The Gigabyte M1005 is the second “Booktop” style netbook from Gigabyte. That means that while the device looks like a typical netbook at first glance, you can close the lid and stand up the laptop in a docking station, plug in a keyboard, mouse and display and use it like a desktop computer.
What sets the M1005 apart from the original Booktop is the 1.5 GHz Intel Atom N550 dual core processor. The rest of the specs are pretty much the same, as is the overall design. But if you’d like to see what the new netbook looks like, Netbook News got a little hands-on time with the Booktop and you can check out the video after the break.
One thing that’s worth noting is that while most netbooks spread out the USB ports on the left and right sides, the M1005’s three USB ports are all on the right side, along with an Ethernet jack and a flash card reader. The mic and headphone jacks are on the front, and the left side only features the dock connector and a VGA port.
The docking station has 3 USB ports, an Ethernet jack, line output, and VGA port.
What I’m really waiting for is something like this, but running one of the new AMD Fusion chips with better graphics performance. I envision a “booktop” that can do HTPC duty at home and media player duty on the go. That would be excellent.
Nice. I suppose some of the early Archos Android tablet sort of worked like this. You could dock them to connect to your TV and take them with you on the go to watch media… but you couldn’t run Windows Media Center, Boxee, or MythTV on them. 🙂