TravelMate 6592G (601G16N)

The formal introduction to Intel's Centrino Pro and the next generation Centrino platform, codenamed Santa Rosa, has come and gone. The Acer TravelMate 6592 business notebook(acer laptop battery) is one of the first Centrino Pro review units to become available on the market so we eagerly got it into the test centre to put it through its paces.

The new Santa Rosa Centrino platform brings a few welcomed improvements to the notebook space, such as the faster Wi-Fi 802.11n, an 800MHz front side bus (FSB), a range of new processors based on the Core 2 Duo Merom CPU, optional Turbo Memory, and some new power saving features. As part of Centrino Pro Intel has also added its Active Management Technology (AMT), which is similar to the vPro technology already released in desktops. This technology allows IT administrators to access the Acer TravelMate remotely via a wired or wireless network connection for maintenance or support.

The Acer TravelMate 6592 runs on Windows Vista Business edition and has the new 2.20GHz T7500 Core 2 Duo CPU with an 800MHz FSB and a 4MB L2 cache, 2MB of DDR2 667MHz RAM and one of ATI's new Mobility graphics cards, the ATI Radeon X2300-HD.

The increased bus speed offered by this platform allows more bandwidth for the CPU, chipset and memory to shuffle data to and fro, providing faster overall performance. Apart from that, however, the new Santa Rosa platform has a few tricks up its sleeve for performance and power saving. Among these is the new Enhanced Dynamic Acceleration, which allows the platform to power down one core of the CPU when no applications require it, and use that added power to boost the still-active core. This can save power, but it can also give a power boost to single threaded applications that are only using the one core.

We put the new platform and all its fancy features to the test with WorldBench 6, in which it scored a healthy total of 74. This is a very good score for a business notebook, but overall, the results don't show any specific areas of spectacular performance. In our MP3 encoding test, we did see a more impressive result. In this test we take 53 minutes worth of WAV files and convert them to 192Kbps MP3 files using Cdex, a freely available, single-threaded application. This test took the Acer TravelMate 6592 just 119 seconds, exactly the same time as the Dell with its T7600 2.33GHz CPU, using the 667MHz FSB Centrino platform.

One area that really impressed us with this notebook was in its battery life. The new Santa Rosa Centrino platform offers a number of power saving features such as CPU and FSB performance scaling according need, but no distinct battery life advantages have been evident in our tests of the Asus or the Fujitsu . Regardless of the reasoning, the Acer TravelMate 6592 lasted for 134 minutes in our worst case scenario acer travelmate 6592 battery test. For this test we loop a DVD until the battery drains completely. It is considered a worst-case scenario as the speakers and optical drive are both in continuous use throughout the test, as well as the core components such as the CPU and RAM.

The graphics chip used in this TravelMate is the first we've seen form ATI's new range of mobile graphics processing units (GPU). Unlike the rest of the range this model only supports DirectX 9 and is considered an entry level card, but will be fine for most business purposes. As a gauge of its ability we ran 3DMark 2001 SE, in which it scored 7784. This shows it has a little bit of grunt for simple tasks, but don't expect it to run any 3D games or other heavy graphical tasks.

The 15.4in screen has reasonable brightness, but is a little dark by comparison to the majority of screens we see. Contrast levels are good though, and so is the viewing angle. It's also very sharp, with a 1680x1050 screen resolution. The keyboard has an ergonomic, curved layout, that is designed to match the natural curve of the wrists when typing. Included are a touchpad and an eraser-head track-point.

The TravelMate offers three USB ports for connectivity as well as a FireWire port. it also includes integrated Bluetooth. For an external monitor there are VGA and DVI ports and for TV-out there's an S-Video port. This allows the notebook to connect to any monitor or projector, which can be handy in the office or on the road giving presentations. There are also a parallel port and a serial port for older devices. For wired connectivity there's a 56Kbps modem and a gigabit Ethernet connection.

For storage, the TravelMate has a 160GB hard drive, which will be more than enough for the average business user, but it also has a DVD re-writer installed for additional storage needs. A 5-in-1 media card reader is installed for SD, MMC, MS, MS-Pro and xD media cards. It also includes a PC Card slot (type II). For additional security, the notebook has a fingerprint reader, providing the option for a more secure login procedure.

Lenovo U160: The notebook with looks and packed with power

MANILA, Philippines – When performance, style and portability are the main considerations in buying a mobile computer, the ultra-light IdeaPad U160 notebook features an etched aluminum cover, minimalist design language and a fashionable chiclet keyboard. It’s your fashion statement.

