Tech News

Intel wants to be your Valentine, ships fixed chipsets today

by ThinkPads on February 14, 2011

At the beginning of the month, Intel discovered a major, though very limited, bug in its new 6 Series chipsets and as a result PC manufacturers had to delay shipment of their new systems. While Intel also noted that laptop manufacturers could resume shipment under certain restrictions, it seems that is a moot point now.

Intel has announced that they are resuming shipments of the “Sandy Bridge” based chipsets today, which may or may not have been intended to coincide with the commercial-holiday of Valentine’s Day.

Of course, just because Intel is resuming shipments doesn’t mean we’ll see laptops with the new chipsets just yet. Of course it will take some time for shipments to reach their destination and production to resume.

When we hear more about that timeframe, we’ll let you know.

Source: [Slashgear]

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Sandy Bridge laptops can resume shipping…minus some SATA ports

by ThinkPads on February 10, 2011

As we reported a couple days ago, Intel had to halt shipments of their new 6 Series chipset that powers new “Sandy Bridge” systems. The stop sale was the result of a bug in the system’s 3Gbps SATA ports that would affect only 5% of systems.

Intel has now announced that laptop manufacturers can resume shipments of their Sandy Bridge laptops, so long as they agree not to utilize one of the effected ports. As we pointed out previously, laptops don’t have a need for as many SATA ports as a desktop and can likely get by without issue.

We have no word which manufacturers will or won’t be resuming shipments, but will keep you updated as we learn more.

Source: [Intel]

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Netbook sales down 25%

by ThinkPads on October 27, 2010

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Research firm IDC is reporting that sales of netbook PCs had dropped 25% compared to the second quarter of this year. This drop is expected to continue as the surge of consumer interest in slate tablets stifles demand for netbooks.

Consumers looking at cheap, ultraportable computing devices have certainly been wooed by Apple’s iPad. The plethora of iPad competition on the way, coming mostly in the form of Android slates, is also capturing some of the netbook market as people wait to see what will appear for the holidays.

Unfortunately it sounds like Lenovo won’t be in a position to cash in on the slate wars, with Android-powered machines coming from nearly every other major manufacturer and many hitting the market by end of year. Lenovo’s LePad should arrive in December, but it will only be in China.

While it’s important for them to maintain dominance in China, their balance in other markets seems questionable with such an important device.

Source: [V3.co.uk]

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Details on Intel’s 3rd generation X25-M SSD

by ThinkPads on October 8, 2010

Intel X25-M G2 SSD - image courtesy Anandtech.com

The SSD market is a fast moving one and Intel is not resting on their laurels. Their X25-M line of SSDs ushered in new levels of performance and affordability in solid state storage.

The third generation of these popular SSDs is coming soon and some details are making their way to the public. The biggest news is that the memory chips are manufactured using smaller transistors, allowing for more chips made per wafer of silicon. Anand of Anandtech tells us that this will yield “roughly twice the capacity at the same price.”

While the drives are still spec’d for SATA 3Gbps, that may change as more of Intel’s chipsets support 6Gbps. Full Disc Encryption is also supported for the first time, an important move for enterprises to consider adopting SSDs. Also as a result of the new transistor manufacturing, drive lifespans should be greatly extended.

The third gen drives will debut in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch sizes with capacities up to 300GB and 600GB, respectively. Read and write performance are up over the second gen as well.

For a more in-depth analysis of the new drives, hit the source link for Anand’s excellent-as-usual technical articles.

Source: [Anandtech]

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Qualcomm says Apple killed smartbooks with iPad

by ThinkPads on September 27, 2010

A few weeks back at Qualcomm’s IQ 2010 event, their CEO remarked that while everyone was waiting for smartbooks to come out (like Lenovo’s Skylight), Apple effectively redefined what a smartbook should be and in the process killed the smartbook market. Huh?

As GigaOm’s Kevin Tofel points out, the iPad embodies pretty much everything that a smartbook wants to be: ultraportable, all-day battery life, instant-on, connectivity everywhere. I’ll add that it’s not a true mobile computing replacement, as the smartbook was intended: the lack of a physical keyboard kills any notion of mass content creation.

Once the iPad launched before so many promised smartbooks, the smartbook sell becomes infinitely more difficult.

Average Consumer: So, what is this smartbook thing?

Techie/Salesman/etc: Well, it lets you access the internet and perform basic computing tasks from just about anywhere, on a device that is super thin & light, has all day battery life, and turns on nearly instantly.

Average Consumer: Ooohhhh, is this a new iPad?

But while the iPad may have eclipsed the smartbook market before it began, the war isn’t over yet. With Google’s Chrome OS coming soon on devices that are yet undisclosed, a whole bevy of Google Android powered slate tablets, and despite rumors of their death we will also see more traditional smartbook devices.

