News Bits: Panasonic ToughBook W5 in 7 Colors, Compal Record Notebook Shipments, Samsung P9000

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Panasonic offers color choices on Toughbook eLite notebooks

November 8^th - Panasonic today announced that its Toughbook eLite notebook PC line is now available with diffrerent color choices.

The ultraportable Toughbook eLite W5 is offered in seven colors: Steel Gray, Merlot, Galaxy Black, Glacier White, Blueprint, Rosehip, and a new &quot;Crown Blue.&quot; The Toughbook eLite W5 features a matte 12.1&quot; display, integrated multi-drive, an 8-hour battery life, and weighs a mere 2.7 lbs.

The thin-and-light Toughbook eLite Y5 is now available in six colors: Steel Gray, Galaxy Black, Skylight Blue, Firehouse Red, Deepsea, and a new &quot;Bronze Brown.&quot; The Y5 features a 14.1&quot; display, up to 6 hours of battery life, and weighs just 3.4 lbs.

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Compal has record notebook shipments in October

November 6^th - Compal Electronics shipped a record of 1.65 million notebooks in October mainly due to strong seasonality. In spite of a tight supply of certain components, such as batteries and memory, the company still managed to hit a record. The Christmas season will drive up demand further in November. Compal expects to reach its shipment goal of 4.6 million units for Q4. For the year, Compal expects notebook shipments to reach 14 million units, and 18-18.5 million in 2007.

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IEEE begins revision of notebook battery standard

November 7^th - The IEEE is planning to revise its IEEE 1625 notebook battery standard, the &quot;IEEE Standard for Rechargable Batteries for Portable Computing.&quot; Approved in 2004, this update aims at an overall performance improvement of notebook battery systems and addresses recent issues to make the systems more reliable. The revised standard is expected to be completed within 18 months.

The purpose of IEEE 1625 is to guide the industry in planning and implementing controls for battery design and manufacturing.

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Zalman Tech ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler now available

The Zalman ZM-NC1000 notebook cooler is now available for purchase. It features a 3mm-thick aluminum base and two centrifugal fans spinning at a variable speed up to 1,500RPM; the fan speed is user-adjustable via a dial on the side of the chassis. Zalman dubs the cooler &quot;Ultra Quiet&quot; because the quiet fans are also supposed to bring down not only your laptop's heat, but also its noise level due to less fan activity.

Newegg.com currently lists the ZM-NC1000 for $49.99.

Manufacturer Product Page

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Samsung's P9000 UMPC PDA device

Samsung unveiled a hard-to-classify device at the Mobile WiMAX Summit, which is best described as a mix between a UMPC, regular computer, and a PDA, all in a one pound, fold-away package. It features a near full-size QWERTY keyboard, integrated WiMAX and CDMA EV-DO connectivity, and is powered by Windows XP.

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BestBuy to offer $379 HP Notebook

Best Buy's Black Friday Ad has been leaked on the web. We recently reported on the Wal-Mart HP notebook that is being sold for $398, but according to the leaked ad flyer for BestBuy that store will offer a Core Solo HP notebook for $379. It will have a 15.4&quot; screen, 1GB of RAM, and 80GB hard drive. It's only going to be sold for that price from 5 a.m. - noon and of course no availability amount is listed so you can expect only 2 or 3 per store so it's more of a tease to get people in that something you'll be able to pickup easily.

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Interesting Links

Computer development is now focusing on power-efficient computing, and the new era of power management technology has arrived. Link to Extremetech.

Discuss it in the forums.

Special thanks to forum member ikovac for submitting this link.

 

The zalman cooling pad looks pretty slick, wouldnt mind seeing how it performs

 

Those Panasonics look pretty good in colors. And that cooling pad looks a lot more sylish than others I've seen.

Imagine the "What the...!?" looks you'd get while using that Samsung PDA on the street .