Although I never really saw the value in these before, I’ve recently been on the road a lot and could have used this to scan research for my book. The pen scans in color up and black and white and supports MicroSD card expansion as well as Bluetooth transmission. It has a large OLED screen and only four buttons.

The X10 ($389) includes a 12v automobile adapter while the X05 ($369) does not. The X50 with OCR software costs $439. It will be available next month.

Product Page

Samsung has a tiny solid state drive that might make its way into future notebooks and netbooks. Based on the mSATA (mini-SATA) interface, the drive would require no external housing and “would plug directly into an internal PCI Express (PCIe) slot in a desktop, laptop or netbook,” according to Computerworld.

The main hurdle is that the PCIe slot isn’t integrated into most current motherboard designs, so it’d have to become a standard present in future products. As for the drive itself, capacities reach 64GB and it uses the serial ATA interface to transfer data.

For use in netbooks or notebooks, 64GB may be enough storage for everyday use but in desktops and more fully-featured portable computers, the mSATA drives could house the operating system and programs while a standard high-capacity hard drive would be used in tandem to store other files like photos, videos, and music.

It’s unknown how much additional cost the mSATA drives would add to a computer’s bottom line but the draw would be that we’d theoretically see much thinner and lighter systems since the drive itself is about a third of the size of a business card.

[via Computerworld]

This teeny, tiny little laptop is really teeny. It almost unusable and, as to be expected from Japanese laptops like these, not really meant for the Shrek-like Western mitts. The woman who showed it to me was really nice.

It runs Ubuntu and has a tiny screen. No specs but seriously – what are you going to do with this? Prop up a table leg?

Hercules also says their one-megapixel sensor will take five-megapixel photos. I sense a fundamental lack of sense in that claim. Putting “interpolative mode” in parentheses doesn’t make 1 into 5.

But aside from that rather ridiculous claim, the webcam looks nice. It’s designed for laptops and has a super-wide-angle lens, so people can look at your entire body while you look at their face. At $60 it’s also a bit cheaper than the LifeCam HD, but it’s hard to say which is the better device until we test them. So test them we shall!

I’ll get a review up once I’ve had a chance to compare the two.

In Japan, Sharp has been known for their ultra-mobile Zaurus for quite a while now, and today, the company added a new mini device to its line-up of mini laptops, the PC-Z1 [press release in English]. Marketed as a “Mobile Internet Tool”, the PC-Z1 comes with a tiny 5-inch TFT LCD (a touchscreen) and measures just 161.4 x 108.7 x 19.7 ~ 24.8mm (weight: 409g).

The touchscreen offers WSVGA (1024×600) resolution. Sharp threw in a 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 CPU, 512MB RAM (fixed), 4GB flash storage, microSDHC support for up to 16GB, 802.11b/g WiFi, Flash Lite support, Open Office, a QWERTY keyboard and somehow managed to squeeze in two USB ports. The battery lifespan for the Ubuntu-powered device is 10 hours. There is also a “quick launch” function, which makes the device boot in three seconds.

Sharp says the device is targeted as users who look for a device that rolls Internet access, an electronic dictionary and an e-Book function into one. The PC-Z1 goes on sale in Japan on September 25 for $450 (in white and black). Sharp hasn’t said anything about international sales plans yet.

While 12 lumens means you’re going to have to choose your lighting or location carefully, the tiny size (deck of cards-ish) and improved battery life mean that’s less of a hassle than with any other kind of semi-portable projector. We’ll see about getting one to review; at $350 it may be a worthy investment for people who don’t want their friends crowding around a laptop for a slideshow or YouTube video. It’ll be out on September 1st.

COMING SOON TO A POCKET NEAR YOU: THE MPRO120

3M’s New Handheld Projector Set for September Launch

ST. PAUL, MINN. (August 26, 2009) – This fall, Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters are coming to a pocket near you! Less than a year after launching the MPro110 – the handheld digital projector that won the “Grand Award” in the gadget category of the Popular Science 2008 Best of What’s New Awards – 3M announced today the September debut of the MPro120, the newest member of the MPro family. The MPro120 provides improved functionality, increased portability and an expanded feature set.

The MPro120 is the first projector to incorporate 3M’s MM200 projection engine, the next generation of the MPro family. As announced at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, the MM200 engine uses an advanced liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) electronic imager and boasts enhanced image quality with a full color gamut. The MPro120 provides users with a robust battery life of two to four hours (depending on brightness setting) – enough to watch a full-length film – and, in full brightness mode, achieves a brightness of 12 lumens. Featuring an integrated flip stand, tripod, stereo speakers and a variety of input cables, the MPro120 is ready to use “out-of-the-box” with a wide range of today’s most popular video output gadgets. And, as with its predecessor – the MPro110 – the MPro120 will be the ideal projection solution for laptops and netbooks. Available optional accessories include an adapter cable for Apple® products, component video cable and car charger.

“Following the success of the MPro110, the MPro120 will further reinforce 3M’s leadership position in the development and implementation of advanced projection technologies,” said Mark Colin, general manager, 3M Projection Systems Department. “The functionality of the MPro120 represents technical achievements that were manageable only by the long-term commitment to research and development that is 3M’s hallmark.”

The MPro120 will be on-sale September 1 with an estimated price of $349. Optional accessories are sold separately.

[via Gizmodo]

So Radio Shack – AKA RadioShack – is planning to call itself the Shack. Radio Shack has been Radio Shack for 88 years. Radio Shack should not change its name.

I understand that the store is in a unique position right now. Most of its major competitors are gone and it’s going up against Best Buy. It has long been the second place you go when looking for electronics and only hobbyists hold the stores near and dear to their hearts. Radio Shack was one of the few places you could get components in a retail environment, a fairly big deal for amateur electronics hobbyists, but now I doubt any of us have set foot in the store in years. The problems, then, run far deeper than a simple name change.

UPDATE – The official Shack release after the jump. *sad clown*

Harry at Technologizer puts it best:

4. RadioShack has problems beyond any issues with its name. Lots of them. Its stores are tiny by the standards of the past few decades of American retailing, and therefore can’t compete with the product selection at rivals. (It barely has room to sell HDTVs at all–the TV section at my nearest Costco is larger than my local RadioShack.) When I’ve been inside RadioShacks in recent years, I’m usually surprised by high the prices are. They have a reputation for iffy customer service. If the signage outside the stores changes but the experience inside doesn’t, it’s not going to be any more competitive than it is right now.

Instead of spending millions on a rebranding, the stores need to regroup. Service in Radio Shack is abysmal and the prices are high and selection is limited at best. The company doesn’t need to be called the Shack (incidentally, there’s a Christian novel called the Shack which may be the impetus for this change. Maybe to make it more affable to the heartland?) Instead, Radio Shack needs to become an alternative to big box stores like CostCo and Best Buy or a replacement for those wonky kiosks in malls where they sell garbage phones.

RadioShack needs to go big or go small but it doesn’t need to change its name.

Incidentally, does anyone remember what the Radio Shack PC clones were called? We almost bought one back in the 286 days. Was it a Tandy?

