By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

THE ULTRAMOBILE PC business is heating up as more hardware manufacturers are getting into the fray. Not to be outdone, computer manufacturer Red Fox and AMD have launched the Wizbook, which will compete with the Asus Eee PC (which technically is not a UMPC).

Although slightly bigger than the Eee PC, the Wizbook has a few features not present in the Eee PC, in particular a bigger hard disk, a larger LCD screen, and a PC card slot. Red Fox claims that it also has twice the battery life of the Eee PC.

But there are some features that are absent from the Wizbook, particularly an integrated web camera, an extra USB slot (the Eee PC has three whereas the Wizbook only has two), and a lower memory module.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

IT’S just over an inch bigger than the first model but it still is a tiny thing and it works really well.

Asus really took the ultramobile PC (UMPC) business by storm (though technically the Asus Eee PC is not a UMPC). Worldwide, the Taiwanese firm had wanted to target a very specific niche market and did not intend to land itself into the mass PC market. Instead, it made a name for itself, even farther from its success as a motherboard maker and basically boosted the idea that a UMPC is a viable product. The company launched the first Eee PC (model 701) in the middle of 2007. Few thought that a solid-state drive (SSD) could present itself as a replacement for mechanical hard disks, especially with the upper limit of 8 gigabytes, which was relatively small capacity at the time. But since then, it became obvious that SSDs would spur manufacturers to integrate SSDs into their own notebooks.

Now there are copycats of other UMPCs using SSDs but with almost nothing coming close to the Eee PC. Blame it on being mesmerized by a fully working notebook on such a small scale but as long as it actually worked then it’s fine by me. Besides, the first Eee PC was pretty cheap (at least P16,000 for the 4-gigabyte model) and it worked quite well even with just a Linux operating system. A few tweaks and it could even be installed with a Microsoft Windows XP operating system though it was a bit risky as the remaining space on a 4GB SSD might not be able to fully accommodate any other application.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

IN THIS day and age of high power costs, computer enthusiasts are becoming increasingly aware that their hobby of building computers might affect their power consumption. Some hardware manufacturers are already integrating power-saving features in their products, such as Intel’s latest processors and some hard disk models.

Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Asustek takes it a bit farther with what it calls the first ever motherboard that has an integrated power-saving feature. The P5Q motherboard series has been integrated with a specialized southbridge chip called the energy processing unit (EPU-6), which the company claims to have a power-saving level of 80.23 percent and utilizes up to 96 percent of energy consumed.

Asus claims the P5Q can also manage the power consumption of the processors, hard disk and graphics cards installed on it. According to Asus Southeast sales account specialist Steven Cokeng, the motherboard EPU setting runs automatically but can be adjusted through the system BIOS.

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By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net

UPDATE: Editor’s note: Corrected typo in battery life of Asus Eee PC 900, and error in screen resolution of Asus Eee PC 701. Thanks to our readers for the heads up.

THEIR product may sound like a cross between a shriek and a car screech but Taiwanese firm Asustek shook up the ultra mobile PC (UMPC) business last year by launching the Asus Eee PC 701. While it is technically not a UMPC, the Eee PC proved to be a most convenient and marketable device in this market segment.

Barely a year after the launch, Asus wants to take on the UMPC market again by launching the Eee PC 900, which only has a few differences from the previous model except for bigger RAM (1 gigabyte on the 900 series compared to 512 megabytes for the Eee PC 700 series) and a higher-capacity solid-state drive (SSD), a feature that makes the device even more appealing as it lengthens battery life compared to regular hard disks with moving parts. Both the 900 and 700 series still use 900-megahertz Intel Celeron-M processors. The first Eee PC models have 2GB and 4 GB SSDs while the new Eee PC 900 has 12GB and 20GB models.

Here’s a video of Vivian Hung, Eee PC product manager for Asustek Asia Pacific, showing the new Asus Eee PC 900.

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By Relly Carpio
INQUIRER.net

SONY ERICSSON recently launched three new Walkman phones which incorporate the Walkman On Top concept: the Sony Ericsson W350i, W380i, and W890i

“It’s having the Walkman interface easily accessible to the user with it being on top of the phone,” explained Vincent De la Cruz, product group marketing manager of Sony Ericsson Philippines.

“We believe there is a market that wants to put music first and foremost over the phone. Particularly a phone with the basic features, but allows people who want to enjoy their music access it easily. Always putting their music experience first,” he added.

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