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.
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Intel have yanked their recent X25-M SSD firmware update, after users reported the new software killed Windows 7 installations. The update introduced TRIM support to the solid-state drives, together with boosting sequential write performance by up to 40-percent; however, some Intel support forum users have discovered that after rebooting their Windows 7 machine the new OS will no longer load.
Given how long it’s taking eviGroup to push out their Wallet MID, we’re quite surprised with how quickly they’re working on getting their new 10.7-inch UMPC out of the door. The eviGroup Pad has already had its first hands-on, courtesy of French site NowhereElse, who reckon the 1024 x 600 resistive touchscreen – even with a stylus – is responsive while Windows 7 runs reasonably on the 1.6GHz Atom processor.
Update: The Elite 3G version of the eviGroup Pad is on sale now for €599 plus €30 shipping ($932); they’ll also sell you an OS-free version for €539 ($799).
Video demo after the cut
Leading computer manufacturers along with Intel and Microsoft have inadvertently created a monster. And like Frankenstein, it is a monster they’d like to destroy. Although the industry’s hot-selling brainchild is physically quite small –perhaps more analogous to a gremlin in scale— with its small 10-inch screen, underpowered Intel Atom processor, cheaper version of Windows and under $400 price, netbooks are devouring corporate profit margins.
Advance interest in Nokia’s Booklet 3G is, if you believe the rumors, so strong that the Finnish company is already preparing the sequel, but we’ll wait until the first shipping units get played with before getting too excited. The Nokia netbooks have just started to ship in Europe, with O2 Germany offering the Booklet 3G for €249 ($371) with a 24-month, €20 ($30) data plan.
The poor global economy resulted in some of the worst quarters in the history of many electronics and notebook makers thanks to consumers not buying in droves. It looks like the market is starting to turn around for many computer makers and the latest figures for GPU shipments from Jon Peddie Research are in for Q3 2009, and they look good.
ASUS have outed their first supercomputer, and while you might associate the term with rooms packed full of ominous black totems, the ASUS ECS 1000 is actually a simple desktop. Despite the compact size, the ECS 1000 manages to hit speeds of up to 1.1 terraflops courtesy of NVIDIA graphics cards; the 3.33GHz Intel LGA1366 Xeon W3580 is paired with three NVIDIA Tesla C1060 computing processors and a single Quadro FX5800.
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Attention for French firm eviGroup's upcoming Pad UMPC is growing, the company has released full specifications for the 10.6-inch touchscreen slate. The Pad has a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM (which, unlike many netbooks, is removable) and a 160GB 2.5-inch hard-drive, together with WiFi a/b/g and 3G (WCDMA/TD-SCDMA/CDMA).
If you’ve dipped even the tiniest of toes into the tech world this past twelve months, you’ll likely have noticed the cookie-cutter spec sheets for netbooks. Intel and Microsoft’s policies on exactly how big a hard-drive, how much RAM and other elements of a netbook’s make-up have hamstrung what could’ve potentially been a hugely innovative segment into little more than a matter of aesthetics. Unfortunately neither company plans to lift those regulations any time soon, but we’re hearing at least that with the advent of the Intel Atom N470 the bar will be raised somewhat.
Continued »Intel have pushed out their promised update to the X25-M SSD, along with the Intel SSD Toolbox and Optimizer, the standout factor of which is a 40-percent increase in performance for the 160GB drive. With the new 34nm X25-M SSD, users can expect up to 100MB per second sequential write speeds.
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