While California certainly wouldn't be the first state to enact such legislature, it would be the first to take it to such a degree. If a proposed bill passes through California legislature, any teenager (under 18) found driving with a cell phone, or any mobile device, for that matter (PDA, laptop, etc.) will be fined. California gets $20 richer the first time a teenager is caught text-messaging on the road and $50 for every subsequent offense. There is no word as to whether or not this ban would extend to all California motorists, and not just the junior ones.

Microsoft and Mitsubishi are taking handheld PC's to the next level. LucidTouch, as the technology is called, allows users to control the touch screen PC with both hands, while previous touch-screens required some form of support (usually a hand) to hold the touch-screen up. LucidTouch technology poses a rather interesting question: Where is the PC part of the touch-screen PC going? Any manufacturer using LucidTouch will have to take low-profile to a new level, and somehow cram all the important hardware to the sides of the screen.

While recent recalls suggest that the current type of laptop batteries are dangerous, an alternative power source seems to be screaming "you ain't seen nothing yet": The Direct Methanol Fuel Cell. Samsung recently showed off a prototype of their Q35 laptop powered solely by a fuel cell. Samsung claims that the laptop can run eight hours a day for a month (about 240 hours) without needing a recharge. The most recent prototype of the Q35 even solved some noise problems previously associated with fuel cell powered laptops. Samsung is currently putting the Q35 through some strict safety testing, and it might even be available by the end of this year. A retail price is yet to be confirmed.

These days, it seems as if everyone has a laptop of their own. Demand for these mobile computers is higher than ever, and shows no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately, laptop component recalls are also higher than ever, and show no signs of slowing down. This quarter, the industry has already been hit by a shortage of LCD panels, hard disc drives, batteries, and casings. The future doesn't look too good either. Analysts predict that laptop demand will continue to soar, and shortages will manifest themselves in high prices, more and increasingly serious recalls as laptop components are rushed out of factories, or outright lack of stock.

Analysts do not expect any relief from this problem for at least five months.

Up to this point, DirectX10 cards in DirectX10 benchmarks have performed abysmally. Company of Heroes, Lost Planet, and other DX10 games have all performed at a fraction of the speed that their DX9 counterparts boast. However, this all is about to change, thanks to recent benchmarks from a pre-release version of Crysis. Dignews benchmarked modern DX10 computers, including a Toshiba Satellite notebook with an 8700. And while all of the computers had occasional stutters (which could plausibly be fixed by the time the game is released, considering Crysis is not even in beta yet), all of them also rendered the game in a quality that simply stunned reviewers. The Toshiba Satellite somehow managed to run Crysis with almost all settings maxed out. Please click the source link for the full review.

Nigerian schoolchildren have recently gotten the first batch of donated laptops from the One Laptop Per Child project (Laptop.org). Ideally, they would be using their brand new laptops to discover the world, get a head start in school, and excel in the competitive business world we live in.

So what do the Nigerian schoolchildren do? They watch all the pornography they can find all day long, and then store it on the 1GB SSD on each laptop. Nigerian officials are very upset that the OLPCs are being used to watch pornography, and in response, the developers of OLPC are putting filters in future versions of it.

Samsung introduced its new 19-inch Notebook which will hit retail in late july in the Korean market.
The known specs so far inlcude an SATA2 320GB hard drive , seven USB2.0 ports and of course a 19-inch wide LCD that supports 1000:1 contrast ratio and 300cd/m2 brightness.

Dell introduced eight colours for its two versions of 15 inch and two versions of 17 inch notebooks. The colours include black, blue, yellow, brown, red, green, pink and finally apple white.
The colours are available for Inspiron 1520 and 1521, 15.4 inch models and 17 inch Inspiron 1720 and 1721.
The 1520 comes with Vista and Core 2 Duo and starts at €879 while the 1521 comes also with Vista but uses Turion 64 X2 while the slowest which will also have Vista but a 1.6 GHz and 1 GB memory costs 729 €.

Intel and One Laptop per Child (OLPC) today announced they have agreed to work together to bring the benefits of technology to the developing world through synergy of their respective programs. Under the agreement, Intel and OLPC will explore collaborations involving technology and educational content. Intel will also join the board of OLPC.

OLPC is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to bring learning opportunities to the most remote and poorest children of the world by providing connected, low-cost and rugged laptops to each and every child in their daily lives.

Asus announced it almost a month ago at Computex Taipei. Today we get to see the specs along with a Full Review.


