Acer recently launched a dual boot version of the Acer Aspire One D255 netbook which runs both Windows and Google Android. And Sascha from Netbook News.de managed to pick one up in Taiwan recently. You can check out his unboxing and first look video after the break.
The netbook runs about $289 in Taiwain and comes with 1GB of memory, a 160GB hard drive, and Windows XP as well as Android.
In order to boot Google Android, you’ll need to first launch Windows and run a utility to configure the computer to boot Android. Once you do manage to get into Android, you’ll notice that Acer has configured the operating system to use a mouse cursor — something which most Android devices don’t need.
Acer also includes a tab in the Android home screen which you can press to exit Android and boot Windows XP.
You can check out Sascha’s unboxing video below to watch him get frustrated with the packaging and lament over the fact that he can’t read Chinese… oh yeah, he also takes a look at the hardware and software on the computer.
I’ve had a little more time to play with the Augen GenTouch78 Android tablet, and here’s the deal: It’s a mixed bag. You can check out my hands-on video after the break, but here’s the short version:
On the one hand the build quality is pretty decent and the tablet feels good in the hand. It has a decent looking display and runs Android 2.1.
On the other hand, entering text or even tapping on icons with the resistive touchscreen display is a bit of a chore. The memory card slot reads “TF card,” which should mean TransFlash and which should support microSD cards. But when I tried inserting a microSD card, it fell into the slot and almost got lost before I grabbed a pair of tweezers to free it. I’ll try again later in case I was putting the card in the wrong way, but I’m going to hold off until I have a spare microSD card that I’m willing to lose.
The Acer Aspire One 721 is an 11.6 inch thin and light notebook with a 1366 x 768 pixel display. Like the Acer Aspire One 521, which I reviewed recently, this model ships with a 1.7GHz AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processor and ATI Radeon HD 4225 graphics. The main difference is that the Aspire One 721 is larger — which provides room for a full sized keyboard and a higher resolution screen. I also suspect it will get less battery lfie, since the larger screen will use more power.
Acer sent me an Aspire One 721 to review, and you can check out my unboxing and first look video after the break.
All in all, I really like the design of this laptop. The matte lid looks like it should be pretty good and fighting off fingerprints, and the large access panel on the bottom should make upgrades easy. And while I haven’t started testing the performance of this computer yet, I was overall quite impressed with the CPU and graphics performance of the similarly-specced Aspire One 521.
Face it– the first day of school is coming closer everyday. But, before your student hits the books with his freshly sharpened pencils, you’ll want to hit the sales to find the best deals on tech for your student. You can find everything you need for back to school here, but check out our favorite notebooks at every price range in this video. Senior Writer Dana Wollman has advice on what features to expect for each price category and shows off our favorites. For even more information on the best notebooks for class, go here.
Open source media player VLC is known as a Swiss Army knife of video players. It can handle pretty much any DRM-free video format you can throw at it, from WMV to MKV, with a little H.264, Xvid and DiVX thrown in for good measure. The folks behind VLC just rolled out version 1.1 with support for Google’s new WebM format. But that’s not the only trick up its sleeve. VLC 1.1 also supports hardware video accleration.
What that means is that if you have supported hardware, VLC will use the GPU to accelerate video playback, thus reducing the CPU load significantly.
In order to take advantage of the new hardware acceleration you’re going to need a machine with an NVIDIA graphics processor, so if you’ve got an NVIDIA ION-powered device you should be good to go. If you’ve got integrated Intel graphics or an ATI graphics processor, you might have to wait a while. ATI support should come after the company updates its drivers, and Intel support should come after the VLC team gets to spend some time with Intel hardware that supports GPU decoding — although I suspect that won’t include Intel Atom chips with integrated graphics.
GPU acceleration is also limited to the Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Linux versions of VLC 1.1.
For a complete list of new features in VLC 1.1, check out the VLC home page. The team has also added support for new audio and video codecs, as well as a new framework that will allow coders to write extensions for VLC.
ECS is showing off a new 10 inch Olivetti netbook with a super-slim design. Netbook news got a chance to check the netbook out at Computex last week, and while it doesn’t look all that exciting on paper (1024 x 600 pixel display, Intel Atom N270 processor, 2 USB ports, 1.8 inch hard drive), it looks awfully nice on video.
The reason for the 1.8 inch hard drive is because you just can’t easily fit a 2.5 inch hard drive in a laptop this thin. The Olivetti netbook also has very few physical ports. There are 2 USB ports on the back, as well as what looks like a proprietary port that may work with a VGA adapter. The sides are almost bare, with only space for a power adapter, headphone jack, and flash card reader.
