SISAREA

That’s right, not only does Augen — a company unbeknown to us before yesterday — make an $150 Android 2.1 tablet, but the company is also stocking Kmart shelves with a $99 Android smartbook of sorts. How’d we find out about this one? Well, when we headed to our local Kmart in hopes of picking up the 7-inch tablet, one last, very lonely GenBook 74 was dwelling on the shelf. We aren’t the kind of people that could just leave the little guy there all alone, so $100 later we were the proud owners of a 7-inch, Android 1.6 clamshell device. Is the little laptop really capable of surfing the web and downloading apps, or would your hard earned cash be better spent elsewhere? Find out after the break.

Continue reading Augen’s $99 GenBook smartbook preview

Augen’s $99 GenBook smartbook preview originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jul 2010 17:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Dell’s taking the slightly revamped “forward hinge” design language it introduced with the Inspiron R line and bringing it down to 11.6-inches with the new Inspiron M101z. The laptop is a followup to the Inspiron 11z, and packs your choice of AMD Athlon Neo K125 (single core) or K325 chips (dual core). AMD, which might still be a bit of a sore subject for Dell, really seems to have carved out a niche for itself in the 11.6-inch size, with its blend of more-than-Atom power, cheaper-than-Intel price, and decent-but-not-ULV power sipping; Dell claims a bit over 6.5 hours of battery life with the standard 6-cell battery. The AMD chips bring along integrated ATI RS880M graphics, and the laptops pack 2GB of RAM and 250GB HDDs standard. What we don’t have yet is the US price: the laptop starts at £379 for a single core model in the UK, which should translate to something around $400-$450 US — Dell has to beat out HP’s $449, similarly specced Pavilion dm1, after all.

Dell Inspiron M101z tosses AMD Neo chips into a new 11-inch chassis originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Student Buying Guide  |  Dell UK  | Email this | Comments

The Sony VAIO P: it’s a lovely little, pocket-friendly machine that suffers from one glaring flaw: high price. Leave it to the boffins at Sony Style to come up with a solution for that. No, not Sony’s Sony Style retailer, but rather KIRF manufacturer Sony Style, which has crafted this 1.6GHz Atom-powered mini laptop with a 1024 x 600, 8.9-inch screen and a “16GB hard disk” that is either actually an SSD or was manufactured sometime in the late ’90s. It offers 1GB of memory (double that for $35 more), WiFi and, according to the specs, “you can carry it to go outside.” The price for that kind of convenience? Just $299 — or $275 if you buy 16 of ‘em. Who wants to set up the group buy?

Keepin’ it real fake: Sony Style L80 mini laptop cuts the VAIO P’s price down to size originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 08:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Engadget German  |  Shenit.com  | Email this | Comments

You’d think after running into ASUS’s next generation Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE over five months ago at CeBIT, our excitement may have waned for the stylish netbooks. Oh, but it’s actually the opposite, and when the brand new netbooks arrived last week, we grabbed the X-Acto knife (safely, of course) and eagerly unboxed them to see if the aluminum clad little laptops were as svelte as we’d remembered them. Sure, the $350 1018P and 1015PE have standard netbook internals (an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 1GB of RAM and Windows 7 Starter), but without a doubt they’re some of the best quality netbooks ASUS has made in quite a while. Hit that read more link for an in-depth look at these two, and to see if they’re all we had hoped for and more.

Continue reading ASUS Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE review

ASUS Eee PC 1018P and 1015PE review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Are MSI’s 12.1-inch netbooks a hair too large for you? Wonder of wonders, there’s a smaller version that’s practically exactly the same inside. Though the new MSI Wind12 U230 Light confusingly weighs just the same as its predecessor (3.3 pounds) and is still 1.22 inches thick, it’s got a smaller 11.6-inch matte LCD screen that makes it two inches shorter in either direction on a horizontal plane. You’re still getting the same 1,366 x 768 display, 1.6GHz Athlon Neo MV-40 processor, 2GB of RAM, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 250GB hard drive and sub-par four hours of battery life, but MSI did think to trim the fat in one last direction, and knocked $30 off the price. That makes the now-shipping U230 Light a somewhat reasonable deal at $400 from Amazon. PR after the break.

