News Bits: HP and Armstrong, Acer TravelMate 3000, Apple Battery Recall

HP to Release Lance Armstrong "LiveStrong" BrandedAMD 64Turion Notebook

While Acer uses Ferrari branding on it's notebooks, HP is adding a bit of a twist on that strategy by releasing a Lance Armstrong "LiveStrong" branded notebook. The notebooks will be the L2000 to be released in June. AMD sponsors Armstrong and, fittingly, the L2000 will be an AMD Turion 64 powered notebook. The L2000 will be a 14" widescreen notebook with optional BrightView screen. Basically it will be an AMD 64 version of the current dv1000 notebook.

HP L2000 Turion 64 Notebook with LiveStrong and Lance Armstrong branding

For those unaware, Lance Armstrong is a championship cyclist that basically owns the Tour De France he's won it so many times. Armstrong has fought with and beaten cancer and established a foundation called "LiveStrong" that raises money to give to advocacy and research of various types of cancer.

For each special edition L2000 notebook sold that includes the LiveStrong insignia HP will donate $50 to the LAF organization. In a word, that's strong.

Link to HP Website with L2000: HP L2000

HP L2000 with Lance Armstrong signature and image on the screen

Acer TravelMate 3000 12-inch Screen Ultraportable Notebook Released in U.S.

The Acer TravelMate 3000 has been available in Asia for a while now but has just made it to the U.S. Itfeatures Intel's Sonoma platform (Pentium M processor 740) 12.1-inch WXGA screen,802.11b/g, Bluetooth, 56k modem, and Gigabit Ethernet,FireWire (IEEE1394) port, three USB 2.0 ports, one PC Card Type II slot, up to 60GB ATA/100 of disk, up to 2GB RAM, external CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 4-in-1 PCMCIA Multimedia reader, and built-in Smart Card reader. The total weight on this laptop is 3.1lbs andAcer claims 4.5 hours ofbattery life.All of this comes at the very good starting price of $1,399.

Acer TravelMate 3000 12-inch Screen Ultraportable

Acer TravelMate 3000 Product Page (Asia): http://www.acer.co.th/product/travelmate/3000/

Acer TravelMate Review (CNET Asia): http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardware/notebooks/0,39001743,39089180p,00.htm

Apple Battery Recalling 128,000 PowerBook G4and iBook G4 Batteries

Apple isn't having much luck with batteries period. From having to recall batteries multiple times to the debacle with people complaining about the iPod battery not being replaceable after it dies, things have been bad PR wise.

The bad news continues, in a report filed with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the company said that it has identified a new crop of batteries that may have the potential to overheat. Apple will replace all of the batteries in question, which were shipped in 12- and 15-inch models of the PowerBook G4 and 12-inch versions of the iBook G4 delivered between October 2004 and May 2005.

If your notebook was bought in this time framyou should contact Apple immediately for a free replacement. The company can be reached via phone at (800) 275-2273 or via its Apple.com Web site. It has also created a battery exchange page on its customer support Web site: https://depot.info.apple.com/batteryexchange/index.html?lang=en

Microsoft Giving Away Tablet PCs at CompUSA

Are you new to the Tablet PC? Wantto see aTabletPC demo in person? Microsoft is offering demos at CompUSA stores in several states through June 19th. The best part is that besides just taking in a Tablet PC demo, you just might win one! The following states are currently holding the demos: California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

More: http://www.tabletpcreviewspot.com/default.asp?newsID=243

 

Nice move by HP, and way to go LiveStrong. Hopefully in just over 2 months time Lance will be raising the tour's trophy for the 7th consecutive time. Talk about shattering a world record ... this guy just stomped it and moved on [ ] Way to go Lance

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N6010: P4M 3.2G, 1GB Dual 400MHz, 60GB 7200RPM, ATI 9700M, 17" WXGA+
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Brian noted that the notebook appears to be a Turion version of the dv1000. The dv1000 has integrated Intel graphics. Although it's quite obvious we won't be seeing Intel graphics, based on the price, is it safe to assume this laptop will have integrated graphics or something really low end like the Xpress 200m in the zv6000?

 

Yes, newer release of the LiveStrong L2000 showed the chipset is Ati Radeon Xpress 200m.

How does this compare with the Intel's integrated graphics chipset in 915GM? Better, equal or worse?

 

Here are the pictures of the HP LiveStrong L2000:

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,2394,l=&s=25696&a=152315,00.asp