Sony unveils Vaio TZ notebook range
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Sound good on paper at least... Today in London in a somewhat understated fashion, Sony released details of its latest Vaio notebook range: the TZ series, aimed predominately at the higher end of the market.â¦
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Continued criticism by industry insiders didn&#39;t stop vendors from OQO to Lenovo and LG from showing off ultramobile PC products with range of innovative features at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held in Las Vegas this week.With many of the prototypes displayed due to hit the market later this year, UMPCs continue to be panned for their inconvenient keyboards, small screen sizes, and poor battery life ever, since the first UMPC from OQO was introduced at CES in 2004.OQO showed off a WiMax-capable OQO Model 2 UMPC, powered by Via Technologies&#39; C7-M mobile processors and running Windows Vista OS. It comes with hard-drive or flash-based solid-state drive options, supports up to 1GB of RAM, and has a sliding display that pops up to show a keyboard. Weighing around 1 pound (453 grams), prices start at $1,299.Eyes were locked on UMPC prototypes from companies including Lenovo and Founder at Intel&#39;s booth. The Lenovo device includes the Linux OS from Chinese developer Red Flag Software, and boasts a 4.8-inch touchscreen, an onboard camera, and other features. The Founder Mini-Note features a 7-inch screen, a 60GB hard drive, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless networking, and weighs around 800 grams.Intel&#39;s prototypes are based on its Menlow platform, a code name given to a set of Intel chips for ultramobile PCs due out next year. Menlow will include a new low-power microprocessor, code-named Silverthorne, and a chip set code-named Poulsbo.One prototype that may never ship is a slider UMPC displayed in LG&#39;s booth, also based on the Menlow platform. The device runs Windows Vista, comes with a 4.8-inch screen, 1GB of memory, a 40GB hard disk drive, a touchscreen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and 3G HSDPA cellular data. A representative at the LG booth said the company had not decided whether to market the device, as it suffered from poor battery life and keyboard usage issues.UMPCs create a design challenge by virtue of being a tweener -- neither a cell phone nor a laptop, said Phil McKinney , vice president and chief technology officer at HP&#39;s personal systems group. &quot;The UMPCs -- OQO and those guys -- are trying to be too much on the small side, very heavy, not great battery life, they get hot in your hand too when you use it. But when you get north of 9-inch screens, you&#39;re getting pretty close to a laptop,&quot; McKinney said.Screens up to 7 inches are not an appropriate scale for use of screen for touch-based applications, McKinney said.UMPCs have floundered around for a while as a killer application for mobile devices hasn&#39;t been discovered yet, McKinney said. &quot;There&#39;s a lot of people coming out with products, I don&#39;t think anybody&#39;s found what the killer application or what that killer use case model really is,&quot; McKinney said.Alp Sezen, a sales director for Via Technologies based in Fremont, California, said that a reason UMPC sales have not increased dramatically, at least in the U.S., is that wireless bandwidth for mobile devices up to now has been slow.&quot;The biggest problem with ultramobile devices is they need more bandwidth. When the user experience for mobile wireless is better, that&#39;s when you will see ultramobile devices really take off,&quot; Sezen said. &quot;Right now you typically get 116K [bits per second] when you are mobile, which isn&#39;t a great user experience.&quot; A true ultramobile experience is the ability to pull out a mobile device and easily surf the Web. &quot;Right now, you can&#39;t get that experience,&quot; Sezen said.It will take a year or two for the mobile wireless experience to get better, Sezen said. &quot;WiMax, and the opening up of Verizon&#39;s EV-DO network in the third quarter this year will help give a better experience for ultramobile users.&quot;Intel has categorized UMPCs under the Mobile Internet Device (MID) nomenclature, and segments the devices further based on applications like entertainment, productivity and navigation, said Pankaj Kedia, director of the global ecosystem program for mobile Internet and UMPC platforms. The look and feel of devices, the marketing technique and what users want to buy is different, Kedia said.Clarion&#39;s UMPC, for example, will be marketed as a next-generation navigation device, Kedia said. &quot;It might have the capability of a PC under the hood, but from a user perspective it is a portable navigation mobile Internet device,&quot; Kedia said. UMPCs are more like MIDs aimed at productivity with PC capabilities inside.When asked if a prototype UMPC that Qualcomm showed off at CES would replace cell phones, company chief technology officer Sanjay Jha thought for a second and then replied: &quot;I don&#39;t know.&quot;Different people might use them in different ways, Jha said. Also, how consumers use UMPCs might depend on how successful Bluetooth becomes, he said. Some consumers might be happy to use a UMPC instead of a cell phone if they can use a Bluetooth headset to make and receive voice calls, rather than holding the larger device up to their ears, he said.Fujitsu&#39;s Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product marketing, also didn&#39;t have a definitive description of the ideal UMPC user. Someone who works on their feet a lot and is OK with typing with their thumbs might be an ideal user, he said. But he said the UMPC wouldn&#39;t necessarily replace a laptop.Terminology doesn&#39;t matter though, HP&#39;s McKinney said. &quot;Let a marketing person loose for 10 minutes and they&#39;ll come up with a category. You can say UMPC or MID, what the hell&#39;s the difference?&quot;(Nancy Gohring, Marc Ferranti, Dan Nystedt, and Martyn Williams contributed to this report).
