NetBooks

iPad wins Apple big chunk of mobile PC market

If the iPad is considered a mobile PC, then Apple is now the top mobile PC vendor in the U.S. and the third largest in the world thanks to its popular tablet, according to data released yesterday by DisplaySearch.

Over the third quarter, Apple was able to grab a 12.4 share of mobile PC shipments around the world, with the iPad accounting for two-thirds (8 percent) of those devices, according to the new "DisplaySearch Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report."

Of course, some may disagree with DisplaySearch calling the iPad a mobile PC and lumping … Read more

HP uncovers the 2133 Mini-Note PC

Surprising virtually no one, Hewlett-Packard has finally officially announced its new low-cost, low-power NetBook-style mini-laptop, called the 2133 Mini-Note PC. Of course, we've been following every detail of this system for months, including the presumed launch date, but they're finally officially on sale starting today, from $499-$749.

We've had a chance to play around with an early test unit for about a week now, and so far we like it a lot. Like the Asus Eee PC or Intel Classmate, the 2133 Mini-Note is a smaller-than-ultraportable laptop that trades high-powered specs for portability and price. The … Read more

Intel shows off second-generation Classmate PC

We've been seeing blurry cellphone pics and hearing rumors for weeks, but Intel is finally showing off the next generation of its Classmate PC at the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai.

The new Classmate is, as we expected, the same machine we saw a few weeks ago in some surreptitiously taken photos, and referred to at the time by Intel's generic NetBook platform name. Then, last week, we learned that one of the companies selling the new Classmate would be a laptop vendor named Computer Technology Link, or CTL, and they were going to call it the 2go PC (… Read more

NetBook gets a name: 2go PC

Those recent pics of an Intel NetBook floating around online finally have an official name attached to them. It's the 2go PC from a laptop vendor named Computer Technology Link, or CTL, according to a spec sheet dug up by Engadget (and it looks suspiciously similar to a laptop we had sitting in our lab last August).

Intended for the education market, the 2go PC clearly has its roots in Intel's Classmate PC platform. That's not surprising, since we told you last August that the low-cost design of the Classmate would, "lead to cheaper, smaller laptops … Read more

Under the Radar: Managing your business online

Security, reliability, and stickiness were key talking points at an Under the Radar session showcasing online business collaboration tools. Presenters included Act-On Software, Magento, Mumboe, and NetBooks. While all presenters emphasized their company's ability to offer software as a service, Magento and NetBooks especially focused on tools for small business.

The Cisco-funded Act-On Software combines Salesforce.com's leads database with WebEx's large-scale conferencing to add invitation and follow-up services and pull data between the two. For example, Act-On runs as a tab within Salesfoce, WebEx, and Microsoft applications, and can show Salesforce data after a WebEx conference. … Read more

New minilaptops powered by $44 Intel CPUs

We've seen a lot of activity lately around the concept of low-cost laptops powered by Intel's upcoming Centrino 2 and Atom CPUs, which promise decent performance and small sizes. Now DigiTimes is reporting that the CPUs to power these systems will be priced very aggressively by Intel, which means we should see these new systems at a fraction of the prices we're seeing in the current $2,000-plus UMPC market.

According to the DigiTimes report, "The CPUs include the Celeron 585 with a core frequency of 2.16GHz priced at US$107 in thousand-unit tray quantities, … Read more

Intel's Netbook leaked?

Through the magic of Flickr , we've all spent the afternoon pondering blurry photos of what might be the Intel NetBook, a heretofore hypothetical computer powered by Intel's upcoming low-power Atom chips.

While we've already seen details of the desktop version, called the NetTop, via some leaked presentation, but the NetBook was a less-defined concept. Until now, that is. According to the original poster (on a blogspot blog called "Tech Corner"):

"My buddy works for a US Based OEM, and showed me a sample of one of the products that will be hitting US shores … Read more

Netbooks: Almost a do-it-all small-business suite

Per my previous rant on Web start-ups that lack a Big Idea, here's one I appreciate, since it's trying to solve a real problem: NetBooks. This company has built a Web-based suite of interconnected apps designed to run a small business.

It's a noble effort, because the small-business market is murder. It's not that there's a lack of customers, it's just that they are so hard to reach and so different from each other. Building a universal small-biz app is a tricky balancing act.

It looks to me like NetBooks might eventually pull it … Read more