More videos here…

RadioShack Invites Consumers to Rediscover “THE SHACK” through
New Brand Creative Platform

Integrated Media Campaign to Contemporize the Brand and Reinforce RadioShack’s Authority in Innovative Products, Leading Brands and Knowledgeable Associates

FORT WORTH, Texas (Aug. 3, 2009) – RadioShack Corporation (NYSE: RSH) will unveil its new brand creative platform, “THE SHACK,” on August 6, supported by an integrated television, print and digital media schedule, as well as a high-profile, three-day launch event taking place in New York City and San Francisco. The new creative was developed by Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners of Sausalito, CA, which was named the Company’s creative agency of record in April.

“Trust is a critical attribute of any successful retailer, and the reality is that most people trust friends, not corporations. When a brand becomes a friend, it often gets a nickname – take FedEx or Coke, for example. Our customers, associates and even the investor community have long referred to RadioShack as ‘THE SHACK,’ so we decided to embrace that fact and share it with the world,” said Lee Applbaum, RadioShack’s Chief Marketing Officer. “This creative is not about changing our name. Rather, we’re contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand. THE SHACK speaks to consumers in a fresh, new voice and distinctive creative look that reinforces RadioShack’s authority in innovative products, leading brands and knowledgeable, helpful associates.”

“We have tremendous equity in consumers’ minds around cables, parts and batteries, but it’s critically important that we help them to understand the role that we play in keeping people connected in this highly mobile world,” added Applbaum. “You will see a real focus on mobility and wireless products from leading brands in our new advertising.”

RadioShack announced last month the addition of T-Mobile to its lineup of wireless carriers in 4,000 stores as part of its strategy to increase its authority and share in mobility and connectivity.

“We’ve partnered with RadioShack to develop a creative platform that will cause people to take another look at THE SHACK. Everything about the advertising – the media, format, style, music and tone – will contribute to a new interpretation of the brand,” said Greg Stern, BSSP’s Chief Executive Officer. “Everyone knows RadioShack. Our job is to communicate what THE SHACK stands for today.”

RadioShack also announced a partnership with seven-time Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, both to sponsor his new American Pro-Tour cycling team and to work with the Lance Armstrong Foundation and LIVESTRONG campaign in the global fight against cancer.

“This is an exciting time at RadioShack,” added Applbaum. “The announcement about Lance and Team RadioShack generated a great deal of consumer excitement and a reappraisal of our brand, which is exactly what THE SHACK is intended to do. Having Lance on our team will no doubt accelerate our brand’s evolution.”

To bring the new creative strategy to life, RadioShack will host Netogether, a three-day event taking place in New York City’s Times Square and San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza on August 6, 7 and 8. The event will connect the cities with two, massive, 17-foot laptop computers with webcams that allow live video and audio exchanges. Netogether will feature live music, celebrity appearances and unique contests to demonstrate how technology can keep people connected – even 3,000 miles apart. Consumers are invited to visit the event and chat with friends or family via the laptops, or to join in the conversation online at www.radioshack.com/theshack, where they can offer real-time comments on the live video feeds.

Short Version: The $399 Acer Aspire One 751h is an affordable netbook with marathon battery life, a gorgeous screen, and an excellent keyboard. As long as you don’t expect to watch high-quality video clips, this machine makes for a very compelling purchase.

Specs:

• Intel Atom Z520 CPU at 1.2GHz
• Windows XP Home SP3
• 11.6-inch widescreen display at 1366×768
• Intel GMA 500 graphics chipset
• 2GB RAM (upgraded from 1GB)
• 160GB hard drive (5400RPM)
• 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
• Built-in webcam
• Three USB ports
• Six-cell battery
• MSRP: $399, Street Price: $379

Review:

If you’ve been researching the 11.6-inch Acer Aspire 751h netbook and haven’t purchased it yet, you’re likely on the fence because of several reviews prior to this one that say the machine is underpowered. And if you’re looking to play HD video, you’ll find it to be underpowered as well. It simply doesn’t play HD video without stuttering. It doesn’t even play non-HD fullscreen Hulu video without stuttering. So this is not a machine to buy if you want to play videos. Standard-definition YouTube videos work fine, but that’s about it.

Taking videos out of the equation, I’m reviewing this machine as if I’d purchased it myself. The first thing I did — and the first thing I do with all new computers — was to remove the antivirus software. In this case, it was McAfee. Boom, instantly this “underpowered” computer starting picking up the pace somewhat.

After that, I opened up the trapdoor on the bottom of the machine and popped in a 2GB RAM stick (cost: about $30), swapping out the included 1GB stick. Boom again, now we’re cooking.

Then, I did what no full-time blogger in their right mind would ever do: I left my trusty $2000 Sony VAIO laptop at home and took the Aspire 751h with me on the road and used it as my only computer for two weeks.

So how did everything work out? Just fine, thank you. The 751h is a more-than-capable portable computer as long as you remove resource-hogging applications (like antivirus software) and bump the RAM up to two gigabytes. I had no problems using the computer day after day to surf the internet using Google Chrome with multiple tabs open, play some old-school games (Risk II, Sim City 3000, etc.), and post stuff to CrunchGear.

Truth be told, I used the machine for about a day before upgrading the RAM and it worked pretty well with just one gigabyte. I upgraded the RAM out of principle, as I think that any computer nowadays should have at least two gigabytes just to be on the safe side. Netbook RAM is cheap and it’s a quick and easy upgrade.

And just to see what all the hubbub was about regarding not being able to play video, I loaded up Hulu Desktop — no go — and tried to play HD YouTube clips — also, no go. Here’s a video of what you can expect if you try to do the same.

As you can see, Hulu Desktop is pretty much out of the question, regular YouTube videos play just fine, and HD YouTube videos don’t play well at all.

Now from a portability standpoint, the design of 751h has found the Goldilocks Zone as far as I’m concerned. It’s not too big, not too small, not too light, not too heavy. It’s juuuuust right. The material used is sturdy, not cheap-feeling, and the curved lines, nice high-resolution screen, and great keyboard make the 751h feel like it’d cost much more than $400. Here it is pictured next to the original 8.9-inch Aspire One for size comparison purposes.

The machine’s glossy outer coating does indeed pick up fingerprints, as does the area around the trackpad (the trackpad itself now looks like it’s covered in butter). Just something to keep in mind. That kind of stuff doesn’t bother me all that much but if it bothers you, you may want to see if you can find one of these on display somewhere and manhandle it for a bit.

Typing on the island keyboard took a bit of getting used to at first but by a few days in, it felt like I was typing on a standard laptop keyboard. The big Shift and Backspace keys are definitely appreciated and, while the tiny arrow keys leave a bit to be desired, this is still by far the best netbook keyboard I’ve used.

The trackpad is kind of a weak spot. It’s bigger than most netbook trackpads and the all-in-one button is placed underneath it instead of flanking the sides but it still takes a fair amount of scrolling and sliding to get the cursor from one side of the screen to the other. The single mouse button registers left and right clicks but it sits almost a bit recessed, so pushing it down to click takes a bit of extra effort sometimes. The trackpad also features multitouch gestures but the actual surface area and slow-to-register timing made multitouch an afterthought aside from vertical scrolling and the occasional zooming.

All in all, the trackpad is fine for occasional, casual browsing and lighter stuff but when I would use the 751h all day for work, I had a USB mouse hooked up.

As for the six-cell battery, this is the first portable computer I’ve ever used that I basically recharge as often as I recharge my cell phone. I’d plug it in at night, and it would pretty much run all throughout the next day. I even took it on a quick three-day weekend without the charger and still had plenty of juice when I got back. So what you give up in power and performance, you absolutely gain in battery life.

Acer promises 8+ hours of battery life and I can definitely say that’s an accurate estimate, all things considered. I was able to muster over six hours of pretty aggressive non-stop computing with Wi-Fi on and the screen brightness set pretty high, along with weekend-long casual use — checking e-mail, surfing the web for a bit, listening to music for a bit, and stuff like that. It’s a welcome change from the battery life found on most standard laptops.

Some may be turned off by the six-cell battery pack jutting out the back, but there’s a three-cell version available and the curvature of the six-cell battery pulls double duty as a nice way to carry the computer around. My hand fit — you guessed it — just right.

So what didn’t I like about this computer? Not enough to make me want to stop using it. I’m not wild about the trackpad, but it’s still usable. The fact that it doesn’t play high-bitrate video is compensated for, in my opinion, by the huge battery life. And I can see how leaving antivirus software and not upgrading the RAM could slow everything down, but that’s all easily fixable and you don’t really need to upgrade the RAM.

The basic premise of this machine — long battery life, high-resolution screen, great keyboard, excellent portability, low price — makes it a great choice against most of the other netbooks on the market. Its Achilles heel, for most people, will be the whole “can’t play HD video” thing. If that’s the case, Gateway (which is owned by Acer) sells basically the exact same machine but with an AMD processor that ought to be able to handle HD video just fine. You lose out on battery life (5 hours versus 8 hours) but that may be a trade-off people are willing to make in the name of acceptable video playback.

Overall, I’ve been excited about this netbook ever since it was announced and, after reading some early reviews, I thought I may have been looking down the barrel of a slow, pokey, disappointing machine. But after a few minor tweaks and upgrades, making peace with the HD video stuff, and a couple weeks of daily use, the Acer Aspire One 751h has quickly become my go-to portable computer — even over my regular laptop.

Acer Aspire One 751h [Acer.com]

Photos:

Ah, the netbook. Back in 1999 or so I remember one of my co-workers spent over $3,000 for a mini Sony Vaio PCG-C1, the kind with the tiny keyboard and woefully underpowered processor. Fast forward a decade and we’ve come full circle with the netbook. These still woefully underpowered laptops still have tiny keyboards but they cost a pittance and, for a certain subset of users, they’re some of the most compelling pieces of hardware to come out ofTaiwan and Japan in years.

Origin Story

The netbook was supposed to save the PC industry. Cast your memory back to 2007. We were just on the edge of the global financial precipice. Desktop sales were flat and laptop sales were soaring. All seemed fine. But there was a problem: the laptop market was considerably different than the desktop market. Desktop PCs sat comfortably in a den and were upgraded over time. Junior wanted to play The Sims so he installed a new graphics card. Sis wanted a scanner – she added an all-in-one. Dad was going through a mid-life crisis so he bought a new case. PCs generated sales in peripherals and, once the PC was maxed out, it was relegated to the basement and a new one purchased. PCs cost a pittance to make and could be sold at a slight profit.

Laptops, on the other hand, were stagnant. You bought a laptop and held onto it. For many it became a main computer, but one you never upgraded. You could add some memory and plug in a printer, but you weren’t purchasing overpriced graphics cards or hard drives.

In the years preceding the netbook, laptop manufacturers played with a few possible upgrade paths. First, they stuffed desktop hardware into laptops to create the Desktop Replacement. These massive laptops weren’t portable, had horrible battery life, and were prohibitively expensive. They knew that this was the wrong route towards riches.

Then they played with mini-PCs for the living room. These PCs fit in teeny-tiny cases and were supposed to sit next to your TV. Windows Media Center promised a 10-foot TV computing experience for all. I doubt many of us have actively used Windows Media Center – let alone Apple’s Front Row experience on the Mac Mini – in the intervening years.

These two branches of hardware manufacturing looked like dead ends. However, by learning how to stuff more technology into a tiny package, laptop manufacturers were able to use fairly low-power desktop chips inside tiny cases.

In about 2007 the OLPC suddenly appeared. The OLPC, if you’ll recall, was the proto-netbook. It was a woefully underpowered laptop for developing countries with a hand crank to charge it. It was great for kids who have never seen a computer but not so great for power-hungry Americans. I once saw a man who could be charitably called a massive geek – in a good way – whip out an OLPC at a conference. He started it up and its speaker began to quack like a scalded duck. It was, in general terms, useless as a real laptop.

Then Asus, a heretofore unknown PC company, hit upon an idea. Why not take cheap processors, stuff them into some of the small motherboards they had been working on, add a laptop screen and keyboard, and make a mini-laptop? They could stuff in Intel’s cheap new Atom processors and make something that is essentially a peripheral laptop. In a strategy that can be attributed to Pimp My Ride, laptop makers knew that consumers loved laptops so they decided to add a laptop to their laptops. The larger, more expensive laptop would sit quietly in the den while the netbook would scoot around the Internet, while you were on the couch watching TV or in the kitchen making pizza bagels.

Thus the eee PC was born. It was amazing. Laptops were now less expensive than some graphics cards. A $400 laptop was something the average consumer could stand behind. Sadly, manufacturers didn’t stand behind the consumer.

The Terrible Truth

The netbook will die soon. They were a cynical play by an industry in panic. They knew they couldn’t get people to buy expensive hardware so they sold inexpensive hardware at a massive discount, hoping against hope that they would sell enough units to make a profit. And profit they did. But, almost three years later, people are discovering the awful truth: netbooks are horrible. Devices like the Macbook Air, for example, are on par with hardware that came out at the turn of the century and the tiny notebooks we tested were fine for most purposes but try to get any real work done and you run into a wall. While they are striking, they’re unacceptably slow for most applications.

But, in a way, it doesn’t matter. You’re not supposed to run desktop apps on your netbook. In fact, you can bypass most of the major issues simply by focusing on web-based apps like Gmail and Zoho Office.

Also, try telling a cash-strapped consumer not to buy a netbook. It’s futile. Nintey-nine percent of computing time at home is spent on the web. Unless you’re a gamer, you probably fire up the laptop for porn or recipes and little else. So, on the aggregate, netbooks are just fine. But woe betide the netbook user who suddenly wants to do some video editing. Interestingly, many netbooks are going back to the store for exactly this reason: consumers feel conned by their relative uselessness.

What’s Next

The next logical step in the netbook world is the ultralight. These ultrathin laptops – think a better MacBook Air rather than eee PC – appeared briefly in about 2006 but disappeared when folks realized they still wanted optical drives. I remember bringing a Gateway ultralight to an IT shop once in about 2006 and the team thought it was an “old” notebook because it didn’t even have an optical drive.

Now, however, optical drives are all but useless. Streaming and downloading are the way to go. Therefore, expect to see ultralight laptops with screens 12 inches or bigger. The netbook will turn into what can only be described as an iPod Touch and manufacturers will fall over themselves trying to replace their mid-tier laptop line – the kind that you’d carry with you on a business trip – with ultralights that can actually do a little work. The prices will rise and crap notebooks like the Cloudbook will blow away.

