Taiwanese firm pips Intel to tilt-and-angle laptop display
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Product demo'd months before Intel concept machine shown IDF Intel Mobility VP Dadi Perlmutter today showed off a concept notebook equipped with a special 'slide up and tilt forward' display. The mechanism mounts the laptop's screen on a stand that allows it to be raised and angled. Cute, but Taiwanese laptop maker Dialogue showed the same concept off almost four months ago.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Taiwan's First International Computer (FIC) will unveil an ultraportable PC at the Computex show this week in Taipei. The CE260 is based on a 1.2GHzÂ C7-M processor from Via Technologies, has a 7-inch touchscreen display with 800 pixels by 480 pixels resolution, and boasts a five-hour battery life, the company said in a statement. Weighing in at just under 1 kilogram, the machine packs 802.11b/g wireless networking, a wired LAN port, and a 4-in-1 card reader slot. FIC is a contract PC maker and doesn't sell machines under its own brand. The CE260 will be on show at Computex in front of buyers from the world's PC vendors and available to them to customize and market under their own brand. Possible additions to the base specification include a detachable clock/calendar, Skype phone, DVB-T digital TV Tuner or GPS (global positioning system) module. Taiwan is a major manufacturer of PC and consumer electronics goods and Computex, which takes place annually in Taipei, brings the island's IT manufacturers together with buyers from big-name electronics brands and retailers from around the world. Ever since Intel unveiled its ultramobile PC platform at Cebit 2006 and Samsung Electronics took the wraps off the first machine based on that platform,Â the Q1,Â there has been increased interest in the market for sub-notebook-size laptops. Machines matching the form factorÂ are expected to be a big theme of Computex 2007.
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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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(InfoWorld) - Intel Corp. wants to see its low-cost Classmate PC help transform they way students in developing countries are educated. And the company is not alone. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project also hopes its low-cost XO laptop can close the "digital divide" that exists between the developed world and emerging markets. Much has been made of these two efforts, which are often painted as rivals by the media and observers. Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel's sales and marketing group, recently spoke with IDG News Service about the Classmate PC and the challenges Intel hopes to address with the device. What follows is an edited transcript of that interview. IDG News Service: Is there room for both the Classmate PC and OLPC as efforts to close the digital divide in emerging markets? Sean Maloney: I've spent a good deal of my life traveling around emerging markets and the first thing I want to say is that it's a truly humongous problem. It's an enormous, enormous problem you're talking about. No one company is going to solve this, whether it's us or the OLPC guys, or Asustek, or HP. And no one single approach is going to tackle the issue either. It's very diverse what people want. Even if you pick one country, say India, you're not going to get the state governments having the same opinions on how this should be handled. It's a perfect problem that a Taiwanese economy of scale could tackle. What Taiwan has always done in the past -- with stunning success -- is drive down costs for standardization and mass manufacturing. IDGNS: And standardization helps keep costs low... Maloney: Yeah, if they're standardized it makes field repair easier and logistics easier and distribution chains easier and all that stuff. It's not just about the device. It's also about the education software that goes on it, the role of the teacher in the class, and then someone has to maintain the thing locally. Many of these countries actually want to assemble it and someone has to do the integration, and all of that. It's a broader issue than just the device, regardless of whether it's an Asustek device, or a Classmate PC, or an OLPC. IDGNS: Apart from education, will these low-cost computers help to increase PC penetration in developing countries? Maloney: To be determined. I've spent a lot of time in the last year in emerging markets and the striking thing is how many mid-range and high-end notebooks are being sold. If you go to Egypt or Turkey or Ukraine or Poland or Czech Republic or Brazil or Argentina, you're seeing shopping malls everywhere converting over to selling notebooks. You could see it in China a year ago, where you go into shopping malls that used to sell desktops and now they're full of notebooks. You see the same thing all across India. It is amazing how many mainstream, made in Taiwan or made in China, notebooks are sold in emerging markets. People have the same aspirations and brand aspirations. You can't patronize people and say we get the big one with the 14-inch color screen and you get the little one, that's not going to work. My view is that these things, like Classmate PC, are much better targeted at kids, with a much smaller screen, smaller keyboard. IDGNS: Is the aim to give the students in developing countries basic PC skills, or is computer access the key to something larger? Maloney: It's about the Web more than anything. I have young kids and it's almost obscene: my kids have access to it and there are 2 billion kids that don't. The disadvantage for someone who doesn't have access to the Web is overwhelming. Â