Featuring the all new Intel Core i5 processor, HD video support, Dolby Advanced Audio, and DirectShare synchronization technology, long term asus a32-f5 battery life and easy system maintenance tools, Lenovo U160 is the ultimate tool for busy and demanding road warriors.

With a thickness of  0.9 inch and weighs 1.25kg, the Lenovo IdeaPad U160 is indeed slim and light. Packed with Intel Core i5 processor, a six-cell battery, Bluetooth, 2GB of RAM, and a 500GB of hard drive.  This computer features include an 11.6-inch LCD display with 1366×768 resolution, 802.11n Wi-Fi, eSATA port, 3x USB ports, VGA and HDMI outputs and 1.3MP webcam.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U160 appears to be an ideal travel companion that combines great technology, great features and amazing specs in one ultra portable package, designed to fill the place between a low-powered netbook and a full pledged laptop.

Lenovo IdeaPad notebooks, including U160 is distributed by MSI-ECS and are available through its authorized resellers.

Lenovo ThinkPad Links Laptop And Tablet

Lenovo is releasing its ultraportable ThinkPad X220 laptop and X220 convertible Tablet PC this April in Australia, aimed at business professionals.

The new 12.5 inch ThinkPads look to push battery life and portability for all day use on the go in the corporate environment, with 15 hours of battery life on the standard battery and 24 hours with a ThinkPad external battery added.

The convertible tablet weighs in at around 1.8 kg but can be lighter with a downgraded battery at the expense of battery life. If you're willing to sacrifice some portability with the bigger battery and external battery pack, the tablet can run for 16 hours.

Weighing more than typical consumer tablets, the X220 runs Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5 and i7 processors rather than smaller tablet- and smartphone-specific CPUs, increasing performance.

The business-centric functions like Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 come stocked for quick boot-up and shut down for jumping in and out of work. Coupled with Instant Resume, users can keep their wireless connections active during PC sleep for up to 99 minutes.

Connectivity options are given a slight upgrade with USB 3.0 slots over the usual 2.0.

Durability, profile and utility are all upgraded on the latest ThinkPad models, with greater drop resistance and spillage resistance for the keyboard on the slimmer, lighter design.

These ThinkPad models start at $2749 and range up to $3699, coming in multi-touch tablet form or in an ‘outdoor' version that includes Gorilla Glass for durability and enhanced visibility.

Lenovo U160 review

With a 1GHz Celeron processor and just 2GB RAM, this isn’t the kind of laptop(laptop battery) that will set pulses racing. Its price and weight are two low figures that are more attractive, though. After using it for a while, we found ourselves growing to like it despite its shortcomings.

With an 11.6in screen, the U160 is about the size of a netbook, and at 1.4kg it's just as light. It doesn't have the low screen resolution of most netbooks, though; 1,366x768 is the same resolution as most 15in laptops, and it gives plenty of space for office documents and busy web pages. It's also ideal for watching HD video. The screen’s 16:9 aspect ratio reduces the size of the black bars above and below widescreen video that appear on netbooks’ 1024x600-pixel screens.

Squeezing such a high resolution into a small space means that each pixel is smaller, making images pin-sharp, although it also makes text quite small. Colour accuracy isn't spectacular: the LED backlight is slightly uneven and the glossy finish and tight viewing angles mean we had to adjust the screen's tilt carefully or else contrast was ruined. Once we’d done so, colours were quite vibrant and accurate.

The dual-core Celeron U3400 processor is based on the Intel Core design but it runs at a slower 1GHz – hence the lower benchmark scores compared to Core i3 chips. However, its overall score of 36 is almost twice the performance of a netbook. Its best result was 46 in our image-editing test, which doesn’t benefit from multiple processors. That’s true of most office and entertainment software, too – given a single task to handle, the U160 should be able to keep up. The integrated graphics chipset can decode HD video but it's not powerful enough to run demanding 3D games.

Visually, the U160 is stunning. Its dark brown case sandwiches a white interior, and the lid has a smart etched pattern. Opening the lid reveals a white keyboard panel and a glossy black bezel surrounding the screen. The keys are an odd shape but their slightly concave surfaces make them comfortable to type on, while their crisp, light action gives plenty of feedback for touch-typists.

Other than placing the Fn key in the bottom left corner where the Ctrl key should be, Lenovo has stuck to a fairly standard layout, including a double-height Enter key. Below is a small but responsive touchpad, with two separate, light-action buttons. There's a small, fiddly switch to toggle WiFi and Bluetooth, and a standard complement of expansion ports. One welcome exception is the inclusion of a shared eSATA/USB port, which is useful for adding a fast eSATA external drive.