Think ChromeOS will appear on netbooks? Think again. It may appear on devices similar to the CrunchPad but the netbook as we know it will soon be running Windows 7 and liking it.

Where Does That Leave Us?

It leaves us on the edge between notebooks and ultralights and so we dug up the best of the current crop of what we’d still call notebooks yet can actually run a few apps. The current MacBook Air is much more powerful than its predecessors and new processors from AMD and Intel will supplant the runty Atom with something like the Athlon Neo, a more balanced chip with a bit more speed.

However, the days of $200 laptops are numbered. There’s no profit in it. This race to the bottom has to stop and, although you will see laptops like the Lenovo Ideapad S10, below, netbooks will slowly migrate to faster – and more expensive – hardware. If this year’s COMPUTEX was any indication, this is the year of the ultralight.

This is not to say that $200 laptops will go away. Manufacturers have already opened that Pandora’s Box and can’t close it. But they will be marginalized by manufacturers and distributors.

That said, here are a few hotties that we played with over the past few weeks. N.B. Apple didn’t get back to us about the 13-inch MacBook or new Air in, but I’m sure Apple makes fine hardware, right?

To test we ran an AVI movie on repeat for a full battery cycle and then ran PrimateLabs Geekbench.

But I’m Shopping for a Netbook

What should you look for? Lots of memory – 2GB at least, and a 2GHz or better processor. A Core 2 Duo is probably your best bet at this point. Unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t even be watching video on your netbook, anything less is a waste of money. I’ve seen some netbooks that can barely surf YouTube let alone run Final Cut Pro.

Don’t be fooled by price. The cheapest netbook is the worst one. A laptop manufacturer can’t sell something for $350 and still add in any bells and whistles. Windows itself takes up a large percentage of a laptop’s cost.

Avoid Linux, at least the pre-installed versions. Sorry, Linux nerds, but it’s true. Buy an XP model and install Ubuntu or whatever later, but don’t get the Linux netbook because it’s cheaper. Maybe Chrome OS will change all that, but Linux-based netbooks are usually running some wonky, kiosk-oriented installation, making them nigh-on unusable.

Go major manufacturer. If there’s anything China is good at it’s creating OEM devices and badging them for sale in the US. All of those Sylvania, Everex, and CloudUnicornNotebooks you see online are exactly the same netbooks with a different sticker on the front. It may look like a bargain but it’s garbage.

Reviews

Click to read

Lenovo Ideapad S10-2

Price $349.00
Screen Size 10.2″
Processor Intel N270 1.6 ghz
Memory 1 GB
Benchmark 861
Battery Life 4:05
USB 3
Display out 1 VGA
Keyboard Tiny, but usable
Mouse A bit too small, side scroll
Bottom Line Priced to move. B

This small netbook uses its patterned gloss top to add a little pizzazz to an otherwise standard appearance. Despite its light weight (2.65 lbs according to Lenovo) it feels very solid, not flimsy or delicate.

Like all notebooks, its keyboard is rather small. However, it’s surprisingly usable. The key layout is very standard feeling, and with a little practice, or small hands, it would be just fine for any daily use. The touchpad is also cramped, though it also is intuitive after the first few minutes. It makes up for its small size by being sensitive. Not only that, it has some multi-touch features as well as standard side scrolling. The 1.3 Megapixel camera also works as a facial recognition system for logging in. An interesting feature sure to wow the ladies.

Hardware wise this machine is pretty standard, based on a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom, it packs 1 gig of RAM for pretty standard netbook performance. Its battery life at 4:05 minutes while watching a movie also seems standard. Its 10.2” screen is very readable, and the colors are acceptable. The included Windows XP works great for its OS, and it will already be familiar to almost any purchaser.

MSI XSlim X340

Price $899.99
Screen Size 13″
Processor Intel U3500 1.4 ghz
Memory 2 GB
Benchmark 1248
Battery Life 2:18
USB 2
Display out 1 HDMI + 1 VGA
Keyboard Flimsy, standard size
Mouse unremarkable, no scroll
Bottom Line Nice styling, underpowered. B

Although this is an ultra-thin very light laptop, and it’s definitely sleek, I couldn’t help my immediate impression of cheapness. With plastic chrome accents on its ports that seem to have been put there in an attempt to distract from its ultra-bland, uniform gloss black finish, to complete its blandness all of its status lights are plain white. It almost looks like a laptop I could buy in a shady market somewhere in China. In the interest of fairness I tried to look past that. Aesthetics, after all, have little impact on the utility of a laptop, and it is weight and thickness are definitely impressive, especially at its price just under 900$. It may be the only sub-grand ultra-thin out right now.

Unfortunately I was immediately disenchanted again when I attempted to open it. A magnet holds the lid shut, and to open it, you have to grip the lid by the narrowest of lips, then suddenly, its vaunted lightness is working against you because the bottom wasn’t heavy enough to separate the magnet. I had to use my fingernails to open it the first time. After the first time though, the problem seemed to get less and less extreme every time I opened it. Now it seems to open just fine. So again, I forgive it, after all everything has a break-in period.
Once opened, I like the screen, its colors are 13.4” screen looks good. Its colors are bright and vibrant, brought out by the glossy screen. The keyboard looks good with large un-crowded keys. Unfortunately they also have a problem. The whole keyboard flexes alarmingly. While unsettling, and in general adding to my impression of cheapness, it doesn’t actually interfere with typing. The keys are large, and have a satisfying amount of resistance, which makes up for the flex after the first few minutes of typing. The touchpad is acceptable, its smooth plastic finish is very usable and familiar, and the uni-piece button has a satisfying press and subtle click. The pad itself seems to be missing any scroll features though, no side scroll or 2-finger, it brings back fond memories of Windows 98 when I had to click and drag the scrollbar down.
On the hardware side, this laptop runs on a single core Intel Ultra Low Voltage processor, which along with a much better than netbook integrated Intel GPU means it benchmarked significantly higher than a netbook. Along with this comes higher power consumption, and when your keeping it as light as this (2.7 lb) that means short batter life. In our test it lasted 2:18. Honestly, despite its shortcomings, using this laptop was fine. It’s definitely quicker than a netbook, even running Vista. Its large screen and keyboard make it feasible as your main computer, while still maintaining great portability. The price is even pretty good, and if you are want a netbook supersize, they even make a model that runs on an Intel Atom.

Dell Adamo

Price $1,998
Screen Size 13.4-inches
Processor Intel U9400 1.4 ghz
Memory 4 GB
Benchmark 2010
Battery Life 3:07
USB 2 + 1 eSata/USB
Display out 1 Displayport
Keyboard Backlit, Large, good
Mouse Nice pad, bad buttons, side scroll
Bottom Line Amazingly slick, expensive. B+

This sleek ultra-thin laptop looks great. Its black-brushed aluminum body is accented by a strip of high gloss plastic. When you open it, the first thing you notice is the large backlit keys with huge futuristic font glowing at you. When you type on them they are satisfying, and probably my favorite feature of this whole machine. The touchpad also is really nice, one of the best textures I’ve come across. It’s an ultra fine-brushed metal that feels incredibly smooth. The mouse buttons I am much less sold on. They click loudly, and require a deceivingly firm push, deceiving because of a slight play in the buttons. The high-gloss, 13.4” screen looks great, very vibrant, but that’s inside. Its so shiny, I suspect if you tried to use this in the sun, it had better be to do your make-up. That’s not the only problem with this laptop. It’s all about the appearance. The hardware inside it is less than exciting, especially for the base model’s starting price of just under $2000. Its processor is an Intel Core 2 duo running at 1.4 GHz. Although it has 4 gigs of RAM, it acts sluggish constantly. Its battery life is its most impressive performance point, and in our test it lasted 3:07 hours. This laptop was clearly designed to look good, and it definitely does, but for the kind of money you have to pay for it I would have expected better performance.

