This week is truly dedicated to new laptop releases, and here we bring a bunch of new releases for you.
ACER TIMELINE X
Lets start with Acer TimelineX line-up. 11.6-inch TimelineX 1830T, 13.3-inch TimelineX 3820T, 14-inch TimelineX 4820T and a 15.6-inch TimelineX 5820T, all for you from the house of Acer.
The 1830T packs Intel Centrino or Core 2 Solo CPUs, but the rest get their pick from Intel’s Calpella Core i3, i5 and i7 ranges. The Intel Core i3-330M and i3-350M (2.12GHz or 2.26GHz), Core i5-430M, i5-520M and i5-540M (2.26GHz, 2.40GHz or 2.53GHz) and Core i7-620M (2.66GHz) are all on offer, together with up to 8GB of memory and up to 640GB of storage.
There are also various ATI Mobility Radeon graphics options, including the HD 5470 and HD 5650, while wireless connectivity includes a choice of WiFi b/g or WiFi b/g/n, optional 3G and optional Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Acer reckons you’ll see up to 12hrs battery life from the 3820T, 4820T and 5820T, while the 1830T will get you up to 8hrs.
SAMSUNG NB30
Samsung launches its “True Netbook”- NB30. Samsung isn’t the first company to attempt to ruggedize a netbook, the Dell Latitude 2100 beat it to that particular punch line, but it’s as much as it can do make netbooks remotely interesting at the moment. It has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive, with Wireless-N Wi-Fi and Bluetooth rounding off the wireless connectivity. A 10.1in screen, and its incumbent 1,024 x 600 resolution display, is another given, though Samsung wins brownie points for using an anti-glare finish.
For wired connectivity you get the usual suspects, which include three USB ports, VGA, audio jacks, Ethernet and a memory card slot. This is perfectly sufficient for most demands, and there’s the added bonus of one of the USB ports supporting standby charging. This is a great feature for anyone who wants to charge their phone, but doesn’t have the mains power adapter to hand.
The NB30 has Windows 7 Starter edition installed. This is a stripped down version of Windows 7 intended specifically for netbooks, which does away with the bits of Windows that aren’t strictly necessary. Its six-cell, 5,900mAh capacity battery is the same as that found in the N210, and produces equally good results. With wireless disabled it lasted over eight hours of video playback, which is a very good result by any measure.
A Legend Reborn: Alienware M11x R2- Optimus and Arrandale joins in. It sports a 11.6″ LCD, with the faster Arrandale CPU (non-ULV) but a GT 330M GPU. What’s truly unfortunate is that along with the CPU upgrade and Optimus, the price jumped $150 and we’re still stuck with a panel similar to what we find in entry-level 11.6″ netbooks. That’s another complaint we have with the M11x R2: pricing is no longer quite as compelling. In fact, if you’re willing to give up Arrandale ULV, you can get the original for a lower cost, with slightly better battery life and the potential to run Linux and still get switchable graphics.
It sports a Core i5-520UM (32nm, 2×1.06GHz, Turbo to 1.87GHz, 3MB, 18W), Core i7-640UM (32nm, 2×1.20GHz, Turbo to 2.27GHz, 3MB, 18W) overclockable to 166MHz bus. It carries a memory of 2x1GB to 2x4GB DDR3-800 2x2GB DDR3-800 which comes tested. Graphics are from NVIDIA GeForce GT 335M with Optimus Technology with Intel HD Graphics.
For those that don’t care about Linux, however, the R2 is going to be the better option, remember that getting driver updates for switchable graphics from NVIDIA is unlikely, whereas the latest Verde drivers support Optimus laptops.
Tags: 250gb hard drive, Acer TimelineX, Alienware M11x R2, dell latitude, intel centrino, memory card slot, netbook, power adapter, Samsung NB30