Notebooks

With netbooks selling well in the run up to the holidays, I took a look at three of the latest entries into the fray, Hewlett-Packard's Mini 1000, Lenovo's IdeaPad S10 and BenQ's Joybook Lite U101.

Even a year after the introduction of the Asus Eee PC netbooks are still something of a novelty. Just a couple of weeks ago, while I was sitting one evening in a hotel lounge with a group of professionals, mine was passed around with enthusiastic curiosity -- they had heard of its easy portability and were eager for some hands-on time before possibly buying one for themselves.

It was five years coming, but the battery of my ThinkPad R50 finally met its maker. On a recent trip, it conked out after powering the notebook for only half an hour -- three hours short of what I'm used to getting out it. Now it refuses to be recharged at all. Clearly, it's time for a new battery.

Colombia will become the second country to use the One Laptop Per Child Project's (OLPC) XO laptops running Microsoft Windows XP in schools after signing an agreement for pilot programs in two towns, Microsoft said late Monday.

Dell announced Monday that it is offering Seagate's self-encrypting hard drives in its Latitude laptops, Precision Mobile Workstations and OptiPlex desktops as a security precaution to those machines being lost or stolen. Seagate also announced today that it has begun shipping its 320GB and 500GB self-encrypting disk drives to laptop manufacturers worldwide.

Hewlett-Packard's jump into the mini-laptop market continues this week's bubble of activity in the so-called netbook business.

With the economy in turmoil, a lot of people who are looking to buy PCs are increasingly turning to cheap, low-power mini laptops.

The netbook is one of the most interesting categories on the market. These small laptops can do most of the jobs of their big brothers while costing under US$500. For some people, such as students, a netbook can be a primary computer. For a business user, it might be a second PC for use when traveling or commuting. Here are five tips to help pick the right one for your needs.

Samsung Electronics entered the netbook market on Friday, announcing a lightweight mini-laptop with a 10.2-inch screen called the NC10.

Hewlett-Packard on Monday introduced ultraportable laptops that can easily switch between wireless 3G broadband networks and withstand harsh environmental conditions.

It often takes high-tech vendors three tries to get a product right. Microsoft is the best example of this rule of three. (Think of how buggy and insecure Windows XP was until 1Service Pack 2 came out. Upstart mini-laptop maker Asustek Computer, it turns out, is another.

A company is now selling what it calls the "world's cheapest laptop," which at US$130, is not a bad deal if you can bear some hardware limitations.

Hot on the heals of ASUS's Eee PC 901 announcement, computer giant Acer has announced the availability of its $599, Linux-friendly ultra-portable notebook, the Aspire One, which weighs either less or more than 1 kilogram depending on your choice of operating system.

Theft of laptops and other mobile devices is spiraling, and the consequences -- financial and other -- are getting increasingly dire.

Hewlett-Packard unveiled a low-cost mini-laptop this week that's aimed at the education market.

Microsoft confirmed this week that it will extend the sales of Windows XP Home to OEMs beyond the current deadline of June 30, 2008, to accommodate a new class of ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) that are just beginning to pepper the market.

Intel plans to release an anti-theft technology for laptops during the fourth quarter of this year, but the company isn't offering many details yet.