If you’re looking for more functionality than your iPad offers, but more portability than a MacBook provides, Sena Cases’ new Keyboard Folio might be just the middle ground you’re looking for. The slick, book-style leather case with integrated Bluetooth keyboard brings your iPad within a hair’s breadth of netbook status while sparing you the indignity of purchasing a real netbook.
The Keyboard Folio is made of European leather and features a side -olding design with cutouts that let you to access your iPad’s ports while its in the case, and an integrated collapsible back stand that positions your iPad at a comfortable viewing angle while you type.
The case features a soft velvet protective lining to keep your iPad scratch-free, and also provides multiple pockets for cards, IDs, or checkbooks. When closed, the case secures with a strap and snap closure, giving you complete front and back protection of your iPad when it’s not in use.
The case’s built-in Bluetooth keyboard features function and sound/music control buttons and the company says its ithium battery should provide 45 hours of use, or 55 hours of standby time, before needing to be replaced.
The Folio Keyboard case, which begins shipping on October 7, is listed at $150, but is available for pre-order now for $130.
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Asus has released a new Eee PC netbook that is designed for children 12 years or younger, and retails for AED 1,270 across the Middle East.
“Children today get acquainted with technology at a fairly early age with a good portion of their school curriculum being computer aided,” said Ericson Correa, business development manager, ASUS Middle East.
The company adds the Asus Eee PC 1001PQ’s Inspirus Desktop “comes across as a simplified operating system with applications that have been designed to keep impressionable young minds away from objectionable material on the net”.
Eee PC 1001PQ also comes with parental controls that specify with websites children can visit, including restricting e-mail contacts and programs they can access. The restrictions can be set to a timetable, so parents can easily keep track of their child’s online activities.
Complete with an Intel Atom N450 processor, the Eee PC 1001PQ runs the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, features a 10.1″ display, along with Wi-Fi and a built-in 0.3 megapixel camera.
It is available in Flame Purple or Vibrant Gold color schemes and comes with stickers for added customisation.
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Asus and Acer up the ante in luxury netbook market
Is the netbook market players at their wits’ end that they have to resort to luxury models in order to sell more units? Perhaps, as Asus and Acer are slated to roll out luxury netbooks sometime in the fourth quarter of the year, with the former prepping a 12.1-inch Lamborghini netbook known as the Eee PC VX6 (with a recently leaked manual), while the latter will take the prancing horse route with an 11.6-inch Ferrari model. Interestingly enough, both models will feature processors from opposing camps – the Eee PC VX6 will be powered by an Intel dual-core Atom CPU, while the Acer Ferrari netbook will run on an AMD Fusion processor.
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Businesses and consumers will purchase 36 million netbooks in 2010 globally, according to research firm Techaisle, which said Monday that the figure reaffirms its initial forecast released in mid 2009.
Business netbook penetration will be 5.3% and consumer netbook penetration will be 1.8%, said the firm. There will be a “short and transient shift of netbook purchases among consumers from some mature markets into a few newly emerging markets,” in 2010, the firm said in a statement. European businesses will continue to adopt netbooks “in decent numbers” during the same timeframe, and they are especially popular with small retail shop owners, Techaisle said.
While netbooks created a strong market in 2009 by their ability to address latent mobility needs, thereby attracting new buyers, starting in 2011 through 2013 or 2014, netbook sales will be on the decline, the firm said. Market expansion will be limited by the “value proposition differential,” said Anurag Agrawal, CEO of Techaisle, because “there is no compelling reason for a consumer or a business to buy a netbook as compared to a notebook.”
In 2009, netbooks were highly sought after devices because they were new, the economy was down and they were relatively inexpensive, making them attractive to both businesses and consumers, explained Agrawal. “But the important thing was consumers were not buying them in numbers — because they decided if they spent another $200 they’d get better a notebook.” Businesses, on the other hand, were buying netbooks to supplement their main computing devices, he said.
“We were getting feedback from the market that it’s not the beginning of an era, but the start of a short trend,” added Agrawal. Although netbooks were touted as a great alternative device for emerging markets like Brazil, Russia, India, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, where PC penetration is very low, consumers did not gravitate to them as expected, he claimed.
Agrawal said netbook vendors need to promote the device to businesses as an alternative for functions that fall short on smartphones, such as PowerPoint presentations, webcams, and web conferencing. “That’s where you can open up the market for netbooks,” he said.
Agrawal claimed netbook forecasts by other research firms are now being revised down since sales have not lived up to expectations and they are only good for internet browsing or taking files on the road.