Continue reading MSI launches Wind12 U230 ‘Light,’ shaves two inches and 30 clamshells from predecessor’s hide

MSI launches Wind12 U230 ‘Light,’ shaves two inches and 30 clamshells from predecessor’s hide originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 07:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  MSI Mobile  | Email this | Comments

We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Max, who seems to be putting his old scattered life behind him in an attempt to get organized. If you’re looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.

“I am a student looking for a second portable computer for taking notes in lectures, as I am ridiculously unorganized at the moment. The thing is, I only have a very small budget, and I need a tablet / touchscreen computer. I have at most £150 ($228) to spend.”

Max isn’t even opposed to buying second-hand, but we just know someone out there has a delightful option on the new market as well. Don’t bother putting off your answer in comments below — that Fall semester is just about the bend, you know?

Ask Engadget: best note-taking tablet / laptop for under $200? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

We’re always skeptical when it comes to underground operating systems whipped up for one specific purpose, but Jolicloud has managed to continually impress us with each passing build. Now, at long last, the netbook-centric OS has arrived at the magical 1.0, and our comrades over at Netbook News have managed to score an early copy. Better still, they’re showcasing it on Acer’s just-released Aspire One 533, and if the bootup speed is any indication, we’d say the two are a match made in heaven. The 1.0 version sure looks grown-up compared to those earlier builds, and while we suspect it would take a bit of getting used to before we really found ourselves comfortable in an app-driven desktop OS, we definitely like the looks of it. Feel free to hop on past the break for a lengthy video demonstration of the refaced system, and if you’re currently using an earlier version, the company has informed the world that upgrades will start slipping out as early as this week.

Continue reading Jolicloud 1.0 demonstrated on Acer Aspire One 533, coming to your netbook soon

Jolicloud 1.0 demonstrated on Acer Aspire One 533, coming to your netbook soon originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Netbook News  | Email this | Comments

Another pretty little seashell has washed up on the Eee PC shore, and ASUS is making this one official — sort of. A listing for the 1005PX has appeared on the company’s site, but it’s sadly a broken link for the moment. No worries, as Notebook Italia has all the details about this little chromatic lappy, which is available in white, black, red, blue, and that pastel pink above that has us really craving a tall glass of strawberry milk. Beyond the clean aesthetics there’s nothing particularly exciting here, your typical 1.6GHz Atom N450 CPU, 1 or 2GB of RAM, up to 320GB of storage, and a 10-inch matte 1024 x 600 LED-backlit LCD. Longevity is said to be a healthy 8.5 hours with a six-cell battery, though we don’t know just how much this one will cost ya — nor when ASUS will fix that link.

ASUS Eee PC 1005PX looks lovely in your choice of colors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Notebook Italia  | Email this | Comments

Miffy (or Nijntje) is a small, Dutch, female rabbit who appears in picture books. How exactly she became a cultural hit in Japan we don’t know, but we do have a good idea how she found herself plastered all over this netbook: some combination of Onkyo having a bunch of extra C4 units lying around and Namco-Bandai having a Miffy license it wasn’t fully utilizing. On the hardware side this thing is particularly disinteresting (1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, etc. etc.), but its lid has been liberally covered with character silhouettes. Its Windows installation (7 or XP) has received a similar treatment, with Miffy-themed apps and wallpaper ruling the desktop thanks to that partnership with Namco-Bandai. No word on price, but predictably this one is Japan-only.

Onkyo netbook gets covered inside and out with Miffy originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Jul 2010 07:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Akihabara News  |  Namco-Bandai  | Email this | Comments

With the NVIDIA Ion 2-powered Acer Aspire One 532g falling by the wayside and the ASUS Eee PC 1201PN hitting the market sans NVIDIA Optimus, all eyes are on the ASUS Eee PC 1215N to be the true Ion 2 machine. Well, super-charged netbook fans, we’ve got good news: the 12-inch laptop, which has a 1.8GHz dual-core Atom D525 CPU and NVIDIA’s Optimus to intelligently switch between discrete and integrated graphics, will ship in the US around August 23. And while an MSRP hasn’t been set in stone, we’re told “it should be below $500.” Sure, a glance at the calender will reveal that you won’t get your mitts on this bad boy for at least 40 days, but we’re confident you’ll find something to pass the time.

ASUS Eee PC 1215N to ship in the US at the end of August originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments