I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and weren’t too shopped out yesterday! If you still have shopping to do for Christmas, we have some seen some cool gear over the last week that might be worth a look. The Sony Ericsson Kurara has been reviewed and the verdict is that the device needs to be cheap to succeed. We reviewed the Nokia Booklet 3G this week. The final verdict was that the machine is underpowered and outperformed by first generation netbooks.
The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 CULV ultraportable last spotted strutting its patterned stuff in Japan last month has finally made it to the US, with pricing kicking off at $649. The U150 packs a choice of 1.3GHz Pentium dual-core or Core 2 Duo processors, together with 3GB or 4GB of RAM, 250GB or 320GB of storage and an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 LED-backlit display.
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Week in review time again, here we go! The Lenovo IdeaPad Pineview netbook hit the FCC Monday. The FCC is one of the most prolific leaker of gadgets and gear around and we love them for it. The CrunchPad is now said to be steamrolling toward a launch and may have a sponsorship deal in place. Word was a few weeks back that the tablet was dead.
Talk about Lenovo’s supposed first ThinkPad netbook is getting even more intriguing, with details of not one but two upcoming ultraportables in the company’s flagship range. First up is the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e, a machine that has been tipped as a netbook but which Lenovo is apparently pushing as an extension of their X-Series premium ultraportables. It will have an 11.6-inch display and use AMD’s Athlon MV-40 processors and RS780 chipset. Meanwhile, the second mystery machine is the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge, targeting small businesses who might want a 13.3-inch notebook in-between current IdeaPad and ThinkPad offerings.
It’s no ThinkPad netbook, but Lenovo’s latest IdeaPad ultraportable – as helpfully previewed by our camera-fumbling friends at the FCC – does at least have an unusual CPU to maintain our interest. The FL5-B3 – which we’re guessing is not going to be the netbook’s final name – uses a 1.66GHz Intel Pineview processor, presumably the Atom N450, paired with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard-drive. While they’re still minimal specs in the notebook world, after what seems like a lifetime of half that memory and a meager 160GB of storage they’re very welcome.
The thought of a ThinkPad netbook is enough to make anyone even vaguely familiar with Lenovo suspicious, but according to ThinkPadToday that’s exactly what the company have up their corporate sleeve. They’re claiming that the rumored ThinkPad X200e will actually drop as the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e on January 5th 2010, with the tagline “Entry level ultra portable, the first ThinkPad of its size”.
It feels like we’ve been waiting for Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12 with NVIDIA Ion graphics for months, probably because it has been months. Announced back in May, demonstrated to us in June, then officially delayed in August until Windows 7’s launch, the arrival of the new Microsoft OS means Lenovo can finally push the IdeaPad S12 Ion out of the door.
Lenovo’s latest IdeaPad ultraportable has finally got the official nod from the company’s Japanese arm. Yet to show up on the company’s US site, the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 has an 11.6-inch 1,366 x 768 glossy display, 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU2300 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory (8GB max) and a 250GB hard-drive; there’s no 3G option, at least not in Japan, but you do get WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and gigabit ethernet.
Adobe have upgraded their Flash offensive, with the news this week that the next version – Flash 10.1 – will run across not only desktop but mobile and smartphone platforms. Taking advantage of the Open Screen Project (OSP), the new version will arrive as a Windows Mobile and webOS beta before the year is out, while early in 2010 we’ll get Android and Symbian versions. Finally, while there’s no release date for 10.1 yet given, RIM have signed up to the OSP meaning BlackBerry devices will also get Flash support.
After the cut, GPU acceleration for Flash 10.1
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Lenovo's latest netbook tweak, the 720p high-definition display option for the IdeaPad S10-2, has seen its first video demonstration. Netbooknews caught up with the ultraportable - together with its regular cousin - and gave them a side-by-side run through, 1,280 x 720 versus 1,024 x 600.
SlashGear Japan
