News Bits: Gateway Buyout?, Nokia Internet Tablet, Sony FS790, Sony VAIO FJ

Gateway in Trouble Financially -- Second U.S. PC Maker to Be Bought Out?

Gateway was big back in the 90's, in the USA at least. They were founded in South Dakota and used their humble location and setting as part of the marketing strategy by putting cow patches on the boxes they sold computers in. Fast forward and they're now in a dull building in Orange County California, close to all the other tech companies. Gateway has been crawling back of late with the introduction of some nice notebooks, the buyout of eMachines and starting to sell through mainstream retailers in the U.S. and also Japan (as of last month). But according to financial analysts, Gateway is struggling to make a profit and are ripe for a buyout. It appears that IBMmight not be the first and last U.S. PC maker to be bought out by an international company, all signs point to an eminent takeover of Gateway too.

More: http://news.com.com/2100-1003_3-5866796.html?part=rss&tag=5866796&subj=news

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

We attended a press event in New York this week in which Nokia was showing off an upcoming device called theNokia 770 Internet Tablet. Nokia claims their new Tablet handheld device 770 is going to be huge with Bloggers. That's good for bloggers I suppose, but whatever you use this for it's true that the 770 is flat out just a cool piece of hardware. You can't see it in the pictureswe took, but the web browser does support full screen, no toolbars, and several zoom levels. I pulled upNotebookReview.com on the device,which looked great. The 770 also supports multiple windows. The 800x480 pixel display looks very good. This device runs on the Symbian OS, so it's more a PDA than a Notebook type of device but we'll talk about it anyway. Pictures below.

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Sony VAIO FS-790 Launched

The Sony FS Series has received another update this weekin the same way that S series received an update a little over a week ago. The FS-790 is available for purchase right now on SonyStyle.com.

Improvements:

• Choose between XBRITE 400 (2 lamps) or XBRITE 200 (1 lamp) LCD Technology. XBRITE 400 is the moniker for the original XBRITE technology while XBRITE 200 is also known as XBRITE ECO.
• Up to 120 GB HD
• GeForce Go 6400 128 MB (on pre-configured models)

One caveat, like the S-580, there is no option for customizing the FS-790 with an nVidia6400 graphics card right now. You can only get an nVidia 6400 by buying a pre-configured model. It is likely that Sony will offer the 6400 as an option in the near future.

Thanks to Eliwood for this news tip, discussion and more information is found in our forums here: Sony VAIO FS790 discussion

New Sony VAIO Slimline 14" Screen FJ Series

Sony has been doing some major overtime in their notebook department the past month. It seems every week for the past 2 months we've had either a product update, refresh or new VAIO line altogether. Well here's another, Sony will be releasing the VAIO FJ series soon, a 14" screen slimline laptop that will be available in silver, blue or red finishes.

Thanks to Yufufi for this news tip, discussion and more information is found in our forums here: Sony VAIO FJ discussion

Intel Chips Cost $40 to Make?

According to a report made by The Register this week Intel is able to stay fat and happy by keeping it's cost of making processors to about $40 a piece and then charging a few times that when selling the processor. We have to keep in mind though, although it might only cost $40 to make a processor (materials and die), but think about all the research and other overhead a company like Intel has to pay for in developing these products. So don't think that Intel is riding the best gravy train ever, the world of developing and selling processors isn't exactly a low barrier to entry market or one that's easy to succeed in.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/14/intel_die_costs/

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Hmmm Gateway...

Not sure if thats a good thing, or a bad thing, but I think being bought out would do some early damage, especially to their reputation, but if they do well, then all's good.

 

ive bought gateway computers for years. I always bought them cheap and upgraded them to great computers. My last gateway desktop i bought 3 years ago. It was a customer return and i got it for only 500 with a dvd burner. I upgraded the ram, video card and hard drive. It was one of the fasted computers ive ever had and to this day have not had any major issuses. However recently while looking for a new computer ive been disappointed by gateway. It seems they were once a great company with good customer support. Maybe its because of the emachines garbage that sells at wal-mart.... who knows but they have lost me as a customer.

 

yeah, that's too bad, i remember well when i use to think of gateway representing quality but now i cannot say the same.

 

Just a quick note, Nokia 770 tablet is running on Linux, not Symbian OS. Its open developer platform, called Maemo, can be found at maemo.org

 

You're right on that 770 OS, I made a mental mistake on that one, thanks for the catch.