Sharp claims world's brightest screen for new notebooks
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Two multimedia laptop PCs from Sharp, set to go on sale by the end of the month, sport screens that are as bright as or brighter than the company's LCD TVs.
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(InfoWorld) - Via TechnologiesÂ has developed an ultraportable notebook reference design that will soon hit European markets. The Via NanoBook, which will be unveiled Wednesday at the Computex exhibition, uses the company's 1.2GHz C-7M processor and has a 7-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) touchscreen and Wi-Fi. The small notebook PC is intended to ship with either a 30GB or 60GB hard disk, and can run either Windows XP or Windows Vista. The notebook weighs less than 2 pounds, or 900 grams, and has a battery life of up to five hours. The NanoBook is aimed at the same market as theÂ Ultramobile PCÂ (UMPC) reference design developed by Microsoft and Intel, but has different specifications. For instance, the UMPC is designed around an Intel microprocessor and does not include a full keyboard. Via trails far behind Intel and Advanced Micro DevicesÂ in the microprocessor market and is counting on reference designs like the NanoBook to win more business from hardware vendors, said Richard Brown, the company's vice president of corporate marketing. The strategy appears to be working. On Sunday, Taiwanese contract manufacturer First International Computer (FIC) leaked details of a NanoBook produced by the company. That device is being made under contract for Packard Bell, which will put the device on sale in Europe during the third quarter, according to a source familiar with the deal. A similar device will be made for sale in the U.S. but will not be sold under the Packard Bell brand, the source said. Via's NanoBook reference design includes at least one feature that will not appear in the device sold by Packard Bell. Because the screen is smaller than the notebook's lid, there is space for a removable module that sits next to the display. Via has developed three modules that can be changed by users to suit their needs. These modules include a world clock, a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver, a VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) phone, a DVB television receiver, and a 3G (third-generation) cellular module. Â
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Notebook PCs coming out this year will likely include more colorful screens thanks to LED (light emitting diode) backlights and Blu-ray Disc optical drives this year, an executive from Micro-Star International (MSI) says, as well as more environmentally friendly attributes.
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(InfoWorld) - Sharp has developed an LCD (liquid crystal display) screen that can display three full-screen images simultaneously, depending on where the viewer sits. Viewers to the left, right, and in front of the screen all see a different image, thanks to a parallax barrier in front of the screen that splits the light output three ways, the company said on Wednesday. Its development follows Sharp's demonstration last year of an LCD panel that canÂ show two full-screen images simultaneously. Those screens, branded "dual-view" by Sharp, can already be found in some commercial products like car navigation systems and cell phones. In the navigation systems they allow a driver to look at a map while the passenger watches a DVD movie. On cell phones, a variation on the technology allows the user to see the screen from in front of it, while those nearby cannot see the screen from the side. It can be useful in a crowded area such as a commuter train, to guard against prying eyes. Unlike the unveiling of the dual-view screens last year, Sharp did not demonstrate the new screens on Wednesday or say when they would be available. Both screens were developed by Sharp and it's U.K.-based unit, Sharp Laboratories of Europe.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Chipmaker announces new chipset and reference design for consumer devices and PCs.
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The MacBook Air is a stunner, no doubt, but it's going to be up against stiff challenges from PC notebook makers. Here are a few of the top ones.
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By Kyodo News International, Tokyo  Sep. 19--OSAKA -- Sharp Corp. on Tuesday gave the media a preview of its  new factory for giant liquid crystal displays, seeking to seize a bigger share  in the overseas TV market with products equipped with LCDs made at the  state-of-the-art plant.
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ThinkPad T42 series notebooks now feature an embedded fingerprint reader.
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(InfoWorld) - Dell Inc. added Blu-ray disc capability to its notebook PC line on Monday, making an effort to compete withÂ Sony Corp.Â andÂ Toshiba Corp. in the growing market for mobile high-definition video platforms. In addition to showing high-end movies and games, Dell's XPS M1710 notebook could serve as a central node to support digital entertainment throughout the home, the company said. Customers can save 50G bytes of either data or video on a single Blu-ray disc. The ability to read and write data to the discs differentiates Blu-ray from HD-DVD, the competing standard for high-definition video, analysts said. Laptops with HD-DVD capability have lower prices but cannot save data to the discs, said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis Inc. "You are starting to see the different camps emerge within the computing companies, with Toshiba and Acer on the HD-DVD side and Sony and Dell on the Blu-ray side," he said. Sony's Vaio VGN-AR270 uses Blu-ray discs, while Acer Co. Ltd.'s notebook and Toshiba's Qosmio G35-AV650 use HD-DVD. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are improvements over standard DVD optical discs; they hold more data and let users watch high-definition video. All three techniques are optical discs, storing data in a binary form that is read by a scanning laser. But a Blu-ray disc can hold five times the capacity of a dual-layer DVD, Dell said. Movie studios and video game producers are eager to sell films on the new media, but the flow of new titles is only a trickle so far because content providers and hardware vendors can't decide which standard will prevail. Pricing starts at US$3,699 for the XPS M1710, including an Intel Corp. Core 2 Duo processor with 4G bytes of memory and up to 160G bytes of storage on a serial ATA hard drive.