Techaisle’s netbook sales projections are significantly less than what at least one other analyst firm has forecasted. ABI Research recently predicted about 60 million netbooks are expected to ship worldwide this year, a figure that will almost double by 2013. ABI Research also said the netbook market would begin to decline in 2014-2015.
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Choosing a netbook can feel like an exercise in compromise. We want the system we carry to be portable and affordable, but we also want it to offer solid performance and a load of features. Maybe this is why so many netbooks are equipped so similarly, with vendors having apparently decided that a near-perfect balance has been found. But while most netbooks differ in only the most minor of ways, a few seem to represent their manufacturers’ ongoing quests to find a new sweet spot or set a new standard.
Take, for example, Acer’s Aspire One AO721-3574 ($430). Here we have a netbook that is looking to slug it out with ultraportable notebooks, like a lightweight boxer trying to make it in the welterweight division.
It sports a faster processor, more memory and storage, a better graphics adapter, and a larger screen and keyboard than one might typically find in a netbook, all at just 3.1 pounds (including the 6-cell battery). But does the Acer walk the walk as well as it talks the talk? Let’s take a look and find out.
AMD Inside
At the heart of the AO721 is a 1.7GHz AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processor. While not a speed demon by any stretch of the imagination, it offers a bit more bang for the buck than you’ll get out of an Intel Atom-powered netbook. In PCMark Vantage, the Acer posted a score of 1,918; in Cinebench 11.5, it rendered the sample scene in just under 15 minutes. This is nowhere near on par with a full-sized notebook, needless to say. But it is a fair bit better than most netbooks can manage.
Also noteworthy is the inclusion of 2GB of DDR3 RAM (upgradable to 4GB) and a 250GB hard drive, both of which are generous for a netbook. And while it will come as no surprise that there’s no optical drive included, the built-in “multi-in-one” card reader should do the trick for many users, with external USB drives meeting the needs of others.
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If you have a student in high school and are looking for the best computer for them, you really ought to consider a netbook. A netbook is a small computer, similar to a laptop or notebook, only smaller. Generally quite a bit smaller. In fact, a netbook weighs less than many school textbooks; and that’s just one good reason for buying one for your high school student.
It’s becoming increasingly important for high school students to have their own computer so that they can use it whenever they choose. It’s also become more important that they be able to take their computer to school so that they can use it to take notes, do research, write papers and perform other things as part of their schoolwork. Netbooks are capable of doing all this and more. Because of their small size and light weight they can be carried around in a backpack, sometimes as a replacement for other items that used to be in there.
Not only that, because of the way they are made, they are also capable of holding a charge for an entire school day, which means your child won’t have to worry about it dying before they get home.
Also, netbooks come in a variety of colors, far more than your standard laptop, which means you can likely pick one in your kids’ favorite color.
And that’s not all. We all know that kids don’t always have the most respect for the things they own, and sometimes treat their stuff a little harshly; netbooks aren’t really any more rugged than their bigger cousins, but they are a lot less expensive; so if your kid drops his or hers on the floor in the cafeteria and destroys it, you’ll only be out a couple hundred bucks, and you’ll be able to replace it without having to worry so much. In some cases, netbooks are actually cheaper thancell phones.
Also, if you happen to have a daughter, many netbooks have been designed with the young modern girl in mind. They come in cute pinks or other pastel colors, have covers designed to look feminine and can be tucked into large purses if need be. Also, netbooks are ideal for small young ladies who don’t want to lug around heavy electronic equipment.
If your student is male on the other hand, there are also more masculine designs and colors available to choose from.
In short, netbooks are the perfect computer for the on-the-go high school student.
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Just three years from now, the number of annual netbook shipments is set to reach almost 120 million units – a figure more than double that of the forecasted 2010 shipments – but insiders are confident that this number will have little impact on future PC sales.
The relatively new computer category has grown significantly since its humble beginnings in 2008.
The rapid increase in sales experienced since the launch of the netbook category is an ongoing trend that market researcher ABI Research believes will not slow down until at least 2014.
ASUS’s pioneering Eee PC – one of the first netbooks to appear in the market – gave the company a good headstart in the netbook market share race. In 2008 ASUS and rival computer manufacturer Acer held almost equal one-third shares of the market but by 2009 those shares had started to shift among vendors.
“Instead of having a preeminent two,” noted principal analyst Jeff Orr in a report released on July 22, “it looks as if only Acer will continue to maintain its commanding lead; but at the same time there are more vendors competing head-to-head. Most of the other major names – HP, Dell, Lenovo – increased their market shares in 2009, while Samsung lost a couple of percentage points.”