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(InfoWorld) - Dell Inc. added Blu-ray disc capability to its notebook PC line on Monday, making an effort to compete withÂ Sony Corp.Â andÂ Toshiba Corp. in the growing market for mobile high-definition video platforms. In addition to showing high-end movies and games, Dell's XPS M1710 notebook could serve as a central node to support digital entertainment throughout the home, the company said. Customers can save 50G bytes of either data or video on a single Blu-ray disc. The ability to read and write data to the discs differentiates Blu-ray from HD-DVD, the competing standard for high-definition video, analysts said. Laptops with HD-DVD capability have lower prices but cannot save data to the discs, said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis Inc. "You are starting to see the different camps emerge within the computing companies, with Toshiba and Acer on the HD-DVD side and Sony and Dell on the Blu-ray side," he said. Sony's Vaio VGN-AR270 uses Blu-ray discs, while Acer Co. Ltd.'s notebook and Toshiba's Qosmio G35-AV650 use HD-DVD. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are improvements over standard DVD optical discs; they hold more data and let users watch high-definition video. All three techniques are optical discs, storing data in a binary form that is read by a scanning laser. But a Blu-ray disc can hold five times the capacity of a dual-layer DVD, Dell said. Movie studios and video game producers are eager to sell films on the new media, but the flow of new titles is only a trickle so far because content providers and hardware vendors can't decide which standard will prevail. Pricing starts at US$3,699 for the XPS M1710, including an Intel Corp. Core 2 Duo processor with 4G bytes of memory and up to 160G bytes of storage on a serial ATA hard drive.
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HDMI, DisplayPort, UVD to be added to laptop chipsets Mobile Roadmap AMD's roadmap for its notebook-oriented has taken a decidedly avian turn as the chip maker gears up to battle Intel's Centrino, a plan that will see it support Flash-fitted hybrid hard drives, 802.11n Wi-Fi, HyperTransport 3 and DirectX 10.â¦
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Fujitsu Siemens Computers, the leading international IT company, has introduced the LIFEBOOK T4010, its latest convertible notebook with a modular bay that weighs less than 2 kg and integrates the functions of a high-powered notebook with those of a
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Media Center PC to incorporate Blu-ray, HDMI too Sony has extended its Vaio Digital Media Center line-up with a pair of new models pitched at European consumers keen to embrace HD content with Blu-ray Disc technology. Interestingly, the VGX-XL201 and VGX-XL202 machines both feature an as yet unannounced Nvidia graphics chip.â¦
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LAS VEGAS -- Sony is developing a version of its Vaio RA desktop PC that will have a storage capacity of 1.6TB and be geared towards storing, editing and distributing high-definition (HD) digital video, company officials said Wednesday.ADVERTISEMENTReducing the Total Cost of OwnershipLearn how to reduce the total coast of ownership in enterprise data management in this case study.
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InfoWorld - Users looking for the best possible display screen on a notebook PC might want to check out a new offering from Asustek Computer&#160;due out in early March.
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Asus will unveil at next week's CES the M70S laptop that comes with 1 terabyte of storage space.
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(InfoWorld) - Users looking for the best possible display screen on a notebook PC might want to check out a new offering from Asustek ComputerÂ due out in early March. The company, which sells products under the ASUS brand, plans to launch the U1 business notebook PC on March 7 in Taipei, Taiwan with an LED (light emitting diode) backlight behind the display screen. It will be among only a handful of laptop PCs using LED backlights to create stunningly sharp pictures and vivid colors on a display. A backlight is a light behind the LCD display, on a laptop in this instance, used to illuminate the screen. Most notebook PCs currently use cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlights because the technology is less expensive than LEDs. An executive at AU Optronics, the world's third largest LCD (liquid crystal display) screen maker, estimated that LED backlights were two to three times more expensive than CCFL, in an interview last year. But LED makers have been driving down costs by getting their product into more gadgets. The more they increase production, the lower their per-LED cost. LEDs are now used in a number of products, including auto lights and the small displays on DVD players and MP3 digital music devices. As costs comes down, LEDs that can be used in larger and larger screens. Aside from the ability to display a greater range of colors, LED backlights beat CCFL technology in power savings as well. Their reduced drag on battery life is a key consideration for notebook PCs, and a number of companies are promoting their use in laptops, including Intel Corp. The LED backlight used in the U1 is "as thin as the wing of a cicada" according to the news conference invitation from Asustek. The entire LCD panel, including the backlight, is 0.5 centimeter thick, the release says. The new U1, the "F" version, is a smaller size laptop with an 11.1 inch wide screen that will run the business version of Microsoft's Windows Vista OS. The laptop uses the latest Centrino Core Duo mobile processor and offers users wireless connections to other devices via Bluetooth and wireless Internet connectivity through Wi-Fi. Pricing depends on a user's choice of features, including a 40GB, 60GB, or 80GB hard disk drive and a combination Blu-ray Disc/DVD Super Multi DL/Combo optical drive. Availability was not disclosed.
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Lenovo is providing a new weapon for enterprise road warriors with the introduction of a widescreen notebook computer that looks like a lightweight but packs plenty of punch.
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Notebook a +9%, hardware +1,2%, in calo computer desktop
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Toshiba's sleek ultraportable laptop is an attention-getter that packs a ton of features into its compact package. Let's take a closer look.
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Itâs not really much of a surprise at this point, but at least we can now openly talk about the T5 and its specs. The palmOne Tungsten T5 features a Tungsten E-esque design, a brilliant 320x480 display, 256MB RAM, Bluetooth and several software updates.
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La multimedialitÃ  Ã¨ una delle carte vincenti della nuova serie di notebook proposti da Asus su piattaforma Amd. Equipaggiati con processore Mobile Amd 64 3000+ (supportano fino a 3700+), i portatili di Asus
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Consumers can take music, photos and movies on the road when Sony's Vaio U hits the United States next month.
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Sony Vaio NR laptop will be released next month.