It could just be the usual craze over the Macworld Expo, but rumor has it that Apple's cooking up a new super-slim version of the MacBook Pro with a 12" widescreen display. Everything already in the MacBook Pro would be there, just in a much, much smaller form factor. How much slimmer could it get, I wonder?
Whatever sources came up with this information don't have a lot of details, but the price point is supposed to be around $1,700 or $1,800, which is decent for something as feature-packed as a MacBook Pro. As for a timetable, February of next year is the date floating around. We'll see if any of this turns out to be true.
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Shortly after the release of their new MacBook Pros with Core 2 Duo processors, Apple has updated their standard MacBooks with Core 2 Duo as well. It's basically the same old 13.3" MacBook, but now it comes with a 1.83GHz or 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 512MB to 2GB of DDR2 memory, and up to 200GB of disk space. For a 13.3" laptop, that's really not too bad.
Other specs of the laptops remain mostly the same. The pricing is pretty much the same too, with the lowest model costing you $1099. This, of course is for the white one; if you want a black one, the minimum you can get away with is $1499, but you get upgrades with that too.
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Looks like Sony's cooked up another ultra-portable laptop. The new Vaio G is a 12.1" laptop that weighs in at only 1.98 pounds. With its sleek style, long battery life, and incredibly low weight, this one could be a winner.
The Vaio G sports a 1024x768 display, a Celeron or Core Solo processor, integrated Intel 945GMS Express graphics, up to 80GB of disk space, up to 1.5GB of memory, a fingerprint reader, and wireless and Bluetooth capabilities. Battery life is rated at 6 hours, or 12.5 with the optional 6-cell battery (which makes it about half a pound heavier).
The Vaio G will be available in Japan starting December 2 for around $2000, depending on which options you pick.
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Dell is slowly phasing AMD into all of its product lines. They have now introduced a new line of laptops that feature a range of AMD mobile processors, yet another step to incorporating AMD and Intel into all of their available computers. But while the price point of the Inspiron 1501 was expected to be below $500, the lowest configuration will actually cost you $549.
The Inspiron 1501 is available with a number of AMD Sempron, Turion 64, and Turion 64 X2 processors, ranging from the Sempron 3500+ to a Turion 64 X2 TL-56. You can have up to 2GB of DDR2 system memory and up to 80GB of disk space. Onboard video is provided by ATI's Radeon Xpress 1150 IGP (with 256MB of Hypermemory). A multi-format DVD burner is available as an option.
The $549 laptop I mentioned above is configured with a Sempron 3500+, 512MB memory, 60GB hard drive, and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, with a 1-year warranty.
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After a long wait (for some people, at least), Apple has released its first MacBook Pros with Core 2 Duo processors. You will find on Apple's website that the new models are apparently 39% faster than the old models, which is quite a performance boost. But we've come to expect that from Apple.
The 15.4" MacBook Pro comes with a 2.16GHz or 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM (upgradeable to 3GB), and up to 200GB of hard disk space. The 17" MacBook Pro comes standard with the 2.33GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. Both have slot-loading SuperDrives (the 15.4" has a 6x drive and the 17" has an 8x drive). The laptops weigh in at 5.6 and 6.8 pounds, respectively.
Both models come equipped with ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics with 128MB of 256MB of memory (based on processor speed). All the standard features of a MacBook Pro, like AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, gigabit ethernet, Firewire, and an integrated camera, along with others, are also included.
Pricing starts at $1,999 for the 15.4" and $2,799 for the 17" MacBook Pros.
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Intel has officially announced its Santa Rosa, along with its marketing name: Centrino Duo. Built around the 64-bit, dual-core Merom processor, the Santa Rosa notebook platform will sport plenty of improvements over current chipsets. Among these features are a new 4965AGN wireless networking adapter, brand new integrated graphics on the GM965 chipset, and gigabit networking.
New Core 2 Duo CPUs will also be available. The T7300, T7500, and T7700 will use an 800MHz bus and have 4MB of L2 cache, and the T7100 will have only 2MB of cache.
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Several of the ThinkPad notebook models from Lenovo are getting a variety of new features soon. Lenovo announced recently that all ThinkPad 60 series laptops will come with biometric security options, including Ultimaco's SafeGuard Easy 4.30 software to support biometric hard drive encryption. These laptops will be able to encrypt and decrypt files and manage your passwords using only your fingerprint. It's surprising that biometrics haven't gotten a wider acceptance, especially since fingerprint scanners aren't that expensive.
In addition, the T60, T60p, R60, R60e, X60, Z61t, Z61p, and Z61e will be featuring new Core 2 Duo processors for increased performance and more energy-efficient computing. All of those models, minus the Z61e, plus the X60s, will also have the option of draft-N wireless support. Given that 802.11n might take a while to get a final standard, there's no way to tell whether or not this can be upgraded to the actual wireless-N until we get more information.
Pricing is not yet available, but these features are supposed to be out by the end of the month, so we'll see.
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If you haven't heard about Panasonic's Toughbook line of laptops, they're a series of notebooks designed to be used in the most rugged conditions: shock, vibration, high temperatures, spills, drops, you name it. Now there are two new models, the CF-19, a tablet PC, and the CF-30, a standard clamshell notebook.
Both are successors of previous models, the CF-18 and CF-29, respectively. Both are built from a magnesium alloy with shock-mounted screens and hard drives to be able to stand anything you can throw at them. (Do I mean that literally? I'm not quite sure.) Battery life has been improved over the previous models: both laptops are rated at six hours of use before the battery dies.
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Fujitsu's Lifebook Q and B series ultra-portable notebooks are getting a major performance boost. Both laptops now have an upgrade option that lets you have one of Samsung's new SSDs (solid-state drives, their new flash memory-based drives) instead of the conventional hard drive. The two drive options are 16GB and 32GB, and they add $700 and $1,400 (respectively) to the cost of the laptop.
The new SSDs definitely give the two Lifebooks a serious performance boost. Samsung's SSD can access data so fast that it's not even comparable to standard hard drives. But is it worth the price? I guess it depends on how much you're willing to spend for the extra performance.
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A short while ago Samsung announced that they had built a solid-state hard drive based only on flash memory. The drive has 32GB of storage space, which by today's standards isn't much, but it's completely silent, it has no moving parts, it's not as likely to crash, and it consumes less power and produces less heat. Not a bad deal, especially if you're just using it as a system drive. Loading times for your operating system and software would be faster, and your computer would run a lot quieter.
Now Samsung is the first to put together a computer based on a flash hard drive too. The Q30SSD is the first computer (a laptop, in this case) to use a solid-state drive, and it's already available in South Korea. It's definitely not cheap; the laptop currently sells for about $3,700, but there's always a price to pay to get the newest in technology.
Hopefully the prices drop a little by the time these laptops and others reach all of us not living in Korea.
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