Specs Sheet
Display: 7"
Processor: Intel mobile CPU (Intel 910 chipset, 900MHz Dothan Pentium M)
Memory: 512MB RAM
OS: Linux (Asus customized flavor)
Storage: 8GB or 16GB flash hard drive
Webcam: 300K pixel video camera
Battery life: 3 hours using 4-cell battery
Weight: 2lbs
Dimensions: 8.9 in x 6.5 in x 0.82 in - 1.37 in (width x depth x thickness)
Ports: 3 USB ports, 1 VGA out, SD card reader, modem, Ethernet, headphone out, microphone in

Back in April, Dell started the "Plant A Tree For Me" fund, which is basically a gigantic charity based around planting trees to offset the carbon dioxide surplus in our world. Now, Dell is taking further steps to actively protect and help the environment. Two of Dell's latest notebooks, the D430 and Precision M4300, have been certified with the stringent Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star 4.0. Ten of Dell's desktop models have already been certified compliant with Energy Star 4.0, which Dell claims makes it "the greenest technology company". Dell also launched cooler-running servers that are more efficient and require less energy to run. Dell is also working hard to make SSD storage available in as many of it's computers as possible.

If competitors decide that they want to steal the crown of "the greenest technology company" from Dell, we may finally see companies striving to make computers more powerful while reducing their impact on the environment.

A report from Taiwanese analyst firm "Market Intelligence Center (MIC)" shows that a recent drop in notebooks prices isn't all good.

While the Taiwanese notebook industry shipped around 19.6 million units in Q2 2007, a 40 per cent year on year increase in volumes, the average selling price fell to $553 with shipment value up 31.5 per cent year on year, amounting to $10.24 billion.

In short, while notebook prices are lower than ever, and sales are higher than ever, profits are going down. Which is not good for businesses like Gateway, HP, Dell, and others.

Taiwan accounts for roughly 70% of all notebooks made (OEM's buy notebook parts from Taiwan, then configure as they please).

After the well known Sony notebook battery issues sparked off worries among numerous companies last year, the problems aren't over yet, with Gateway having it's second recall in under a year. The notebook maker has now announced that it is to recall a further 14,000 batteries - on top of the 35,000 Sony batteries it recalled in October. This time round the batteries for the 400VTX and 450ROG laptops manufactured between May and July 2003 are to be replaced, with the battery model numbers being 6500760 and 6500761 respectively. If you suspect you may be affected by this, visit this Gateway site to find further instructions.

NVIDIA Corporation today announced the GeForce 8700M GT graphics processing unit (GPU) for notebook PCs, a new high-end GPU designed for the most demanding notebook users. The GeForce 8700M GT GPU, the newest and fastest GPU in the GeForce 8M series of notebook graphics processors, raises the bar for DirectX 10 graphics and video performance. In addition to accelerating existing DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 content, GeForce 8700M GT also features NVIDIA PureVideo HD video processing engine and NVIDIA PowerMizer technology that intelligently balances the user's need for longer battery life and performance. The GeForce 8700M GT GPU will be available in notebooks from leading partners in North America, Europe, and Asia, including Toshiba, Sager, Prostar, Eurocom, Biohazard, Connoiseur, Cybersystem, Hypersonic, MALIBAL, Multirama, rock, Evesham, Falcon Northwest, Plaisio, XS2, Nexoc, Hyrican, Vigor Gaming, Voodoo PC, and many others.

Having become the major supplier of pre-built PCs in general, Hewlett Packard has now managed to take the crown in European notebook sales. Until recently, Acer held the top spot for Europe, but a 53% increase in year-on-year first quarter sales has allowed HP to leapfrog Acer, selling 1.38 million units compared to Acer's 1.23 million. This means that HP is now the largest supplier of notebooks in Europe, Asia and the US - beating Lenovo in China and Dell in the United States (HP sold 1.74 million notebooks in the US compared to Dell's 1.55 million). This confirms HP's position as the largest supplier of computers, and should certainly give competing companies like Dell and Acer something to think about.

Taiwanese company Via Technology shows off its prototype micro notebook at Computex 2007. The NanoBook has a 5 hour battery life running a 1.2 GHz C7 processor and 7 inch screen. Weighing in at 1.8 pounds expect a 30 gigabyte hard drive and up to 1 gigabyte of memory. Priced around $600, it competes with other mini notebooks from Palm and SamsungSource:Cnet

Intel has been creating waves with the new Centrino Pro/Duo plattform (although they dropped the "plattform" part) and AMD is trying to stay in the news. They have now shown off the upcoming Griffin CPU at the Microprocessor Forum 2007. The CPU itself is about as big as a compact flash card. I will come in combination with the RS780 Chipset, which features up to 14 USB 2.0 port & 6 SATA ports. Intel's Robson (or Turbo Memory) will be taken on by AMD's Hypermemory offering. There will be support for HDMI and DisplayPort as well. All this should be available in mid 2008.

