CES 2010 - Netbooks, Netbooks, Everywhere!
Anand
and Ryan are running around Vegas, but lucky for me I get to cover the
show remotely - it's a lot less stressful and at the end of the day
my feet don't hurt. With the recent launch of Intel's Pineview and Arrandale
processors, we expect to see a plethora of new laptops, netbooks, and
notebooks at this year's CES based on these platforms. We will also
see some new laptops using AMD processors. Since I'm not actually at
the show, I can't comment specifically on LCDs, keyboards, or build
quality, but I will do my best to provide some analysis of the various
product launches.
Pine
Trail Netbooks
The
biggest area in laptops right now appears to be the netbook. Everyone
is making something using the latest Atom N450 CPU, it seems. Netbooks
are also all over the show floor, which is no surprise considering their
light weight, small size, and stellar battery life. If there's one usage
case where netbooks excel, running around a tradeshow floor has got
to be it! Personally, I'd still take a slightly larger 11.6" CULV
laptop, but there's no accounting for taste.
First
out of the gate with a new Pine Trail netbook is Acer, with the Aspire
One 532h (AO532h). We expect to see quite a few netbooks with similar
specifications, so it's really going to come down to availability, pricing,
and overall design. The AO532h comes with an Atom N450 CPU, 10.1"
chassis, WSVGA (1024x600) LED backlit LCD, 1GB DDR2-667 RAM, and a 160GB
hard drive. With a 6-cell battery it weighs just 2.76 pounds and delivers
more than 10 hours of battery life. The AO532h is available in Onyx
Blue, Garnet Red, and Silver Matrix with an MSRP of $300.
Plenty
of others are showing Pine Trail netbooks. Toshiba had their NB305 on
display, rated at up to 11 hours of battery life with a 6-cell battery.
The NB305 has a couple models, with the less expensive starting at $350
with a typical keyboard and a glossy black exterior while the $400 model
gets a chiclet keyboard and a "scratch resistant" surface.
Samsung
announced a bevy of new netbooks, differentiated by battery life and
exterior design. The N210 and N220 have a "crystal pattern design"
and offer up to 12 hours of mobility, while the N150 and NB30 reach
8.5 hours and 11 hours respectively. The hinge on the N150 has a modified
"integrated hinge" and the NB30 is designed to withstand harsher
treatment with features like a water-tight seal and freefall sensor.
Availability is expected any day now.
And
just to round things out, yet another N450 netbook is the HP Mini 210,
which Engadget reports has been seen at retail shops for $350. One feature
that's clearly different from other netbooks is the unibutton touchpad.
I've tried Dell's latest touchpad on the Inspiron 11z and 14z, though,
and the thought of losing my discrete left and right buttons does not
appeal to me! Sure, it works for Apple, but this netbook is running
Win7, an OS designed with two mouse buttons in mind.
There
are other N450 netbooks coming, and the core features are all the same.
HDD capacity and amount of RAM are going to be the primary differentiators
in terms of specs, but look for other features like non-glossy LCDs
(we hope!), matte chassis, varying battery capacities, and other stylish
elements to define these netbooks. As we noted in our ASUS 1005PE Pineview
article, one of the things Pine Trail lacks is support of H.264 offload,
but some netbooks should also include a Broadcom chip to handle HD video
decoding. That's probably the biggest feature we'd look for if we were
out shopping for a new Pine Trail netbook right now.
Lenovo
Breaks their Mold
When
it comes to Lenovo, you can always count on them to provide conservative
styling… right? Well, no longer, as it seems Lenovo has decided
to mix things up a bit. Today Lenovo announced several new laptops.
The one that's almost certain to catch your eye is the new ThinkPad
X100e, an 11.6" laptop - Lenovo is careful to state it's not a
netbook - using AMD's Neo processors. Both single-core and dual-core
CPUs will be available, but the big news is that the X100e will be available
in traditional black as well as… red. Yes, you saw that right:
a red ThinkPad! "Heatwave Red" to be exact.
You can't tell me that isn't just a little bit too sexy for a ThinkPad!
Unlike
most other laptops, this new red ThinkPad still uses a matte surface,
and it looks pretty cool. Lenovo also worked hard to maintain full-size
keys with their traditional chiclet style keyboard. Their customary
pointing stick is also present and accounted for. Battery life is less
than we see from typical netbooks; Lenovo claims up to five hours of
battery life, and that's presumably with a single-core processor. On
the bright side, performance should be substantially better than Atom-based
netbooks, but then the real competition is probably CULV designs. Pricing
for the 100e will start at less than $449, though we expect better equipped
versions will cost quite a bit more.
Lenovo
Goes Glossy? Meet the ThinkPad Edge
Another
new move for Lenovo is the ThinkPad Edge, which is a glossy black (or
red) version of your typical ThinkPad. It looks really nice in the pictures,
but you can see fingerprints even in their promo video. Considering
I've complained about all the glossy laptops for the past couple of
years, the Edge isn't something I'm super excited to see. The good news
is that Edge is merely an alternative design; as Lenovo states at the
end of the video: "Classic or Edge, the choice is yours".
Personally, we'd stick with the Classic design. The Edge laptops will
also be available with Intel or AMD processors; the Intel models state
that they can reach up to 7.8 hours of battery life, and we suspect
AMD models will be about 25% lower (5 to 6 hours).
And
just to assuage your fears, there are plenty of new Classic ThinkPads
in the works, including reworked T410s, T410, T510 and W510 models.