Thursday, August 26th, 2010  Intel recently released their first dual-core Atom chip specifically for netbooks and Lenovo’s already putting it to use in their IdeaPad S10-3 netbook. The new dual-core Atom N550 chip is clocked at 1.5GHz, sports dual 512KB L2 caches, and has a max power consumption of 8.5W. This isn’t the first dual-core Atom chip, as there have been dual-core variants used in nettops where power consumption isn’t as much a concern, but it is the first chip specifically for netbooks. This chip was spotted in a new IdeaPad S10-3 configuration at a German reseller. The model 06475CM adds 1GB DDR3 RAM and a 250GB hard drive to the new dual core chip, along with the rest of the usual netbook specs, for a price of €493 (or ~$626 USD). New IdeaPad models tend to take a little while to make their way across the continents to North America, but we should see these new models before long. It remains to be seen if this will be sold as an upgraded model, or if dual core will supplant the single core versions. I’m expecting the dual core chips to be offered in higher end configurations with a fatter price tag. Maybe Intel has found a way to introduce a little more margin in the netbook market? Source: [Netbooknews.de] Tags: ideapad s10-3, intel atom, Netbook
Posted in IdeaPad | 1 Comment » Monday, May 24th, 2010
To avoid possibly cannibalizing sales of larger, full-power notebooks, Intel has only allowed OEM’s like Lenovo to produce laptops with their Atom N-series processor if the screen was 10.2-inches or smaller. This may change as Intel faces increased competition in the bargain-bin notebook category. A bevy of ARM-powered smartbooks and tablets are set to launch this year, generally in the same price range as Intel-based netbooks and without Intel’s arbitrary screen restrictions. Lenovo’s Skylight is one example, powered by Qualcomm’s 1GHZ Snapdragon processor found in so many new smartphones. NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 solution is also expected to be used to power new slate tablets and even Apple’s iPad could be considered a competitor to netbooks. This rumor of Intel policy change comes with the expected launch of a new dual core Atom processor. With manufacturing improvements bringing more performance and lower cost to Atom, Intel may feel they have both the impetus and now the leeway to increase the functionality of Atom-based netbooks. One could also make the argument that with some models offloading video processing to a Broadcom or NVIDIA chip that larger, higher resolution screens are needed to actually take advantage of those improvements. Source: [Digitimes] Tags: Netbook
Posted in Tech News | No Comments » Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Lenovo dropped a little Spring surprise on us today, with the announcement of the slimmer IdeaPad S10-3s netbook. Back at CES 2010 in January, Lenovo announced the refreshed IdeaPad S10-3 netbook. It brought a slimmer chassis and larger, redesigned keyboard to the company’s successful netbook lineup. Not content to rest on their laurels, the IdeaPad S10-3s is slimmer than the standard S10-3, with a slightly revised chassis and a few additional spec changes.
