First look: the Ion-powered Lenovo Ideapad S12

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Lenovo’s Ideapad S12 is one of the first netbooks we’ve seen to use Nvidia’s Ion platform, which can allegedly “turn a netbook into a notebook” thanks to its combination of Intel Atom CPU and Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU.

It’s a new part that’s only been used by Acer up until now, in its netbooks and A-Listed Aspire Revo R3600.

That ambitious claim comes courtesy of Matt Wuebbling, a senior manager in Nvidia’s notebook division, who’ll understandably talk up the chances of his own product in the face of endless scepticism. However, having been hands-on with Lenovo’s latest offering and seeing the Ion in action, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to support his claims.

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MSI’s new-look Wind U120 – now with integrated 3G

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

MSI’s Wind U100 has earned quite a few admirers in PC Pro’s offices, but if there’s one thing lacking from it and all the current crop of netbooks, it’s integrated 3G. 

Right on cue, MSI have just sent us a few shots of their forthcoming Wind U120, which will be officially launching in January. Draft-N and HSDPA 3.5G will be integrated as standard, and we presume the rest of the specification will be the usual netbook fare. So you can expect an Atom N270 processor, 1 or 2 gigabytes  of memory and probably a 120GB hard drive as a bare minimum given MSI’s propensity towards mechanical disk drives in their notebooks. We have a gut feeling that it might even be the first netbook in the range to sport Intel’s forthcoming N330 Dual-Core Atom processor.

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Look what just blew in… MSI’s Wind

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Since we first caught a glimpse of MSI’s Eee rival, the Wind, we’ve been eagerly waiting to get our hands on one, and just an hour or so ago, one of our lovely contacts at MSI obliged us.

And while the pictures may have looked promising, the Wind is even more alluring in the flesh. The matte white finish looks good, and feels good too. It’s no match for the model looks of HP’s Mini Note 2133, sure, but as our recent review made abundantly clear, looks aren’t everything.

The base feels sturdy enough, and the gentle curves do look rather attractive in a pleasingly plain, understated kind of way. The lid is a little more pliant, and really tugging on it left ripples waving across the display, but it’s clearly strong enough to fend off the odd knock here and there.

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To Eee or Not to Eee?

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

I’m in something of a quandary. After seeing just how much work I can get done on the train – there’s an awful lot of time to be had in between businessman having fights with their portable bicycles and then hammering away on their Blackberries – I’ve decided to buy some sort of ultraportable laptop.

My motivation is that while I’d like to work on the train, getting anything done at the moment requires more effort than I’d like. Which, ideally, is no effort at all. At the moment, hammering out a review on the journey home involves lugging a (relatively) heavy laptop in an extra bag, with the respective power cables in case I decide to use it when I get home, too. I’d like to condense this down somewhat, and some sort of smaller, lighter laptop stands out, as I’d be able to slip it into my backpack with everything else.

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