Stainless Steel Aerodynamic netbook by Kivu Technology

Kivu Technology Co. has made a brave move by rolling out a new netbook, “G-Five KTNO2” which uses its Aerodynamics shape to let the consumers not feel much of its weight. Though the weight is 1.26 kg but you will feel holding just 0.90 kg while you walk with it. Designed to catch eyes and resembling like the wing of an aircraft, it has a brushed stainless steel chassis to give it a classic feel.

It features Intel Atom Processor that runs @ 1.6 GHz, 10.2-inch dispaly @ 1024 x 600 LCD display, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard disk, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 3G SIM slot, card reader, LAN, Bluetooth and 1.3MP webcam. Nothing is known about its pricing.

Dell Mini OPI Designer Lids Now up for Sale

Last month, we informed you about Dell and OPI tie-up to offer new designer lids for the Dell Mini netbooks as-well-as notebooks. Now, they are finally available to the consumers. As mentioned earlier, the designer lid is going to cost you whopping $85

There are 26 designs to choose from.

“Who doesn’t love New York? It has everything – fashion, theatre, four distinct seasons, energy, excitement, and the best bagels anywhere. Hands down. The place where the official color of fashion is black, this city offers big buildings, big ideas, big beauty – and big inspiration. For this big color.” – Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, OPI

HP 13-inch ultrathins launched – HP ProBook 5310m and HP DM3 – use AMD NEO processor

HP has churned out two new 13-inch thin-and-light notebooks, which are based on Intel’s Core 2 Duo and AMD’s Neo platform. Talking about the HP ProBook 5310m, it mainly targeted to more serious consumers; has a balanced and sophisticated look with black anodized aluminum with a magnesium frame in a soft touch finish. HP is punching it up as ‘the world’s thinnest full-performance notebook‘. It seems that they are right about it as it will be available with a Core 2 Duo (SP9300) CPU. Priced at $899, it may be expensive for some, but then there is no settlement on its performance end. You can also go for $699 version powered by a ULV Celeron processor.

The HP DM3 is a bit cheaper than the former. However, it will be offered with much cheaper AMD Neo processors or Intel CULVs. It is priced at $549 for an AMD dual-core Neo version, while an Intel-based DM3 will set you back $649. Such a price for the metal look which worth for it. HP claims up to 10 hours of battery life on its 6-cell battery.

Qualcomm betting a lot on Smartbooks – says future is very bright for Smartbook

Qualcomm is giving its best endeavor to increase its sales and thinks that computers in the future will be just like Mobile Phones. By computers, they mean Smartbooks which are basically netbooks running Android, Google Chrome OS or Linux.

Most of the upcoming Smartbooks will be using ARM processors, precisely Qualcomm ARM-based CPUs.

Consumers want computers that will run all day on one battery charge, don’t need to be switched off and are always receiving data, said Jacobs, whose company is the world’s biggest maker of mobile-phone chips.

According to Qualcomm, people do not want to carry a bulky laptop and its charger all day with them. They want a device that can run all day and remain connected too. More than 12 companies have decided to use the Snapdragon’s chip, which runs at 1GHz clock speed. The future is surely very exciting and we are waiting for the Snapdragon-based netbooks AKA Smartbooks to hit the market

Acer plans to launch THREE TOUCH enabled products with Windows 7

With Windows 7′s release just around the corner, Acer has announced that they will be unveiling three touch-enabled products running Windows 7. According to the product manager of mobile computer department, touch enabled netbooks have a great chance of becoming a hit among consumers in comparison to Tablet PCs concept which never really took off.

The manager, Shih, said that the in-cell technology has better prospects than the built-on touch solutions as the components of former are built directly into the TFT panels and are cheaper too.

Last year was the year of netbooks and now, it appears that this year, it will be the year of touchscreen netbooks

Bad SONY! – BLOCKS Virtual XP mode in Windows 7

It may shock you but, its true! The Sony Vaio laptops are not designed to run Window’s 7′s much boasted Windows XP virtual mode. Also the laptops are shipping with BIOS with which Virtualization cannot be done. Sony hasn’t made any clarification regarding whether, they will enable this feature in coming future or not.

According to Sony Insider, the company commented on this by saying that “Its engineers and QA people were very concerned that enabling VT would expose our systems to malicious code that could go very in the Operating System structure of the PC and completely disable it”, a official of the company.

Many misconceptions and confusion are crawling within the people that Sony’s advertising is not at all clear about the whether the Vaio machines are unable to work with a core feature of the Core 2 Duo chips they ship with. As a result of which, many people have now asked for a refund.

I am personally looking forward to do this feature as it would let me to run some of the apps that run only in Windows XP. If SONY does not come with a solution, then they are bound to loose certain number of consumers (including me)

Raon Digital’s website goes down – Bankruptcy on-the-way?

Looks like all UMPC makers are having a hard time in surviving in the world of (cheap) netbooks. A couple of months back, we reported that OQO’s future was bleak and was on the verge of getting bankrupted. That happened. Now, is it Raon’s turn? Folks at UMPCportal have lost their contact with them. Most importantly, their website has gone down, which is not a good sign for the current customers.

Will the Raon’s customers be rendered helpless just like OQO customers? Personally, I have been a huge fan of their products, but for average consumers, their products have always been a little on the expensive side. Example: An average netbook costs under $400, but most of the Raon’s products hovered in $600+ range

Netbook Shipments increasing at a mind-boggling rate! – 33 million netbooks expected to be sold in 2009

We all are still fighting the economic downturn and most of the people low on cash are treating netbooks as cheap alternative to notebooks. Reason is simple: They are small, trendy and easy to carry around.

In western countries and in countries like Japan, notebook shipments faced a sharp fall, whereas the netbook shipments actually increased. In the year 2008, when the netbooks were still considered as niche devices, the netbook vendors were able to sell just 7.3 million units whereas the notebook shipments were still high at 51.4 million.

This year, things are changing at a faster pace as netbook shipments are expected to be around 13.3 million units which is nearly 100% growth when compared to previous year. Same is the case in US and Japan, where the netbook shipments increased by 136.9% and 29.1% respectively.

Clearly, netbooks are being treated as secondary laptops and in some cases as primary laptops by consumers. Intel Atom processors that are used in almost all modern netbooks are powerful enough for handling the daily computing needs of the normal people. Netbooks are perfect for the ones who are not into hardcore PC gaming.

SmartQ MID now runs Windows CE OS too – costs just $150!

We mentioned the SmartQ MID a couple of months back. At that time, it was able to run just Ubuntu Linux. Now, it will be able to run Windows CE as OS. This MID comes with an 4.3-inch screen and runs ARM processor. Although it raises the possibility of dual-booting, but I don’t think that will be offered to the consumers.

It is available at DealExtreme (non-affiliate link) online shop that has few units in stock and is being retailed at $150 (with free shipping too)

First Eco certified netbook – SAMSUNG N120

Any device is said to be eco-friendly if it does not contains any mercury or harmful chemicals. If it comes with display, it should be highly energy efficient. Samsung N120 is the first netbook to become TCO certified.

According to TCO, the Samsung N120 is completely mercury free and uses LED backlit for energy efficiency. This makes the netbook as ‘green’ and ‘eco-friendly’ for the users.

“We are proud that the N120 is the first netbook achieving TCO certification which leads consumers to regard Samsung computers as safe and user friendly products. Samsung’s commitment to the environment is one of our top values and we are constantly trying to develop our products to be qualified for TCO standards.”