Intel Pine Trail Dual Core

Intel is introducing a series of new chips destined for netbooks, tablets, and other portable computing devices. Some won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s been reading this web site for a while. Others are brand spanking new.

Pine Trail Dual Core

First up we’re going to start to see netbooks with dual core Intel Atom chips. These are part of the same Pine Trail platform as the Atom N450 and N470 chips that are available today. But the new first new chip will be a 1.5GHz dual core processor called the Intel Atom N550. We’ve already seen at least one computer that will use this new CPU.

It’s not clear what kind of performance boost a dual core Atom chip will provide. After all, simply having two cores doesn’t necessarily make every computer function faster. But at the very least, these systems should be better at multitasking than current netbooks — which are already pretty good thanks to hyperthreading technology.

Pine Trail chips with support for DDR3 memory

This has been one of the worst kept secrets in the netbook space, but Intel is giving the Atom N450/N470 chips a slight update to add support for DDR3 memory. The clock speeds, memory cache, and other features won’t change. Just the names and the memory.

The new chips will be a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455 and 1.83GHz Intel Atom N470.

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Ever since HP announced plans to acquire Palm a few weeks ago, there’s been a lot of speculation about exactly what the company plans to do with Palm’s WebOS operating system. Today an HP exec has confirmed that the company is developing a WebOS tablet which should be available by October. That’s not particularly surprising.

I was a little surprised to learn that HP is pretty much ruling out putting WebOS on a netbook. HP CEO Mark Hurd mentioned the other day that all sorts of devices, including web-connected printers could be equipped with WebOS in the future. So it seems strange to rule out a rather obvious product category like netbooks or smartbooks.

That said, I’ve long suspected that a hurdle smartbooks and other Linux-based netbooks have to overcome is the fact that they look like laptops. And people expect laptops to do certain things — like run the applications they’ve been running on PC or Mac computers for ages including Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and so on. Sure, we’re moving toward a point where the most important app on any machine is the web browser, but while people are perfectly happy to adjust to the peculiarities of a smartphone or iPad-like tablet, if you present someone with a device that has a 10 inch display and a keyboard they tend to think they already know how to use it and could get frustrated when it turns out they don’t.

Of course, there’s nothing preventing users from hacking WebOS onto netbooks — and we’ve already seen some folks taking the first steps toward doing just that.

One thing I still have difficulty making customers at my day job understand about netbooks is that they don’t have an optical drive. Ok, some thin and lights like the Gateway EC14 do, but they’re not that plentiful on Liliputers. “Then how do I get my Norton CD В installed?” they ask. It’s frustrating for customers, and it’s more work for me.

HP’s help desk analysts have probably gotten numerous phone calls about the same issue. Now they’ve got an alternative solution: send netbook owners over to the newly-opened HP Download Store!

But wait, aren’t there already a ton of places where you can buy downloadable software online? Sure, but HP sells a ton of netbooks — and that ton of netbooks will no doubt start shipping with a nice, obvious “click here to buy software and games for your HP Mini!” icon somewhere on their desktop. Customers love simplicity, and not having to hunt around on the ‘net will be probably be enough enticement to drive sales.

The store В is currently considered beta, but it’s open for business should you be inclined to make a purchase. It’s worth noting that notebooks.com did some price checking and HP seems to be a bit high on most items — MS Office Home and Student lists for double what you’ll find it for at some other resellers.

via notebooks.com

The KDE Plasma interface certainly looks good, and it’s a good fit on netbook screens. And MeeGo runs on netbooks…So why not throw the two of them in a blender and see what comes out?

That’s what one enthusiast has done, and he’s shared his triumph on YouTube for all to see (check out the video after the break). The combination looks like a nice match to me — MeeGo’s lightweight foundation and the glossy attractiveness of Plasma.

What I’m not sure of is how this would look on other MeeGo devices — say, a Nokia handset with a 3″ or 4″. I’m sure someone will try to run Plasma on one of those, too, so it probably won’t be long before we see how it looks.

via Linux-Netbook

I noticed a story making the rounds yesterday about how the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) had decided that travelers would be able to keep their iPads in their bags while passing through X-Ray machines. And I kind of ignored the news… until I noticed that it’s not just iPads, but all electronics smaller than a typical laptop. That includes game consoles, portable media players, and even netbooks.

Generally the TSA requires you to take out a full sized laptop and place it in a separate tray for screening. But in a blog post, the TSA has spelled out that teh iPad, eBook readers like the Kindle and Nook, and netbooks are exempt for the most part.

That doesn’t mean you’ll never asked to remove a netbook from your bag while traveling. Screeners are supposed to look for anything out of the ordinary, and if they decided that bulging bag with a tangle of wires hanging out of it that you call a laptop carrying case is suspicious, you’ll probably still have to remove your netbook or other gizmo. But it looks like most of us can save a bit of time while traveling thanks to this clarification from the TSA.

Of course, if you’re traveling with a full-sized laptop, you can also save a little time by getting a TSA-approved laptop case.

via TechNewsDaily