It may not be screamingly fast or packed with the latest features, but the U160 is light, lasts for over six hours per charge and costs little more than most netbooks. The 11.6in screen may be a bit cramped for some people, and those using demanding applications such as photo or video editing will be frustrated by its basic performance, but for web browsing on the move it's a great little laptop. It’s worth considering the pricier Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 for its superior performance and battery life, though.

HP Pavilion dv7-4035sa review

HP's dv7-4035sa has a 17in screen and a dedicated graphics card, as well as a triple core AMD processor. It's fitted with two ATI graphics chips: one is an older 4250 part integrated onto the motherboard, while the other is a dedicated 5470 chip that supports DirectX 11. Both can handle HD video decoding. The idea is that you can use the dedicated graphics cards for playing games with the laptop plugged in, but when you're on the move you can switch to the integrated graphics chip to save power.

This logic is undermined by the fact that the 5470 isn't that powerful a chip: a score of 20fps in our Call of Duty 4 benchmark means that you'll have to turn down graphics quality settings to get playable frame rates in action games. Older games, or those optimised for network play such as World of Warcraft, should be fine.

Using the low-power 4250 gave four hours battery life instead of three, which is a significant improvement but still isn't that impressive. In any case, few people are likely to want to lug this 3.7kg laptop very far from a mains socket.

The dv7-4035sa scored poorly in our benchmarks, getting 57 overall and scoring only 58 in the single-threaded image-editing test. Although this is plenty for office and web use, it's not so promising for creative tasks such as photo and video editing. Laptops at this price that are built around Intel Core i3 and i5 processors manage scores of between 79 and 93.

Build quality is superb. The khaki-coloured case is made from a metal alloy with a smart pattern etched into its surface, which feels sturdy and partly explains the laptop's weight. Inside, the design is tastefully unadorned, and the only indicator lights are on the relevant keys, such as Caps Lock. There's a numberpad on the right side of the keyboard, and the flat, isolated keys have a crisp, light action.

Sadly, the dv7-4035sa's touchpad is the same flawed design as on the HP(hp laptop battery) dv6-3065ea. The left and right click buttons are simply marked out by a T-shaped line drawn on the touchpad. Because the whole thing is a just a single surface, we often found ourselves moving the mouse pointer when trying to double-click, or clicking on something when we meant to move the pointer. It's a shame as otherwise it's a large and responsive pad, but in its current form it's virtually unusable.

The 17in screen has a 1,600x900 resolution that gives significantly more desktop space than 15in laptops with 1,366x768 resolutions. While it seemed dimmer than other LED-backlit screens, contrast and colour accuracy were better, especially where flesh tones were involved.

The screen is probably the biggest attraction in this package, with the decent keyboard coming in second. The dual graphics chip setup is a waste, though, as the dedicated card isn't powerful enough and there's not much need for a power-saving integrated chip on a 3.7kg notebook(notebook battery). Performance is poor considering the price, and the frustrating touchpad is the last straw. The Dell XPS 15 is only a little more expensive, but it's far more powerful in both 2D and 3D and a joy to use.

Apple's iPhone could be next to get dual-core A5 chip

After making its first appearance in the iPad 2, the next stop for Apple's A5 chip could be in the next version of the iPhone, where it would bring a significant boost in graphics and application performance without compromising battery life, analysts said.
The A5 microprocessor, announced by Apple at the iPad 2 launch on Wednesday, would provide the next iPhone with better-quality FaceTime videoconferencing, and gaming capabilities that could allow it to compete with handheld gaming consoles, those analysts said.

"What it would bring to smartphones is increased [processing power] for computationally intensive applications," such as photo and movie applications, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64. "Those do require more horsepower under the hood than you would get with a single-core processor."
The A5 chip, designed by Apple and based on an ARM design, has two cores running at 1GHz, versus a single 1Ghz core in the A4 processor, which was used in the first iPad and the current iPhone 4. The A5 provides twice the CPU performance and nine times the graphics power of its predecessor, according to Apple. cell phone battery

Apple hasn't announced the next version of the iPhone or disclosed its specifications, but the company has released new models in the middle of each year since the first iPhone came out in 2007.

The A5 adds "a lot more speed to things you do everyday, like surfing the Web, sending e-mail and multitasking," said Bob Mansfield, senior vice president of hardware at Apple, in a video on Apple's website.

More significant is the graphics boost, which falls in line with Apple's goal of improving the video capabilities on its devices, said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. "If you're trying to do heavy media-intensive apps, it does matter," he said.

