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Samsung on Thursday said it plans to launch a new line of multimedia “powerhouse” R80 series notebooks at Best Buy, both online and offline, on March 7th. The sub-$1,000 notebook line will come with Blu-ray capabilities and Nvidia GeForce graphics. “Best Buy continues to be an important retail partner for Samsung, and we’re excited to offer a range of notebook and netbook options to our customers that deliver exceptional craftsmanship and performance,” said Todd Bouman, director of product marketing at Samsung Electronics Information Technology Division. “True to Samsung’s unique, customer-focused design aesthetic, these mobile PCs are flexible enough to be used as mobile devices or desktop replacements for all-day use.” There will be three models in all — R480 ($730), R580 ($830), and R780 ($930) — all of which come built around Intel’s Core i3/i5 platform. The flagship 17-inch R780 unit will include 4GB of RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT 330M graphics, a 500GB hard drive, DVD burner, 1.3MP webcam, Wi-Fi, and Windows Home Premium 64-bit.

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Netbooks are all about portability, and for the time being, Averatec trumps all others in that department, or so the company claims. Averatec this week announced its N1200 netbook, which it says is the thinnest and lightest 10.1-inch netbook on the market. Measuring 10.7 x 6.5 x 9 inches (without the feet), the N1200 weighs a mere 2.2 pounds. It’s also fairly attractive for a netbook, eschewing a glossy chassis in favor of a brushed steel appearance on the lid. Inside it all sits what you’d expect from a modern netbook

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

Nvidia this morning officially launched its next-generation Ion platform, and with it, we expect a deluge of product announcements. One of those comes from Zotac, who today announced what it claims is the world’s first Ion 2 powered mini-PC. “The ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11 mini-PC is perfect for home theater PC use as well daily usage. Watching high-definition movies with premium audio tracks is a rewarding experience with the ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11 mini-PC.” Mr. Berger said

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It’s no secret that Intel’s Atom chips are a bit on the slow side. While we certainly like the battery efficiency, a bit more power would be great. It appears Intel is willing to appease us, and the announcement may come on Monday. Intel is expected to introduce the Pine Trail based Atom N470 , which will be nearly the same as the N450, but clocked at 1.83GHz instead of 1.66GHz.

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

The Habey BIS-6620 is petite, and it certainly does offer options for connectivity and integration, but is it ready to compete with the big boys as a digital entertainment center? Specs are reasonable . The BIS-6620 has an Intel Atom Z510 CPU running at 1.1GHZ, with a 400MHZ front-side bus, and an Intel US15W chipset with GMA500 graphics. It can hold up to 2GB of memory in a single DDR2 slot.  Storage is whatever you can fit into a 1.8-inch internal HDD/SDD SATA II bay

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

German website NetbookNews.de discovered something rather interesting about Lenovo’s ThinkPad X100e. As it currently stands, the X100e sports an 11.6-inch screen with a 1366 x 768 display, AMD Neo MV-40 single-core CPU, and ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, but an overhaul might be in order. NetbookNews.de stumbled upon the X100e’s support page , which showed a different set of specs next to the above. The alternate specs included a 10.1-inch screen with a 1280 x 720 display and Intel Atom N450 processor

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The new Asus T101MT netbook tablet was spotted in an FCC filing back in December, but it’s now been made official . The systems comes with the familiar netbook internals including a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, a 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen (with touchscreen capabilities), and 1-2GB of RAM depending on which version of Windows 7 the customer opts for. Consumers will also have a choice between a 160GB hard drive, or a 320GB hard drive with 500GB of Asus cloud storage free for a year.   Of course, the real trick here is the rotating screen that swivels around to put the computer into tablet mode

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Acer is taking HD video playback in its netbooks seriously, with its new Aspire One 532G netbook offering smooth 1080p playback through an HDMI port. Acer is boasting that the netbook can handle YouTube HD videos and high-def playback from Facebook without problems, while mainstream gaming and 3D computing should be no trouble either. The video power comes courtesy of Nvidia’s upgraded Ion platform, which now makes use of the recently announced Optimus technology . Optimus rolls out This allows the 532G to switch between integrated or dedicated graphics processors on the fly, which means when you’re just browsing the web you can get 10 hours of battery life, but the more powerful GPU kicks in automatically when you start playing HD movies or games. The discrete half of the Nvidia Ion solution offers 512MB of graphics memory and CUDA support for some advanced applications, which means the netbook will be more useful for tasks like video editing and encoding than its Intel Atom N450 processor might let on.

The full story can be found on Tech Radar

Tablet or netbook? Asus’ upcoming convertible Eee PC T101MT is a little of both, and if Amazon’s German portal is any indication, it’s just about ready to ship. Amazon’s listing has the tablet pegged at 12.1 inches, but it’s actually a 10.1-inch display. It’s also touchscreen capable, hence the tablet talk, and includes an Intel Atom N450 processor (1.6GHz), 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, Intel GMA3150 graphics, and Windows 7 Home Premium. In other words, everything you would expect out of a modern day netbook

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

We’ve been having flashbacks of when netbooks first became a hot ticket item and every day brought forth a new product release. Now it’s time for tablet PCs to sit in the limelight, and the latest to join the crowd is Handheld’s 7-inch Algiz. Unlike other tablets of late, the smaller sized Algiz sports a comparatively rugged design. Perhaps because of this, the Handheld eschewed touch support and instead opted for physical buttons shoved over to the side of the screen.

For the full story, go to Maximum PC