When everyone thought that the ASUS UX21 will be the first “Ultrabook” to hit the market in September, here comes the rumor that says HP might launch an ultrabook even earlier than ASUS. According to Digitimes, HP is likely to release 2 or more models of Ultrabooks, which will be running on either Intel Core i7-2677M or i7-2637M, before ASUS. Foxconn Electronics, the manufacturer of HP ultrabooks, is said to have begun shipping the Ultrabooks to HP but both companies refuse to comment about this.

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The Acer AC700 Chromebook is now on sale at Amazon.com for $349. It’s the second Chromebook to hit the market after Samsung’s Series 5. Currently, the 3G model of Acer AC700 is not yet released to the market, so consumers can only opt for the Wifi model with the following specs:

• 11.6-inch  (1366 x 768) resolution screen
• Dual-core Intel Atom N570 Processor
• 2GB DDR3 RAM
• Intel Integrated GMA 3150 Graphics
• 16GB Solid State Drive
• 1.3 Megapixel HD Webcam (1280 x 1024)
• Two Built-in Speakers
• 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi
• 2- USB 2.0 Ports
• 1- HDMI Port
• Memory card slot for storing photos, music, and video
• Up to 6 hours of battery life

The Samsung Series 9 laptop is definitely one of the best ultraportable laptop around, but its $1,149 price tag sure scares a lot of people away. Now for those who couldn’t afford the Series 9, here’s the good news — Samsung is going to introduce the new Series 3 laptop which will be in the mid-level laptops range, but with similar premium finishes, solid keyboards, and pleasant touchpads as the Series 9.

The Series 3 laptops will be available in various sizes ranging from 11.6 to 15.6 inches, and in terms of CPU, there will be an option for Intel Core i3, i5, i7 and AMD processors. Starting price will be $599 for the Core i3 version. Details specs and availability are yet to be announced but you can check out the hands-on video for these laptops in the video below by Laptop Magazine.

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Besides Cedar Trail netbooks, ASUS is also planning to launch the UX21 “Ultrabook” on September. What’s an “Ultrabook”? It’s a new category of ultraportable laptop that Intel recently announced. And what’s special about it? Intel claims that it has longer battery life, are less than 0.8-inches thick, and priced under $1000. If you want to learn more about Ultrabook, PC World has a great article here that explains it in more details.

The ASUS UX21 will be the first “ultrabook” to be released to the market, and Digitimes reported that it will be launched by ASUS on September this year. The laptop is super thin with only 0.12 inches at its thinnest point and 0.67 inches at its thickest point, and weight only 2.4 pounds. Its whole body is covered with brushed-metal finish making it looks super stylish and feels very solid. Specs wise, it will features an 11.6 inch display, second generation Intel Core processors, and solid state drives. ASUS has not announced its price yet, but it’s expected to be priced under $1000.

Here’s a hands-on video of the ASUS UX21 ultrabook by Engadget at Computex 2011:

While ASUS has been very successful with their Eee PC Transformer in the tablet segment, they certainly have not forgotten about the netbook / ultraportable segment. Digitimes reported that the company will be launching Cedar Trail netbooks on September, and is targeting six million units of sales.

There will be 2 models of Cedar Trail netbooks that ASUS will be launching — the Eee PC 1025CE and 1025C. Both models come with a 10.1-inch screen with 1024 x 600 resolution, a Cedar Trail Atom processor (N2600 or N2800), up to 2GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 500GB HDD, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, Windows 7 Starter, and a choice of 3-cell or 6-cell batteries.

So what’s the difference between the Eee PC 1025CE and the 1025C? The 1025CE is the higher end model with a metal finish, a better webcam with 4x zoom, a USB 3.0 port, and a sleep-and-charge USB 2.0 port. The 1025C doesn’t have those features and is built from plastic instead of metal. The starting price of the Eee PC 1025C and 1025CE will be $249 and $279 respectively.

Below are the hands-on video for both netbooks by Nicole from Netbooknews.com at Computex 2011:

Thinkpad X220 Review Summary

Overview
The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 may look like the phased-out old laptops of the past, but it has completely blown away a lot of reviewers with its superb performance. Packed with the new Intel processor 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M, the ThinkPad X220 is one ultra-fast laptop. The laptop is also very light, making it very convenient and handy to carry around, and its six-cell battery provide extremely long battery life. The ThinkPad comes with 3 USB ports, and one remarkable feature of one port is that it can be used for charging mobile phones even when the laptop is off (which is great for those who are traveling).

