Green IT looking pale at CeBIT

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

One of the primary themes of CeBIT this year was supposed to be Green IT. Interest in the subject is “overwhelming” according to the CeBIT website.
And indeed there’s an entire hall dedicated to it this year, albeit one of the smaller ones. But still hall 8 – “Green IT World” – is sparsely occupied. The subdued ambience is a long way from the heaving mass of bodies in hall 21, where the likes of MSI and Gigabyte are showing off their shiny stuff amid loud music and pneumatic young ladies wearing shirts which appear, very regrettably, to have shrunk in the wash.

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Netbook rivals battle it out at CeBIT

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

The big netbook guns are out in the halls of CeBIT this year, with MSI, Asus and now Gigabyte showing a raft of new low-cost models. Here’s a round-up of what’s new.

MSI
On the MSI stand, the Wind U100 series has blossomed into the U110, U115 and U123 series. The U110 Eco promises to bring the Wind’s Achilles Heel – its battery life – up to snuff, with a claimed 12 hours on the standard battery. MSI says this is possible with the use of the new Intel Menlow mobile platform, originally intended for Intel’s pet MID (mobile internet device) product category but now half-inched for netbooks.

The U115 is, MSI claims, the first hybrid netbook with both SSD and hard disk storage, but aside from that looks the same as the U110, and both share the same styling as the original Wind U100:

The Wind U123 is slightly higher-end, with a posher, more angular look and aimed at business users, and it brings an integrated 3G broadband adapter to the Wind range:

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