laptop and notebook

In an attempt to upset the netbook applecart, Lenovo on Monday planned to introduced a small and affordable laptop that can deliver full PC functionality without compromising features.

The IdeaPad U350 is the first in Lenovo’s new line of inexpensive ultraportable laptops, which will include low-power processors Intel has designed for small and affordable laptops. The laptops will be as light as netbooks but include larger screens and offer more functionality.(See our hands-on report on the IdeaPad S12)

Priced starting at US$649, the U350 weighs about 3.5 pounds and includes a 13.3-inch screen. It comes with a four-cell battery that can run for around four hours. Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system comes pre-loaded with the laptop, and Lenovo officials declined comment on potential upgrade options to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 OS.

The laptop is powered by Intel’s single-core Intel Pentium SU2700 processor, which runs at 1.3GHz and includes 2MB of cache. Lenovo will start offering Intel’s faster single-core SU3500 Core Solo processor as an option with the laptop starting in August. The U350 comes with 2GB of RAM and can support up to a 500GB hard drive. The Intel chips carry the CULV moniker, which stands for consumer ultra-low voltage chips.

The U350 offers more features and functionality than netbooks, said Charles Farmer, consumer products marketing manager at Lenovo. Netbooks are designed to be secondary PCs, while the U350 is being targeted as a primary PC for users.

Netbooks are designed for basic tasks like Web surfing, and have small screens of up to 12 inches. The U350 has a larger screen and includes graphics capabilities usually found in a mainstream laptop, Farmer said. The U350 can run high-definition multimedia, gaming and resource-hungry applications, something netbooks typically can’t do.

The U350 also supports more memory and storage than netbooks, Farmer said.

By the same token, the U350 is not as powerful as expensive ultraportables like Lenovo’s ThinkPad X200 and X300 series laptops. The ThinkPads run faster processors like Intel’s dual-core Core 2 Duo chips, and include other bells and whistles like fingerprint readers and solid-state drives for data storage. However, the U350 is much cheaper in price, Farmer said.

The U350 will start shipping by the end of June. It will be available worldwide.

Dell plans to grow its business by acquiring another company, a senior executive said Friday.

“Michael [Dell] did talk about our desire to increase activity for inorganic growth. We have established a healthy cash position and strategically we will be looking for opportunities to do that,” said Steve Felice, president of the company’s small and medium business unit, during a conference call with reporters.

“Obviously we won’t share those details, because we can’t disclose what companies or when, but we are looking at opportunities to expand the business,” Felice said.

Dell had US$9.7 billion [B] in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of its fiscal first quarter, which closed on May 1. That represents an increase of 16 percent since January 30, when the company ended its last fiscal year.

The increase in Dell’s cash reserves is particularly notable for the difficult business environment that the company faced during the first quarter. Revenue fell 23 percent compared to the same period one year earlier, from US$14 billion during the first quarter of 2008 to US$10.2 billion.

There’s no shortage of speculation as to what companies Dell might be interested in buying.

Some see Palm as a logical target since buying the company would give Dell immediate access to a line of smartphones — a segment of the market that Dell officials, including CEO Michael Dell, have expressed interest in.

If Palm is a target, the upcoming Pre handset may be a principal reason. Scheduled to go on sale next week in the U.S., the Pre uses a new operating system and is seen as a potential rival to Apple’s iPhone and handsets based on Google’s Android operating system.

Others see rival Acer as a possible acquisition target for Dell. The Taiwanese PC maker has grown quickly in recent years, taking PC market share away from larger rivals. Buying Acer would increase Dell’s share of the PC market, although there would be a fair amount of overlap across computer product lines. In addition, Acer is also building its own line of smartphones, based largely on its acquisition of Taiwanese handset maker E-Ten Information Systems last year.

While acquisitions can help companies expand into new markets or increase their market share, they are fraught with risks — as Lenovo Group found with its 2005 acquisition of IBM’s former PC division.

