It’s something of a struggle to find a netbook running off anything other than Intel’s Atom processor – be it the Atom 270 or 280.

Samsung seems to have faith in one of Intel’s rival’s, though, namely VIA.

Thanks to an official release from VIA, we can now confirm that Samsung’s NC20 will be powered by a VIA Nano CPU - the U2250 to be precise.

Despite Samsung’s NC10 running off an Atom chip, this news doesn’t come as a total surprise. As we reported earlier this month, it was widely believed that Samsung would switch to VIA with the NC20. More after the break.

Solar power is great and by all accounts is going to save the world from imploding on itself, but having to drag around a solar charging unit with you in order to juice up your phone, for instance, can be a pain in the backside.

Inventor Knut Karlsen has come up with a pretty swish solution to the problem: simply attach solar panels to the batteries themselves. In fact, he's gone much further than just talking about it and has actually come up with some working prototypes, which he's christened SunCat cells. More after the cut.

The Chinese-language Commercial Times has just dropped word on not one but two manufacturers lining up ultra-thin netbooks. What with Chinese not quite being our first language, we've turned to the ever trusty Digitimes, which has translated the news into Queen's English.

First up is Asus, which is said to be prepping up the 10.1in Eee PC Shell. As well as its super slimness, Digitimes reports that the Shell will have, "a higher specification than the Eee PC S101, will be easier to carry, and offer longer battery-life".

First up - this isn't a phone we're going to see here anytime soon. Nor would we want to. It's the Motorola i465, designed for America's rather quaint iDEN networks (think 2-way radio meets mobile phone in a push-to-talk, text messaging stylee). What's interesting about it is the keypad - a fully-fledged QWERTY keyboard shoehorned on to a near standard-size phone by way of some nifty pyramid style keys.

The raised ridges keep the keys slender, while (hopefully) allowing enough separation to prevent any dual key press typibng mnqalklfunbctions. In another cunning innovation, Motorola has printed the numbers on one face of the pyramid, and the corresponding key-sharing letters on the other so you can glance from the left to read the numbers, or the right to see the letters - nice.

With double digit billion pound losses at our UK banks, some good news for a change. O2's parent company, Telefónica Europe, has announced profits (haven't heard that word for a while) of €4.18 billion - helped in no small part by a stellar performance from O2 UK and sales of its iPhone.

Alongside the dry figures is the headline grabbing news that O2's now sold a million iPhones here in the UK - with the pre-pay option proving particularly popular, it seems.

Matthew Key, chairman and chief executive of Telefónica, told the Guardian: "iPhone sales are continuing to accelerate, and we have been pretty stunned at the results of our pre-pay offer, which is £342.33 for a year's data usage included," nicely slipping in a little ad at the end there.

CeBIT is almost upon us, and Gigabyte will be using the event to launch no less than three 10.1-inch netbooks – the Touch Note T1028, Booktop M1022 and Thin Note S1024.

As its name suggests, the Touch Note T1028 benefits from a touch-sensitive display - the screen is also rotatable, so you can use it tablet-style when scribbling down notes. It runs off an Intel Atom N270 processor/945GSE chipset combination, and pricing is expected to be around the £360 mark. Details on the other models after the break.

In case you didn’t know, Gmail went down earlier this week. It affected some members of the Mobile Computer team but we didn’t bother reporting on it because, Google fixed the problem within a couple of hours and, frankly, sometimes these things just happen.

But Google was sufficiently alarmed by the outcry from other quarters to get a Google Apps status page out the door, quick sharp. So the next time you can’t send a message via Google Mail, don’t be tempted to break Twitter as well by asking en masse "Is Gmail down?!?!" – visit the all-new Google Apps Status Dashboard.

More after the cut.

Microsoft has been raving about how the full-fat version of its forthcoming Windows 7 operating system will run without a hitch on the majority of netbooks.

But with Vista slowing most netbooks to a crawl, it’s hard not to be sceptical about this claim, especially where low-end models are concerned.

Now Microsoft head honcho Steve Ballmer has come out saying that there will actually be a skinny version of Windows 7, designed specifically for netbooks. More after the cut.

Our traditional advice on opening an MP3 player is to file the bundled buds in the bin and grab a set of decent 'phones from the likes of Sennheiser or Shure. Now Sennheiser's sprinkled its audiophile magic on the humble iPhone headset - simultaneously creating the first 3rd party Mac headset that doesn't rely on a USB adaptor for its track skipping / call controlling / voice recording needs.

As sleep inducing as a Microsoft "Strategic Update Meeting" sounds, today's SUM (as we comatose regulars like to call them) has turned up some tasty news treats - starting with Windows Mobile 7.

Along with some depressing (well, if you're a Microsoft exec) news on the "somewhat unprofitable" state of Windows Mobile as it currently stands, CEO extraordinaire, Steve Ballmer, remained chipper, pointing out that bargain-basement Windows Mobile devices were likely to be in-demand, bringing in some welcome pennies. More importantly he confirmed Windows Mobile 7 - the promised land for Windows Mobile fans - would be landing some time next year.