Western Digital Corp., today announced it is now shipping its 250 GB WD Scorpio 2.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives. The drives employ perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to achieve the highest capacity available in a small form factor drive and have WD proprietary features that make the drive quiet, use less power and run at cool operating temperatures.

Techwarelabs brings some spy shots of what is considered to be the first quad-core notebook in existence.This laptop will supposedly support dual 8800 Video cards, a 17" screen and chassis, two internal hard drives up to 160GB each, and the new quad core Intel CPU, all using a 975 chipset.

Good luck trying to cool all that.

Fujitsu Japan has announced the super compact Lifebook U laptop which rightfully earns the title of 'the world's smallest and lightest notebook'. With a footprint of 171×133×26.5 mm, carrying it around should pose no problems, additionally, it weighs a mere 580 grams. It is powered by Intel's A110 processor clocked at 800Mhz and features a Intel 945GU Express chipset which has an onboard graphics processor. Specs include Wi-Fi, Ethernet, a fingerprint sensor, 1 x USB 2.0 port, CF and SD card slot and lastly a VGA out. The Lifebook U runs on Windows XP Professional or Vista Business. Watching movies wont be fun on the 5.6 inch (1024 x 600) display but you can surely send emails and make the cost sheet. The LCD doubles as a touch screen and can be rotated and twisted.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) is today announcing volume shipment of the industry's highest-capacity, highest-performing notebook hard drive with new optional data encryption technology. With double the capacity and a 22-percent performance improvement over its predecessor, the 200-gigabyte (GB), 7200 RPM Travelstar 7K200 reigns supreme as the leader in this elite notebook hard drive segment. Now, with optional hard-drive level "Bulk Data Encryption" technology from Hitachi, the Travelstar 7K200 offers even greater cachet to notebook users by helping to guard against data loss and piracy.

According to many industry experts Windows Vista drains notebook battery life faster than Windows XP. The main culprit is said to be the new Aero Glass feature which may look nice but is a burden for many users on the go. While the Aero interface is disabled when switched to power-saving mode, many manufacturers like Hewlett Packard are seeking their own solution to this problem. Experts say that Microsoft will likely have to improve Vista battery life performance in the upcoming service packs to meet consumer pressure.

Thanks to several factors, including a lower value of the dollar, Microsoft throwing in their $3-per-copy operating system, and production delays, the $100 OLPC project will now cost nearly double that figure per laptop. The asking price is now $175 per laptop. We are seeing production delays because the OLPC project needs $3 million USD to begin production of their laptop. While they have offered their laptop to several countries, few have actually followed through with the project. The founder of the OLPC project hopes that orders from Peru and Russia will allow them to start production by October 2007.

Another laptop battery recall has begun from today, when Acer Inc. announced that about 27,000 laptop batteries are defective. Again we are talking about Sony-made lithium-ion batteries that could overheat and cause a fire. The affected Acer models were sold in the U.S. and Canada from May 2004 through November 2006 for between $500 and $1,500. The laptops possibly containing the recalled batteries were the TravelMate series with 4-digit model numbers beginning with 242, 320, 321, 330, 422, 467, 561, C20, and the Aspire series beginning with model numbers 556, 560, 567, 930, 941, 980. Acer, whose U.S. division is based in San Jose, says consumers should immediately stop using the recalled batteries and contact the company for a free battery replacement. The laptops could still be safely used if powered by the AC adapter, the company said. Please click here, if you want to find out how you can replace your defective laptop battery.

Laptops based on Intel's new Centrino platform Santa Rosa are starting to leak out, this time they're from Lenovo (a few Fujitsu models got out last week). The new ThinkPads T61 and R61 are both based on Intel's Core 2 Duo processors and use Intel's Gm/PM965 chipset. Other specs include both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows XP Pro, Intel's new Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 IGP (for systems using integrated graphics), NVIDIA graphics (for other systems), 14.1" screens, Intel Turbo Card, smartcard support and full hard disk encryption. These laptops should be available from May this year, with a Blu-Ray version coming in July. Lenovo will also finally be removing the IBM branding from palm rests after acquiring Big Blue's laptop division in 2005.