That acquisition was meant to vault Lenovo into a leading position in global PC markets. Instead, after seeing sales to large companies sink in North America and Europe, Lenovo instead turned its focus back to China in a bid to cut its losses.

Intel’s Moblin 2.0 Linux desktop for netbooks is really still too raw to be called a beta, but with a fresh take on what a desktop should be, it’s showing great promise.

Artwork: Chip TaylorWhen Intel announced that it was turning its Moblin mobile Linux project over to the Linux Foundation, I assumed that it had decided to walk away from the project. Then, Intel announced that it was partnering with Novell to bring pre-installed Moblin desktops to netbooks. At this point, I was really puzzled. But, then Intel released the new version of Moblin and their moves suddenly made sense.

Intel wants to compete with its long-time partner Microsoft in the operating system business. To do that, Intel wants broad support from the Linux community. Intel doesn’t want Moblin to be ‘Intel Moblin,’ the company wants it to be Linux’s Moblin with support from everyone.

Thus, what we have is a Linux desktop that’s built on top of a Fedora Linux framework; uses GNOME for its desktop and applications, and will rely on Novell/SUSE to get customized versions of the desktop pre-installed on the Taiwanese OEM (original equipment manufacturers) netbooks. Its main competition: Windows 7, but Google Android also looms as a desktop Linux challenger.

How does Moblin stack up? Well, the look is great, and it’s not quite like any other desktop I’ve ever seen. The closest thing I’ve seen to it in recent memory is gOS, which puts Google applications on top of an Ubuntu Linux base.

Instead of giving you applications to choose from, Moblin gives you functions from a top menu bar that’s hidden until you need it. So, for example, when you boot Moblin, you don’t see a desktop full of icons or menus, you see your appointments and frequently used applications. The interface, called M-Zone is all about letting you get to your Internet functions as fast as possible.

Note I say, ‘functions,’ not applications. Intel tries to make the applications invisible. Instead of opening the Web browser, which is based on Firefox 3.0.10, to see what’s happening on your Twitter and Facebook accounts, you can see what’s what with you social network friends right from the M-Zone interface.

You see Moblin is all about letting you use what you already use on the Internet, and not letting either the operating system or the applications get in the way. I see Intel trying to do for the netbook desktop what Apple did with the PC desktop: get out of the user’s way so they can do what they want to do with the minimum of interference.

For Linux power users, and I’m one of them, who want to control every last thing on my PC, this isn’t that attractive a notion. But, I know that for many netbook users, who just want fast and easy Internet access, this could be a real winner.

So, if you want to IM a buddy, watch a video, whatever, Moblin tries to make it as easy as possible. It does have some traditional applications, like a spreadsheet and word-processor, but they’re not heavy-duty office suite tools. The word-processor, for example is GNOME’s gedit, which no one will ever mistake for OpenOffice Writer.

Moblin also uses virtual desktops, called zones, but it has a different take on them. Instead of requiring you to create a virtual desktop, they’re created on the fly when you need one. Want to keep all your Web activity in one zone, and work on a report in another, just assign it to another zone, and — pop! — the new zone is created and your word processor is already there.

Does that sound difficult? It’s not. Moblin is all about providing an attractive, consistent look and ease of use. Sometimes that consistent look, for long time Linux users, will surprise you. For instance, some applications won’t offer all the options you expect them to have.

Some of this has been done to keep the look and feel of the interface uniform, but it’s also to make Moblin faster than fast. I’ve never seen any operating system, except for instant-on, embedded desktop Linuxes like SplashTop, boot so quickly.

Once up, the desktop felt incredibly fast. If I didn’t know I was running it on 1.6GHz Aton equipped netbooks with 512MBs to 1 GB of RAM, I never would have guessed I was running it on such low-end hardware. Moblin is the anti-Vista. It runs great on minimal equipment instead of requiring the fastest possible hardware and still running at a snail’s pace.