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(InfoWorld) - Intel has tied with three large Indian PC vendors to assemble the Classmate PC, a PC specially designed for schools. The three vendors -- HCL Infosystems, Wipro, and Zenith ComputersÂ -- will start shipping the product to Indian schools next month. The Classmate PCÂ will be sold only to schools, and not through retail channels to consumers, John McClure, Intel's director for marketing in South Asia said on Monday. The Classmate PC has been specially designed to work in a networked classroom environment, and comes with software and features that give the teacher in the classroom control over the dissemination of content to students' PCs, he said. The Classmate PC, for example, does not have a hard disk. Instead it contains up to 2GB of NAND flash memory. Most of the content will reside on the teacher's PC, McClure said. Intel's manufacturering partners, such as HCL, Wipro, and Zenith, will team with content providers, education services providers, and system integrators to deploy the Classmate PCs in schools. The PC, which can run both Linux and Windows operating systems, is powered by a 900MHz Intel Celeron mobile processor, and comes with Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, Intel said. It has a 7-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) screen, and an option of 256MB or 512MB of RAM, Intel said. The device weighs less than 1.45 kg and comes with a six-cell lithium-ion battery promising three to four hours use, the company said. The introduction of the Classmate PC follows pilots of the product by Intel in some schools in the country. The price of the product with the control software will be 18,000 Indian Rupees ($450), with the education software and Wi-Fi connectivity available at extra cost. That is a high price by Indian standards, prompting Intel to target the device in the first phase at private schools, rather than government-run schools that typically run on shoe-string budgets. While well-funded private schools may deploy the computers across the school, at some other private schools, it is more likely that the school will introduce the PCs initially in one class, such as the science class, according to McClure. In another rollout scenario, schools may deploy a few in each class, and assign each PC to a group of students, he said. Intel expects some of its partners to offer schools the option to pay for the PCs on a monthly fee per student, McClure said. The Classmate PC is also being rolled out in Nigeria and Brazil, McClure said. Intel plans to introduce new models of the Classmate PC by the end of this year or early next year, targeted at higher education and professional schools like nursing schools, he said. These models may have some modifications in features, including large hard disk drives, to suit the usage models envisaged, McClure said. Intel is not targeting the Classmate PCs at government-run schools in India, both because of their cost, and also because most of these schools are still behind in technology adoption. For these schools, Intel is donating about 10,000 PCs over the next three to five years, and is also training teachers on the use of computers. A number of Intel programs, including one called the Community PC, which offers a shared PC to local communities, aim to bridge the digital divide for this segment of the population, McClure said. Intel announced earlier this month that it hasÂ joined the One Laptop Per ChildÂ (OLPC) initiative. The nonprofit project aims to equip children in developing countries with specially designed low-cost notebooks powered by chips from Intel's rival Advanced Micro DevicesÂ (AMD). In India, however, the OLPC is a nonstarter, with the Indian government deciding not to adopt it because it does not provide for control by teachers, among other reasons.
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Intel has showcased the next two generations of its notebook platforms, and revealed how it intends to extend battery life in the future.
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By Subashini Selvaratnam  INTEL Corp is working on a new 45-nanometre (nm) transistor technology which will boost the processing speeds in personal computers (PCs), laptops and servers.
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Intel's rugged, low-cost laptop is now available to to consumers and businesses in India.
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Intel, the world&#39;s biggest semiconductor maker, said it is helping Chinese and Indian customers build personal computers that use the Linux operating system, an alternative to Microsoft&#39;s Windows software.
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SAN FRANCISCO - Intel Corp.'s dual-core strategy for mobile processors became a little clearer this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, but questions remain about the company's plans for bringing dual-core designs to its desktop and low-end server chips.
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By MATTHEW FORDAHL    SAN JOSE, Calif.  -- In the latest change to its product lineup, Intel Corp...