(more…) Tags: ideapad s10-3, Netbook
Posted in IdeaPad | 4 Comments » Monday, April 5th, 2010
Reports are circulating that Lenovo and Samsung will be among the first companies to use VIA’s new VX900 media processor in low cost netbooks, launching as early as June of this year. The VIA VX900 claims to bring 1080p video playback and DirectX 9 support to netbooks. Coupled with the Nano processor that is cheaper and more powerful than Intel’s Atom, although a bit more power hungry too, VIA has quite the technology advantage in the netbook arena. Unfortunately they have nowhere near the market saturation of Intel and while consumers will get a cheaper netbook option, don’t expect the added competition to cause Intel to lose a wink of sleep. Lenovo already uses the VIA Nano 2250 in their 12-inch IdeaPad S12 netbook, undercutting the equivalent Atom model by $40. The new media processor could bring forth an updated S12, or perhaps serve as a more cost effective option to the NVIDIA Ion? Either way, Lenovo’s 12-inch netbooks are due for an update. Perhaps we will see the VX900 and other new technologies in an S12-2 this summer. Read our Lenovo IdeaPad S12 review Source: [DNA India] via [Lilliputing] Tags: ideapad s12, Netbook, via nano
Posted in IdeaPad | No Comments » Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Reports surfaced a few weeks back of an Intel Atom powered Lenovo ThinkPad X100e, and a new report is out citing some ThinkPad Mini 10 signage seen down in Australia. Students in New South Wales, Australia are reporting ThinkPad Mini 10′s being prepared, likely as the new models to be rolled out to the next class of students. I can’t say I’m versed in Australia’s public education system, but it appears that at a certain level students are assigned a laptop to use for educational purposes. The so-called 10-inch version of the X100e would indeed have a 10-inch screen, but that doesn’t mean the chassis is any smaller. Much like the short lived IdeaPad S9, the “Mini 10″ would simply have a smaller LCD and appropriately larger screen bezel. At least the 10-inch display would have a better resolution than most netbooks, running at 1280×720 according to the information leaked last month. The refreshed Pine Trail Atom processors would be used, likely the defacto 1.66GHz N450. Lenovo’s ThinkPad X100e was recently announced to be the company’s smallest form factor in production, with an 11.6-inch HD capable display, AMD dual core processors, new “island” or chiclet style keyboard and a choice of three colors. It isn’t much of a surprise that Lenovo has been working on converting this model to an even more budget friendly netbook, although this will primarily be targeted at corporations and schools. Lenovo dipped their feet into the large customer netbook market with the IdeaPad S10e, a netbook mechanically identical to the “consumer” IdeaPad S10, but integrated with the company’s worldwide sales and service model. This investment on the back end ensured that new inventory, parts and service would be available through their already efficient channels set up for large customers. The largest group to take advantage of this was a department of education in Australia, about this time last year, so it’s no surprise we are seeing reports of the new Mini 10 in Australia as well. It would be safe to assume that the S10e trial program was successful enough that they want to bring the ThinkPad name into schools and even businesses where the use case fits. Perhaps that is even why the X100e was green lighted in the first place, as it is no secret that Lenovo puts large customer needs ahead of the individuals. Source: [Netbooked] via [Lilliputing], [Electronista] Tags: Netbook, thinkpad mini 10, thinkpad x100e
Posted in ThinkPads | 4 Comments » Monday, November 16th, 2009
A new Lenovo IdeaPad was just shuffled through the FCC, who kindly took some pictures and made them public for the rest of us to see. Thanks to a detailed specs sticker on the backside, we know this is going to be a new netbook based on Intel’s forthcoming Pineview platform. This new netbook looks like an interesting piece. The system buttons have moved from above the keyboard to being integrated into the display bezel. The keyboard also stretches edge-to-edge a bit more and overall looks like it might be a bit bigger than the IdeaPad S10-2′s keyboard. The fingerprint-happy finish is there, but you’ll also notice something major missing: touchpad buttons. In all likelihood, Lenovo ditched the traditional touchpad buttons in favor of the touch-to-click feature that Apple initially popularized and now can be seen on other machines, including HP’s Envy 13 premium laptop. I’ve played a bit with the Envy 13 while it’s been in the Logic labs and don’t mind the touch-to-click, even the right-click is natural with an actual clicking action built into the touchpad. As long as Lenovo does their homework on the usability, this