Still, at this early stage, Moblin doesn’t work and play well on many platforms. For example, I, and many others, have found that it’s default Wi-Fi drivers won’t work with the Dell Mini 9’s Wi-Fi chipset. It also has some holes in it. For example, although Flash is supposed to be already installed, it’s not and there’s no easy way to get Flash to work with it.

I can only recommend people who like living on technology’s bleeding edge giving Moblin a try at this point. That said, if Intel, Novell and friends can get Moblin to deliver on the promise of its remarkably fast performance and function-based interface, I think we’ve got another real winner coming in what’s already shaping up to be a great year for Linux netbooks.

A prototype device due to be shown in Tokyo Wednesday may give laptop computers a better shot at performing heavy-duty video processing.

Space and heat considerations often limit the amount of computing power that can be packed into laptops. But Taiwan’s Leadtek plans to unveil a prototype external video processor that brings the power of Toshiba’s SpursEngine chip to portable platforms.

The SpursEngine was developed by Toshiba and is based on the same architecture as the Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor that powers the PlayStation 3 console. While the Cell contains a Power PC core and eight “Synergistic Processing Elements” cores, the SpursEngine contains only four of the SPE cores.

The chip also contains a hardware encoder and decoder for MPEG2 and MPEG4 AVC/H.264 video and is designed to be used as a PC co-processor handling of calculation-intensive work such a real-time high-definition graphics processing.

Leadtek already offers a plug-in SpursEngine board for desktop PCs and the prototype device essentially packages the board in a case with PCI Express connector for use with laptops.

The device will be on show at the Embedded Systems Expo that runs from Wednesday to Friday. Leadtek hasn’t detailed when it will be available or a likely price but the PC Card costs about ¥29,800 (US$308).

US-Japan cooperative research clean hydrogen battery

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Officials in recent days the United States and Japan cooperative research in clean hydrogen energy technology to reach a consensus. January 8, in Japan, visiting U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry signed a cooperative research on hydrogen and fuel cell technology of paper battery technology. Abraham said that international cooperation is the key to achieve both goals. Hydrogen battery is considered a clean and highly efficient battery. People to promote the use of hydrogen energy, said people will no longer be dependent on oil, they asked for a reduction in pollution. Japan and the United States officials and technical experts will be in fuel cells and technology policy, as well as hydrogen production, storage and transport technology cooperation. Japan and the United States is the “hydrogen economy International Cooperation Organization” members. The organization set up in November last year to promote hydrogen production, storage, transport and end-user and technical exchanges, to complete the common use of hydrogen battery code and meet the relevant standard.

Glucose battery

Power shortage? Increasing miniaturization of electronic devices can not find the right hp nc6200 battery , hp nc6220 battery , hp nc6230 battery? Do not worry, use of our body, a variety of biological cells can also generate electricity - Micro-bio-batteries would provide a steady flow of human energy

The movie “The Matrix”: in the distant future, intelligent machines rule the world, they learned of the potential use of a ubiquitous power source - human. These machines in the industrialized ranch on “stocking” of mankind and the human body to absorb the current release. You, me, and he became a battery.

Fortunately, the evolution of civilization is not so fast. However, this film is real. Living cells and their large collection (that is, a variety of organisms including the human body) can indeed have a small amount of current. But until now, scientists have only in the idea of how to take advantage of this energy.

There is no doubt that the use of the organism when the hp nx6110 battery , hp nx6120 battery , hp nx6125 battery  has many advantages. A bio-fuel cell can be in a secure area of the body current, while at the same time as the use of fossil fuels pollute the environment as a by-product produced, and it was also small in size, durability, etc., which are micro-electrical is a Gospel.

The secret power of living cells

Why the generation of living cells? Levels in biology, the living cells through the “Sugar” and accept by way of sunlight energy, but from the physics point of view, at the molecular level, all cells of the way the energy in the final analysis is to obtain atomic and molecular electronic exchanges between the shuttle.

Smaller number of adhesion molecules, it is easy to lose one or two electronic. In addition a number of molecular electronics is free but the appetite, in obtaining the release of electrons at the same time, some energy. Cells residing in the supply and the need for such a center. For example, in some of the help of special enzymes, yeast break down sugar molecules in order to obtain a number of electronics, and then put them to the oxygen molecules in the vicinity. This process produced water and carbon dioxide, and a little energy, the energy obtained by yeast. This process can be seen as the Pentium in the electronic flow of sub-atomic economy.

Rather than current level, but a series of electronic flow stability. An artificial cell power plant is a microform. Its battery power is generated by chemical substances. Battery use is very convenient, because the electronic electrode through their outflow, you can easily put it received MP3 players, flashlights, toys, lighters on. If micro-organisms can also do that, we just put them to the electrodes of the electronic focus, rather than to the elements they are scattered, you can use them to generate electricity.

“E. coli cells” rotating fan

  However, biotechnology is used to power many of the difficulties, the most stubborn obstacle is wrapped in the extracellular membrane. The majority of microorganisms are deep in the body where there are enzymes to process electronic. Therefore, the search for organic compounds tend to be slid into the membrane of the soluble electron acceptor, such as oxygen, the resulting electron capture, and then export the electronic. However, man-made electrode is insoluble and can not be used for generating micro-organisms. Reversing some of the chemical medium can do this kind of thing, that is, in the inter-electrode cells and transmission electronics, could we do that are usually expensive and not very effective, also need to continue to add.

In order to solve the problem use of biological electricity, the United States St. Louis University biochemist who made a special thank new method. She did not study the internal mechanism of micro-organisms, but studies of the external mechanism of micro-organisms. Two years ago, her research team extracted from E. coli by the enzyme, the use of alcohol to produce a decomposition of the enzyme do fuel cells, can be received directly on the circuit. This is a non-charged wall of the microbial fuel cell. Enzyme alcohol into vinegar, producing a weak current.

This is not the size of a small fuel cell, in order to bring a cell phone, the need for 20 square inches of the enzyme so fuel. Mintel said: “We have use of our bio-fuel cell drive small electric fan rotation, but not useful to do any of the energy-driven air-conditioning or similar equipment.”

“Glucose battery” into blood vessels

Sugar is the main living cells energy source, they everywhere, from alcohol to gas, from the cock to the body fluids, both contain sugar. Once scientists learn how to develop it, it means that to find a limitless energy source. A cup of sugar to do with fuel cells can bacteria make a 60-watt light bulb for 17 hours.

University of Texas Helena Adam designed the use of sugar biological cells, this battery by the two parallel plate micro-optical components. Each fiber board are coated with an enzyme: the snatch sugar in cathode electronics, electronic-oriented anode oxygen. A 1 / 4 inches long so the device can generate 600 pa3399u-1brs,pa3399u-2brs, toshiba satellite a100 battery of current, enough to drive a micro-circuit.

Compared with traditional batteries, manufacture of biological cells to the greatest difficulty lies in the miniaturization of its shell. Through a number of clever technology, Helena has been known to create the smallest cell, which were put into small enough to be human blood vessel, and where do the glucose fuel. For medical implants in the human body for glucose monitors, this is a perfect re-power source, however. According to Helena of the invention can also be important to create another product: signal immediately in accordance with the patients blood glucose level measured instruments. Diabetic patients which will be a Po.

Bio-power generation, a bright future.

The U.S. government is beginning to spend billions of dollars quickly to stimulate the economy. And that may be why Advance Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) said this week it is releasing its 6-core Opteron chip in June, well ahead of schedule, and plans to follow it early next year with a chip code-named Magny-Cours that will ship in 8- and 12-core models. After that, it plans a 16-core chip in 2011 .

But while AMD was in Sunnyvale, California, announcing its aggressive chip roadmap, Justin Rattner, Intel Corp.’s chief technology officer, was in Washington, selling his company’s chips.

