Samsung's 16-inch, 16:9, multimedia based R620 laptop

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Samsung has updated their R series laptop range. Well, I say updated but spec-wise the R620 isn’t all that different from the R610. Sure, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD4650 graphics card may be an improvement on the R610’s nVIDIA GeForce Go 9200M GS, but the HD4650 is only included in the premium models. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD4330 in the standard version isn’t all that different.

On board memory has gone up a gig to 4GB DDR2 and the maximum hard-drive is 500GB, although the standard size is only 160GB. It keeps the 16-inch, 16:9 HD ratio for movie watching via its built-in Blu-ray player. The premium version is full HD 1080p whilst the standard version has a resolution of 1366x 768. There’s also HDMI-out if you want to hook it up to your TV.

One new feature is the anti-bacterial keyboard. It’s coated with a special finish that makes it almost impossible for bacteria to live and breed. Presumably if you spill your Yakult on it, it will simply evaporate into thin-air.*

If you’re looking for a mid-range laptop and you’re also considering buying a Blu-ray player then this laptop could help you kill two birds with stone. As a laptop alone it is decent – not exactly a world-beater – but the added Blu-ray, plus fast transfer via the combo USB/eSATA, make it a pretty good media-centre laptop.

It’s out in July and the standard version will cost you £699 from Samsung.

* This will not actually happen. The Yakult will kill your laptop – don’t try it.

Related post: Samsung R610: 16″ Blu-ray multimedia laptop

What is a netbook?

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Paul and I were having a chat this morning. Actually, it was more of a go at marketing departments. Packard Bell were the ones staring down the barrel, as it goes, but it could have been any laptop makers.

“Packard Bell launches the first netbook with AMD,” the press release read, and as my colleague said, we’re not so sure.

The problem is that we’ve got no proof. No one’s really set the definition of what makes a netbook and when a netbook becomes a notebook. We’re all clear that the Asus Eee PC 700 is a netbook but things start to get very laptoppy by the time you get to the Packard Bell dot m/a.

So, I think it’s about time we made some hard and fast rules on the matter here at Tech Digest. There’s some obvious categories we can look at, like size and weight, but, before we do, it’s important to remember what a netbook is all about. What’s it for? What’s the niche?

Well, according to Wikipedia, for the want of anywhere better to look –

“A netbook is a laptop computer designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet. Primarily designed for web browsing and e-mailing, netbooks rely heavily on the Internet for remote access to web-based applications and are targeted increasingly at cloud computing users who require a less powerful client computer.”

Ok. So, straight off the bat we’ve got our first stipulation.

TECH DIGEST RULE ONE OF NETBOOKS – A NETBOOK MUST HAVE WIRELESS ACCESS TO THE INTERNET

So, all netbooks must have Wi-Fi and or 3G access built-in. External dongles do not count.

Ok, what next? Well, it says they’re designed for web browsing and e-mail and rely heavily on the internet for remote access to web-based apps. Right, so it’s not a home or work computer, as we would expect. It’s for access to files when away from your base. It’s a mobile machine in other words.

TECH DIGEST RULE TWO OF NETBOOKS – A NETBOOK IS FOR USE ON THE MOVE

If it’s for mobile computing, then it’s got to be light and you have to be able to fit it into the kind of bag that you’d be carrying round anyway, regardless of where you were going. We’re talking size and weight here, and the question is – what are you prepared to carry around or, more to the point, what extra burden are you unlikely to notice?

Anything under a kilo qualifies in my book. That’s less than a bag of sugar. I can carry sugar. Two kilos is definitely too much. Hang on. Quick straw pole of Shiny Towers…

…right, it seems the average weight of the bags here is around 2-3 kilos. I’d suggest 50% more in your bag is too much, so I’m ruling 1.5kg and over out. I reckon 1.3kg is fair.

Sizewise, we’d have to rule out anything over 12-inches straight away. Wouldn’t fit in my bag. Ten inches is definitely ok. I’d say the biggest a netbook could be is 11.5-inches.

What else? Well, the apps are largely cloud-based and a less powerful computer is needed and, through that, the netbook can save battery life because, being a mobile machine, a long life is more important than high performance.

TECH DIGEST RULE THREE OF NETBOOKS – A NETBOOK MUST SACRIFICE PERFORMANCE FOR AS MUCH BATTERY AS POSSIBLE

First up, a discrete graphics processor is right out. Any juice for powering a GPU could be used for prolonging battery life, so a big “no” there. Integrated graphics, I’ll allow and certainly the likes of the Nvidia Tegra “system-on-a-chip” which inTEGRAtes a CPU and GPU in one silicon lump.

I’m rolling the idea of single-core CPUs in my head as well but, as much as I can see how that netbooks are only really for internet based activity, I can also appreciate that they could still involve a degree of multi-tasking and, provided efficient low voltage two core and above processors can be manufactured, then I’m happy to let that go.

So, that’s size, weight, power, battery but the last area I’d like to look at is cost. These things need to be cheap.

TECH DIGEST RULE FOUR OF NETBOOKS – A NETBOOK MUST BE CHEAP

We’re getting under powered, tiny little machines here. They have less hardware and less metal and they can’t do as much as their bigger brothers. There’s no way they should cost anything like as much. So, I’m setting a ceiling of £400. You can get a full size Dell for less than that, so that’s an absolute max.