Lenovo Thinkpad T400s

Price $1,599
Screen Size 14.1″
Processor Intel P9400 2.4 ghz
Memory 2 GB
Benchmark 2753
Battery Life 2:22
USB 2 + 1 eSata/USB
Display out 1 Displayport + 1 VGA
Keyboard Very standard, good, Top lit
Mouse Nice texture, satisfying, 2 finger scroll
Bottom Line Excellent build quality, speed. A

This laptop looks just like Thinkpads for years. It does because that look is utilitarian, logical, and well thought out. Its keyboard feels perfectly standard, requiring no getting used to, my one small complaint is that the control key is not the bottom corner, it is one in from the corner, and as a result I have hit the function key accidentally often. The touchpad has an interesting texture that I like, a fine grid of tiny bumps. It makes using the touchpad very tactile. The touchpad also allows you to 2-finger scroll. There is of course also the ThinkPad’s signature “trackpoint” nub.
An interesting feature is the built in keyboard light, which makes so much more sense to me than backlit keys. With the LED keyboard light you get some ambient light that you could read by or whatever you need. The 14” monitor looks fine, it can get quite bright, to the point it hurts my eyes inside, but that combined with a matte finish screen makes this laptop feasible to outside use on a sunny day. Those combine to make this a laptop that is useful virtually anywhere I would normally be. Combine that with its light weight (3.9 lb) and you have one of the most useful laptops available. Hardware wise it’s also very capable, based around a 2.4 GHz Intel Core2 Duo, it has 2 or 3 gigs DDR3 of memory. Of course running all that while keeping the weight down means that the battery life is less that phenomenal, and during our tests died after 2:22 hours. This laptop is the one for you if you need a powerful easily portable laptop you can use almost anywhere.

with Berkeley Beyers

Back in the olden days I used to read Joey Devilla’s blog all the time. He was – and is – known as Accordion Guy and he produced consistently cool content. Well, I just stumbled on him again and found that he’s doing great, philosophical posts on tech. Take his examination of netbooks vs. smartphones, for example.

He compares netbooks and smartphones to two brands of fast food pie. Netbooks are sub-par pies made to look like a real slice of pie – you know you’re not getting good pie but the appearance of a pie shape and crust creates cognitive dissonance and makes you think you’re getting screwed (which, in most cases, you are – netbooks are sub-par notebooks and horrible “communication devices”). Smartphones are like McDonald’s pies in that they don’t look like pie – they look like a pared down and highly subjective vision of pie. You have everything in there – the filling, the crust, whatever else – but you know you’re not buying real pie and you can sit back and “enjoy” it on that level. Netbooks are faking it while smartphones have no pretensions of pie-like goodness. With me so far?

This analogy maps directly to netbooks and smartphones. Netbooks look like little laptops but when you try to use them like laptops they fail – the Dell Adamo is an excellent example. They’re not powerful enough to be real laptops yet people expect a little power from something with a screen and a keyboard. The MacBook Air is another example – it’s nigh on unusable in its current configuration yet folks expect a true 2-GHz MacBook crammed into an Air case. This is simply not the situation. Even Intel’s goal of calling them Low Cost Small Notebook PCs is ludicrous. The low-cost is right, but what about low-value?

Then you have smartphones. These things SHOULDN’T be internet browsing tablets but they are. I surf more Internet on the iPhone than ever. It’s a great one-off source for a quick fix. When was the last time you put your smartphone down in the kitchen with the browser pointed to a recipe? And when was the last time you put your netbook down next to the flour and eggs? I suspect you used your smartphone more frequently for these one-off tasks than your netbook.

What do manufacturers have to do? They could go the Nokia route buy building little touchscreen devices or they could up their prices and put actual hardware into tiny cases as opposed to bargain basement processors and chips. Either way, netbooks will go the way of the dodo, especially considering they cost a pittance and can’t be making anyone any cash. Quoth Joey:

When people buy a smartphone, which they’ve been doing like mad, they’re buying their primary mobile phone. It’s the mobile phone and computing platform that they’re using day in and day out and the device that they’re pulling out of their pockets, often to the point of interrupting conversations and crashing the trolley they’re operating.

When people buy a netbook, they’re often not buying their primary machine. It’s a second computer, a backup device that people take when their real machine – which is often a laptop computer that isn’t much larger or more expensive – seems like too much to carry. It’s a luxury that people might ditch if the current economic situation continues or worsens and as the differences between laptops and netbooks vanish. Netbooks, as a blend of the worst of both mobile and laptop worlds, will be a transitional technology; at best, they’ll enjoy a brief heyday similar to that of the fax machine.

Netbooks are racing to be smartphones and smartphones aren’t racing anywhere – they’re just getting better.

The picture above shows the three flavors all in one Neapolitan mess. I’m so efficient!

As with before, you can get an XP edition with less RAM and less storage for $330, or you can go for the $280 Mi version, which has more of both. I’ve never understood that pricing strategy. There’s also a shiny black business version, but its merits (apart from being black) are not well-explained. If I had to advise, though, I’d wait until the upcoming wave of Ion devices comes out; even if you don’t like what you see, they’ll probably drive the prices down of non-Ion netbooks across the board. And of course, if you’re spending the cash to max out your netbook, you might be getting into dv2 territory.

Explore the Minis here. And here’s what they have to say about the new thangs:

Powered by either an Intel® Atom processor N270 with 1.6-gigahertz (GHz) or an Intel
Atom processor N280 at 1.66-GHz, the HP Mini 110/1101 line offers configure-to-
order options on a number of its features.
The three series are as follows:
• The HP Mini 110 XP Edition supports up to 1 GB of memory and either a 32 GB solid-
state drive or 160 GB hard drive, as well as optional WWAN. An optional Broadcom
Crystal HD Enhanced Video Accelerator is expected to be available in July and will
allow users to enjoy 1080p high-definition content.
• The HP Mini 110 Mi Edition is a simple-to-use mobile companion with an HP-
developed interface. The Mini 110 Mi comes with applications that enable web
browsing, email and online video from the Mi dashboard, minimizing startup time.
Favorite websites, photos and music that are added to the dashboard stay live, and
the taskbar makes it easy to switch between programs. The Mini 110 with Mi runs on
a Linux operating system and supports up to 2 GB memory and up to 250 GB of hard
drive storage.
• The HP Mini 1101 offers a wide range of operating systems including Windows® XP
Home, XP Pro and Windows Vista®. The Mini 1101 offers two optional batteries: a 3-
cell option for the lightest weight configuration or a 6-cell option for battery power that
lasts up to twice as long. In addition, the optional integrated HP Mobile Broadband
allows users to conveniently access the Internet, corporate intranet, email and mission-
critical information around the world.