If it is introduced, an iPhone with the A5 chip won't be the first dual-core smartphone. Motorola's Atrix 4G, which has a talk time of up to nine hours, runs on a dual-core ARM processor. LG's Optimus 2X, which is available for pre-order and due later this month, also uses a dual-core ARM chip.

Brookwood said the A5 could be a step forward in Apple's efforts to bridge the gap between tablets and Macbooks. Like Motorola's Atrix smartphone, the next iPhone could be plugged into a dock with a screen and a keyboard to give it laptop-like functionality.

The A5 could ultimately make its way to Apple TV devi
ces as well, analysts said. Apple doesn't have a big share of the TV market, but a chip like A5 could be a differentiator if it supports full high-definition video. The existing Apple TV device, which uses the A4 chip, plays video at only 720p resolution.
Apple shipped nearly 50 million products in 2010 based on its A4 processor, including the iPad, iPhone and Apple TV, according to research firm IHS iSuppli.

Analysts said the A5 chip may be based on ARM's Cortex-A9 design, which is used in Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip. The next logical step for Apple would be to make a quad-core version, which would deliver even more processing power.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, Nvidia announced a quad-core chip code-named Kal-El, which it claims is twice as fast for Web browsing as the dual-core Tegra 2, which is used in Motorola's(motorola battery) Xoom tablet. Qualcomm also announced a quad-core Snapdragon chip for mobile devices at the show.

Lenovo ThinkPad X120e: A Superfast Business Netbook

Lenovo calls its ThinkPad X120e an ultraportable--and its new AMD Fusion CPU certainly endows the laptop with much better performance than netbooks have achieved in the past. But it's nowhere near as fast as the average Intel Core processor-based ultraportable. Lenovo has done a magnificent job giving the keyboard a full-size feel, but the 1366 by 768, 11.6-inch display suffers in comparison to the 12- and 13-inch displays of other ultraportable laptops. Given the choice between characterizing the X120e as an underpowered ultraportable or as a wonderful netbook(netbook battery), I'm going with the latter.
Lenovo is king of the keyboard, and the X120e has the best netbook keyboard ever--nothing else comes close. The feel is magnificent, with none of the finger scrunching common to the breed. The touchpad is comfortable and perfectly responsive, and old-school Lenovo fans will be happy to learn that the company includes a TrackPoint eraserhead cursor control.

The ThinkPad X120e comes in various configurations starting at $399 for an E-250 Fusion CPU, 2GB of memory, and a 250GB, 5400-rpm hard drive. Our X120e test system came equipped with the slightly faster E-350 CPU, 4GB of memory, and a 300GB, 7200-rpm hard drive. Those burlier components carried the X120e to a WorldBench 6 score of 57--a far higher mark than traditional netbooks tend to receive, but lower than a typical pricier ultraportable would get. The stronger configuration of our review unit ratcheted up the price to $650--pretty steep for a netbook.

Video performance with the Fusion CPU/GPU ranges from excellent to mediocre. With codecs supported by the graphics hardware (Radeon HD 6310), it delivers smooth playback of 1080p video. With codecs handled by the CPU alone, though, it's limited to 720p, and even then playback sometimes isn't as smooth as you might like. Gaming frame rates approached playable, falling just shy of 30 fps in Unreal Tournament at 800 by 600 at medium resolution. That's a tantalizing near-miss, but it's still a miss. Simpler games will fare better.

The X120e carries the netbook-standard three USB 2.0 ports, but business users will appreciate that Lenovo includes both VGA and HDMI video outputs. The ethernet supports gigabits speeds, you get Bluetooth on board, and you can choose between b/g/n and a/b/g/n wireless.

The unit is a tad larger than the average netbook at 11.1 inches wide, by 7.45 inches deep (add about 0.75 inch for the six-cell battery), and 1.16 inches thick. It's also a bit heavier at 2.93 pounds and 3.31 pounds (when equipped with a three-cell or a six-cell battery, respectively). Our test configuration's six-cell battery powered the unit for nearly 5.5 hours--impressively long, considering the performance.

The system we tested came loaded with Windows 7 Professional, but you may choose Home Premium 32-bit or 64-bit, if you prefer. Office 2010 Starter is on board, and Norton Internet Security is available for user installation.

Lenovo's marketing preferences aside, the X120e is not an ultraportable: Its screen is too small and its performance is too slow. We're not even sure why the company would want to match it against full-fledged ultraportables. But the X120e is the best netbook going. Though it's a little pricey, one typing session will convince you that the $450 starting price for this model is more than worth it.