News Bits: Gateway M210, VAIO U750, AMD Sempron, ATI Radeon X800

Gateway Releases New 14.1" Widescreen Screen Thin-and-Light

The Gateway M210, Gateway's new thin-and-light model notebook, will start selling today (11/24) with a starting price of $899.The M210 featuresa 14.1" Widescreen LCD using XGA resolution (WXGA). The M210 will have a full-size keyboard for ease of typing.

Picture of the Gateway M210 taken from a user manual (http://support.gateway.com/s/Manuals/Mobile/8510250.pdf)

From the press release:

"The Gateway M210 is the perfect option for consumers and professionals alike, who want a PC that's light, powerful and affordable," said Ed Fisher, Gateway's senior vice president of product planning. "We've brought this product to market, so customers no longer have to choose between performance and mobility. We're also offering more flexibility with PC customization options, enabling users to select the right set of features for their computing needs and budget."

Optimized for the battery life and performance demands of mobile computing, the Gateway M210 notebook line includes an Intel Celeron M processor or Intel Centrino Mobile Technology with an Intel Pentium M processor. To take advantage of wireless computing at home, school, hotels and other WiFi Hot Spots, the Gateway M210 offers integrated 802.11g wireless. Rounding out its communications capabilities, the Gateway M210 also includes Intel 10/100Mbps Ethernet and a 56K V.92 modem.

The Gateway M210 series offers users a choice of a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive or DVD burner, a 40GB or 60GB hard drive(3) and 256 MB of memory, expandable to 1256MB through the SODIMM memory slot. Integrated Intel 855GM graphics with 32MB UMA video memory turn the PC into the perfect medium for watching DVDs and developing presentations.

More from the Press Release: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041123/latu019_1.html

By doing a Google search on "Gateway M210" the M210 user manual on the Gateway support website was found, so here's a link to that.

Link to User Guide: http://support.gateway.com/s/Manuals/Mobile/8510250.pdf

Sony VAIO U750 Handheld Notebook Available for Pre-Order

Sony recently announced the fact that they would be releasing the VAIO U70 that is sold in Japan into the U.S. market as the VAIO U750. NotebookReview.com did a review of the JapaneseU70 a few months ago and we posted an article about the pending release of the U750 in the U.S. just last week. The VAIO U750 is now showing up on the virtual store shelves of the web for pre-order. So if you have $1,999.99 burning a hole in your pocket and you love the latest in technology, then feel free to take the plunge!

More: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=2083

AMD Releases Sempron 3000+ Processor

AMD on Tuesday started selling a processor designed for thin-and-light notebooks that weight about 5lbs. The Sempron 3000+ processor. The Sempron 3000+can plug into the same types of motherboards used by AMD's higher performance Athlon 64 processors, this will allow manufacturerssuch as HPto create a single PC model but offer it in a range of prices by toggling between the Sempron and AMD 64 processors along with tweaking other aspects of the notebook such as Memory, Hard Drive Size and various other configurations.

The Sempron 3000+ chip is available now worldwide butAMD indicated the first notebook models with it will come out in Europe, typically a market more receptive to AMD processors anyway. Packard Bell will offer its EasyNote E6 notebook with the chip in countries such as France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom later this month. Acer, Fujitsu Siemens and Sharp are among the other manufacturers thatwill offer this chip.

ATI Releases Mobility Radeon X300 and X800 for Notebooks

ATI today officially announced thenew X300 and X800 Radeon graphics processors for notebook computers.The Mobility Radeon X seriesincorporates relatively new technologies such as the PCI Express interface for graphics cards and Microsoft's DirectX 9 graphics software.

The Mobility Radeon X300 targets thin-and-light notebooks and is likely to come out in the more expensive models at first. The Mobility Radeon X800 is designed for gaming notebooks, it willoffer the ability to interface with up to 256MB of dedicated video memory -- more than enough to chew up even the latest games on the market.

The Mobility Radeon X800 will be released in December.Two of the first PC makers to offer it willbe Alienware and Eurocom. ATIdid not offer an exact date for when its X300 chip will arrive in notebooks, saying instead that it will come in a number of future designs. We should expect the X300 to appear in thin-and-light notebooks at some point early next year as that's when notebook manufacturers will finally incorporate the PCI Express chipset that the X300 depends upon.

The X800 chip is likely to be used in notebooks based on desktop PC chipsets, which is commonplace among larger-size game-oriented laptops.