Research firm Gartner has put out a report claiming that this will be the “year of the mini-notebook” in the Asia Pacific region, with netbook shipments expected to grow by 82 percent from last year. You’ll have to pony up $1295 to read the full report, but the Cliff Notes version is available in the […]
April 2009
Acer lowers netbook shipment projections
Acer still expects to sell more netbooks in 2009 than in 2008. But the company is scaling back its projections and now expects to ship between 10 and 12 million mini-laptops rather than 12 to 15 million. This news came out as part of Acer’s first quarter financial results today. The recession is taking its […]
Low price computer sales eat into Compal’s profits
Compal isn’t a very big name in the US. But the Taiwanese company is one of the largest computer makers in the world. Compal has contracts with big computer companies including Acer, HP, and Apple and actually manufactures many of the machines sold under their names. So amid all the reports of declining profits in […]
GMABooster can boost netbook graphics performance – a little bit
GMABooster is a free utility that can adjust the clock speed of the Intel 945GSE graphics chipset used in many netbooks to offer modest improvements to graphics performance. Basically, the Intel 945GSE integrated graphics processor, along with a few others, are sort of like underclocked versions of the 945 graphics. The idea is that by […]
24 open source apps for Eee PC netbooks
While the earliest Asus Eee PC netbooks were equipped with Linux, today Asus sells far more Eee PCs running Windows XP than Linux. But that doesn’t mean the mini-laptops aren’t still extremely popular with Linux and open source enthusiasts. The folks at Datamation have put together a list of 24 open source applications available for […]
More NVIDIA ION powered PCs coming soon
Acer may have been the first company to announce a tiny nettop desktop computer sporting the new NVIDIA ION platform, but it won’t be the last. The ION platform combines a low power Intel Atom CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor to offer greatly improved graphics performance in some applications. The two latest […]
Lenovo wants your input on a ThinkPad netbook
The other day I mentioned that a Lenovo executive admitted in an interview with APC Magazine that the company is thinking about developing a business-class netbook as part of its ThinkPad lineup. Right now Lenovo’s only netbooks are 9 and 10 inch models in the consumer  oriented IdeaPad line. At the time, this looked like […]
Gigabyte Booktop netbook that thinks it’s a desktop on sale in Taiwan
The Booktop M1022 is one of Gigabyte’s more unusual netbooks. This little guy has a bit of an identity crisis and can’t decide if he’s a desktop or a notebook. At first glance, it’s a pretty standard netbook with a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, and all the usual […]
Asus launches Eee PC 1003HAG with 3G in Japan
Asus is launching the latest in its line of bafflingly named Eee  PC models, this time by adding the letters HAG to the end of the computer name. The Eee PC 1003HAG is due out in Japan in a few weeks, and it sports an integrated 3G modem that can handle download speeds of up […]
Acer AspireRevo reviewed, dissected
The Acer AspireRevo is the first computer to use the NVIDIA Ion platform, which bundles a low power Intel Atom CPU with an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU. The result is a low power computer that can handle high quality graphics — sometimes. Engadget spent a few weeks reviewing a pre-release unit, with mixed results. In […]