New Toshiba Satellite T100 Series Powered by Amd Neo X2

Toshiba's new 11.6-inch Satellite T115 and 13.3-inch Satellite T135 won't be the flashiest thin-and-light notebooks on the market, but they're an economical entry point into the increasingly popular class of casual-use, ultraportable laptops.

At less and inch thick and weighing in under four pounds, both new Satellites are portable, have 720p native resolution displays and cost as little as $450. The processor options aren't anything to go crazy over, but with the optional Intel Pentium SU4100 the notebooks can achieve up to nine hours of battery life.

They won't be your best bet for a primary computer, and I wouldn't ask them to do too much heavy lifting, but at the lower ranges the Satellite T100 series appears to offer better than average value.

Toshiba's thinnest and lightest Satellite laptops, T100 series laptops are ultrathin PCs built for everyday mobility. Delivering more performance than a netbook, and less weight and more battery life than standard laptops, Satellite T100 series laptops are design engineered for life on-the-go. With two screen sizes to choose from (11.6" and 13.3") and now equipped with a dual-core AMD processor plus ATI Radeon HD graphics, Satellite T100 series laptops offer full-range performance for productive multi-tasking and digital entertainment enjoyment in a sleek, thin and ultraportable package.

Sleek, slim mobility
Ultraportable form-factor with starting weights of 3.5 lbs and 3.9 lbs for T115 and T135 models, respectively
Slim profile measuring less than one-inch thick
Battery life rating up to 9 hours on Intel-based platforms; up to 6 hours on AMD-based platforms
Fast resume functionality

Laptop-class performance and premium features
Choice of Intel or AMD processors:
AMD Athlon™ Neo and Turion™ Neo X2 processors with ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 graphics configurations available
Intel Pentium® SU4100
Choice of 11.6" or 13.3" HD TruBrite® LED Backlit display with 16:9 aspect ratio and native 720p screen resolution
HDMI output
USB Sleep and Charge port
TouchPad with Multi-touch Control
Spacious hard drive configurations up to 320GB available
All models come equipped with a Hard Drive Impact Sensor
Toshiba apps: Media Controller, Bulletin Board, ReelTime and power-saving Toshiba eco utility™

Premium style with a comfort-driven design
Draped in Fusion™ Finish, available in Nova Black with Red and White color options available (T135 only)
Full-size keyboard and TouchPad
Advanced airflow technology keeps the laptop cooler when sitting on your lap

Pricing: $449.99 – $699.99 MSRP

New Dell Laptop's to use Intel Core i3 With Windows 7

The newest crop of notebooks and Netbooks are not just leaking but beginning to flood out of reseller sites. The latest: a Costco Canada posting of an upcoming Dell Inspiron laptop based on Intel's Core i3 processor.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, which starts on Thursday, PC makers will debut laptops using Intel's freshly minted Core i3 processor, as was previously reported. Core i series processors are based on Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture. The Core i3 is the first Nehalem chip targeted at mainstream and lower-cost laptops.

The Dell offering, at least as posted at Costco, is a bit more expensive than other leaked models from Gateway or Hewlett-Packard, so we'll have to see how pricing shakes out in the coming the weeks. And note that Costco lists the Intel processor as the "future Core i3 processor," and further states that "all orders will ship the week of January 17, 2010."

Dell Inspiron as listed by Costco:

• Processor: Core i3
  
• Display: 15.6" TFT
  
• Memory: 4096MB
  
• Hard disk drive: 320GB 7200rpm
  
• Optical drive: DVDRW
  
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
  
• Video card: Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator HD
  
• Price listed by Costco: $1,029.99 Canadian dollars or about U.S.$983.

New Asus Eee PC 1000H Works Best With Windows 7

Here is a confession: I am getting pretty tired of netbooks running Windows XP. So when we got our Windows 7 Beta disc at PDC earlier this week, I couldn’t wait to get it running on a netbook.

This morning we loaded Windows 7 Ultimate (Pre-Beta) on an ASUS Eee PC 1000H. And just as Microsoft said: it works. The Eee PC running a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor and 1GB of RAM handles the new operating system pretty well, just as it ran Vista pretty well when we loaded Vista Basic on it a few months ago. We still had a problem getting a few of the Eee PC drivers to work with the system, but for the most part we were able to get all of the features to work using the XP drivers provided by ASUS.

