HTC to enter netbook market

HTC has received pretty good recognition and is now considered one of the most reputed smartphone manufactures. Now, according to the latest news bits, there are chances that it might try it hands in the (over-saturated) netbook market.

According to HTC CEO Peter Chou, they are very much interested in this category and they are looking forward to enter the netbook market.

I am pretty sure that we will see something very unique and exiting, if, in case, HTC does enter the netbook market. We have seen some really great MID-like smartphones from them. To name a few, HTC TOUCH PRO 2 and the latest one featuring a capacitive display like iPhone, the HTC TOUCH HD 2

Note that HTC did enter the UMPC market and they were not able to sell a lot of these UMPCs. HTC’s UMPC known as the HTC Shift was a disaster; costing more than $1000; ran Vista on a 800MHz processor!

Look out for our extensive HTC TOUCH HD 2 coverage at WindowsPhoneMix.com, our sister site about Windows Phones

TabletKiosk a7330D and TabletKiosk a7230xd TufTab unveiled at outrageous prices

TabletKiosk was one of the first companies to enter the UMPC arena. Its dominance was short lived as netbooks simply overshadowed the UMPCs with their rock bottom prices and laptop-like form factor. Now, the UMPC space is slowly reviving with the launch of ASUS EEE T91 (db link) and Gigabyte T1028 UMPCs.

The TabletKiosk has unveiled two new UMPCs, both powered by the power-frugal Z530 processor which should give its user excellent battery life. The TabletKiosk a7330 is non-rugged UMPC while TabletKiosk a7230xd is a rugged one.

Both of the UMPCs have resistive as-well-as active digitizer for pen use. TabletKiosk is taking pre-orders now. TabletKiosk a7330 will cost you a hefty $1495 whereas the a7230xd will cost you a mind-boggling $2195!

Samsung Q1UP UMPC perfect for retro-gaming!

An author at arstechnia who was on a tour sometime back did some retro gaming on his Samsung Q1 Premium UMPC that comes with a 1.33GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and runs Vista Business OS. According to him, it can be underclocked from 1.33GHz clock speed to 800 MHz without suffering any noticeable performance hit while playing some of the retro games on it.

He was able to play Torment Planescape game for 5 hours straight on a single charge with WiFi off and CPU throlled to 800MHz, which is great for a UMPC. Later in his article, he admits that using a desktop OS on a small screen does sometimes gets a bit difficult and unusually complex.

Microsoft can do a lot more in adapting the desktop OS according to the MID environments by making them more streamlined and more finger-friendly. That will happen in Windows 8, perhaps? Let’s face it, Microsoft has never put the UMPCs in their top priority list and has always neglected this small, yet exiting market of UMPCs.

Bonitor MP201 and MP301 Mini Projectors

Bonitor, a french based company has unveiled a pair of mini projectors: MP201 and MP301. These projectors sport native resolution of 640×480 with 15 lumens of brightness and a 1.57/1.62 throw ratio.

The MP201 is designed for the game consoles, mobile phones, Blueray/DVD players and portable media players. On the other hand, the MP301 is cheaper than former and is geared towards netbooks, UMPCs and laptops. It features both USB and VGA connectors. It shall however be noted that MP201 comes with a built-in rechargeable battery whereas the MP301 is powered by its USB port.

MP201 retails for $289 and MP301 for $249.

[Official product page of MP201 and MP301]

HTC Shift charger is same as EEE PC charger!

I am sure many of you must be having problems in finding chargers for the HTC Shift. Let’s face it, the HTC Shift is not as popular as other netbooks or UMPCs and HTC has not been able to sell a lot of these units.

Now, it has been found that the charger is same as the EEE PC charger, to be specific, EEE 901’s charger and 1000x’s charger. Even the make is same!

This also means that if you wish to buy a car charger for your HTC Shift, all you have to do is buy one made for the EEE PCs!

Evil Plan? Intel to make the netbooks “children only” market?

Wow! Who would have expected this? In some random talk, Intel’s chief ‘re-iterated’ the fact that netbooks will become more of a market targeted towards children.

Although Intel’s Atom processors are at the top and most dominant in the netbook market, folks at Intel are still not happy with the unbelievable progress made by the netbook segment. Reason behind this is simple: Netbooks have now started to really hurt the sales of the notebooks. Netbooks are the perfect way to do your basic work: web-surfing, office document editing, basic photo retouching (using Photoshop) and so on. You do not need an insanely powerful (and expensive) Core 2 duo-equipped computer to do the aforementioned tasks. When you are mobile, one of the most important thing that matters is the battery life. Most of the modern day netbooks offer 6 hours-plus of battery life and some of them even offer 8 hours too.

Coming back to the point: It would be an extremely unintelligent step, if Intel is bent upon making the netbook a “children only” market. Netbooks have been able to do something which the UMPCs (which is now a niche market) failed to do, that is to become a mass market product.

Compal reducing R&D support for MIDs – Are they not selling well?

MID (Mobile Internet Devices) is a segment which started along with UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) and Netbook. Both UMPCs and MIDs simply failed to take off.

The Compal Electronics has reduced its R&D resources specifically allocated for MIDs due to the uncertain business outlook for the segment, according to industry sources.

However, Compal made a wise move by shifting those employees to the netbook R&D segment.

Fujitsu Loox M netbook released – nothing too exciting

Fujitsu has released many portable devices like UMPCs and netbooks in the past. Most of them have really been ground-breaking (take U820/U2010 for example). Although the Loox M looks quite pretty from outside, but from inside it is just-another-netbook.

It comes with 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160GB hard drive, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, three USB 2.0 sockets and a multicard reader. True, there is nothing ground-breaking about these specifications, but its price of $611 is surely something which most of the netbooks in the market are not carrying right now.

TIP for Netbooks with small SSDs – move data to SDHC card or other external storage [Netbook]

Many people still go for the SSDs models for netbooks due to their rugged nature and more reliability. Manufactures often go for the SSDs with smaller storage capacities to keep the price of the netbooks down. The user of the netbook often has to face storage problems. I advice all of these users to use [...]