Disclaimer: I own shares in Advanced Micro Devices. That said, all workhorse laptops in my possession are quite satisfactorily running NVIDIA GPUs and Intel CPUs. There’s no favoritism being shown here towards any company whatsoever.
NVIDIA confirmed last night their intention to launch their Fermi-based GF100 graphics cards during Q1 2010 now that delays in the Fermi architecture have been settled. The board and others in the Fermi lineup will include DirectX 11 support while adding other features such as live raytracing to the mix.
The demo box was running the UNiGiNE benchmark, and while I didn’t have time to run through that benchmark last night, I will have time to run through it after this morning’s NVIDIA press conference in just under three hours.
ASUS (pronounced ah-soos, apparently) demonstrated four laptops at their press conference yesterday. Announced were
the ASUS NX90 Bang&Olufsen concept (pictured).
a new line of EeePCs designed by Karim Rashid.
ASUS’ latest gaming laptop, the G73. It wasn’t branded as a Ferrari or Lamborghini this time.
the U Series Bamboo Collection.
All of them had an unusual focus on aesthetics, with each focusing on some theme related to the target market. The G73 took on a stealth look, while the U Series focused on Bamboo (the explanation was that Bamboo grows back quickly, though the laptop isn’t exactly green in any other sense). The Karim Rashid EeePC and the Bang & Olufsen laptops are both designed for the sake of design. I’m not entirely certain how usable the dual trackpad design of the B&O concept is, but it does make for a clean design.
As for specs, the G73 and the NX90 are top-tier, with both allowing for the use of quad-core Core i7 processors. The G73 uses AMD’s Radeon 5870 for the GPU, while the Bang & Olufsen concept focuses on nvidia’s wares by using the GeForce GT 335M. The Bamboo collection can run with either Core i7 or Core i5 processors, while the EeePC sticks to the latest generation Intel Atom.
Videos of the NX90, the EeePCs, and the U Series are after the break. I’m still working on the G73.
HP joined the netbook craze after it saw the market potential for the tiny devices (something Acer has used to propel itself toward the number 2 spot amongst computer OEMs). This one carries less of a netbook-y feel and more of a business-y feel than other typical netbooks, which might help HP reach an audience slightly more concerned about aesthetics than the typical netbook buyer. Things to note:
It runs Vista, which is great. Thing is, I’m unsure as to whether it runs Windows Vista smoothly enough under load thanks to the chipset being used. This is one of those netbooks which might be a better grab once it’s loaded with Windows 7 thanks to 7’s performance and power usage optimizations.
The keyboard is spill-resistant (there’s a difference between this and spill-proof), which means that it can likely withstand an accidental coffee or coke spill without problems. Your best bet would be to dry it off quickly.
Build quality is excellent, and the tool-less design (with switching ram, anyway) is definitely a plus. The only catch is that I can’t think of too many instances where a user would want to upgrade ram on a netbook.
There are two separate add-ons which I also take a look at in this video; one of which is a USB expander that adds extra USB ports, dedicated headphone/mic jacks, as well as a NIC. It’s not a complete docking solution, but it should serve perfectly fine for people who just want to plug one USB cable into their netbook at work as opposed to setting it on a dock. The other is just an external optical drive, which might (again) only really be a necessity in the office.
As with the last video, you can catch this hands-on video after the jump in both vanilla YouTube and YouTube HD.
Update: Please, if you’re going to copy my images, don’t delete the watermark. I went through effort to get these pictures, and having them torn off (as is the case with ArsTechnica’s recent linkback)just means that I’ll have to present unsightly watermarks over the entire picture next time as opposed to keeping the images presentable by leaving the watermark in the corner. Update 2: ArsTechnica corrected their image accordingly. Thanks!
Just about everyone has seen the shots of the new Windows 7 retail packaging, but pictures of the new Anytime Upgrade packaging are much harder to come by. Impossible to find are any current examples of the packaging besides press shots and renders, so having said that, here are a few good hands-on shots I managed to take. For those wondering, yes, this means the boxes themselves are real, and that yes, Microsoft will indeed be pushing Anytime Upgrade through retail channels.
If you want some context as to how Microsoft arrived to this new box design, go ahead and check out Brandon LeBlanc’s post over at the Windows Team Blog. As for a physical size comparison: the full version boxes carry the same dimensions as the current Vista boxes.
(There’s nothing relevant inside the boxes themselves; just a fake key and a CD of Visio inside the retail box of which I was also taking some pictures.)
Have at it:
On an unrelated note, we (the staff of AeroXperience) would like to wish our condolences to the Jackson family with regards to the recent, sudden, and highly tragic passing of Michael Jackson
Disclaimer: I own shares in Advanced Micro Devices. That said, all workhorse laptops in my possession are quite satisfactorily running NVIDIA GPUs and Intel CPUs. There’s no favoritism being shown here towards any company whatsoever.
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