News Bits: AMD Unveils 'Puma', Creative X-Fi ExpressCard Debuts, Dell Sued by NY

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AMD unveils next-gen mobile platform for notebooks

AMD today officially announced new details about its upcoming &quot;Puma&quot; mobile platform. It is designed to deliver extended battery life, improvements in graphics and video processing, and a higher level of performance overall. The &quot;Puma&quot; platform is expected to build on the AMD M690 mobile chipset and feature 65nm AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core processors.

Key technologies in the new &quot;Puma&quot; platform include the &quot;Griffin&quot; AMD next-gen mobile processor and AMD &quot;RS780&quot; mobile chipset. &quot;Puma&quot;-based notebooks are expected to be available in the mid-2008 timeframe. The platform is based on an open platform strategy - in addition to the &quot;Griffin&quot; processors and &quot;RS780&quot; chipset, the &quot;Puma&quot; platform also includes ATI Radeon graphics, Nvidia chipset and graphics technologies, and advanced wireless technologies.

Read More (BusinessWire.com)

Creative debuts X-Fi ExpressCard for notebooks

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Creative has released information about the new X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook on its website. The card is designed to enhance the audio capabilities of a notebook. The Xtreme Fidelity card features 24-bit surround sound, X-Fi Crystalizer Technology (restores detail and vibrance to compressed music and movies), and X-Fi CMSS-3D (enhances headphone sound by moving sound orientation).

The X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook ExpressCard has various ports and connections for audio equipment. An optional Speaker Docking Module allows for 5.1/7.1 surround sound connectivity.

The requirements for the X-Fi are as follows:

• Windows Vista or Windows XP (SP2, x64, or Media Center)
• 1.66GHz Intel Pentium M, Intel Core series, or AMD Turion equivalent
• 256MB RAM (512MB for Vista)
• 600MB hard drive space
• ExpressCard/54 slot
• CD/DVD-ROM drive

The X-Fi for notebooks is a recent addition to the Creative website so it should be appearing in stores soon.

HP 12.1-inch LED-backlit notebook coming in Q3

HP is planning to release a 12.1-inch LED-backlit notebook in Q3 according to a DigiTimes report. AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) will start to ship the panels in small volumes for the notebook in June. Dell is also likely to come out with an LED-based notebook according to the report.

While LED technology will not become mainstream in 2007, DisplayBank estimates that by 2010, notebooks with LED backlighting will account for 39.5% of shipped units.

SIIG introduces USB-to-ExpressCard adapter

SIIG today introduced a USB-to-ExpressCard adapter, which enables any USB 2.0 port on a PC to act as an ExpressCard slot. It works on Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.3+ without a driver. The only potential problem is that the adapter is only compatible with USB-based ExpressCard devices; PCI-based ExpressCards won't work.

The adapter retails for $32.

Read More (Engadget.com)

HP's good looks are paying off

HP's focus on style for its PCs has started to pay off - HP's fiscal Q2 revenue was up 12.7% from the same period a year earlier, totaling US$25.5 billion. Notebook PC revenue grew 45%, and desktop sales were up 9%, which is remarkable considering the desktop market has been relatively flat. HP has also increased its operating profit margin to 4.8% from 3.6% in the same period last year; it has more than doubled since two years ago.

One of the first things charimen and chief executive of HP, Mark V. Hurd, did when he took over in 2005 was hire the chief operating officer of Palm, Todd Bradley. He is regarded as a strategist inside the company and developed HP's design-focused strategy. He realized that there was a shift in consumer preference from desktops to notebooks and that styling could increase sales.

Dell has struggled to keep up with HP in terms of notebook sales. Samir Bhavnani, research director of Current Analysis West, said that &quot;H.P. is like the plain girl from high school that you see three years later and she is a bombshell, while Dell is the hot girl from high school who has gained 30 pounds.&quot;

Dell has taken notice of HP and will be introducing redesigned notebooks and desktops over the next few months, which will take styling cues from their high-end XPS line.

Read More (NYTimes.com)

Dell getting sued by N.Y. attorney general over deceptive practices

A lawsuit was filed against Dell by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, saying the company and its financial services affiliate deceived customers to increase sales. The lawsuit claims that Dell and Dell Financial Services LP have engaged in false advertising, fraud, and deceptive business practices.