The dv2 is HP’s answer to this dilemma. Almost as small as a netbook, and almost as powerful as a regular laptop, they said it would be the best of both worlds. Of course, the risk was that it would have the worst of both worlds instead. That turns out not to be the case, and the dv2 is a smart little machine — but it’s still far from perfect.

The dv2 really is in a class of its own — though I mean that literally, not in a sense of excellence. It occupies the price gap between netbooks and regular notebooks, and comparisons to either are going to be kind of misguided. So keep that in mind when you find yourself comparing one or the other to the dv2 in your head.

Form

HP has gone to great lengths to get the form factor right, and they’ve done pretty well. It really is very thin (less than an inch), with a knife-like profile marred somewhat by the chubby battery case at the back. It’s got junk in the trunk, essentially. Not that there’s anything wrong with that &mdsah; but it does disturb the otherwise flat form of the thing. It opens and closes with a magnet, although it’s not weighted enough on the bottom part that you can open it with one hand.

It’s also very nice-looking. The piano black with chrome accenting is fetching and classy, and the little designs on the handrest area are understated. Unfortunately, a lot of the look is lost after you’ve used it for a few hours, since this thing attracts fingerprints and smudges like no other. You’ll have them on the bezel, you’ll have them on the exterior, you’ll have them on the handrest, and you’ll have them on the chrome trackpad. Dust, too, collects in the cracks and is very visible on the shiny surface.

The keyboard is difficult to judge. It seems big enough, although it’s off-center, which irks me. Still, the keys are a good size (if a bit close together) and they’re all there. Most of the compression seems to have occurred on the left side, where your esc, tilde, and tab keys have shrunk significantly. Other than that, it’s as good a keyboard as I’ve seen on any small-form-factor laptop.

The 12.1″ 16:10 ratio display is excellent. Its 1280×800 resolution means you can watch most 720p content full-sized, and I find it to be very sharp, although it has a very limited vertical viewing angle for getting color right. It’s also covered in a reflective coating like every other laptop these days, for god knows what reason. I’m typing this on the dv2 now, and I can read the reflections of the signs across the street from me. Earth to laptop manufacturers: let us choose. At least the display is bright enough that it works fine in all but the worst lighting situations (that is to say, all but the one I’m in right now in this cafe).

Function

The insides of the dv2 are much better than your average netbook, though not quite as fast as the mid-range laptop platforms that start at $1200 or so. The processor is the brand new AMD Neo, which is making its debut with the dv2, and although it’s clocked the same as your average Atom (1.6GHz), it’s not quite as micro-sized and limited — not to mention it’s 64-bit. AMD has a history of doing more with less hertz anyway. It’s also got up to 4GB of RAM; the one I have has 2GB, but 4GB is actually going to be the standard in the US. Lastly it’s got a 250GB hard drive, which stands out quite a bit when compared with netbooks, which generally come with a fraction of that.

It comes with Vista, which is good and bad. What’s good is that it actually runs quite well, something I wouldn’t expect from any netbooks out there (and some regular laptops). The bad news is that it’s Vista, and if you want to take advantage of the HP Mediasmart capabilities, you’re going to have to keep it that way.

Because it has a discrete video card, it’s no stranger to some light gaming, as long as you adjust your expectations. HP and AMD invited me to try out a real game, so I installed World in Conflict. Unfortunately, even with a reduced resolution and settings on medium, I could hardly get a playable framerate. Better to stick with last generation stuff for now; WoW and games from a year back probably will run a lot better. 4GB of RAM vs my 2GB would help, but I doubt it would double the framerate.

The incredibly sexy Blu-ray player that comes with the dv2 is excellent, and since the screen actually supports 720p, the dv2 suddenly becomes a very nice little portable media machine. It’s questionable whether the battery will hold out for the length of a whole movie, though; I give it a little over two hours under medium-to-heavy load, and three on light load. Playback was fine but I did get stutters here and there; again, my model had less RAM than yours probably would, so keep that in mind.

Not all gravy

So far, so good. There are some little issues here and there but no deal-breakers. Unless you really need a nice trackpad. Because the dv2 doesn’t have one. I mean, it has a trackpad, but it’s pretty bad. First of all, the material it’s made of seems to require extra effort to drag your finger along. Of course, once it’s all covered in grease and smudges, as it will be since it’s shiny chrome, you’ll be able to glide a little easier (kind of gross to think about). The pad is super-wide for some reason but not particularly big, so you’ll be doing a lot of multiple strokes to get things done. The size is strange, because there’s clearly more room available on the handrest area.

It’s got an unpredictable little scroll area on the right side that’s difficult to use without looking, which kind of defeats the point. The buttons below the pad take a considerable amount of force to push, and I found myself avoiding them altogether. Most infuriating was the “drag lock” which apparently is impossible to disable. I like to tap instead of using a button, and this trackpad is definitely not good for that. Sometimes it’s super-sensitive, sometimes I’ll tap several times to no effect. Of course, all these problems are solved by simply using a mouse (my Bluetrack Mini worked perfectly), but part of the draw of larger and better laptops is the improved trackpads. Whether this is a driver problem or what is immaterial: it’s there and it’s annoying.

Lastly, while Vista may run fine once it’s gotten its great bulk up and running, it took fully four minutes for a cold boot to drop below 15% CPU usage. I’d rather have 7 running on this thing, so honestly I’d just drop RC1 right in as soon as I got one of these.

Bottom Line
I think that HP has a good thing here, and although other companies are planning on releasing similar styles of mid-size/ultrathin notebooks in the future, the dv2 is actually here and leading the charge. It’s not a paragon, however, what with its problematic trackpad and questionable 3D performance. Those problems aside, though, it’s got a great form factor, lots of storage space, the keyboard is solid, the screen is great, and honestly starting at $750 I think that this is a great deal. It’s an excellent second laptop for when you need to be a little more portable, and because it’s got plenty of hard drive space it works as a little media laptop as well as a barebones browser-and-email machine.

If that sounds like something you’d like, you can get one here.

Short Version: A thoughtful universal power adapter that can charge your laptop and a USB-powered device simultaneously, the Innergie mCube90 features a tiny secondary DC adapter that detaches from the main adapter for use in cars and airplanes.

Long Version:

Road warriors, take note. This $119 universal adapter may be the only power source you need to take with you on your next trip. Priced similarly to various other universal adapters out there, the mCube90 offers a few nice extras you may not find elsewhere without adding any extra bulk to your bag.

The adapter allows you to simultaneously charge your laptop and USB-powered cell phone (or MP3 player, voice recorder, etc.) while in your hotel room and then should you need to hit the road, the bottom fourth of the adapter detaches from the top section and serves as what Innergie calls “the world’s smallest Auto/Air power adapter in the world.”

It’s a nice feature considering having a big brick sitting in your cup holder with wires coming out of it is inconvenient and ugly at best, dangerous at worst. You’ll still have wires, sure, but the actual power adapter is of near-inconsequential size.

The larger AC adapter pushes out between 65 and 90 watts and is compatible with nearly all standard laptops from the likes of HP, Sony, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and many others. There are seven included power tips and an easy-to-read guide, along with an AC power cord, DC power cord, and airplane-compatible DC power cord.

The tips, manual, and cords are all housed in a zip-up nylon bag for easy transport.