We’ve even got Lenovo’s LePad launching in December, with what seems like a separate “base” unit that has proper PC chips in it to run a regular old OS like Win7 (although the base will come at a later date).

With this huge deluge of new mobile tech hitting the market all in the same couple quarters, including Blackberry-maker RIM’s PlayBook announced today, it’s going to be an interesting time in the mobile space.

Source: [SlashGear] via [GigaOm]

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Intel working on improving laptop cooling

by ThinkPads on September 17, 2010

UK tech rag The Register reports from IDF that Intel is working on improving laptop cooling. They’re specifically looking to tackle the heat buildup that occurs when you set your laptop on a solid surface, like a desk or bed.

They’ve found that temperatures on the base of a laptop can raise up to 10 degrees Celsius when placed on a surface. Their technology, which they are sharing no details about, eliminates that temperature increase.

An improved cooling system like this would allow for more flexibility in system design, with less space needed for suitable cooling and possibly less cost as well.

Source: [The Reg]

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New Intel software helps keep your SSD optimized

by ThinkPads on September 16, 2010

Intel X25-M G2 SSD - image courtesy Anandtech.com

While Solid State Drives (SSDs) are growing in popularity as the prices drop, not all adopters realize that SSDs need a little upkeep to operate at their peak performance. In fact, without proper maintenance, SSD performance can be severely degraded.

Intel has released a toolset for owners of their SSD models to easily keep their drives in peak running order. The Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox enables easy access to diagnostics, secure drive erasing, and most importantly keeping the data optimized for maximum performance.

Without getting too technical, due to the way data is stored on an SSD, old data that is marked for deletion needs to be properly erased and the rest of the data surrounding it re-organized to ensure efficient access to the data that you do want to keep. Modern SSDs have the capability to do this without wiping the entire drive contents, but in many cases you do have to enable it manually. If you want to know more about how SSDs function differently from regular hard drives and what makes the difference between cheap and expensive drives, I highly recommend Anandtech’s SSD Anthology article.

The Intel tools can run and schedule this activity, optimizing the drive via the Trim command, so you can just set it and forget it.

Source: [Intel] via [Lifehacker]

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Dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon delayed to late 2011

by ThinkPads on September 10, 2010

We know Qualcomm has been working on a dual-core 1.5GHz Smartdragon chip for a while now, but it appears that chip will be extensively delayed.

Qualcomm is reported to have stated the new dual-core chip won’t be released until late in 2011, whereas previous reports placed it shipping late this year. The consolation prize is that they will be shipping 1.2GHz single-core Snapdragons in Q1 2011, with a dual-core version coming a few months later.

Lenovo is working on several Android-powered devices that we hope to see this year, including the slate LePad and some form of a smartbook. It looks like we won’t see them powered by a dual-core Snapdragon, but hopefully they will at least get the slightly faster 1.2GHz chip.

Source: [NetbookNews.de] via [Lilliputing]

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Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y460 to feature new NVIDIA GeForce 400M GPUs

by ThinkPads on September 7, 2010

NVIDIA has a new lineup of mobile GPUs coming out and recently announced a number of manufacturers who would be adopting the new chip. Lenovo is among those ranks and the IdeaPad Y460 will be getting the new GPU, at some point.

Announced at the recent IFA conference, the new GPU lineup is the first mobile variant to use NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture and supports Direct X 11. The chips are all also Optimus-enabled, allowing seamless switching between the discrete NVIDIA chip and the Intel HD graphics that come on every 2010 Intel Core processor.

NVIDIA’s 400M GPUs in performance level from mid-range (GeForce GT 445M, 435M, 425M, 420M, and 415M) to enthusiast (GeForce GTX 460M, 470M and 480M).

The IdeaPad Y460 currently only ships with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 switchable graphics, so it will be interesting to see when the new NVIDIA GPUs hit the market.

Source: [NVIDIA]

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New dual-core Atom chips being held back

by ThinkPads on August 30, 2010

Intel’s new dual-core Atom processors may have been in the headlines for the past couple weeks, but it appears netbook manufacturers aren’t in a rush ship refreshed products just yet.

It appears the low cost computer market is in a bit of flux right now, with the tablet craze stirred up by Apple’s iPad. A variety of tablets running Google’s Android with either Qualcomm or NVIDIA chips inside are scheduled to hit the market this fall.

Many of the manufacturers that have popular netbook lineups, including Lenovo, also have tablet products in the pipeline. This conflict of interest is likely pushing back the availability of dual-core Atom products to later this year.

Another pressure in the low cost computer market is AMD’s refreshed low power platform, which is supposed to be a stronger competitor to Intel’s Atom and also planned to emerge later this year.

Source: [The Inquirer]

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