Previews and Reviews

I couldn’t have gotten through college without my laptop’s docking station. When I would return from the library with my Dell Inspiron 8200, rather than plugging in all my connections one by one—mouse, keyboard, external monitor—to my notebook, I had a Dell dock or port replicator on my dorm room desk. All I had to do was drop my laptop into the dock and I was up and running.

Whether you’re a current HP notebook owner or a college-bound student looking to buy an HP, HP’s xb3000 Notebook Expansion Base is a solid docking solution. Though it has a larger footprint than most docks and is a bit pricer, the $249 station wraps quality Altec Lansing speakers and a laptop stand into one.

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This week our site has been abuzz with comments about OLPC’s next generation laptop, the XO-2. No prototype of the XO-2 has been built yet, and the machines aren’t scheduled to ship until 2010, but that hasn’t stopped readers from expressing strong opinions about the XO-2’s keyboard, or lack thereof.

Replacing a physical keyboard with a touchscreen virtual keypad (à la the iPhone) is a bold move on OLPC’s part, but is it good for everyday use?

RoMania commented:

The fact that the keyboard is missing it’s a big problem. Trust me I prefer to type on a real keyboard rather than on a touch screen. [sic]

Flatus said:

Touchscreens that you press may work for an ATM machine, where you’re only doing a few presses while looking at the screen.

A user named Jason was blunt in comparing the XO-2’s keyboard to one from the late 70s/early 80s:

The future is typing on an Atari 400?

For those not well-versed in disco-era technology, we should say that the Atari 400 (pictured at right) was an early home PC that featured a membrane keyboard. Membrane keyboards were used in a few other early home computers but were quickly relegated to microwave-oven keypads, because typing on a flat surface is so uncomfortable. Or is it?

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Last week, CTL released the specs of its new mini-notebook, the IL1PC. This morning the system arrived at our offices. According to CTL, the unit containing a 60GB hard drive, 1GB of memory, and Windows XP Home will be available through online retailers in the coming weeks for $449. But is the system worth the extra $50 compared with the 7-inch ASUS Eee PC 4G XP? Let’s find out.

Sleek Exterior, Small Footprint
Right out of the box we were impressed by the glossy black lid on the IL1PC. Though it gives the system a nice sassy look, it quickly became smeared in fingerprints. The 9.6 x 6.8 x 1.7-inch notebook had no shame getting up on the scale: It weighed in at 2.4 pounds, 3.0 pounds with the AC adapter. Though the system is slightly heavier and wider than the Eee PC 4G, it’s still very light.
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Today, Western Digital introduced its new Mac-compatible My Passport Studio portable hard drive for protecting all of your most valuable data. Weighing less than 5 ounces, the external hard drive lets Apple users back up their favorite documents, music, photos, videos, and other files using OS X Leopard’s Time Machine.

The My Passport Studio also features FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, a lengthy five-year limited warranty, a capacity gauge that lets users know how much space remains on the drive, and a metallic silver finish designed to complement other Mac products. Western Digital’s My Passport Studio is available now in 250GB ($159) and 320GB ($219) capacities.

I am here this morning in Cambridge, Mass., at OLPC’s Global Country Workshop. Opening the conference this morning was OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte, who announced the second generation of the OLPC XO laptop, which will be called the XO-2.

Negroponte didn’t share many details about the XO-2’s hardware, but the new system has two touch-sensitive displays. As you can see from the video and the pictures, the XO-2 will be much smaller than the original machine (half the size, according to the press release) and will have a foldable e-book form factor. “The next generation laptop should be a book,” Negroponte said.

The XO-2 will employ the dual indoor-and-sunlight displays, which was pioneered by former OLPC CTO Mary Lou Jepsen. The design will provide a right and left page in vertical format, a hinged laptop in horizontal format, and a flat, two-screen continuous surface for use in tablet mode. “Younger children will be able to use simple keyboards to get going, and older children will be able to switch between keyboards customized for applications as well as for multiple languages,” the press release reads. The XO-2 will also reduce power consumption to 1 watt.