The lawsuit accused Dell of attracting customers with misleading financing terms, rebates, and other benefits, but in the end charged high interest on lines of credit and avoids giving customers rebates through various tactics. The lawsuit also accuses dell of failing to honor warranties and service contract by making it difficult for them to get tech support.

A Dell spokesman, BoB pearson, said the following in a written statement:

&quot;Our customers are our top priority at Dell. We will vigorously defend ourselves in court. We are confident that our practices will be found to be fair and appropriate. While even one dissatisfied customer is too many, the allegations in the AG's filing are based upon a small fraction of Dell's consumer transactions in New York.&quot;

The lawsuit wants Dell to pay unspecified amounts in damages to affected customers, $500 for each instance of certain violations, and a further $2,000 for additional costs.

Read More (NewsDay.com)

Alienware adds 200GB 7200RPM hard drive option in notebooks

Alienware has added a 200GB 7,200RPM hard drive option for select notebooks. The drive is one of the new Hitachi 7K200 models - we covered the release of that drive here. It features NCQ (Native Command Queing) and has16MB of cache.

The drive is available as a $400 upgrade on the 17-inch Aurora m9700 and 15.4-inch Area-51 m5550, and a $220 upgrade on the top-of-the-line 19-inch Aurora mALX.

Playing World of Warcraft on an OQO

What's cooler than playing World of Warcraft on a notebook? Why, playing it on an ultra portable computer with a 5-inch screen that you can hold in one hand - the OQO. The computer, despite having meager specifications, runs WoW surprisingly well and has an undeniable cool factor.

Full Story &amp; Videos Here

 

It's all good news all the time for HP, and Dell just keeps getting beat-up on. Well, soon they'll be the underdog and people will start rooting for them (maybe).

 

Lol, ouch! So what exactly does this mean? Dell's idea of a redesign is to keep it silver and add a black lid?

 

Hahahahaha

 

Sweet, X-fi expresscard soundcard. I hope its not too expensive.

By the way, the link to the creative X-fi card page is broken. The link is to a logitech VX mouse on newegg

 

@Chaz - The link to X-Fi is actually to a Newegg Logitech VX Mouse page, randomly. Needs repair.

EDIT: I fixed it for you here, but the NBR homepage one probably still needs work.

 

Cool code name but AMD have some catching up to do in the mobile market against Intel

HP ftw

And at least you lot get rebates. Dell offer nada outside of NA far as I can tell!

Has anyone seen an LED in person yet? Always interested in the old screen tech y'know, what with our eyes being so important and all

 

Is AMD asking us to hold off on Santa Rosa until they get their platform out in mid '08?

With AMD and ATI being the same company now, it would be cool if Integrated graphics meant a nice ATI card.

 

yey well ive posted that Dell news yesterday. Ive also added another link with more details to how Dell ripped people off who fell for the Dell finance plan
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=123652

This will be very costly for Dell considering they mainly market themselves by Infomercial/radio/print media.

 

I think I read somewhere that Dell will start offering their notebooks in like BestBuy and Circuit City

 

I'm sorry, but AMD has fallen too far behind in the mobile market for me to pay much attention to them. They need to speed up their releases and skip ahead a few steps. I hope they get back into the game soon.

That Creative card looks nice. It's also nice to see an ExpressCard adaptor since I don't have an expresscard port on my system. I'm sure the Creative card would beat this generic AC97 soundchip in my laptop no problem. Sometimes the sound from this thing is just awful or all crackly because of driver or compatability issues. =/

And Dell...well, they had it coming! By all standards I should have been a "well qualified customer" when I purchased this laptop or helped purchase the inspiron6000, but both times they denied the special offers to myself and my family. Every other organization would always give us financing and promotional deals because we have very high credit scores. Dell did not so they had this coming. DFS was also highly confusing and not-user-friendly so I'm glad I closed my account with them. If Dell got their act together maybe they could improve things, but it looks like HP is doing things right and getting traction. I'm glad because HP has really been impressing me lately. They're on a roll! Maybe Dell will rebound one day. Competition is always a good thing.

 

anyone know an approx release for the X-fi?
i only run linux, and it probably won't work for a while, but the sooner it comes out, the sooner alsa can get it working

just froogle'd it
seems it's available at some shady dealers, but not any reputable place (around $80 ish) but you'd have to get it with the 5.1 adapter, which would probably push it over $100

 

I'd imagine the ALSA driver will come out soon. I run only Linux as well.