Likes

• Impressive specs – It comes with the new Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor, 7200 RPM hard drive, 4GM RAM, an IPS display, and a six-cell battery.
• Lightweight – Despite having a solid construction, the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 is incredibly light, weighing just 3.6 pounds including its 6-cell battery.
• Great keyboard – The keyboard layout design of the Thinkpad X220 is said to be excellent with perfect spacing between keys. The curved keys also provide right amount of feedback. The extra large keys (the Escape and Enter keys) are truly helpful because typists are highly unlikely to miss them out now. PC World mentioned that instead of impeding the work, these big keys actually help a lot.
• Good quality IPS display – Not only the 1366 x 768 resolution IPS screen is crisp and vibrant, both vertical and horizontal viewing angle are excellent. Also, it’s a matte display so you won’t have to worry about reflection problem even in bright environment.
• Impressive video conferencing feature – With a 720p webcam and a new noise canceling mics, the Ideapad X220 is very a capable machine for video conferencing.
• Strong performance – Featuring Intel’s new Sandy Bridge 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M processor, 7,200rpm hard drive, and 4GB of DDR3 RAM, the X220 has a very strong performance. Even with lots of tabs and windows open while browsing the web, plus an open window for editing photos, the laptop still worked smoothly. PC World pointed out that even when watching movies that have a high-bit rate, the laptop still ran smoothly.
• Stay cool even after long hours usage – Unlike other laptops and notebooks that eventually heat up after hours of use, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 is remarkable because it does not heat up. It stays cool even when the laptop is being subject to prolonged use.
• Long Battery Life – With its 63Wh six-cell battery, Engadget reported that the Thinkpad X220 lasted seven hours and 19 minutes on their video rundown test, which involve looping the same standard definition video with brightness set at 65 percent.

Dislikes

• Boring design – design that hasn’t changed much in the last ten years. Looks less attractive than its competitors like HP’s EliteBooks and Dell Vostro
• Touchpad isn’t large and sensitive enough – The touchpad that measures 3.0 x 1.95-inch is not spacious enough for good navigation experience. Also, it’s not sensitive enough for multitouch gesture.
• Bloatware – There are a lot of background applications running, even when there are no user-applications being run. PC World pointed out that the task manager even showed 90 processes going on even when doing nothing.
• Webcam quality isn’t up to expectation – The webcam that goes with it may be for high-definition purposes, but images aren’t that clear, and even appear washed out. Reviewers expect colors to pop out, it they do not.

Customer Reviews

Thinkpad X220 Customer Reviews

[ReviewAZON asin="B004UR9TCY" display="fullpost"]

Videos

Thinkpad X220 video Reviews

The netbook market may be slowing down, but Intel’s absolutely not giving up on the netbooks. The company recently announced the new Cedar Trail platform, which is the next generation Atom processor that’s clearly targeting the netbook and the low cost mini laptop segment.

So what can we expect from Cedar Trail? First, performance will improve slightly, like every other Atom launch before it. Power consumption will be a key factor here. With the new Cedar Trail platform, netbook’s battery life is expected to further improved compared to the current generation netbook. Intel is promising battery life in the 10 hours plus bracket and “weeks” of standby time.

Another improvement of Cedar Trail netbook is that it will run cooler with a “50 percent lower thermal design point”, according to Intel. This enable manufacturers to design a fanless netbook that’s thinner, lighter, and run quieter.

Also, Intel says that the Cedar Trail platform is capable of triple booting, which means it can run Windows, MeeGo, and Chrome OS on the same system; and let you pick the OS that you want to run when the system is booting up.

Intel’s Smart Connect technology is another special feature that can be found on the Cedar Trail platform. With this technology, any running application will be able to update itself, even when the netbook is asleep. For example, if you have a Cedar Trail netbook that’s put into standby mode with Twitter and Facebook running in the background, Smart Connect technology will wake your system up periodically to check for Facebook and Twitter updates before putting it back to sleep again. The benefit for this is that the resume time will be much faster when you wake your netbook up since everything have already been updated.

Graphical performance has been a major limitation for Intel Atom platform. That’s why the AMD Fusion platform is getting a lot of attention recently for being much more capable than Intel in this area. In the new Cedar Trail platform, Intel promised smooth 1080p HD video playback and HDMI support, which isn’t possible currently on the Pine Trail platform without the help of third party GPU.

And finally, there’s the Wireless Display (or WiDi) technology that mirrors whatever is on the netbook to an HDTV, wirelessly. The beauty of WiDi is that the technology is built into the Wi-Fi chip, so there’s no dongle hanging off the USB port. A separate Netgear receiver is required in order to take advantage of WiDi, though.