could work out fine and save the space of the two touchpad buttons. EDIT: Looks like this new touchpad could be the Synaptics Clickpad. I wonder what HP uses in the Envy 13. You’ll also notice that the keyboard has moved to a chiclet style, like the rumored ThinkPad netbook, and the arrow keys are slightly subset from the rest of the keyboard. This particular model will have a 1.66GHz Intel Pineview processor, which is likely the Atom N450, and comes with 2GB RAM and a 250GB HDD. While the display is the netbook standard 10.1-inch 1024×600, the rest of the specs are a nice step up from the standard netbook fare. We talked a bit about Pineview back in May, the new Atom processor that will combine the CPU and GPU on a single chip to reduce cost and power consumption. Higher performance processors will also be available and Pineview should help bring some profit margin back into the netbook game. Source: [Slashgear] Tags: leak, Netbook
Posted in IdeaPad | 2 Comments » Monday, November 9th, 2009 Intel Atom processor die Intel’s next generation Atom platform, codenamed Pine Trail, will be moved up and is expected to announce on December 21st, in time for CES in January. If you’ve been in the market for a netbook, you might do better to wait for Pine Trail or even the rumored ThinkPad netbook. Pine Trail offers a number of improvements over the current Atom platform, but the benefits a more tangible for Intel and its partners than consumers. The biggest change is moving the memory controller and graphics core onto the processor itself. While this doesn’t yield much in the way of performance improvement, it should reduce power consumption noticeably and most importantly reduce system cost. Intel and partners should see an increase in profit margin on the typically razor-thin profits that netbooks currently see. On the mobile side of things, the single-core 1.66GHz Atom N450 is expected to announce with 512KB L2 cache, Hyperthreading, and 64-bit support. Desktops, aka nettops, will get the dual-core D510 which is identical to the N450 save for 1MB L2 cache. A single core, 512KB L2 version of the D510 will be called the D410. Down the road we should see a 1.83GHz mobile chip dubbed the N470. Source: [The Register] Tags: intel atom, Netbook
Posted in Tech News | No Comments » Wednesday, October 28th, 2009  Lenovo has released a second configuration of their IdeaPad S12 netbook with NVIDIA Ion chipset, this one with a boost in specs. Just last week we brought you news that Lenovo had finally released their IdeaPad S12 12-inch netbook with the NVIDIA Ion chipset. While that first model featured boosted specs over a standard netbook with Windows 7 Home Premium, 2GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, and Bluetooth, this new model builds on that even more. The IdeaPad S12 model 295954U is upgraded to 3GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive over the other NVIDIA Ion model, with a $50 price bump to $649. Unfortunately this new model isn’t eligible for a discount just yet, but you can still get the lower spec’d model for $579. Tags: ideapad s12, Netbook, nvidia ion
Posted in IdeaPad | No Comments » Monday, October 26th, 2009
Along with the new IdeaPad models, Lenovo is also sprucing up a couple of the existing ones. The CULV IdeaPad U350 and S10-2 netbook will be able to be purchased with new textures and colorful patterns. The U350 will have new cover textures like brown lizard print, white lamb skin print and red light weave. The S10-2 netbook will have colorful new designs like pop art, violet floral, red floral, green floral, phoenix, garden, sailing and origami. Hit the jump for the image gallery of these designs (more…) Tags: ideapad s10-2, ideapad u350, Netbook
Posted in IdeaPad | 3 Comments » Thursday, October 22nd, 2009  We’ve been waiting a long time for this, but Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12 is finally available for purchase with the NVIDIA Ion chipset. The IdeaPad S12 model 29595FU is the only S12 loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit) and since its not bound by the WinXP licensing, it can be sold with 2GB RAM. You also get a larger 250GB (vs 160GB) hard drive and Bluetooth, which none of the other S12 models have. All of these new features, along with NVIDIA’s slick Ion platform, will run you $599 and it should ship within 11 days or so. It is even on sale $20 off, see how to get the deal below. What about you?
How appealing is the NVIDIA Ion chipset to you? Do the gaming capabilities matter on a 12-inch netbook? What about the forthcoming Flash acceleration coming from Adobe next year? How to get the deal - Choose the accessory & warranty options for your IdeaPad S12 (29595FU, column on far right)
- Apply coupon in shopping cart with no spaces before/after: USP11THINLGT
Tags: ideapad s12, Netbook, nvidia ion
Posted in IdeaPad | 1 Comment » | |
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