“I think we see a number of opportunities and what we are trying to do is raise awareness that this is an extremely auspicious moment,” said Rattner. He was talking principally about the performance gains of the latest Intel Xeons, but is also cognizant of the government’s plan to spend a lot of money on technology.

To be sure, AMD can’t afford be left behind in U.S.-funded tech upgrade, not with its recent string of losses. And the government has been good for the company. When AMD released its 64-bit Opteron in 2004, its first big users were high-performance computing centers that get much of their money, directly or indirectly, from government sources. The fastest supercomputer in the world — IBM’s peta-scale Roadrunner, built for the Los Alamos National Laboratory — uses Opteron chips.

Rattner doesn’t know how many federal dollars will go to technology, and said Intel is still discovering opportunities in the government’s spending plans. “I think we were surprised that there is money in the stimulus for high-performance computing as it relates to climate change,” he said.

The government is now putting in place the processes through which it will spend the nearly US$800 billion stimulus money on a variety of projects. Government agencies will get a lot of new servers; technology is being rolled out for health care; supercomputers will be built. And new industries will rise: The government, for instance, plans to spend $2 billion for lithium-ion manufacturing plants.

Rattner met with government officials and IT managers at an Intel-sponsored conference in downtown, discussing the merits of the company’s processor technology, in particular its Nehalem, or Xeon 5500, the quad-core workhorse used in many mainstream servers. Intel released a six-core chip, the Xeon 7400 last September. The eight-core Nehalem EX is expected in 2010.

AMD is “trying to get ahead of Intel,” especially its Nehalem EX, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight64 in Saratoga, Calif. That’s in part behind AMD’s decision to push out its six-core “Istanbul” chip five months head of schedule.

Nehalem “clearly has seized the performance advantage that AMD had for a very long time,” Brookwood said. Now, AMD believes Istanbul, “will keep them very competitive over the next year and then going to 12 cores in 2010 will keep them competitive when Intel comes out with eight.”

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT Inc., said that large, multi-core chips are focused “on delivering increasingly robust platforms for virtualization. I think that’s where they see the future in the x86 market,” he said.

Fake mobile phone batteries

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Crack down on fake and shoddy cell phone batteries, Nokia will take stringent measures

Reuters reported on November 16, the world’s largest mobile phone maker Nokia announced Thursday, had been taken, including cooperation with the police raid, including measures to combat counterfeit mobile phone batteries. Nokia recently the company’s image on their mobile phone batteries due to reports of the fire hit.

Nokia reiterated that the original battery did not find the fire incident occurred, and directed against a third party battery manufacturers products or counterfeit goods, Nokia will begin next year to crack down on unauthorized cell phone market activities. However, they also recognize the illegal counterfeit products are often difficult to distinguish.

The sudden appearance of a large number of recently reported to the Netherlands from countries such as Vietnam, Nokia mobile phone batteries overheating occurred and caused the fire or explosion. Nokia said in a statement, “In each case, the problem proved Neither the original battery batteries, their manufacture do not meet industry safety standards.”

A Nokia spokesman said the company did not authorize any matching battery manufacturers to produce its own brand of battery used in Nokia phones, the company only to encourage the use of Nokia brand batteries.

Nokia also said that companies have to take the initiative in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and other European countries to cooperate with the police conduct surprise raids and seized tens of thousands of counterfeit products.

Pollution problems

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Pollution problems, the city set up a recycling of used batteries of electric vehicles

Reported December 30 in recent years, electric car sales surge at the same time, an alarming number of used batteries, which contain toxic metals lead, the survival of our environment.

It is understood that so far, only the urban areas, the electric bicycle has a number of factories and sales outlets are everywhere. City vehicles to the Department of Building managers should bo told reporters that the BCCI in 2002 on sales of nearly 10,000 electric vehicles, while sales volume in 2003 has far exceeded this figure. I understand that the market is currently used in electric bicycle battery is about 70% of lead-acid batteries, 30% of nickel cadmium batteries, the life about a year. This produces every year a large number of used batteries will be a serious risk of pollution.