What about price? The recently announced ASUS Eee PC 1025C and 1025CE suggest that a Cedar Trail netbook will cost no more than $279. With all the attention that the tablet PC is getting recently, such low price will definitely help to draw some attention back to the netbook.

ASUS recently announced the Eee PC X101 MeeGo netbook on Computex 2011. The netbook is super thin and light, weighing just 950g (2.09 pounds) and measuring 17.6mm in thickness. The best part is that it will cost only $200 for the base model. In terms of specs, it will comes with an Intel Atom N435 processor, a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 matte display, and a 2600mAh 28Wh battery. There’s a higher end model called X101H which will feature a “hybrid hard drive” (SSD + HDD) and choice of Windows 7 or MeeGo.

Below is a hands-on video of the Eee PC X101 on Computex 2011 by Engadget:

Google just announced the Chromebook, and Samsung and Acer are among the first two companies to release a Chromebook. For Samsung, it’s called the Series 5. It’s already listed on Amazon and it comes with the following specs:

• 12.1″ (1280×800) 300 nit Display
• 3.26 lbs / 1.48 kg
• 8.5 hours of continuous usage 1
• Intel® AtomTM Dual-Core Processor
• Built in dual-band Wi-Fi and World-mode 3G (optional)
• HD Webcam with noise cancelling microphone
• 2 USB 2.0 ports
• 4-in-1 memory card slot
• Mini-VGA port
• Fullsize Chrome keyboard
• Oversize fully-clickable trackpad

Below are the official promo video from Samsung and a hands-on video of the Series 5 from Engadget:

What Is A Chromebook?

Google introduced a new category of cloud computing device called the Chromebook on the I/O 2011 event. What exactly is a Chromebook? The quick answer is a laptop-like device running Google Chrome OS. But there are several differences between a Chromebook and a traditional laptop/netbook.

Software

Chrome OS while being called an OS is actually an Internet browser with minimal system setting to play with. Unlike the Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS, the Chrome OS depends on cloud application to perform almost all of the tasks that you would normally do on your local PC program. For example, you will be using Google Doc to manage your documents instead of Microsoft Office, and all of your documents will be stored in the cloud instead of to your local hard drive. There are pros and cons for that which we will discuss later. Of course the Google Doc replacing Microsoft Office is just an example. You will be checking email, playing games, browsing photos, etc.. pretty everything on the web using a Chromebook. That’s why there’s a need for a Chrome Webstore — a place where you can find all the games and apps for your Chromebook. If you have used any Android devices before, the Chrome Webstore is something just like the Android market.

Hardware

In terms of hardware, the Chromebook is pretty similar to a netbook. Taking the Samsung Series 5 (one of the first Chromebook to hit the market) as an example, it has a 12.1-inch display, a dual-core Intel Atom N570 processor, 16GB SSD for storage, 8.5 hours of battery life, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 4-in-1 memory card slot, Mini-VGA port, and a full-size Chrome keyboard. The major differences we see here between a Chromebook and a typical netbook are the storage and keyboard layout. Typical netbooks comes with larger but slower 250GB hard drive. You won’t need this for a Chromebook since most of your stuff will be stored on the Cloud. And for keyboard, you will find quite a number of standard keyboard keys such as ‘Delete’, ‘Caps lock’ , and ‘Print Screen’ to be missing on the Chromebook’s keyboard, and some extra keys not found on the typical keyboard to be there.

Pros and Cons

What’s Good about Chromebook

Secure Data – The Chromebook is truly a cloud computing device. You can access your data from anywhere at anytime. You won’t loose any data even if you throw your Chomebook into the sea. Get a new Chromebook, login, and tada.. all your stuff are still there.. that’s because everything is stored on the cloud.

Security – Since the Chrome OS is basically just a web browser, there’s less security loopholes to be exploited by hackers. You don’t even need an antivirus.

Instant Bootup – The Chrome OS is a very lightweight OS and it boots up in 8 seconds or less.

What’s The Downside

Internet connection is a must – Since everything is done on the web, you can do almost nothing when you don’t have access to the web. Luckily there’s the 3G version Chromebook that ensures you always get Internet access.

Limitation of web application – Not everything can be done on the web yet. For example, graphic or video editing still requires professional software like Adobe Photoshop.

Price – It isn’t cheap. The Samsung Series 5 is currently selling at $429 for the Wifi version, and $499 for the 3G version. You can get a netbook with similar hardware specs for less than $300.