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This post is not a preemptive eulogy for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Over the past few days—since the announcement that Windows XP will run on OLPC’s XO laptop—we’ve noticed quite a few naysayers.

GigaOm, to pick on one in particular, said in his post that OLPC was a far-fetched idea from the start:“[I]t was being shoved down the throats of emerging economies with more dire needs, such as food, clean water and schools.” To that, I have to go with Nicholas Negroponte’s answer, which I have committed to memory at this point: “It’s not a laptop project; it’s an education project.”

Then Om, as many have said over the past few days, hits at the availability of XP on the system. “The availability of Windows XP is different from what the people behind OLPC had set out to do—build a truly open, low-cost connected computing device for kids around the world.” Isn’t an open platform one that can run any operating system? Couldn’t a truly open system run Sugar and XP side by side, just like Negroponte asserts will happen?

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For the most part, I’ve been very content with the way the Xandros Eee PC 900 runs on the original specs. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to upgrade the 1GB of memory to 2GB.

The Eee PC, like its 701 predecessor, has only one DIMM slot, so if your system comes with less than 2GB and you want to upgrade, you’ll need to throw out the factory-installed RAM. The RAM replacement process is pretty painless, at least compared with that of the HP Mini-Note. However, I will confess it took me a long time to find the second screw to take off the back of the system. For some odd reason, ASUS decided to put an Eee PC sticker over the second screw on the back. Why? Most likely to make me feel like an idiot.

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We at LAPTOP just love us some face offs. Just a few days ago we pitted the Asus Eee PC 701 vs. the Asus Eee PC 900 in a knock-down drag-out brawl, and last week the Sprint and Verizon versions of the BlackBerry Curve 8830 threw up the cuffs.

Today’s bout? The Acer Aspire 8920G vs the HP Pavillion HDX in a battle for multimedia supremacy. Both machines offer gorgeous displays, Blu-ray drives, and discrete graphics, but like Highlander, there can only be one. Check out the video below to see which machine came out on top.

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This week (needless to say, this whole year) has been full of mini-notebook arrival news. Some systems, like the MSI Wind, we cannot wait to get our hands on. Others, we’re less excited about. We might just have to add the CTL IL2 PC to that list.

The IL2 PC made by CTL, the same manufacturer of the 2go PC, will have a 7-inch display, VIA chipset, integrated Wi-Fi, and a 40GB hard drive. Seems like a Eee PC clone to me. See below for the quick specs:

• CPU: 1-GHz VIA C7-M
• RAM: 1GB DDR2 Standard
• Display: 7-inch LCD, 800 x 480
• Storage: 40GB 1.8″ HDD
• Two USB 2.0 ports, 3-in-1 (SD/MMC/MS) memory card reader, VGA, Ethernet, modem, headphone, mic
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Size: 9.6 x 6.8 x 1.7 inches
• Weight: <2.7 pounds
• 4-cell Li-ion Battery (up to 4 hours typical usage time)
• OS: Microsoft Windows XP, Linux

While we’re waiting on the official price from CTL, we don’t think it a stretch to expect something in the $399 range.

Yesterday I wrote a post about Garmin’s $99 offer that will give BlackBerry users unlimited access to its GPS software for the lifetime of the device. One commenter asked if BlackBerrys from carriers such as Verizon Wireless that have locked down GPS software could still take advantage of Garmin’s offer.

There’s a two-part answer: you can, but it’ll cost you. Of course, Garmin isn’t the villain here. The carriers are trying to push their own navigation solutions (e.g., VZ Navigator) by locking down the GPS capabilities of phones including some versions of the Curve and phones in the 8800 series.

Here’s the official response from Garmin:

“Customers with locked-down GPS can still use Garmin Mobile, however it will require them to have an independent Bluetooth/GPS receiver, such as the GPS 10x. They can also use a third-party GPS/Bluetooth receiver with our maps. If their BlackBerry has a locked GPS, it’ll be slightly more than $99.99 because they’d have to buy the one-time-purchase $99.99 maps and a GPS/Bluetooth receiver (the GPS 10x is $99.99).”

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