Unsurprisingly, it takes 58 seconds for the system to boot the OS (see the video below). Of course, it has actually taken a minute for some systems to boot XP as well. However, the Eee PC 1000H boots in only 40 seconds with its default operating system.

Once booted, it was pretty neat to see Windows 7 on the 10-inch screen. As we mentioned in our Windows 7 overview ($79.95), things pretty much look and feel like Windows Vista.

But, one feature on Windows 7 might just be perfect for netbooks: the improved Network Manager. One thing I hate about Vista is having to connect to a wireless network. Things are easier in Windows 7. Selecting the network icon in the System Tray extends a jump list of available networks. Connecting to our home network was simple. I just clicked the network name and entered the password.

Beyond the wireless connection manager, things are pretty smooth in terms of performance. We will be running some benchmarks later, but in my use of the Eee PC 1000H for the entire evening I didn’t have any hang ups while simultaneously chatting on Skype, writing this post in Wordpress, editing pictures in GIMP and uploading video files using Filezilla.

As for graphics performance, video playback on Hulu.com was smooth. But a downloaded 720p high-definition video played back with a number of pauses. Additionally, when we attempted a video call over Skype we had a problem sending and receiving video at the same time. Doing one or the other was fine, but not both at the same time.

One of the chief complaints about Vista is that it’s a “heavy” operating system that eats up too many system resources. However, in his presentation at PDC, Windows and Windows Live SVP Steve Sinofsky said that WIndows 7 consumes less than half of his Lenovo S10 ($349.97) netbook’s 1GB of RAM. It turns out he was right on the money as the performance monitor showed only 485MB of the RAM was in use with no applications — except the standard Eee PC driver set — were running.

So how is Windows 7 on an Intel Atom netbook? Two thumbs up for the new wireless manager and the new visual cues that are incorporated throughout the OS. We wouldn’t give up Windows XP just yet considering the video playback, but the OS is still in beta and it is our hope that final version will be even better for Atom-based PCs.

New Sony VAIO NR Laptop for 2010 powered by Core 2 Duo

It seems that the new Sony VAIO NR laptops will be arriving soon. The laptops will come in two colors. The lower spec machine (VAIO VGN-NR11SS) comes in a silver finish with Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 Processor (1.5GHz, 2MB Cache, 667MHz FSB), while the higher spec machine (VAIO NR11Z/T) comes in a darker charcoal grey/black finish with Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 Processor (2GHz, 2MB Cache, 800MHz FSB). Both notebooks adopt the standard Intel X3100 graphics, a 200GB hard drives, ExpressCard and memory card slots. NotebookReview speculates that these Sony’s new NR series will be available this fall for at least $899 for the base configuration.

Apple's New Tablet iSlate Rumor ( Atleast it looks like this )

Poking more at the info Apple secretly registered iSlate.com a couple years ago, TechCrunch found Apple's possibly setup a shell company called Slate Computing, which has a trademark on "iSlate." The signatory? Apple's Senior Trademark Specialist, MacRumors discovered.

Regina Porter most recently signed for the "iSlate" trademark for Slate Computing this past August—showing Apple's continued with "slate" beyond its initial registration for iSlate.com and the "iSlate" trademark in 2006. In Europe, a law firm Apple typically uses to register trademarks has also filed for major domains containing "iSlate," while another they use has filed for a trademark on ISlate in the European Union, registered to a corporation in Trinidad & Tobago, a country Apple's used to register European trademarks before, including for the iPhone.

Curiously, another trademark registered by Slate Computing in the US is "Magic Slate," which follows the same naming convention as Magic Mouse, obviously. MacRumors wonders if it might be something like a multitouch trackpad for computers, like with a screen (which we've wanted for a long time).

Whatever's going on, Apple's obviously gone through a lot of work to discreetly register a whole lot of "slate" stuff, which seems like a ton of effort for nothing, or simply a ruse to throw people off. It's funny, actually, that everybody "knew" what the iPhone was going to be called years before Steve Jobs took the stage to announce it, but no one really knows the tablet's name. I've always figured that, whatever it is, it'll have just two syllables. iSlate fits the bill. And for now, it's the only one with any evidence