ABI predicts that some of the smaller players will be pushed out of the market in the coming years. “Some firms saw netbooks as an entry point into the PC market. Gigabyte is one example. But with a 2009 market share falling to just 0.1%, Gigabyte might be advised to rethink that strategy,” said Orr.
“Other suppliers, such as the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) initiative, have been hit hard by the global recession.”
Mainstream consumers are giving the nod to netbooks, not as a replacement device for laptops or PCs (as manufacturers and analysts once predicted) but rather as a complementary device that offers “value rather than raw performance.”
During Apple’s Q3 2010 earnings reports technology blog CNET reported that Apple COO Tim Cook discussed how the company’s tablet device might impact future PC and Mac sales.
Cook suggested that the iPad might even boost Mac sales in the near future, before commenting, “Our guts tell us that this market is very big…if it turns out that iPad cannibalizes PCs, that’s fantastic for us because there is a lot of PCs to cannibalize.”
According to technology blog CNET, Intel Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith remarked that the tablet segment would have little impact on the sales of PCs during Intel’s earning conference call.
“I think this [tablets] is an additive category of computing much like Netbooks were an additive category,” advised Smith.
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Most netbooks sold today offer similar features, run on identical Atom powered processors and offer the same lightweight mobile computing options at very similar prices.
A bit newer to the game, Samsung is looking to nudge its way into a market traditionally populated by the likes of MSI, ASUS, Dell and Toshiba. And it’s a pretty forceful nudge considering the entry, the Samsung N220 Netbook (known as the N210 in the United States). It has all the same features of the competition but offers twice the battery power in nearly the same size.
We got to spend some time with Samsung’s N220 and realized early on that despite its small size and weight, it acts more like a full featured notebook than a skimpy netbook. Its build quality is surprisingly solid – not unexpected given Samsung’s reputation for designing solid consumer electronics.
One of its most striking features is a glare-free, matte screen. Most “economy class” netbooks feature cheap, high gloss screens that are so reflective as to be useless when viewed outdoors, or even in a airplane where lighting is less than ideal. The N220’s screen is decidedly not-useless in such conditions. Screen technology is Samsung’s forte and they supplied the N220 with a very readable, reasonably bright and multifunctional screen that does okay with video and text as well.
Aside from the praiseworthy screen, battery life is the biggest feature netbook buyers should look for in devices that are made for travelling. By that token, the seven hour battery life of the N220 is outstanding.
What’s more, Samsung says you can get 11 hours out of a fully charged battery, though that seems only attainable on the ultra-conservative power settings; Wi-Fi off, lowest screen brightness, one program running at a time, that sort of thing. Essentially, 11 hours with the dial set on “pathetic.” But seven hours, that’s awesome all by itself.
The Samsung N220 comes equipped with a 1.66GHz N450 Atom processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD and Windows 7 Starter. Pretty standard stuff in terms of netbook hardware – upping your RAM to 2GB is highly recommended; a straightforward and relatively inexpensive upgrade that will noticeably boost performance and better enable multitasking.
For a diminutive little traveller in the sub-$500 price range, the Samsung N220’s extended battery life and a matte screen make it the better option than most competitively priced netbooks.
Final Score: 4 (out of five)
Platform(s): Windows PC
Publisher: Samsung
Link: http://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/office/mobile-computing/netbook/NP-N220-JA01CA/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail
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The AC100 is being tagged as the ‘cloud companion’ intended mainly for accessing the Web and other Net-based services, although it has a 32GB solid state drive and even an HDMI port for outputting video onto an external monitor (at 1080p HD, Toshiba says) instead of the AC100’s 10.1 inch screen.
Under the textured hardened plastic shell sits Nvidia’s 1GHz Tegra T20 processor running Android 2.1 with 512MB of RAM. Toshiba claims eight to ten hours’ battery life on the 25Whr battery and up to seven days on standby.
APCmag.com has handled a production sample of the device and it’s delightfully slim – tapering from 14mm to 21mm – and light, at around 900 grams. But for such a featherweight wedge the AC100 feels surprisingly sturdy, without the obvious flex you’d usually associate with plastics.
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Over the last week, Jolicloud started rolling out the first complete version of its Linux distribution to existing users.
The distro is highly netbook-centric and, until Jolicloud 1.0, looked very much like the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on which it is based. However, the new version looks significantly different to the ‘pre-final release’ that preceded it. That was an unusual move for the company, as major user interface (UI) changes tend to be tested in beta before their final release.
At the time of writing, there is no direct installer for Jolicloud 1.0, so getting it relies on installing the pre-final release, then getting an invitation to upgrade.
Jolicloud was founded last year by Tariq Krim, who before that had set up iGoogle competitor Netvibes. The French Linux company is backed by venture capitalists including Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype.
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