ECS also incorporated the status LEDs onto the button below the touchpad, which looks pretty cool — until you actually start using the laptop. Still, it’s an interesting design decision and it’s nice to see a netbook that doesn’t look like every other mini-laptop on the market.
There’s no word on pricing or availability.
You can check out a hands-on video from Netbook News after the break.
The IdeaPad U160 is Lenovo’s sequel to the IdeaPad U150, which I reviewed earlier this year. Like the U150, the new model features an 11.6 inch 1366 x 768 pixel display, a full size keyboard, and Windows 7 Home Premium. But the recently introduced IdeaPad U160 will come with Intel’s latest generation low power processors, including Celeron, Pentium,. Core i3, i5, or i7 options.
The U160 isn’t available from Lenovo just yet, but the folks at Netbook News spotted the laptop at Computex last week, and they’ve posted a video to prove it.
The thin and light notebook looks quite slim. The case is barely thick enough to make room for the USB, Ethernet, VGA, and HDMI ports. And the chiclet-style keyboard looks quite similar to the one used on the Thinkpad X100e laptop which is designed for business users. The touchpad looks rather small though.
You can check out the hands-on video after the break.
The Lenovo IdeaPad U160 should run about $699 and up when it hits the streets later this month.
MeeGo is a custom Linux environment designed for netbooks, tablets, smartphones, and other portable devices as well as connected TVs and in-car systems. And while MeeGo v1.0 for netbooks just hit the streets last week, it looks like the developers already have a few other tricks up their sleeve. Yesterday we got a first look at a tablet running a version of MeeGo with a custom touchscreen interface. Today, we have a 7 minute hands-on video taking a closer look at the new UI, courtesy of Chippy at CarryPad.
You can find the video after the page break. But here are some of the highlights.
There are two ways to launch apps, either using the iPhone-like program launcher with shortcuts, or a panel system that shows your personal data including movies, music, web pages, Facebook and Twitter data streams, and so forth.
Under the hood, the OS is the same as the netbook version of MeeGo, but the user interface has been completely redesigned.
You can switch between running apps by hitting a box at the bottom left corner to bring up thumbnails for running programs.
The photo app supports pinch-to-zoom functionality.
One thing that I’ve found a bit strange in the netbook version of MeeGo is the fact that the so-called music player is responsible for all multimedia playback, including videos. That seems to be true on the tablet edition as well, since the demonstrator opened the music app to show off the tablet’s 720p HD video playback capabilities. Hopefully the developers will either create a separate video app eventually… or at least rename the software so that it’s called a media player instead of a music player.
VIA’s Nano processors haven’t exactly revolutionized the mobile computing space, but the low power Nano chipset has been available to PC makers looking for an alternative to Intel’s Atom platform for the past year or so. This week at Computex, VIA is showing off the next-generation Nano chip, with a dual core processor.
The VIA Nano DC is a 1.6GHz dual core x86-based processor. The version on display at Computex was built using a 65nm processor, but the company says by the time the VIA Nano DC comes to market in about 6 months, the company will be using next-generation technology.
Engadget reports that VIA paired the demo chip with a VN1000 digital media chip, dual channel DDR3 memory, and a Chrome 520 grpahics processor to demonstrate its performance. The system doesn’t seem to have any trouble playing 720p HD video — but that’s not really saying much. Most Intel Atom-based netbooks can handle 720p video. You can check out Engadget’s video of the test rig after the break.
It’s also interesting to note that the Nano DC is originally destined for desktops rather than netbooks or tablets, since it generates a fair amount of heat.
Just because a tablet is running Google Android doesn’t mean it has to look like it’s running Android. After all, HTC has made a habit of shipping Android Smartphones with the custom HTC Sense user interface running on top of Android. And now Sascha from Netbook News.de found a tablet prototype that runs Android with a tablet-friendly UI slapped on top.
The tablet is a prototype from Asus subsidiary Pegatron, and it has a 10 inch display, Freescale ARM-based processor, HSMI output, a SIM card slot, USB port, and mic and heapdhone jacks.
You can find Sascha’s video after the break, but if you don’t speak German you might not need to turn the audio up.
The most interesting thing about the tablet is the custom user interface which places a series of widgets on the home screen allowing you to see a celendar, launch a media player, see the local weather, or updates from social networking sites.
On the one hand, it looks a little overly crowded. On the other hand, it’s nice to see that someone finally realized that tablets have large screens than smartphones and it makes sense to customize the Android Home Screen to take advantage of the extra space.
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