Acer Ferrari One to feature ATi Radeon HD 4670 GPU!

Acer Ferrari One (quick look) is a netbook with a lot of muscle power inside. Its XGP port caught a lot of attention when it is first unveiled. According to CNET, the XGP interface can be used to plug-in a dock that has the ATi Mobility Radeon HD 4670 GPU which has the capability of pushing a mighty 2048×1536 pixels on its external display. The dock also adds 6 USB 2.0 ports.

So, if you think that its dual-core chip along with its internal ATi GPU was not enough, you can further have the boost by just plugging in an external GPU, which the Acer calls, DynaVivid Graphics Dock. This dock weighs 650gm and will be available for $199 in the month of November.

ATM – A theme manager for the Xandros Linux OS

Sunnynarula18, a geek and Linux enthusiast who loves to mess around with the themes and GUI of the Xandros based Linux OS has come up with n excellent utility that lets you manage themes for the Xandros OS easily.

ATM is the theme manager with features that include changing themes , backgrounds , and icon modes. The bouncy icon mode is the one i like the most it increases the size of selected icons on the launcher by 12% compared to normal icons displaying a nice and cool bounce roll over effect when the icon is highlighted.

Here is a video of the bounce effect.

Fanciful, I must say!

Click on read more to get download and installation information

Disney Netbook MK90H soon landing in the Japanese land for 335 Euros

If you live in Japan and have been eying on the Disney netbook for your kid, you won’t need to wait for long. ASUS will be launching its Disney netbook in Japan in the month of September and we expect it to be made available worldwide by October. It will be priced at €335.

ASUS will be including a ‘kid-friendly’ interface on top of Windows-XP including some themes built around Mickey Mouse, Cars, Toy Story, Wall-E etc. Also, since it is meant for small children and they will be stepping into the big-bad world of Internet, parental controls are very much needed in order to stop your child from viewing “you-know-what”. In addition to that, the kids can only correspond via email to those people which are approved by the parents.

Sabertooth Z PATA ZIF SSD for your HP Mini 1000 – Turbo charge your HP Mini 1000

HP Mini 1000 owners can now ‘double’ the bootup and application load speeds by using the latest SSD from Active Media: Sabertooth Z PATA ZIP SSD. It has 82MB/sec transfer speed and it comes in 16GB and 32GB capacity. The SSD is also easy to install. It can also be used in other HP Mini netbooks like 1010NR, 1030NR and 2510P.

“The SaberTooth Z cuts bootup and application load times in half.” said Vice President of Sales at Active Media Products, Jerry Thomson. “HP Mini 1000 users will be amazed at the ease of installation and the difference it makes in performance.”

The 16GB SSD costs $70 whereas 32GB SSD will cost you $110.

Click on read to know more about it

Kubuntu Netbook version coming soon! [breaking]

Just few months back, Ubuntu came up with a specially tailored version for netbooks, Ubuntu NBR (Netbook Remix) and we were fairly impressed with it. Now, they have released Kubuntu Netbook version, which is not its final version. It features KDE desktop rather than Ubuntu’s Gnome desktop.

Ubuntu promises to bring even more enhancements in Kubuntu Netbook versions and we hope they really do as the interface is not as sleek as the one in Ubuntu NBR.

Here is some information about the current Alpha 3 release:

The Karmic Koala Alpha 3 CD release brings with it a brand new desktop as well as many new fixes and applications. For this latest release of Kubuntu 9.10, we are adding several interesting features to the desktop experience, building on the latest KDE. Besides these changes, there have been updates to many common applications as well as bug fixes to some of those annoyances you may or may not have run into. With every new pre-release, updates will be documented allowing you to thoroughly test your new Kubuntu test installation. Remember that all of these features are part of a pre-release version of Kubuntu, and may still have issues. We ask that any problems you come across that you file a bug, if one has yet to be filed for your problem.

The image can be downloaded from here and has 737MB download size. Here are a couple of tiny screenshots of Kubuntu(as these are only ones that we could find)

Mushkin unveils the new Europa III SSD

Mushkin has launched the Europa III SSD, which is based on MLC NAND flash memory and uses the Samsung’s S3C29RBB controller. It comes with 250GB of capacity and features SATA II interface. It will come with a solid aluminum case. Its price and availability date is not known so far. It has 0.15W and 0.25W power draw in idle and load respectively, and it has a MTBF of one million hours.

Samsung has developed an SSD with SATA mini-card design especially for netbooks

Samsung has unveiled its new Solid State Drive (SSD) which employs SATA-interface. The best part about Samsung’s new SSD is that they can not not be used as primary storage device but also as a complementary drive for netbook with dual drive capabilities.

“The said Samsung SSD boasts of a mini-PCI Express form factor with SATA 3.0GB/s interface. It will be available in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB capacity. You can also have the option to get the SSD will full encryption.”

“The market is beginning to embrace a smaller SSD for the nascent netbook sector,” said Jim Elliott, vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. “The cost-efficiency and reliability of lower-density, highly compact Samsung SSDs are perfectly suited as the storage medium for the rapidly growing netbook marketplace,” he added.

Samsung has also taken care about data security. The new SSDs comes with an option of full disk encryption. This new SSD is 80% smaller than the normal 2.5-inch HDD. This gives the manufactures the potential to create smaller and lighter netbooks.

More Pictures of Disney Netbook!

We mentioned about the Disney-branded ASUS netbook yesterday. Here are few more pictures of it:

Click on read more to see more pics of it including its interface screenshots!

Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix to be available soon!

Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, has announced the availability of Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix. The newer version of ubuntu is going to be made available this coming Thursday. The newer version sports faster boot times. It also comes with an interface which lets them launch their favorite application easily and quickly. Other improvements include better power management and easier switching between networks.

Although, I really enjoyed EEEbuntu, which is actually an Ubuntu 8.10 with EEE drivers, but its long bootup time was the main turn off. That is the reason, I kept going back to Windows XP. I’m really looking forward to download the Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix version. I hope the improvements are enough to make me use the Ubuntu full time.