battery website

It wasn’t long ago that ASUS vowed to trim down the number of Eee PCs it sends to market. Just a month later, though, the 1002H, another 10.2-inch model, has shown up on the company’s Web site.

If the 1002H looks familiar, that’s because it borrows elements from both the 1002HA and the 1000HE. Like the 1002HA, it has a 160GB hard drive and a rated five hours of battery life, but it also has the chiclet keyboard we swooned over in our 1000HE review.

Additionally, the 1002H has a slightly faster Intel Atom processor: its N280 CPU has a 1.66-GHz clock speed, as opposed to the N270’s 1.6-GHz. If you’re using a netbook for the things it’s meant to be used for (Web surfing, e-mail, and the like) this bump shouldn’t make much of a difference. We’re more pleased that ASUS is adding its chiclet keyboard to more models.

In addition to white, the 1002H will come in black and pink, although there’s no word yet on pricing or availability

Everyone and their mother is trying to  grab a piece of the netbook pie by creating a me-too mini-notebook and Workhorse just seems to be beating the same dead horse. Busting through the corrals of our office was Workhorse’s Certeza MC10 netbook. Bluntly the Workhorse is just another 10-inch netbook but we are intrigued by its customization options which is intended for larger businesses or institutions.

Check out our first impressions of the Workhorse Certeza MC10 and our hands-on video.

Basic, Black Box Design

The Certeza MC10 seems to be trying to look a little like an HP Mini 1000 or Dell Mini 10 but it needs to try a little harder. While the black glossy lid gives it somewhat of a higher class look, it is a fingerprint magnet. Even when we tried to wipe it down, a number of smudges remained. In the middle of the lid is a small indented, rectangular shaped slot which is blank at the moment, but Workhorse tells us it can be customized with the model number or name of a company or school.

Under the hood the netbook just looks like it might not yet be completed (we should note that we do have a pre-production unit), while there is a Workhorse logo under the screen there is a blank plastic strip. This strip is flanked by two speakers that look a bit cheap.

While the Workhorse only has 2 USB ports, it has an ExpressCard slot which makes it easy for adding a mobile broadband card. It also has an Ethernet, headphone, microphone and SD card reader.

Good Keyboard, Touchpad

To Workhorse’s credit, the keyboard is quite spacious for a 10-inch netbook. The keys have a nice feel to them and remind us of the keyboard on the MSI Wind U100. In addition, the key arrangement is solid with a decent sized Shift key located to the left of the up arrow and a full size Enter key.

While the touchpad is a bit small, there are dedicated right and left mouse buttons. The pad itself has a decent amount of friction for navigating the desktop.

Vista Outfitted

The Workhorse Certeza does stands out from most of the other netbooks in the barn in its ability to be customized. Our unit came with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and Windows Vista Home Premium. According to the company’s site you will be able to upgrade to 2GB of RAM (though costs more than the 1GB) and downgrade to Windows XP or Linux. It will also be available with mobile broadband and WiMax options. Underneath the back panel there is even a dedicated slot for a SIM card.

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Our unit took over a minute to boot Vista but once the operating system was up and running, we didn’t have a problem visiting our favorite sites and streaming video and music. Our full review will contain more performance impressions and benchmarks.

Early Verdict

It is hard to say why someone would want to purchase the Workhorse for $549 (the Windows XP version will be $449) when they could get an HP Mini 2140 or a Samsung NC20 for the same price. However, while customers can buy the Workhorse Certeza MC10 from RocketDepot.com, Workhorse PC  focuses on larger orders that may be tempting to businesses and educational institutions who want customized solutions

Dell on Tuesday is finally expected to launch the mysterious Adamo, a “luxury” laptop that could be the PC maker’s response to ultra-thin laptops including Apple’s stylish MacBook Air.

Adamo has a light and ultra-slim design that makes it easy to hold with a few fingers. It measures 0.65 inches (16.39mm) at its thinnest point, and weighs around 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), with a 13.4-inch screen.

With prices starting at around US$2,000, it isn’t targeted at normal buyers, said John New, senior product marketing manager at Dell.

“It’s for an affluent crowd, and somebody who’s fashion forward, style conscious who wants to project an image of success and style. They probably have a fine watch, and nice, name-brand accessories, and we want this to be one of them,” he said.

The laptop uses new technologies that could make it a speedy machine — it runs on an ultra-low power Intel processor, supports DDR3 memory and includes SSD storage. A battery built inside the laptop provides about four to five hours of run time per charge.

Speculation around Adamo heated up late last year when observers suggested Dell was building a laptop as a response to Apple’s MacBook Air. The rumor was confirmed when the laptop was shown to the press at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Dell did not reveal its specifications at the time, saying Adamo was being shown to squash impending rumors about its existence.

Adamo is heavier and may be bigger than the MacBook Air, but it provides Dell an entrance into the ultraportable market to compete with offerings that include Hewlett-Packard’s Voodoo Envy. Dell could particularly face an uphill battle against Apple, which has a leg up with impressive designs and a loyal customer base that allows it to charge a premium for products.

Taking a veiled jab at Apple, Dell’s New said that Adamo sacrificed size to bring more practical functionality — like the inclusion of an Ethernet port — rather than skimp on finer details. Apple has been criticized for not including an Ethernet port in the MacBook Air.

“You could do this exercise to make something super thin,” New said. “We want to make sure we deliver performance and value and it’s not just a fluffy purchase.”

Dell has a history of fairly boring designs, but the PC maker has been aggressive about changing that, said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at market research firm The NPD Group.

“While not everything has been a success, I think their colors and patterns on notebooks have resonated well and they have been steadily improving the design appeal of their products,” Baker said.

But as consumers cut back on spending during the recession, will anyone pay a premium for the laptop?

Adamo could do fairly well with affluent buyers who continue to spend on hardware and technology products, but it has to be positioned and marketed correctly, Baker said.

“People will spend [on Adamo]. This is not intended to be a high-volume, high-velocity item but more of a statement [product],” he said.

Prices for the laptop start at $1,999 with a 128GB SSD and an Intel Core 2 Duo SU9300 ultra-low-voltage processor running at 1.2GHz with 2GB of DDR3 memory. The high-end version of Adamo is priced $2,699, with an Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 ultra-low voltage processor running at 1.4GHz with 4GB of DDR3 memory.

The laptops include 128GB SSDs for data storage and run on 64-bit Windows Vista OS. Networking options include an Ethernet port and wireless 802.11n networking. Dell does not include an optical drive in the Adamo, but is offering external DVD-RW, Blu-ray drives and external hard drives with storage capacities of 250GB and 500GB.

Internal batteries are replaced by sending the laptop to a depot, New said. He couldn’t predict how many days a user would have to wait to get the laptop back after a battery replacement

Sony’s VAIO P may have a competitor waiting in the wings. U.K. Site ElectricPig has spotted pictures of a highly mobile Lenovo device that strongly resembles the VAIO P on Lenovo’s Flickr stream. The device was tagged the Pocket Yoga PC.
All we have are the images to go on, but the device looks to be longer than P Series, but just as pocketable. It sports a keyboard, and while we cannot locate any form of a touchpad or pointing stick, one image (shown here) depicts a stylus for writing on-screen, which may mean you have to depend on the touchscreen to navigate the desktop. There are no details on the specs of the device.
Our Lenovo U.S. contact tells us there are no formal plans for the Pocket Yoga right now, but that doesn’t mean we won’t continue to drool.

Updated: According to Lenovo’s Design Blog the Pocket Yoga was a concept designed over two years ago, there are no plans to bring it into production at this point. Though that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t  think about it!

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