News Bits: Asus A6T, New Acer Aspire 9400 and 7100, AMD Turion X2 Delay, Google and IE7

Asus' faster-than-wired laptop, the Asus A6T

Asus and Airgo Networks, Inc announced this week the Asus A6T notebook, featuring built-in WiFi that is claimed to have faster-than-Ethernet networking speeds thanks to an embedded 240Mbps WiFi adapter. The Asus A6T will have AMD Turion X2 Mobile Technology. The adapter incorporates True MIMO Gen3 technology by Asus, and demonstrates that Airgo's technology is being adpoted by the PC OEM market.

The Asus A6T, in addition to increasing wireless performance, will also extend range. It should prove to be a great platform for streaming high definition video and realtime VoIP, music, and gaming.

Airgo's Director of Marketing, David Borison, commented "By integrating Airgo's True MIMO technology directly into the A6T series laptops, ASUS has leaped three generations ahead of its competitors in terms of wireless performance, reliability and range. A strong, reliable wireless connection is critical for consumers as mobility and high bandwidth applications become central to the computing experience. Airgo is proud to be an integral part of the fastest laptop on the market today."

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Acerreleases new 17" notebooks, Aspire 7100 and Aspire 9400

Acer this week updated its Aspire notebook lineup, announcing four new 17" models. All are based on WXGA+ (1440x990) resolution displays, and are targeted toward mainstream home and office buyers.

The Acer Aspire 9400 and 9410 support Intel Pentium M and Core Duo notebooks respectively, using the 945GM and 915PM chipsets. Video performance is provided by Nvidia's GeForce Go7300 GPU featuring 64MB of dedicated GDDR2 memory, but can share an additional 192MB of system memory via TurboCache. Each model comes with up to 120GB of hard drive space, dual-channel DDR2 RAM, and DVD burners.

Higher-end models feature integrated 1.3 megapixel webcams and a five-in-one card reader, in addition to Intel WLAN cards, Ethernet, and a 56k modem. Bluetooth 2.0 is available on certain models.

The lower-end models, the Acer Aspire 7100 and 7110 are based on Intel's budget Celeron M processor, Acer WLAN chips, Ethernet, and Bluetooth on certain models. The 7110 model features a VGA webcam. The lower-end models can also coe with up to 120GB of hard drive space and DVD Burners.

Pricing for the Aspire 7100 starts at around $800 while the Aspire 9400 is around $1,000 starting.

AMD Turion X2 Dual Core 64-Bit processor Availability in notebooks delayed until June

AMD had said the Turion X2 64-bit dual core processor would be available May 9th. That's six days away, and apparently no longer true. Taiwanese manufacturers that are to make notebooks with the Turion X2 processor indicate it will now be sometime in June before anything is released with this processor.

More from DigiTimes.com

Google is upset with Microsoft over IE7

Google is unhappy with Microsoft because they made MSN the default search engine in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7's search bar rather than Google. Google is trying to tell Microsoft that it is a bad idea to do so, because during the 90's when Microsoft tried to integrate Windows Media Player into IE, they found themselves in all sorts of trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in anti-trust litigation, where they were found guilty.

Google's fear is that by making the default search engine MSN, it will take away search revenue and volume from Google. Two other major browsers, Opera and Firefox, have an integrated Google serach field, and both are compensated for the searches made from those fields. Microsoft defends their decision and say they have made it easy to make Google the default engine - all it takes is three clicks.

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Acer gains sales in China, Americas, falling in Europe

Despite Acer's sales falling in Europe by ten percent sequentially in Q1, sales in China increased by 2% to 6% in the first quarter, and sales in the Americas rose by 7% percent to 18% in the same period. Sales coming from Europe fell to 56% however.

Acer's Chairmen JT Wang commented that Acer is the top manufacturer of notebook PCs in Europe already with a market share of 18%. He said that a stall in growth was inevitable, and that in order for Acer to sustain targeted sales growth of 30-50%, they need to gain ground in China and the Americas.

Acer is planning to double its overall desktop PC sales to 10 million units in 2007, and should account for about 20-23% of the total product sales in 2007 comapred to a previous 14-15%.

More interesting is Acer regards HP as it's primary competitor, not Dell, which Wang claimed they outstripped in terms of growth.

