March 10, 2010
Acer possibly developing laptop with frame-less display, touchscreen keyboard
ZD Net
Rachel King writes about a new rumoured concept notebook from Acer.
“Rumours are swirling that Acer is working on a laptop that could have a touchscreen keyboard…and a frame-less display. Is that even possible? According to Digitimes, Acer will be launching this unnamed laptop some time before the end of 2010. Who is to know if this is true or not, and if it will ever happen. There aren’t even any specific sources, but sometimes crazy rumours aren’t to be ignored. And isn’t always the most ridiculous rumours and concepts that come to fruition?.”
Would you buy Coby’s 7-inch smartbook for $85?
ZD Net
Sean Portnoy writes about the possibility of a less than $100 laptop.
“Coby has been a showing new portable this week at the CeBIT expo that will cost, according to Engadget, just $85. Yes, you read that right. How does Coby get the price so low on the NBPC722? For starters, the screen is just seven-inches, which places it squarely between most 10-inch netbooks and smaller MIDs. It also eschews an Intel Atom processor for a 624MHz Marvell PXA303 one, and provides a mere 2GB of flash-based storage. You also have to live with Windows CE rather than Windows XP or Windows 7 as your OS. But most importantly, it has built-in 802.11b/g (but not 802.11n) Wi-Fi for checking email and viewing Web pages.”
Google Chrome OS ‘business version’ coming in 2011
Engadget
Donald Melanson writes that Google will be introducing a “business version” of its Chrome OS for netbooks next year.
“Google software security engineer Will Drewry revealed, seemingly for the first, that Google will be releasing a ‘business version’ of Chrome OS for netbooks sometime in 2011. Details on it are still pretty light at the moment, as you might expect, but it will supposedly offer more ‘management muscle’ than the consumer version. Drewry did drop a few more details about Chrome OS for netbooks in general, however, including the interesting tidbit that you’ll be able to enable a development mode by flipping a switch located under the battery.”