How will people’s lives to bring these problems to find the end-result of the used batteries? A few days ago, Electric Co., Ltd. Ningbo city BCCHK building and cooperation, the establishment of a joint in the urban electric vehicle batteries the recycle bin (place in the eight-character bridge), is responsible for processing by the manufacturers.

Hot Electric Bicycle

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Electric bicycle sales, battery recycling issue is the development of the bottleneck

Referred to as “small donkey” fuel scooters because the urban environment pollution will be banned tomorrow the road in the urban area. The industry predicted that the electric scooters will become the new darling of the public.

Fuel will be the history of scooters

The rise of fuel scooters in 1995, relying on a separate lubrication system, single-cylinder two-stroke engine, belonging to the non-motor vehicles, but in fact the speed to fast track non-motorized bicycles and pedestrians pose a security threat. Other fuel combustion scooters inadequate exhaust emissions in high concentrations of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, have done great harm to people’s health.

In response, the city government in 1997 made a fuel stop on the licensing decision scooters. In the past two years, as awareness of environmental protection among the people, the elimination of fuel rising voices of scooters, the city people’s congress deputies and CPPCC members the city several times to move the proposal. Last year, the provincial Economic and Trade Commission, Public Security jointly issued a document, etc., clearly stipulates that “fuel the use of scooters for the 5-year period shall not be delayed.” Accordingly, not long ago, the city government decided to December 25, 2003 to more than five years since the duration of the license the use of fuel scooters to implement end-of-life, since January 1, 2004, the highway in the urban areas - Century Boulevard - Chang Hung tunnel - Ring Road - Airport Road to form the closed loop (including the road) within the scope of, the prohibition of road traffic fuel scooters. It is reported that the city fuel scooters are involved in 58,000, of which there are 17,000 urban areas.

Electric bicycle and on homeopathy

Electric vehicle is a power-driven bicycle. According to the city of Valley Electric Vehicle Association president Decai introduced in 2002, sales of electric bikes for the whole country 1.6 million in 2003 soared to 3,000,000. Will be implemented in 2004 the “National Road Safety Law,” to determine the electric bike’s status as a non-motor vehicles. It is understood that in 2003 total sales of electric bikes in our city of about 45,000, but almost the size of the cities of Ningbo, Suzhou City, sales reached 90,000.

Electric bicycle and bike compared to the relative labor-saving, comfortable; compared with the motorcycle, the relative energy efficiency, safety; scooters and fuel compared to a relatively environmentally friendly, cheap. Growth in sales year after year prove that the market has some preference for electric bikes.

Ningbo, a number of manufacturers and sellers to seize the favorable opportunities came one after another. Ningbo large-scale access to Carrefour, Hymall more than 40 supermarkets, in 2003 electric vehicle production and sales of 40,000, based on in 2004 to 100,000 red slash. Xinjiang Xiamen city electric bicycle every day leading up to 50, sales of nearly 100,000 yuan. It is estimated that in 2004 the sales of electric bicycles throughout the city will reach about 60,000.

Battery recycling issues to be resolved

Electric bicycle also has “weaknesses”, that is, it uses no batteries, such as recycling, use, environmental pollution can be. It is understood that, at present, the use of electric bicycle aluminum multi-acid batteries and lithium batteries, which in the production process and use of the old battery acid and lead, chromium and other heavy metals, hazardous to humans. At present, the electric car not to discard old batteries relatively common phenomenon, the lower the recovery rate.

Fortunately, there are enterprises begin to take action. Electric car battery production in our province large “super-wai” battery company executives said that next year the company’s electric vehicles will recycle old batteries, make a commitment to the consumer: in 2004 to carry out 10 games in the country “green action” special events, publicity electric vehicle battery recycling old ideas.