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New top-of-the-line smart phone has a sharper screen, a faster chip and a removable battery.
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A new wafer-thin laptop and a movie rental service for iTunes starred in this year&#39;s keynote from Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld Tuesday.The notebook, called the MacBook Air, wasn&#39;t the ultraportable that pundits had predicted, but it is &quot;the world&#39;s thinnest notebook,&quot; according to Jobs, who produced it from a manilla office envelope to make his point.Priced from $1,799, the notebook has a 13.3-inch widescreen display and a full-sized backlit keyboard. To keep the MacBook Air compact, it uses the same 1.8-inch hard drive found in the iPod and a smaller version of Intel&#39;s Core 2 Duo processor built especially for Apple, Jobs said.The model shown at Macworld was in brushed silver. It is three quarters of an inch thick at its thickest part and just 0.16 inch along the front edge, Jobs said. He compared it to another popular thin laptop, the Sony TZ series. At 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms), it is about the same weight, he said, but the new Apple notebook is about half its thickness.&quot;To fit an entire Mac in this thing was a major feat of engineering,&quot; Jobs said.The MacBook Air will ship in about two weeks. It lacks an optical disk drive, which could make it tricky to load software. To get around that, Apple developed a program called Remote Disk, which allows users to download software from the optical drive of a nearby computer using its built in 802.11n wireless connection.The standard configuration comes with an 80GB hard drive, 2GB of main memory, and a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo. Options include a 64GB solid-state drive and a faster 1.8GHz processor.Intel developed a Core 2 Duo chip package for Apple that is 60 percent smaller than the standard version, according to Jobs. &quot;It&#39;s the width of a dime and as thick as a nickel, with 400 million transistors,&quot; said Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who joined Jobs onstage.Apple will sell an optional portable optical drive for $99, Jobs said. He promised a battery life of 5 hours while surfing the Web and with Wi-Fi enabled.Many had expected Apple to announce an ultraportable notebook, which would have filled a gap in Apple&#39;s notebook product line, noted Robbie Laughlin, an assistant retail manager with Apple reseller Carbon Computing in Toronto.&quot;They had a 12-inch PowerBook a few years ago, and I&#39;d like to see something small like that reintroduced,&quot; he said before Jobs began his speech.Still, Apple&#39;s computer business is riding high from the popularity of its iPods and iPhone, Laughlin said. &quot;They&#39;re still on an upswing. We&#39;ve seen a huge uptick in switchers the last six months, people who wouldn&#39;t normally walk into an Apple store.&quot;The other big focus of Jobs&#39; speech was movies, including a movie rental service for iTunes and a new version of Apple TV that allows renting and downloading movies directly to a TV without using a PC.Apple signed major film studios -- Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Sony, Universal, and Paramount -- to sell movies through the store. Rentals are $3.99 for a new release and $2.99 for older films, or a dollar more for high-definition versions.The movie rentals are available in the United States from Tuesday, and later this year internationally, Jobs said. Apple pledged to have 1,000 films available by the end of February, and films will come to iTunes 30 days after their DVD release, he said. Users will have 30 days to watch a film after renting it, and 24 hours to finish watching it after they have started.Apple TV wasn&#39;t more successful because it was sold as &quot;an accessory for your computer,&quot; Jobs said. &quot;That&#39;s not what people wanted. ... So we&#39;re back with Apple TV 2. It still syncs with your computer [if you want it to], but no computer is required.&quot;Apple TV also received a price cut to $229 from $299. The new version will be available in two weeks, Jobs said, and existing customers will be able to update to the new software.He didn&#39;t show a 3G iPhone as some had expected, but he did announce software updates available from Tuesday, including the ability to map an iPhone user&#39;s location with Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular towers. The iPhone update also lets people send a text message to multiple users.The iPhone shipped 200 days ago and 4 million have been sold since, Jobs said. The software developer kit for the iPhone will ship in February, he said.Jobs also introduced a wireless backup product called Time Capsule, a companion to the&#160;Leopard operating system&#39;s Time Machine, which constantly backs up work to a desktop hard drive. Time Capsule will ship in February and is basically an Airport Extreme base station plus a hard drive, Jobs said, &quot;so you can back up your notebook wirelessly.&quot;Time Capsule will come in two models, with a 500GB offering for $299 and a 1TB version for $499.
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Alienware's new Area 51 n15x gaming notebook will hopefully provide some balance in today's notebook news, offering graphical processing power over a small profile.
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Asus, a fairly new entrant to the notebook market, was showing off its 8-inch Eee at CES this week.
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Lenovo has launched a widescreen version of its ThinkPad line of notebook PCs, bidding to compete with Dell for business users.
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Sharp's new X-series models come in 37-, 42- and 46-inch screen sizes, at prices ranging from about $3,282 to about $4,520.
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Sharp shows off new developments in its screen technology at this week's Ceatec consumer-products trade fair in Japan.
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Slickly designed 22-inch Crystal display confirmed along with the new UltraSharp 3008WFP, a 30-inch model featuring DisplayPort connectivity.