Samsung’s N110 netbook got its official announcement and first review all in the same day, but we’ve had to wait a little longer to see the 10.1-inch ultraportable go up for pre-order. Now Samsung’s own shop-online page has purchase details, and the N110 has also shown up at Buy.com.
Circuit City has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, in a move to reduce pressure from suppliers and in what could be a final, last-ditch attempt to ride out the ongoing credit crisis. The company, which is the number two electronics retailer in the US, announced last week that it would close 155 stores before the end of the year; however, increasingly strict terms from Circuit City’s suppliers – including demands for payment up front – were hampering what company CFO Bruce Besanko described as “turnaround goals”.
Toshiba’s NB100 netbook (aka the NB105) may not step outside the box with its spec sheet, but that won’t stop buyers being drawn to the reliable brand name. TechRadar had a brief hands-on with the NB100 recently, and found that while the 120GB available hard-drive space is capacious and the Ubuntu OS smooth with its 512MB of RAM, the keyboard was smaller than on rival machines.
The Samsung NC10 netbook has had a pre-release unboxing and benchmark photoshoot, pitting the NC10 against ASUS’ Eee PC 901. While falling short of a full review, it does tell us that the keyboard is more usable than the Eee PC’s – thanks to larger keys – and the trackpad, though relatively small, works well. As for the benchmarks, in CPUMark 2.2 the NC10 scored 75.05 points, while the 901 managed 74.27.
Check out the full Samsung N10 image gallery after the cut
Biggest news this week has been in gaming, with Nintendo announcing the latest iteration of their DS handheld. The DSi introduces new multimedia features – for instance a 3-megapixel camera – and an even thinner body, at the expense of battery life. Don’t get too excited, though; the US won’t see the DSi until “well into” 2009.
In netbooks, ASUS slipped in a few new models at both the low and high-end of the market, with the Eee PC 900HA and 904HA offering bargain 160GB storage while the S101 corners the more-fashionable (and expensive) end. That’s a niche the ASUS N10 already occupies; that netbook ran the review gauntlet this week, proving “technologically clever” but simply too expensive. ASUS – and MSI, whose Wind U90 was panned too – must be looking enviably at Gigabyte’s M912M convertible touchscreen netbook, which was good enough to pull a credit card from the wallet of one reviewer.
Samsung’s NC10 netbook is garnering more and more interest, with new higher-resolution images showing a well-laid-out keyboard that makes fewer concessions to a smaller casing than, say, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9. The 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 display are confirmed; what’s new to us is that the VGA output can drive an external monitor at up to 2048 x 1536 at 85Hz, and that the N10 has HD audio.
The TORQ N100 is a sweet device! I just loaded it up with ALK’s CoPilot Live 6. Please check back a few days for a video walk through review of the the GPS on the TORQ as well as a CoPilot Live 6. Meanwhile, enjoy my initial thoughts and impressions as well as the unboxing ceremony.
SlashGear Japan
