I’ve had Honeycomb 3.1 on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 for a week now and as I did with the Compaq Airlife and Toshiba AC100 last year, looking for signs that a smartbook is finally happening. The signs are there, yes, but there’s still a long way to go.

Check out a similar A500 productivity test by Jerry at Carrypad

I predicted that 2011 would be the year we would finally see ARM/Android devices move into productivity scenarios and it looks like the ASUS Transformer has achieved that with many recommending it as one of the best Honeycomb tablets out there. With its weight and price though it loses two features that the Toshiba AC100 had going for it but we’re moving in the right direction with the core operating system and that’s more important than weight and price right now.

Let me talk about a few of those core features in relation to my testing on the A500.

Keyboard / mouse support

Not only does the full-size USB port on the A500 support a keyboard but it supports USB hubs, hard drives, USB sticks and mouse pointers. With the core operating system being keyboard and mouse ‘aware’, there’s a surprisingly smooth transition from desktop OS. Double-click to select a word works although there are clear limitations when it comes to drag and drop, especially between windows. It’s something I do a lot with text and images as a blogger. Importantly it seems to be stable and relaible too. Keyboard and mouse continues to be an important input and control mechanism for nearly everyone so let’s hope this gets improved.

Browser

That keyboard and mouse support extends to the browser too. The tab button switches to the next input field for example and you can scroll within a box without the whole screen scrolling with it but there are still critical issues. Input fields are hit-and-miss and my personal test of using the WordPress back-end, a complex web application, fails misserably. That’s an ExoPC in the image above with the A500 off to the side! Mouse-over functions aren’t working 100%, input fields are an issue and drop-down menus appear randomly in the WordPress back-end. Stability seems reasonable but you’re looking at a content consumption browser, not a full web experience. Firefox doesn’t do any better. Mouse-over still doesn’t seem to work and using the WordPress back-end I couldn’t even enter text or resize the Ajax input field.  I’m seeing similar brick walls in other complex web applications too.

The performance when browsing web-app pages is also noticeably slower than on a netbook, to the point where it becomes annoying.  Netbooks aren’t fast but in most cases, they’re acceptable. The wordpress back-end takes seconds longer on the A500 and tests patience. Sunspider is 150% as fast on a N450 single-core netbook than on the dual-core A500! (13ooms on ExoPC vs 2300ms on A500.) Genera processor power is still an issue on ARM devices. A 1.5Ghz dual-core or a 1Ghz quad core solution should be high on your list if you want to test productivity on devices like the A500 in the next round.

For those of you needing the full web experience, I can tell you now that you don’t need to read any further. Honeycomb is a fail in that respect.

Acer Iconia A500 information page. Includes links to reviews, gallery, articles, alternatives.

On the bright side, progress is being made and yes, many people don’t need web apps. Here are some of the improvements I’ve noticed,

• Rotating homescreen works in portrait mode. Small but welcome change.
• Re-sizeable widgets really help improve information flow on home screens. A major advantage and in my opinion, a real lock-in feature.
• Stability improvements help but I’m still seeing more app crashes on the A500 than I do on the Galaxy Tab 7. Windows 7 on a netbook is way, way better in comparison.
• English language support. A problem with the German version of the A500 I bought – it now has English language support. Not many people will have noticed this issue!
• USB support for hard drives, hubs, keyboard, mouse, USB drives works well.
• Browser now supports desktop user-agent for viewing full versions of websites.
• UI speed and smoothness improvements.
• Additional apps – Kobo reader, LumiRead, Zinio Reader, Movie Studio.
• In general, battery life on the A500 has always been very good along with the screen quality.

So we’re at a place where the experience is better than Toshiba AC100 but still a way away from productivity use. The browser and stability need to be improved along with a general improvement in speed and in applications which doesn’t seem to have happened in the last months. Honeycomb isn’t getting enough growth to spur developers to write Honeycomb applications yet and that’s a major worry because it is falling further behind the iPad and if it remains that way, there’s little incentive to write apps for it until Android 2.x and 3.x versions are merged in Ice Cream Sandwich.

One other thing – there’s that Movie Studio application. I’ll try and write a little more detail about it in another post because I’ve just edited a 720p video made on the Nokia N8 with it. It wasn’t a nice experience!

How long until it works?

For some, it works well enough today, for others, Android will never have the feature-set required because Honeycomb doesn’t aim to cover all niche scenarios. It’s a consumer, mass-market operating system designed to help Google make money through advertising in its applications. We musn’t forget that the core OS is actually free although there’s clearly quite an expense involved in getting it suited and booted for the consumer.

For many, Android is getting close. We are seeing adoption in productivity scenarios already and the more apps that appear, the less the browser is required and the less of an issue that browser becomes.

For me, Android is probably a year away from being production ready. I look to the iPad to see how the video software and hardware works well together, how stability is less of an issue and how quality, stable applications solve more and more requirements.  I’ll be looking to test Android on a smartbook or large format tablet in the next round which we should expect to be readily available in early 2012.

