Soft Cell Netbook

There’s no denying netbooks have become hugely popular and they are an essential travelling companion, but like all laptops, large and small, they have one big drawback. Somehow they always run out of power at the most inconvenient moment. That won’t be a problem with this new one from Norhtec? The Geko Edubook looks like just another 8.9-inch cheapie, and the starting price is competitive, the baseline model will be a touch under £170, but the big bonus feature is that it doesn’t use a proprietary rechargeable battery pack. Instead it uses a set of 8 standard AA cells. It will run for up to 4 hours on NiMh rechargeables, and if you get caught short all you have to do is pop into the nearest shop and drop in some Duracells and it’s good to go for another 6 hours, thanks to the very low power consumption (there’s no fan and it uses an LED backlight). It even has it’s own built-in charger so there’s no need to lug a mains adaptor around with you either. The rest of the spec is fairly routine. It has a 1Ghz processor, it comes with 256, 512 or 1Gb of RAM and there’s a choice of standard hard drive or SD flash storage. Needless to say it supports Windows XP or stick with the pre-installed Ubuntu Linux operating system. They’re taking orders now for US delivery, unfortunately there’s no word on the European release just yet.

Super Slim Backpacks for Cool Laptop Owners

We know what a drag carrying your laptop around can become if you don’t have the right bag for it. Regular one-side bags are kind of old-fashioned and give you a geeky look most of the time. Plus, they don’t come anything close to doctors’ recommendation, because they can really hurt your back and even cause scoliosis.

So, a better alternative would be a backpack. They are so popular nowadays that they can be found in every shape or size imaginable. Even Yoda-shaped ones are available, if you are a Star Wars fan. However, each good thing has its downfalls. When carrying an oversized backpack, besides hurting your back, you can really knock people over when turning. Actually, I heard it was voted as one of the ten most annoying things that people usually do in public, next to talking too loud on your cell phone or forgetting to take a shower. Read more

WiFi to Replace Ancient Radio Waves Technology

Although these things have been around for quite some time now, I’ve only recently decided to give some more though and attention to the WiFi Radio concept, and I was pretty impressed to find out that’s it’s actually a lot more popular and widespread than I previously thought. I have never been a classic radio fan, since most radio hosts annoy me to the point that I just want to smash the radio with a baseball bat. But over the years I have tested some Internet radio stations and I can’t say I was disappointed. After Yahoo launched their new Messenger 9, I also had a brief “stint” at listening to some Yahoo music stations. Read more

Asus Smellbook

You’ve got to admire Asus for pushing back the frontiers of laptop design. From the genuinely revolutionary Eee PC, which launched the whole Netbook craze, to the slightly odd bamboo-cased laptop there’s seems to be no end to its creativity, at least that was until we heard about the F6Ve series notebooks. This is a range of ‘fragranced’ laptops, that’s right, they smell, you can choose from a pink coloured ‘Floral Blossom model costing around £649, or a glossy ‘Musky Black machine, which starts at £799. Basic specs are a 13.3-inch screen Intel Centrino Core 2 processor, wi-fi, choice of 120, 160, 250 or 320Gb drives, up to 4Gb RAM, web cam and Vista pre-installed. Incidentally, someone at Asus has obviously been doing some research into smells and national characteristics and in the US you can get models entitled Aqua Ocean and Morning Dew – make of that what you will. Read more

$75 Laptop in the Pipeline?

We have spoken before about the laudable One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, which aims to supply laptops costing $100 to children in poor countries and which indirectly spawned the recent influx of cheap mini laptops, like the Asus Eee PC, Elonex one et al. Well. OLPC has now unveiled a mock-up of a future model, which could sell for as little as $75.

There’s no need to get too excited, the $100 target for the OLPC XO1 still hasn’t been achieved (it’s closer to $200…), but like its predecessor the XO-2, has some interesting features. These include dual touch and haptic (pressure) sensitive screens, both daylight (and indoor) viewable. Read more

Hack a Laptop Challenge, Winners and Losers

In a three-day contest, held at a major security conference in Vancouver recently, teams of hackers were challenged to break their way into three laptops, running Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Ubuntu Linux operating systems, reports CNet News.

Now I know what you are thinking but you’d be wrong… On the first day all three machines repulsed attacks on the operating systems and via a network connection. The Mac Air laptop was the first to fall, however, two minutes into the start of the second day’s session. This was after the judges relaxed the rules to allow the hackers to attack browser and email vulnerabilities. Read more