11n wireless / Bluetooth 2.1 (with enhanced data rate)
• Choice of Windows 7 Starter or XP Home
• The all important Intel Atom N450 processor (1.66GHz / 667MHz)

Seriously though, this thing actually sounds great. While not always the most beautiful machines on earth (as evidenced by them offering the NB305 netbook in ‘Mocha Brown’), Toshiba’s laptops have always been really sturdy and performed very well.

The Good Bits

The 250GB hard drive is nice (remember just a couple of years ago when full-fledged performance laptops would ship with 40GB drives?).

The USB ports offer a nice touch: one of them features ‘Sleep-and-Charge’, which is such a sensible idea we don’t know why it’s not featured in every netbook. Basically it lets you charge your phone/ipod/camera/whatever via USB even when the laptop is turned off. Simple and really useful.

The 11-hour battery life is great. We’re betting that will drop to 8 or 9 in actual use, but who’s complaining at those?

And, Toshiba’s name for reliability is great if you’re wanting a netbook to throw in your bag & haul around everywhere.

The Odd Bits

Sadly missing from Toshiba’s press release were any details of the RAM in this thing. Intel used to insist netbooks feature no more than 1GB RAM. A few manufacturers have been putting out 2GB machines lately, but we were interested to see what Toshiba would do with this (their first machine with the latest generation Intel processor).

We already touched on the colours. This thing comes in ‘Snow White’, ‘Mocha Brown’ and ‘Cosmic Black’, all of which sound a little second-rate blaxploitation-era drug dealers. We’re still holding out for the day laptop manufacturers  bow to the needs and wants of the common man, and start putting out colourways like ‘Gingerbread Man Orange’, ‘Jimmy White’ and ‘Hearing Aid Beige’.

The Best Bit

Of course, the battery life is helped a lot by the Atom 450 processor inside this thing. Intel’s Atom CPU basically ate the whole netbook market alive, and the next generation of these things gives the Toshiba NB305 a headstart over a lot of similar netbooks.

Related posts:

1. Atom N450 & N470 Specifications
2. Atom N450 Release Date
3. The Samsung N140 First Look

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There’s big news from Samsung, who have let the news slip that they’re about to release 4 new netbooks:

• The N210
• N220
• N150
• NB30

Longest battery life in the range is shared by the N210 and N220 with an impressive 12 hours. This is thanks to Samsung’s proprietary LED backlight system which features significantly less battery drain.

They’re all 10.1″, 1024×768 affairs, which Samsung seem to have latched on as the sweet spot. The NB30 is a ruggedised machine, able to handle a few knocks & spillages.

The N210 & N220 feature Windows 7 Starter as standard but, interestingly, also come with a Linux-based OS for quick browsing without having to wait for W7 to boot up.

More news as we get it!

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome for Netbooks
2. Samsung N310 Specification
3. Windows 7 Netbooks

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today the BBC has an article on their news website which reports netbook popularity is on the slide and that they will become redundant within a couple of years.  Read on for our thoughts on the subject.

Pretty interesting thought, but this certainly isn’t true.A few searches on the internet show that netbooks continue to outstrip sales of laptops and they’re still on the rise.

2010 will most likely be the year of the netbook with continued sales, great machines on the way.  With more and more free internet connections in cafes, hotels, trains etc, it’s great to have a tiny computer in your bag to whip out and have a quick surf/email/chat etc.

So why does the BBC think this is the end?  We’ll let’s have a look at their reasons:

“Operating systems require more resources”

This isn’t true.  Almost all netbooks that have been on the market for the last two years can run Windows XP (most are pre-installed) to a good standard and certainly most netbooks from the last 6 – 12 months will have no trouble running Windows 7, which also comes pre installed.

Whilst Windows is the most popular operating system for netbooks it is resource heavy. This doesn’t affect your netbook speed, but it does typically mean a lower battery life than the same machine running a Linux based OS and (of course) means a higher price.

Amazingly though, 2010 will see the launch of the Google Chrome OS for netbooks. This Linux-powered OS will offer much of the same functionality as Windows, but with better security, and higher performance without the need for a highly specified machine. It also means Linux Operating Systems will have some marketing power behind them in the netbook space.
“Prices are getting higher”

I also think this is a load of rubbish.  Check out the find from yesterday remove this as a link a fantastically spec’d Asus netbook for £199 pounds link this instead. This is even better when you consider the first netbooks on the market 3+ years ago we’re also around the same price.

Sure some netbooks are breaking the £350 mark, but these machines are offering greater specifications than £600+ laptops.  Bottom line is that prices are not getting higher, you can still buy cheap, powerful netbooks and this is set to continue.