Conclusions

So a computer is only a netbook if it…

has Wi-Fi and/or 3G
weighs 1.3kg or less
has a screen less than 12-inches
sacrifices performance for battery life
has no discrete GPU
cost less than £400

So, as we suspected, by that measure, the Packard Bell dot m/a is not a netbook. Other manufacturers, please take note/net.

Packard Bell release first AMD based netbook

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You may recall last month we told you that Packard Bell is back. We told you all about some of their new range including the netbooks dot m and dot s.

Well now they’ve gone and announced another netbook, the strangely named dot m/a. The dot m/a is the first netbook to come with an AMD processor – the single-core 1.2GHz Athlon 64 L110. That’s all great. Except it’s not really a netbook. It’s a small, entry-level notebook.

The specs support my argument – the screen is 11.6-inch with a resolution of 1366×768. It’s got a graphics card – the ATI Radeon X1270 and it weighs 1.25kg. That’s a bit too hefty for a netbook in my opinion.

Packard Bell even state that they keyboard is “as large as a regular notebook”. Err, that’s because it is a regular notebook.

Ok, so we’ve established it’s not exactly a netbook but what has it got going for it? Well, for £349, it’s not a bad budget option if you’re after a fairly compact notebook.

It’s got a 160GB hard-drive with 1GB of RAM – both of which are expandable to double their current size. It has a multi-gesture touch pad including pinch and flick for you iPhone fans and it’s got a 5-in-1 memory card reader. Like other Packard Bell releases it comes complete with Adobe Photoshop elements pre-installed. Bluetooth and 3G can be added at an extra cost.

It’s pre-loaded with Vista so presumably it would qualify for a free upgrade to Windows 7, according to the statement released by Microsoft yesterday. It’s available in black or red and with a three or six-cell battery. The six-cell should give four hours of battery life.

It’s out next month – get one direct from Packard Bell. Just don’t expect to receive a netbook.

MSI X340 super slim notebook coming in June

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MSI has being showing us its svelte side ever since CES and today they’ve come good on one of those sexy show models in the shape the of MSI X340.

It weighs a netbook threatening 1.3kg and runs between 6mm – 19.8mm thick. Unlike its Windier cousins though, the X340 is armed with a proper Intel Core 2 1.4GHz processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAM and a 320GB HDD for all your storage needs. What’s more, there’s a 13.4″ LED screen and a proper keyboard.

There’s no mistakes in the connectivity department with b/g/n compatible wireless and Bluetooth 2.0, although 3G might have been nice. It comes off the shelf with a 4-cell battery and DVD drive but I’d say upgrading to a 6er and Blu-ray would probably be a good choice. You have got built-in speakers and an HD screen after all.

The X340 can be yours for £859 from June. Not cheap but X-rated slim models never are.

MSI

HP ProBook laptop series – business with Blu-ray

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HP (does anyone call them Hewlett Packard any more?) are getting all professional on our collective consumer butt by encouraging our business aspiration with such words as glossy and noir to describe a range of mostly black laptops they call the HP ProBooks. Hmmm, that name rings a bell?

What they’re offering are the 15.6″ 4510s and 4515s, and the 17.3″ 4710s ProBooks. Each comes with an LED lit 16:9 display not a hint of mercury in sight. Just as with Dell, you can spec these things up and down more or less at will but on the whole, you’re looking at around a 2.1GHz processor with two cores either made by Intel or AMD and ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4330 512MB graphics units, and as much RAM as you’re willing to pay for.

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Blu-ray ROMS are as standard along with the slightly odd integrated numpad.

You can find more details on them over here with prices starting from £345. Expect your machine of choice to be pushing the £475 mark if you want a few reasonable extras.

Asus launches F70: World's First 17.3" laptop

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This is not a joke. This is a banana. Although it may as well be a picture of the Asus F70 laptop launched today as the world’s first 17.3″, 16:9 LED widescreen, portable computer. According to the specs, it’s a very decent machine. I’m not posting a picture of it not to protect you from its terrible ugliness but to shield you from its hideous averageness. It’s a flat, grey cuboid. You can go and have a look if you like but consider yourself warned.

SHINY VIDEO PREVIEW: HP Pavilion DV2 12.1" notebook

This week sees the launch of the hotly anticipated, 12.1″, entertainment notebook from HP, the latest in the Pavilion range. We had a glimpse of the DV2 at CES a few months back but nothing beats a closer inspection with Shiny Shiny’s Zara, so here she is for a tour of the £499 piece of computing kit.

It seems to have a good selection of ports and, although the screen isn’t up to HD content, I’m glad to see an HDMI port in case you’d like to strap the thing to your TV for all your downloaded high res programming, of which you’ll have space for up to 500GB. The other option is the external optical drive which can be upgraded to Blu-ray presumably at moderate cost.

Got to say that the whole package looks rather sexy and it’s always good to see trust in an AMD processor. Looking forward to having a play with this one first hand

HP DV2

10" Netbooks go HD with the 720p-capable Dell Mini 10

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The world of netbooks has finally made it to high-definition with the announcement from Dell that its Mini 10 netbook is being souped up. Within a week or so, the option to go to a 1366×768 display resolution, which is ample for displaying 720p movies, will be offered.

Best of all, that spec jump will cost just $35 more (£24 or so). Wireless 802.11n will also be offered, alongside Bluetooth 2.1, a speedier processor and more capacious hard drive. You’ll still be stuck with Windows XP and a measly non-upgradable 1GB of RAM, though.

The new specs are available right now in the USA, so a UK launch can’t be far off.

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