Gateway Laptops

Mar 16th

eston-n97

The Eston N97 runs on a 624MHZ Marvell PXA303 processor, a 7-inch 800×480 touchscreen, Android 1.5 OS, Wi-Fi, a 2800mAh battery which will give about 4hrs on usage. The device it self will be able to also run Windows CE, but i don’t know if they will implement a dual boot like SmartQ implemented for their products. The N97 is currently on preorder in China and expected to be released by the end of the month.

(Via MP4 Nation Blog.)

A New Gaming Notebook From MSI

Mar 14th

A New Gaming Notebook From MSI

MSI has come out with a new gaming notebook ‘GE700? for the mass market. Powered by an Intel Core i5 processor with Intel Turbo Boost and Intel Hyper-Threading technology, the GE700 offers a 17.3-inch 1600 x 900 HD+ TFT LCD display, an Intel HM55 chipset, an ATI Radeon HD5730 1GB graphics card, a DDRIII of memory, up to 500GB hard drive, an HD webcam, a 4-in-1 card reader, two cinema-class speakers + subwoofer, a 6- or 9-cell battery, WiFi, Bluetooth, an HDMI port and runs on Windows 7 Home Premium OS. Pricing and availability are still unknown at the moment. [Technology News]

MSI Wind U160 Available For Pre-Order

Feb 19th

MSI Wind U160 Available For Pre-Order

Amazon has begun taking pre-orders for MSI’s upcoming Wind U160 netbook. Priced at $379.99, this mini laptop offers you the following specifications: a 10.1-inch LED backlit display, an Intel Atom N450 1.6GHz processor, an Intel GMA 3150 graphics card, a 1GB RAM, a 250GB hard drive, a 1.3MP webcam, a 4-in-1 card reader, 3x USB ports, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 6-cell battery and Windows 7 Starter OS.

(Via Laptop Notebook News.)

First Impressions of the Sony Vaio W – Green Netbook

Feb 12th

First Impressions of the Sony Vaio W – Green Netbook

At CES 2010 Sony announced the new Sony Vaio W netbook, which adds a green focus to the netbook and how it’s shipped. I’ve had the chance to use the Sony Vaio W series netbook for a week now and wanted to share my first impressions of the new green netbook. Overall I have found the Vaio W to be a good machine, but I have a few minor quibbles so far.

To start, the Vaio W is a pretty sleek netbook that feels pretty sturdy and looks stylish, except for the battery. Now, don’t get me wrong the prospect of 6-8 hour battery life under real world usage is appealing but I wish the Vaio W didn’t have the snail tail battery that sticks out the back. In the end, it’s no deal breaker and it works as a handle and to prop the keyboard up a bit for a better typing experience so I can let it slide.

Speaking of the keyboard. After a week of usage I both love and hate this keyboard. I love the silver color, key spacing, responsiveness of the keys and the feedback. But the keys are small. While the spacing makes it easier to deal with what really gets me is that the right shift key is one of the smallest keys on the Sony Vaio W. This means I am constantly missing it, which I find annoying.

Then again, when I shared this frustration on Twitter I was asked what I used the right shift key for, so maybe this is a non issue for most of the population. For the record, I have cobbled my own version of home keys meets hunt and peck which serves me well and allows for a pretty crazy fast typing speed so long as know what I want to say.

One thing that I found really useful as soon as I wanted to write a post on the Sony Vaio W, was that it has a screen resolution of 1366 x 768, This is big enough that I can have two windows up next to each other, snapped to the left and the right in Windows 7, and still see well enough to work. This is a huge improvement over the 1024 x 600 resolution of my HP Mini 1000 and even though some text can be small, there’s no way I can go back.

As part of the green theme of the Sony Vaio W, details below, the brown reusable carrying bag made out of recycled juice bottles with a light green zipper accent. I really like the bag because it fits the Vaio perfectly. You can store the battery in a Velcro slot at the bottom of the bag, or if you want to keep it in the netbook it fits that way too. Not a lot of room for anything else, but I found that I can slide a moleskin notebook in alongside the netbook, so it is good enough for daytrips.

The Sony Vaio W has 3 main green ‘features’: