Netbook Review, notebook review, tablet review, PC review » motherboard

Zotac unveils Pine Trail motherboards

Kamal DS — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:24:20 +0000

Zotac has launched its first motherboard based on the latest Pine Trail platform. Comes equipped with the apishly agile Atom D510 dual core chipset that runs at a clock speed of 1.66GHz and sporting the GMA 3150 graphics which is also used in the pine trail netbooks, it has 10 USB 2.0 ports (and yes, you read that right, “10 ports!”).

It even packs in an HDMI and eSATA port. Other standard nettop feature includes VGA port, 2 single channel DDR2 slots (upto 4GB RAM supported), WiFi b/g/n and Ethernet. Costs €100 and shipping will commence at the end of January 2010.

If you want to take a glance at its full specs, you can download its product specification sheet from here (direct PDF link)

[Zotac NM10-DTX]

Trackball Mod for an EEE PC

Paul Merak — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:02:16 +0000

A modder over Plasti-bots has been able to integrate a trackball into the body of his ASUS EEE 901 netbook. He used the trackball from the Apple's mighty mouse and soldered it onto the motherboard of the EEE 901.The Apple Mighty Mouse uses a built-in driver from Win XP. From the trackball standpoint, the driver provides the ability to scroll vertically (95% of what I was looking for). However, it does not provide horizontal scrollingClick on read more to see a video of it in action!

SONY launches VAIO P with Windows XP in India (VGN-P25G) – still no XP version for USA

Paul Merak — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:19:04 +0000

SONY has silently launched Windows XP version of VAIO P in India at a price of $999 (Rs49,990). The Windows XP version comes with just 1GB of RAM and that too soldered to the motherboard. This means that you are stuck at 1GB of RAM forever.Also, the new XP model, VGN-P25G comes with Z530 processor that runs at 1.6GHz as opposed to Atom Z520 processor that runs at 1.3GHz. The speed difference should be huge as XP runs pretty well on all netbooks as opposed bulky Vista, which gives awful performance on VAIO P with Z520 processor[VAIO P VGN P25G webpage (India)]

More than 50 percent Main board failures in OQO O2 and E2

Paul Merak — Sat, 09 May 2009 17:45:43 +0000

There is a poll going on in the OQOtalk forum (most popular OQO community) regarding the Main Board failures. Quite shockingly, the poll is reflecting some really strange results. More than 50-percent people had to get the main board changed atleast once. Some users had to get their OQO's main board changed twice in an year.Clearly, this reflects the poor manufacturing quality of the OQO. Too many failing main boards are not expected from a product that costs $1000+. Couple that with the EXTREMELY poor customer support and bleak future of OQO (canceling all OQO 2+ orders), things do not look so good for the current users.