Smart phones & E-reader devices are “taking over”

Touch screen devices like the Apple IPhone and E-Reader devices now offer users access to get on the net to surf and check email.   Sure they do, but these are certainly not going to replace or even affect sales of netbooks:

• They don’t have keyboards. Making them painful to use for more than 5 minutes at a time.
• Higher cost, for the cost of an IPhone you could purchase 2 netbook computers.
• File storage.   Storing files on these things is a nightmare.  For example – if someone calls you in the middle of a long train journey asking you to correct a power point presentation, what is the likelihood that you’ll be able to make those changes on your phone?

With more and more devices coming out in 2010 it will be interesting to see new features and ways of using them but for now netbooks are the most practical and cheapest way to work and surf on the move.

So the BBC thinks this will be the year netbooks die. We think this will be the year netbooks thrive. What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Related posts:

1. Netbooks Continuing to Grow in Popularity
2. Atom N450 Release Date
3. Atom N450 & N470 Specifications

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

If you’re on the bargin hunt for the best netbook deal during the January sales,  Amazon have a cracking deal on the Asus 1001HA 10 inch netbook which I think is unbeatable for £199 with free delivery.

A sub £200 notbook!

I still can’t believe how cheap computers are these days.  It makes me a little sick for some of the machines I’ve purchased in the last couple of years that have not been half as good, but 5 times the price.

Specification wise, the Asus 1001Ha is a very decent machine:

• Intel Atom N270,
• 1GB RAM,
• 160GB HDD,
• 3 Cell Battery,
• Windows XP

To see more on the Asus 1001HA deal click the image below:

Related posts:

1. Asus Eee 1008HA (Seashell) netbook
2. Asus Eee 1008HA (Seashell) netbook photo gallery
3. Sony Vaio W netbook

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

It sounds like Google are looking around for a manufacturer to produce a set of netbooks for them. Techcrunch – one of the biggest tech blogs out there – is reporting Google has sent an RFP to several suppliers.

An ‘RFP’ (Request for Proposal) is basically an invitation for manufacturers to put together a pitch, telling google “sure, we’ll make a bunch of netbooks for you. Here’re the details of how we’d do it…”

As you’d expect, these netbooks would feature an extended version of Google’s Chrome browser as their operating system.

Google have been pushing Chrome very heavily lately, advertising in national newspapers, running billboard campaigns. The move into browsers was sure to worry Microsoft, but it didn’t look like Chrome was making a dent. The move into actual computers will be even more worrying for Microsoft, as this would make it easy for schools & businesses to cut costs and move away from Windows.

More news as we get it!

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome for Netbooks

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

There are some great points about the Booklet 3G…

• Built in mobile wireless to connect to phone networks
• Monster 16-cell battery (meaning 12 hours of battery life)
• Built in GPS

But there are some oddities too. Windows 7 Starter is a nice touch, but with only 1GB of RAM is probably a mistake.

And, of course, pricing this at £650 is definitely a mistake. One of the key selling points of netbooks is they’re cheap. Perhaps it’s priced this way deliberately so that Nokia can make more money from mobile networks wanting to give it away as part of contract tie-ins? Whatever the reason, we hope they rethink this.

Take a look over at the Nokia website.

Related posts:

1. Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook – European Release Date

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Earlier in the year they launched the VNB100 which more-or-less flopped. So why are Viewsonic pursuing this?

Well, it isn’t really surprising: Everyone else is doing it! (see our article on the ridiculous ‘Dual Screen Netbook’ for proof).

So, the big questions:

1. Is it any good?
2. What’s Viewsonic’s plan?

Is it any good?

Well, it’s actually not bad. The spec is fairly ‘standard’ for today’s netbooks:

• 10” Display
• 1GB RAM
• Windows 7 Starter
• 160GB Hard Drive
• Fairly decent, solid build quality
• Intel Atom processor
• 6-Hour Battery Life

As we said – fairly standard. Samsung & Asus were selling this same machine 12 months ago (without Windows 7, and with a longer battery life).

The price may be a barrier. At $400 in the states, this will probably come in around the £300 mark as an RRP in the UK. (In reality sellers will price them much cheaper than that)

So why are they doing this?

A few reasons. They’re obviously saw the earlier VNB100 and this machine as ‘proofs of concept’. These are “me-too” designs just to test the water. If they have any sense, over the next year we’ll see some much better machines coming out from Viewsonic.

But why would they sell netbooks at all? Well, the less desktop PCs sell, the less monitors sell. Meanwhile, viewsonic will have been taking notes on Samsung. Samsung were a very minor laptop player, but have quickly become a very major netbook player. That must look appealing to them as – like Samsung – they are very well known for the quality of their screens & see that as their ‘core’ business.

The difference is, Samsung’s strategy was to push things. They picked one area (battery life) & pushed it as hard as they could. Until Viewsonic decide to do something ‘interesting’, it will be seriously hard for them to come anywhere close to Samsung in the netbook market.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.