News Bits: Notebook Sales Growth, Averatec Grows, Intel Dual-Cores, T42 Gets Award

Desktopand Notebook Computer Sales to Double to 1.3 Billion Sold in 2010

This year the expectation is that worldwide shipments of notebooks and desktops combined will be about 575 million units. That's a lot of computers. But nothing compared to what Forrester research is predicting the amount to be shipped in 2010. According to their numbers, in 2010 1.3 billion computers will be shipped worldwide, with a major source of growth coming in China and India. Growth of computer sales in North America and Europe will also climb steadily. Notebook computers will continue to take a larger share of sales over desktop computers, currently desktops comprise slightly over 50% of computer sales, but by 2005 it is expected more notebooks than desktop computers will be sold.

More: http://www.investors.com/breakingnews.asp?journalid=24401170&brk=1

Averatecis the Fastest Growing NotebookSeller in United States

Averatec was ranked as the eighth-largest notebook vendor in the U.S. for the past two consecutive quarters, when shipments totaled 51,000 and 85,000 units respectively, but those numbers also mean they are the fastest growing notebook maker in the US market. Averatec's growth this year has been impressive, when compared to the 17,000 notebooks it shipped in the first quarter of 2003. So from 1st Quarter 2003 to 3rd Quarter 2004 sales growth has been over 400% for Averatec.

Averatec's shipments of own-brand notebooks are expected to reach 250,000-300,000 units by the end of this year andgrow to 500,000 units in 2005. Averatec makes the popular Mobile Theatre 6200 with instant on DVDand Convertible Tablet Notebook C3500. Averatec has increased its sales by competing on price and getting new features to market quickly.

More: http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20041217A8038.html

Intel Dual-core Processor Plans-- Because Two is Better Than One and So on to Infinite

The core of a processor is responsible for performing math calculations -- which is a rather important part of the job of a processor. In the never-ending push to boost speed it will be dual core processors, and quad-core and then octa-core (woah, that'd be eight cores) that will continue to thrust us into the future of theneed for speed. Intel plans to release chips with two processing cores next year. The first dual-core chip from Intel will be code-named Smithfield and shall be released for desktops in 2005. The first dual-core notebook chip, code-named Yonah will likely ship in late 2005 but won't appear in notebooks with great numbers until 2006. By the end of 2006 dual-core chips should represent 70% of notebook chips made by Intel. And as the Intel R&D department is looking into multiple cored processors, it's safe to believe that stretching out to 2008 we'll see more and more cores included in processors. The good news is that increasing core count is a great way to boost performance yet not drastically increase power consumption.

More: http://news.com.com/Intel+expands+core+concept+for+chips/2100-1006_3-5494714.html?tag=st.prev

Government Computer News gives ThinkPad T42 "Best Notebook" Award

Government Computer News is a bit of a yawn as far as being aninteresting website if you're not working for the government. But it's newsworthy to note that a government focused website named the IBM ThinkPad T42 their pick as the best portable computer of the year:

More:http://www.gcn.com/23_34/prod_reviews/28068-1.html

Free Omea Reader License Key for Limited Time

Omea Reader is an easy to use, all-in-one RSS/ATOM feed reader, newsgroup reader, and web bookmark manager. But what really makes it unique is the level of information organization and management features including lightning-fast searches, flexible filing, contextual access, and extensibility. Omea Reader is being offered for free until January 2005 if you download now and request a license key.

Download and key request: http://www.jetbrains.com/forms/omea_reader/download/license

thanks to Perry for this tip!