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(InfoWorld) - One of the biggest rumors to come out of Computex this week is that Intel is developing a new high-end graphics processor, which it will begin sampling to graphics cards makers in Taiwan in the next year or two. Graphics card makers at the show said they've seen no signs of it, however. The rumor follows reports of Intel hiring more graphics chip engineers, and speculation that Intel will have to answer Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD's)Â purchase of GPU maker ATI TechnologiesÂ last year. AMD is developing a family of microprocessors with graphics built in,Â called Fusion. Some also speculate that Intel will need to buy a graphics processor company to bolster its expertise in GPUs. Intel already makes graphics cores, but they are generally used in chip sets for PCs aimed at users who are not looking for high end graphics. In fact, Intel is the world's largest graphics chip maker, but it has never gone after the high-end segment of the business, which has long been dominated by NvidiaÂ and ATI. The only major announcement Intel has made recently about graphics is building the function intoÂ a future multicore chip code-named Larrabee. The chip, which will pack dozens of x86 microprocessors onto a single piece of silicon, is under development. The company may eventually take a swing at the high-end GPU business, but several graphics card makers at Computex say they've seen no sign of such a move yet. "There have been rumors of an Intel GPU for a long time. I haven't seen anything like it yet," said Andy Wu, project engineer in the multimedia division at Micro-Star International, one of Taiwan's largest graphics card makers. "It would be big news if it were true, but it's not real," said Andrew Wei, graphics product manager at Foxconn Technology Group, another graphics card maker. An engineer at Asustek Computer, Taiwan's largest motherboard maker and a major graphics card developer, also denied the existence of an Intel GPU or any hearsay that one might be coming anytime soon. Grace Wang, regional marketing manager for Intel's Asia Pacific platform component group, said Larrabee is the only major graphics project Intel has announced recently, and declined to comment on any other product plans. Intel held 38.7 percent of the graphics chip market at the end of the first quarter, followed by Nvidia with 28.5 percent and AMD with 21.9 percent, according to Jon Peddie Research. Â
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AMD had an OLPC laptop on hand to showcase the fact that its Geode processor powers the device designed for emerging markets
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Taiwan&#39;s Asustek Computer complained on Tuesday of a shortage of Intel central processing units (CPUs) for laptop PCs, but said it didn&#39;t expect the problem to affect its sales.&quot;The biggest shortage in notebook components is in CPUs, Intel CPUs. Intel isn&#39;t meeting demand,&quot; said Jerry Shen, president of Asustek, answering questions at an investors conference in Beitou, Taiwan.The statement highlights persistent problems laptop PC makers have faced this year in trying to procure certain parts. Strong demand for mobile computers has caused&#160;a shortage&#160;of small LCD (liquid crystal display) screens and small hard disc drives (HDD), laptop makers have complained. Therecall of around 10 million laptop batteries&#160;containing cells manufactured by Sony has also kept these vital parts in short supply since last year.Intel could not immediately be reached for comment.Back-to-school sales in September, and the run-up to the end-of-year holiday season are hot times for people to buy new laptop PCs, and hype around Microsoft&#39;s Windows Vista and&#160;Intel&#39;s Santa Rosa laptop chips&#160;has given an added spurt to demand this year. Laptop PC sales are expected to hit record highs, and some companies believe the market will grow by around 30 percent next year.Supplies of certain laptop parts could become more plentiful once the peak season ends and demand slows down.Meantime, laptop makers have had to keep up with suppliers by maintaining relationships and building inventory when they can.&quot;Our relationship with Intel is good so we don&#39;t have a big problem, but if it wasn&#39;t so good, our troubles might be worse,&quot; said Shen, of the CPU issue.Asustek forecasts it will ship between 4.2 million and 4.4 million of its own-brand laptops this year, not including its popular new Eee PC. The company has targeted shipments of up to 400,000&#160;Eee PCs&#160;this year.&#160;
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Intel is updating its low-cost Classmate PC laptop with upcoming Silverthorne CPU and a sleeker design.
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Today, notebook computers are being used in an increasing number of applications in both consumer and commercial environments.  This paper  discusses the technologies necessary to meet the demands of these applications and what Fujitsu is doing to meet the varied display requirements of its customers.
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Set-top box that works with Viiv-compliant PCs on the way, but hurdles remain on the chipmaker's path to digital living room.