Super Parked » David Meyer

Intel unveils tablet Classmate PC design

David Meyer — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:13:00 +0000

The new Classmate PCs will have twistable displays, allowing the Netbooks to be used in tablet mode.

(Credit: Intel)

Intel has revealed the design for a tablet version of its Classmate PC, a low-powered Netbook designed for use in primary schools.

The tablet-format Classmate, which was unveiled Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will let manufacturers build Classmate PCs that can be used either as a standard clamshell laptop or--with a 180-degree swivel of the display--as a touch-screen tablet. As with most Netbooks, it will run on Intel's Atom processor.

"Education is one of the best ways to improve the future for individuals, villages or nations," Lila Ibrahim, the general manager of Intel's emerging-markets platform group, said in a statement Friday. "There are 1.3 billion school-age children around the world and of those only five percent have access to a PC or the internet. The IT industry has a huge opportunity to contribute to how technology can improve students' learning and students' lives."

Ibrahim's division developed the reference design for the convertible Classmate PC based on ethnographic research. Child-friendly features include a water-resistant keyboard and a sturdy frame. Another feature is dubbed "palm rejection"--in tablet mode, the user can rest their palm on the touchscreen while writing, without the screen registering the palm's pressure as input.

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MSI Netbook sports solid-state and hard drives

David Meyer — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:05:00 +0000

MSI has launched a Netbook that uses both solid-state and hard-disk drives.

The U115 Hybrid, unveiled Monday, comes with a solid-state disk for most of the PC's operations, together with a hard-disk drive that can optionally be used for storage. An "ECO on mode" temporarily disengages the hard drive; ...

Study: BlackBerry has twice failure rate of iPhone

David Meyer — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:27:38 +0000

(Credit: SquareTrade)

Apple's iPhone has half the failure rate of RIM's BlackBerry in the first year of use, a study carried out by a mobile-phone warranty firm has found.

The SquareTrade study, released Saturday, looked at more than 15,000 handsets that were covered by the company's ...

Originally posted at News - Wireless

ARM Cortex-based Netbooks due soon

David Meyer — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:27:38 +0000

Netbooks using ARM's next-generation processor architecture will be announced soon, according to a senior executive at the company.

Rob Coombs, director of mobile solutions at the U.K. processor design company, told ZDNet UK on Wednesday that Cortex-A8- and Cortex-A9-based application processors would find their way not only into

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