Read More at Digitimes

Dell keeps cutting priceson Core Duo notebooks

Dell has already cut prices on its Inspiron E1705 and Latitude D620 notebooks to below $1,000. They've decided to do it again, just for today - previously, Dell's mainstream E1505 15.4" notebook was $1,234 with a Core Duo T2300, 80GB 5400RPM Hard Drive, 1GB of RAM and a DVD Burner. They are cutting that price to an incredible $699. Remember, that's today only. Dell always has weekly specials, so if you miss this one there will always be another.

Dell is also cutting the prices on their desktop models. The latest deal is the base Dimension B110 desktop with a Celeron D processor and a 19" Flat Panel for a mere $349. Of course, it only has 256MB of RAM, but that's easily upgradeable aftermarket.

Why is Dell offering such great deals? According to ZDNET, excessive inventories of processors and other components are causing manufacturers to get rid of inventories. Keep an eye out for more deals from other manufacturers over the next few weeks.

Read more at DailyTech

Gartner Research claims there will be a delay on top of current WindowsVista Delay

Gartner Research apparently knows more than Microsoft themselves and is predicting that MS will face another 3 - 5 months of delays on top of their January predicted release of Windows Vista, which was pushed back from a November release to January for regular customers.

Microsoft still says January, and the Gartner Research claim is pure speculation. Speculation that I'm sure Microsoft doesn't appreciate.

Read More at ArsTechnica

Brazilian Soccer Star Ronaldo hired as Lenovo "Worldwide Brand Ambassador"

Brazilian soccer player Ronaldo with a ThinkPad

Lenovo Group Limited has announced cooperation with FC Barcelona, and its super star Ronaldo de Assis Moreira (also known asRonaldinho). Ronaldowill be a Lenovo Worldwide Brand Ambassador. Ronaldinho, the FIFA World Player of the Year for two years running, currently plays for Barcelona and the Brazilian national team, and is expected to play a key role in Brazil's defense of its World Cup title when the tournament begins on June 9, 2006.

Ronaldinho willappear in worldwide marketing campaigns and promotional activities for the recently announced Lenovo-branded notebooks and desktop PCs.

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So Google's allowed to pay others for making Google the default search engine, but Msft isn't allowed to make MSN default on it's own products? The reason anyone even uses Msft stuff is because of the integration. When I want to find the best product for every task then I just get it. That's why I use firefox and adobe instead of IE and Paint. Anyhoo, let the Msft bashing proceed......

 

Lets hope the ASUS A6T comes out ASAP when Taylor comes out (Turion 2x).
People are getting tired of waiting for releases. :|

I am not happy with IE7 or IE7 decision to go with MSN search, i prefer google as default.

I have firefox but i do not like it compared to IE7 or IE6. For me Firefox seems extremely unfinished and i hate messing with plugins. IE6 was real nice and smooth for me. Right now IE7 doesn't seem so user friendly for Toolbar Customization !!

One thing all American have seen is dropping prices for Dell products. I personaly am amazed that they can cut their prices by HALF compared to other laptops that are in the same category. GJ Dell, hats off.

If Vista get's delayed, wouldn't Merom too, since we all know Intel doesn't wanna loose market share to AMD and since Taylor got delayed. Well can't we assume Merom's delay will come shortly after?

Thanks for the newsbit!

MysticGolem

 

Google has gone insane. MSN search is already the default on IE and there's no way to change it right now. If I type in an address and the server doesn't respond fast enough or doesn't exist, I generally always get stuck with an MSN search page. Google should be happy that MSN search can be taken off as the default in IE7. But there's two things that are way more important here that Google is ignorant of:

1) IE7 is horrendous. It still doesn't comply with internet standards, still has PNG problems, still does stupid stuff, and also has a worse interface than FireFox and IE6. I like using IE6 for certain websites (and FireFox for others), but I didn't care for IE7.

2) MSN search is awful. I rarely if ever actually get meaningfull results. Instead, I always get sites trying to sell me something no matter what I type in. I have already come not to use MSN search after so many poor searches. I use Google and will change my browser over to Google even if MSN is set as default. I rarely use the integrated search thing so it's not a big point.

And somebody let Asus know my laptop has a gigabit ethernet card on it.

 

It should be "Brazilian soccer star Ronaldinho."