Unfortunately, no MacBook-compatible tips are included. I’m guessing that’s because the mag-safe tips found on Mac notebooks are likely more expensive to produce. That’s a shame, too, as the mCube90 comes in a nice “MacBook white” shell.

The size of the adapter itself is about as long as a standard notebook adapter but about half as thick and maybe 15 to 20 percent wider. All the cords are thoughtfully wrapped with velcro ties, making cable management easy.

Conclusion:

The Innergie mCube90 would do well in all but the most tight-walleted frequent traveller’s bag. At $119, it may seem a bit expensive at first but competing universal adapters generally run $80 and up and you’re basically getting three adapters in one.

The detachable mini-DC adapter, especially, is a really nice feature to have if you spend a lot of time in the car. Of note, the DC adapter is available as a standalone product for $60 if you don’t need the full AC adapter.

Innergie mCube90 [MyInnergie.com]

Wanna know something about laptops? No matter how small and portable you make ‘em, the AC adapter’s always going to be the size of a ham sandwich. Well that gravy train is about to crash into a brick wall of ingenuity thanks to Texas Instruments. The company has apparently developed a 90-watt AC adapter that measures 85×60x11 millimeters or, as the above photo shows, about the size of a wallet.

The adapter is being shown off at a trade show in Japan and TI has already started shipping the adapters to Chinese manufacturers (no release date for Japan yet). It’ll sure be nice to see these tiny things start to make their way into netbook and ultraportable notebook kits.

[via Tech-On!]

It appears that Samsung still has the netbook to beat in the N110, the $469 replacement of the NC10 that increases battery life to over seven hours of real world use, swaps in a glossy lid, and rounds out the front corners while staying under three pounds with a six-cell battery.

The keyboard stays the same as the NC10’s, which is a good thing according to LAPTOP. The touchpad gets a slight bump in size and the single rocker-style mouse button gets raised up a tiny bit but still “lacks a divot to separate the left and right sides.”

Most everything else between the NC10 and the N110 stays the same – 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB Ram, 160GB hard drive, XP Home – but the incremental upgrades, plus almost 7.5 hours of continuous web surfing makes the N110 the top dog in the 10.1-inch netbook class.

[via LAPTOP]

Business guys need something rugged, with plenty of storage and an optical drive for porn. Netbooks are built on the cheap and are equipped for basic tasks, not to mention the fact that their little screens and keyboards aren’t really the best for extended periods of work.

Of course, tiny laptops may be good in some situations, but family-owned book stores aren’t going to make up for lost sales from banks, insurance companies, and consultancy firms.

Last year, Texas Instruments announced that they had developed what they called their “pico” chipset for DLP projectors. This year, some of them are actually available.

From the press release:

PICO PROJECTION MEDIA PLAYERS (PPMP’s)

• Samsung MBP200: Compact and lightweight, the portable MBP200 can connect to mobile phones and laptops and allows users to project content with up to a 50-inch viewing screen. The MBP200 is a stand alone media player with an SD card slot letting users listen to music and create playlists, as well as project video, pictures or PDF, PowerPoint, Word or Excel files. Samsung has not yet announced U.S. shipping details on this product or anticipated price point.
• Cinemin Stick™ by WowWee Technologies: Roughly the size of a candy bar, the Cinemin Stick™ comes equipped with 4GB of internal memory and an expandable SD memory card slot for easy access to your videos, digital photos and other media. WowWee has not yet announced U.S. availability or price details for this product.
• Cinemin Station™ by WowWee Technologies: Combining big pictures with big audio, this little media center – merely the size of two soda cans – is a modern-day boombox, the ultimate dock for your iPod, iPhone, or other multimedia devices. WowWee has not yet announced U.S. shipping or price details for this product.

MODULAR PICO PROJECTORS

• Optoma Pico PK-101: Smaller than most smart phones and weighing approximately four ounces, the Optoma Pico PK-101 pocket projector can turn any environment into a mobile cinema experience and even connects to your iPod or other multimedia device. The PK-101 can be purchased for approximately $399. This product is on sale in Japan through Apple stores and in the U.S. through Amazon.com and Best Buy.com
• Cinemin Swivel™: Comparable to the size of the Cinemin Stick™, this affordable lightweight micro projector uses a unique adjustable 90-degree hinge for ceiling projection – putting your favorite videos, photos, and more on display anywhere, anytime. The Cinemin Swivel™ will be available in Q2 2009 for approximately $299.
• BUGprojector: This is a mini pico-projector module from BUGlabs which incorporates DLP® Pico™ technology to beam an image to a flat surface just eight inches away. With a native resolution of 480×320 pixels, stereo playback and a brightness of 9 lumens, users can project videos, photos and presentations on the go.

NOTEBOOK COMPANIONS

• Acer K10 Pico Projector: Weighing just over a pound and comparable to the size of a pocket dictionary, the Acer K10 Pico Projector can be paired with Acer notebook to project your presentations. It is especially developed for business professionals. The K10 will go on sale this month for approximately $450 (£299).
• BenQ GP1: Positioned as the ultimate on-the-go digital lifestyle device, the BenQ GP1 most notably stands out from the crowd with its integrated USB reader, enabling users to easily run movies, pictures, and office applications directly from a USB thumb drive without the need for notebook attachment. The GP1 will be available March 2009 through the BenQ e-store and other channels for $599.
• Dell™ M109S: Akin to the petite size of a pocket dictionary, the handy M109S connects to a Dell Latitude notebook and is primed to be your superlative assistant during small group presentations and collaborative meetings. When the business day ends, play games and watch movies in a bigger way. The product is now available for purchase for under $499.00 through www.dell.com.
• Toshiba TDP-F10U Mobile LED Projector: Weighing just over a pound and comparable to the size of a paperback novel, the TDP-F10U Mobile LED Projector utilizes an LED light source to serve as your reliable presenter on the road. Information on pricing and availability will be released from Toshiba.

If you were to take a peek into one of these mystical blogging tool chests, what might you find? Lets take a look at the bag I’ll be carrying this week, which is a fairly standard example of a blogger’s road gear.

The Bag:

The brand, color, and shape may vary, but it’s one of the most crucial tools in our kit.

After a handful of shows and many sore-shouldered nights, most of us make the jump from over-the-shoulder style laptop bags to a backpack. On (very) few occasions, it’s a stigma; stuck in the mindset of tacky blazers and leather briefcases of yesteryear, certain folks in the industry look at backpack’s as bags appropriate only for school children and hikers. To these naysayers, we say: Enjoy your back aches, chumps.

What’s inside:

1. Data keepin’ tools
2. Accessories
3. Cables

Trade shows mean two things: a crap ton of walking, and a crap ton of people. There are many tens of thousands of people around you – surely one of them might consider walking away with your stuff. You definitely don’t want to put this bag down if you don’t have to, so you’ll be wearing it for a long time. Besides having enough room for all your gear, the only thing that matters about the bag is that it’s comfortable; I’d gladly rock a bright pink Hello Kitty bag over anything else if it had some better support and cushioning in the straps.

