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The Smartbooks are coming, the Smartbooks are coming (this year)

One of the hottest product categories on display at Computex in June was the ARM-powered smartbook. These little computers look a lot like your typical netbook, but they feature low power ARM-based processors that are cheaper than most Intel chips, but a bit slower. On the bright side, many of these chips include built-in support […]

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Industry predictions: Netbook shipments to quadruple, could outsell noteboks

There’s no doubt that netbooks represent the fastest growing segment of the PC industry today. And I expect them to become even bigger over the next few years. 12 months ago, almost nobody knew what a netbook was, but today you can find them in a number of retail stores, order them from most computer […]

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Closer look at the Wistron PBook Snapdragon-powered mini-laptop

The Intel Atom processor may be powering the vast majority of netbooks from major computer makers today. But ARM based ultraportables are getting ready to explode onto the market. And by explode, I mean sometime in the next year or two we’re going to see a bunch of manufacturers, wireless carriers and others start to […]

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Qualcomm shows Windows CE-based handheld, reminiscent of HP Jornada

Chip maker Qualcomm has been showing off netbook prototypes built around the company’s Snapdragon chipset for a few months now. Qualcomm’s expertise is in making chips for cellphones, but the new Snapdragon platform should be able to handle basic computing tasks for netbook-style devices, including web browsing and multimedia playback. You won’t be able to […]

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Qualcomm Snapdragon platform to power Acer, Asus and Toshiba devices

Covering the netbook space, I read a lot about Intel, VIA, and AMD, and ARM processors. But another company, Qualcomm is building a platform, that it says will be ideal for netbooks and other low power devices. A few weeks ago we got a glimpse of  a few prototype netbooks based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon […]

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Qualcomm unveils netbook prototype with Snapdragon CPU

Qualcomm is showing off several concept designs for mobile devices built around the company’s new Snapdragon chipset. Wht makes the Snapdragon platform different from say, an Intel platform is that it’s ARM-based and includes built-in support for 3G connectivity. The two devices Qualcomm is showcasing at the moment represent two different markets for the chips: […]