LINKS please....I couldn't find it yet.

 

Yep , this should easily solve their problem because those are the pinnacle of style .

 

I wouldn't hold my breath on that X-fi Linux driver, they keep pushing the date back it seems.

 

No, Dell has pissed off enough people that I doubt they'll ever get back to top-PC maker status.



Then again I'm completely bias towards HP and Apple, so...

 

That USB to Express Card adapter isn't convincing, since the main advantage of the Express Card interface is speed, you may as well buy a USB or PCMCIA version of the component you want...

Heh...looks like AMD are trying to target Santa Rosa. I don't think it'd get very far, unless pricing is competitive...

 

This is supposed to be a good thing?

 

Well, the ExpressCard is actually a good thing. It works only for USB based cards anyway, so there isn't going to be much of a speed loss. It just lets people continue to use some new tech without having to purchase a new notebook.

Now, once they manage to get a lot of PCI-e ExpressCards out there...

But I'm thinking about this one, if some of the eSATA ExpressCards I've been looking at are USB based. I don't have an ExpressCard slot, and I won't for a few years.

 

since when? the XPS doesn't really look any different from the inspiron line... Although their desktop line is gorgeous, I can't say the same about the notebook line unless u like flashy LED's. IMHO anything Dell is far from the pinnacle of style. I think ASUS makes the nicest laptops.

 

I think they are referring to the M1210 design, which isn't bad.

 

the x-fi express card looks compelling... does anyone think that would work in tandem with the usb/express card adapter? reason is i am looking to get an express card dock, but at the same time i want higher fidelity sound for my 5.1 logitechs (without prohibitive costs ). tia.

chris

 

Somehow I doubt the X-Fi ExpressCard will work with the ExpressCard --> USB adapter, because I think it's PCI-based. In order for it to work with the adapter, the ExpressCard must be USB-based.

 

Someone needs to be introduced to the concept of sarcasm...

 

The XPS M1210 is a very attractive notebook, but like the rest of the dell series, its pretty chunky.

 

When you put in a sound card into a notebook, does it route the audio through the notebook speakers, or do you thne have to plug in your own headphones or speakers?

 

I know that with my Audigy 2 ZS Notebook card, I have to use external speakers/headphones in order to get sound. I heard rumors of a patch that allowed you to use the internal notebook speakers with the card but I never looked into it.

 

Wow, nice to hear from you AMD. I'll consider you in 2010, when the Santa Rosa I just bought is looking a bit old. If they had said 3rd quarter 2007 I'd bite, but mid 2008? They do know that it's only 2007 now, right?

And nice to see Creative is offerring useless products to notebook consumers now instead of having the useless card monopoly on desktops.

 

true creative's drivers are a complete disgrace.
still horribly supported in Vista

 

Creative's drivers are abysmal under Vista, I can't even get the cool equalizer and mixer software that I could under XP with my Audigy 2 ZS.

 

AMD Puma is a promising for cheap laptops, and it's good to see competition between Intel and AMD.
Without AMD, we wont see Intel doing this great work lately

 

I agree about competition, it is great. Unfortunately, I think AMD is a tad behind in keeping up. By mid 2008, who knows what Intel will have. AMD has fallen far behind. Good thing they make money on much more than mainstream processors, otherwise we'd be seeing them go out of business.

 

Well, their DX10 GPU business isn't doing so hot either (but neither is nVidias so...). I'm starting to worry about AMD/ATI.

 

They still sell a lot to government/corporate organizations that we don't see a lot of. There is a lot more to those companies than the consumer oriented stuff we see. Years ago it was looking like AMD was going to go under, then all the sudden their Althon line kicked butt. I'm sure they are both here to stay. Maybe not as strong in the consumer market, but they will make a comback someday.

 

I agree Intel is leading free, but still AMD isn't too bad, barelcona is an example, which is better than current xeon chips.

 

it is on Amazon now for $74.04

http://www.amazon.com/Creative-70SB071000000-Expresscard-Blaster-Notebook/dp/B000QRV3NU/ref=sr_1_1/103-8540224-8512611?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1179961086&sr=8-1