Articles tagged with: laptops

BusinessWeek has posted a nice slideshow that highlights Alan Kay’s influence on the world of mobile computing – he’s the guy that practically invented the netbook some 40 years ago, as you may remember...

The slides are illustrations based on a book by BusinessWeek writer Steve Hamm, called The Race for Perfect: Inside the Quest to Design the Ultimate Portable Computer. This traces the 40-year history of mobile computing (and also tracks the entire development cycle of the Lenovo X300), which pretty much began with Kay’s DynaBook concept in 1968.

You can see the full slideshow over at BusinessWeek – it’s well worth a look.

[The Long Road To The Laptop via BoingBoing]

Looking like a Nintendo DS gone wrong, Fujitsu has unveiled the Lifebook N7010 - a Blu-Ray equipped laptop with an innovative extra touchscreen above the keyboard.

Intriguingly, the 4in "Touch Zone" screen isn't of the Windows Vista SideShow variety but a fully fledged display in its own right. By default it's a touch controlled app launcher but it can also be roped in for full screen video (well, all four inches of it), photo slide shows or media controls. Slashgear also reports that apps can be "dragged down" to the mini display - making it more like a second monitor.

Elsewhere it's the usual media powerhouse / desktop replacement mix with a 16in screen, 2.26GHz Intel Core2 Duo P8400, a 256MB ATI Radeon HD 3470 GPU and Blu-Ray drive.

It launches in the US on Tuesday 11th November for $1500 - but there's no word a UK release. Click through for the press release.

When the most anticipated aspect of a new laptop is what it looks like, it can only be a new laptop from Apple. After all, when did a website last run leaked photos of a new laptop chassis from Dell..?

To be fair, the external design of the new Apple MacBook and MacBook Pro is a little bit special, largely because of the manufacturing process behind it. Both the MacBook and MacBook Pro have cases that are carved from a single block of aluminium and assembled from three (or four, if you count the battery cover) single pieces. We’ll leave aside any potential strength advantages that this new “unibody” design bestows and focus on something much more interesting instead – how it looks.

Aldi likes to pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap so £580 for a Medion Akoya P6612 may seem a tad pricey for a supermarket that makes Morrisons look like Harrod's Food Hall. Tell us that it includes a 2.0GHz  Core2 Duo P7350, 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive, 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M graphics, HDMI and Freeview tuner, however, and you have our interest.

Add in the fact that the 16in beauty comes with an unheard of three year warranty and has a surprisingly premium black gloss exterior - and we'll see you in the queue.

It goes on sale as a special from Thursday 30th October. If it's anything like our Aldi wetsuit/power drill/Blu-ray buying experience, expect them to be sold out by 9.01am.

[Aldi]

It looks like Leon Bailey got in a bit of a muddle with his earlier story about Asus' plans for the Eee Top 1602 and bamboo notebook.

As stated, both products are being launched at the Stuff Live show at the end of October, but Leon's speculative abilities got a little out of hand, so here's a correction.

Two new business-minded Toshiba's are ready for your inspection this afternoon. First up is the Tecra R10, billed as Tosh's first sub-2kg 14-incher. Nudging up alongside it is the slightly meatier 15.4in Satellite Pro S300, that's been primed to take a chunk out of your desktop. Read on for the details and full press releases.

That Vaio TT we mentioned last month - Sony's finally got round to announcing its arrival here in the UK. The 'World's-lightest-Blu-Ray-laptop^TM' that digs HD and can pack up to 256GB of SSD capacity in its 11in frame will go on sale, appropriately enough, on 11/11 for a starting price of £1599 with a 2GB RAM, 120GB hard drive combo.

That won't include the much vaunted Blu-Ray option but will include built-in HSDPA with a month's worth of T-Mobile service in the box, via a pre-pay SIM - although the TT won't be locked to the pink network if you've got other plans for your mobile browsing.

It'll also be one of the first laptops that punters will be able to customise internally using Vaio by You. Our cup floweth over. Make the jump for the full specs and press release.

Ever had a secret urge to customise your own Vaio? No? Well, listen up anyway. Sony's taken a leaf out of Dell's (note)book to launch Vaio by You, its cringingly titled new online ordering system.

Available via the Sony Style website it'll let you select a base model and then spec details such as the hard drive (or SSD of course), optical drive and operating system.

It'll all be very familiar to fans of Dell laptops but a brave new world for Sony, which notes that it'll mean you'll be able to buy a consumer-orientated CS1-Series with Vista Business and a Z2 workhorse with Vista Ultimate. Crazy, eigh?

The fun starts this Friday, 24th October. Should give you enough time to prepare for the thrill. Click through for the full press release.

Back in June, Asus was showing off a twin screened laptop concept (think giant Nintendo DS) at Computex in Taiwan, with two touchscreens in place of the usual one screen plus keyboard combo. Over the weekend the rumour mill's been spinning, with suggestions from panel makers that a real product could launch some time in the first three months of 2009.

Digitimes reports that the mould breaking laptops would take advantage of Vista's replacement, Windows 7, with possible screen sizes of 11.6in or 12.1in, although final specs are still to be finalised.

While there's no reason to doubt the report, some have pointed out that Windows 7 isn't scheduled for release until the following year, while others have suggested that a purely touchscreen laptop might not be the ideal machine for the touch typers out there. Luckily that's not a problem for us  t w o  f i n g e r  s t a b b e r s . . .

[Digitimes]

The future's bright - the future's more laptops with built-in HSDPA, so says Orange's director of devices (how much cooler would that title be with just two little letters missing), Francois Mahieu, who's promising more bundled laptop deals with SIMs inside.

According to Mahieu, "Almost one third of the laptops that we will sell to consumers next year will have a SIM embedded". Just the thing for dongle haters. And he's suggested a laptop care package might be on the way, a la Orange's current mobile handset offering. Joy.