Door #1: The Data keepin’ tools

1. MacBook Pro: Unless you’ve figured out some way to get the job done with smoke signals and carrier pigeons, it’s a whole lot harder to blog an event without a laptop. The 15″ MBP is a solid system – plus you get access to a special “Apple Only” section of the Media room where you and the other mac owners all give each other high fives and talk about your favorite coffee joints.
2. EEE 1000: Whaaat? A second computer?! Insanity, I know. It’s worth the extra 3 pounds or so to carry around a netbook. If one machine is choking as it tries to handle that HD video you’re forcing through it or one of your team’s laptops catches fire, you’ve got a cheap, reliable system to work on without much sacrifice.
3. T-Mobile G1: CES = Chaos. We’ve got at least 6 guys who will be all over the massive convention center, and we’ll be texting and e-mailing each other to organize insanely precise strike movements almost endlessly. QWERTY keyboard for the win. Plus, Android will probably be a hot topic at CES, best to have a bot-powered handset handy.
4. Apple iPhone: It’s needed to get into the Ultra Elite version of the aforementioned “Apple Only” room, which is exactly the same except it costs more.
5. Paper and pen: The classic. If you want to leave your 15″ LCD ball-and-chain in the media room, you can still get the story. But wait – didn’t I say you don’t want to leave anything laying around? The media room is no different, but as long as you’ve got a team member or two watchin’ your goods, you’re set. Peter Ha is a ninja and I once saw Doug Aamoth kill a man with his own pants, so quick trips shouldn’t be an issue.

Door #2: The Accessories

1. Nikon D90: With the crap fluorescent lighting and glass display cases which always seem to have been sprayed with some sort of ultra-glare coat, the show floor is no place to try and capture a masterpiece. You don’t absolutely, positively need a dSLR – but you’ll want one. If you roll into a booth with a pocket shooter, people look at you like you’re a dad holding up the line in the Indiana Jones ride so you can get a picture of your kids next to a hidden Mickey. People have this idea that only Pros are licensed to carry dSLRs, which means that everyone else will have one.
2. Canon SD630: But that doesn’t mean you won’t want a point and shooter. When the sun goes down over CES, it’s party time. It’s a little known fact that Devin gets up on the bar and dances Coyote Ugly style when he drinks – it’s a sight to see, but its not worth (drunkenly) dragging a $1400 dollar camera into a bar. This SD630 is beat to hell, but it still takes better shots than my phone – it’s the perfect bar cam.
3. Canon HG10: It’s a dedicated HD cam, so we’ll only bring it out for the big stuff. HD looks great and all, but it’s not worth the processing and encoding time if it’s just a two minute video of the latest in microwave oven technology.
4. Logitech Revolution: The best mouse I’ve ever used. It’s not really a travel mouse, but it has found its place in my bag anyway. Could I just use the touchpad? Sure. But with everything I can do on a touchpad, I could have done it 5x faster with my mouse; efficiency means my posts go up quicker, meaning I’m doing my job better. I use a dongled mouse rather than bluetooth, as switching it from laptop to laptop takes a whole lot less time than dealing with pairing/unpairing.
5. USB Drives: Big stories often involve more people than the one name you see in the byline. One person will be editing/resizing photos (often times huge RAW photos), another will be writing, and USB drives are the least complex and most fail safe way to get these big ol’ files back and forth.
6. Extra SD cards:: No matter how many times you think that this year’s tradeshow is the lamest yet, you still walk away with hundreds and hundreds of photos – and they build up quick.
7. Multi-in-one memory card reader: Lots of gadgets means lots of different memory cards. Fortunately, card readers are compact enough that covering pretty much all of the common ones shouldn’t take up much space at all.
8. Clif Bar Z bars: Are they for kids? Sure. Are they friggin’ delicious? Hells yes. You can only eat so many day-old turkey sandwiches before your stomach starts yelling at you, and protein bars do the trick without packing on the pounds.

Door #3: The Cables

This one’s pretty simple – chances are, you can deduce why these are necessary. This ones purely to boast about how much crap we manage to tuck away into these tiny pockets. I won’t explain what each one’s for, but I’ll make a few notes where worthy.

1. Nikon D90 Charger
2. Canon SD630 Charger
3. Monster portable 3-way power splitter: The most useful convention swag I’ve ever received. Monster gave it out one year, and it hasn’t left my bag since. Show organizers usually know to pack the media room with power strips – but if all the ports are plugged and no one’s looking to leave, a quick switch works keeps everyone plugged in with two extra ports for you to juice up with.
4. Canon HG10 charger
5. 2x mini-usb cables
6. iPod/iPhone data cable
7. EEE charger
8. MacBook Pro charger

All in all, the bag works out to roughly 28 pounds. So – if Thursday rolls around and you get an inkling to make a comment implying that you’re not getting your $0 dollars worth of subscription fees out of our coverage, remember this, if nothing else: we gladly lug around 28 pounds of crap for 8 hours a day to cover these things. Why? Because we like you.

HP and AMD recognized a demand (they hope) and have crafted a pretty sweet-looking little ultra-thin, portable notebook with a considerable amount of power: the Pavilion Dv2.

I liked what I was hearing from them because I genuinely agree that people need a good medium between netbooks and notebooks. The price and capabilities of netbooks are settling down into a shape that I don’t find that useful personally, but I don’t need a second “real” laptop. I need something that’s, for lack of a better term, good enough. And AMD seems to have come up with a setup that gets most of the power of a laptop at a more convincing price point.

This 12-inch laptop uses the new Athlon Neo setup, so it has a real full-power processor and discrete graphics setup (Radeon 3410, reasonable). It’s perfect for the kind of low-intensity photoshopping, web work, and NES emulation that I do every day, and doesn’t try to half-ass stuff like HD video editing, RAW photo management, or 3D gaming. Actually, it sorta tries on the last one, but we’ll forgive them. I’m a bit cheesed that it only comes with Vista; the OS simply doesn’t scale down well. I’d rather have 7.

When I first heard about this thing, it was supposed to have a 4:3 1024×768 screen. Boy am I glad they changed that to a widescreen 1280×800! Now you can watch 720p stuff the way it was meant to, kind of. Anyhow, the thing is due out in April and I’m really looking forward to it. HP’s doing nicely: with the Mini 1000 they’ve got a solid tiny laptop, and this Dv2 looks to be a good option for the next step up. Above that I’m not sure how I feel about them, so we won’t talk about that.

We might not have believed it 5 years ago, but “netbooks” are proving that there is a real market for tiny, affordable laptops. They are selling like hotcakes, but what does that mean for us in the future?

What netbooks lack power and features, they make up with much smaller form factors and very affordable prices. They usually come in at 7-10 inches, with Intel Atom processors and a variety of hard drive, SSD, and webcam options. Netbooks are selling well; they dominate Amazon’s top 20 bestsellers list, taking up 15 spots. New models are popping up weekly with almost all major PC manufacturers marketing their own ultraportable. 

We have to keep in mind though that there are quite a few problems. Companies like Sony and Apple fear that a price war will force prices down and shrink already small profit margins. Also, as Farhad Manjoo of Slate says, they are ugly and can be pretty slow since they run operating systems designed for full-fledged computers. He calls for a sleek tablet that would be optimized for web and media consumption, pretty much a big iPod touch.

I don’t know if a tablet will be the sweetspot in the netbook world. There have been previous attempts at making a web tablet, but they haven’t really caught on. What I do know is that the laptop arena is going to experience big change in 2009 as new form factors and configurations emerge, among other things. We can expect some interesting new devices to be released in the coming months.