Now, does anyone want to buy my A500?

Looking like the same industrial design as the Iconia A500, this is Acer’s Meego Tablet.

Full credit to @ndeviltv and @ngde_live

More coming soon. I’ll be reporting on this over at Meegonews. Update: Videos, screen grabs and thoughts on the article.

If you measure the power used by a netbook PC when it’s in standby, a frozen unusable state, it uses around 500mW of power.  Leaving a netbook on with WiFi connected in an idle state with the screen blanked, maybe with an email program polling occasionally, you’ll see about 10 times the power usage. In PC terms, 5W is impressive but if you go to the smartphone world and take a look at the figures there, there’s a huge huge gap that needs to be tackled. As smartphones become tablets, become smartbooks, there’s a threat that ‘always-on’ becomes ‘must-have’ and that X86-based devices will struggle to compete in casual computing scenarios.

Smartphones are designed from the ground-up around the concept of ‘always-on. From the moment a smartphone is conceived, every element of the design has to be checked for power consumption which is why a smartphone can sit connected to the GSM telephone network drawing power consumption levels lower than 50mw. That’s 1/10th of the power consumption taken by a good netbook when it’s in a frozen state. Impressive.

But what happens when you connect a smartphone to the internet ? You can use cellular data services to achieve a good rate of connectivity by switching on UMTS for example. Switching to WiFi on a typical smartphone brings faster connectivity and, in a lot of cases, lower power that can be done on cellular networks. A smartphone can run a multitasking operating system and remain connected to internet and voice networks in well under 500mw of power, the same as it takes a netbook to sleep.  In fact, the best smartphones are running in this configuration for over 24hrs on a 5Wh battery which is an amazing 100mw of power usage. Turn on some background internet activities and it will jump to an average 200mw!

What happens if you take an ARM platform that’s in the same processing power category as a low-end netbook. Put it in a 10” screen form factor and do the same test? Actually, it’s the same as a smartphone. The only difference between a high-end smartphone and a smartbook with a 10” screenand a huge battery is the screen itself and when that is off, there’s practically no difference at all.

To prove this, I took one of the most powerful mobile computing platforms in a large 10” form factor device with 32GB of storage, 1GB of RAM and integrated WiFi. The device has a 23wh battery (about half that of ‘6-cell’ netbooks. The device is the Acer Iconia Tab A500 Android tablet which runs honeycomb. I connected to the Wifi (at 54mbps) and left the device connected with the screen off while it did it’s stuff in the background. Marketplace checks, email checks, Twitter checks and even some GPS usage by Google Maps. A weather service was running, the volume was set to silent and Bluetooth was turned off.

Over a 48  hour period with a few screen-on moments for checking progress (and a 10 minute in-use period as my daughter grabbed it to use a paint program)  I measured 46% fall in battery usage of which 5% was due to screen-on time. Take away the screen-on figure and you have 209mw of power usage.  The Acer Iconia Tab is nothing more than a smartphone inside!

‘Always-on, Always Connected’ will be a ‘Must-have.’

Always-on tests are interesting because it’s a hands-off test that people think only applies to idle smartphones.  In fact, it applies to many computing scenarios. With location, polling, sync, presence, alarms, push updates and of course, cellular voice and messaging becoming the norm in the hand, they will also have appeal on the desk. Not having to wait 5 seconds for a machine to start-up, another 5 seconds for a Wi-Fi connection and another 10 seconds for tweets, emails and other features to catch up is annoying.  There’s also a bunch of other screen-off, connected activities that are interesting. Servers for example. By that, I mean computers and gadgets that serve information to the Internet. This doesn’t just cover web servers. Think about internet-connected weather stations and web cameras, in-car data storage and notification systems. Then there are the devices that just don’t need big screens; Connected musical instruments. Digital cameras with 3G. Internet Radios. Low-power internet connectivity is important for these devices.

Related: Social Netbooks and ARM’s Lock-In Netbook Opportunity.

Summary

The point here is not to highlight that ARM is better than X86, it’s to highlight the gap. This gap is currently a huge advantage for ARM-based platform designers.

• The first point is, if manufacturers using X86/PC architecture don’t get products to market with active standby soon, with the help of Intel (the only X86 player trying to tackle this problem) customers will have a chance to experience, and may not turn back from, ARM-based always-on products.
• The second point is that this is a screen-off gap. Current screen technology is killing ARMs advantage in the ‘in-use’ scenario where screens are larger than 7”. It reduces the ARM advantage from 20x in idle to about 4x with a 10” screen being backlit. When the devices CPU is being actively used, the advantage drops even lower to around 2x. [Acer Iconia Tab – 4W. Samsung NC210 – 8W)
• Finally, the Acer Iconia Tab A500 is a good example of low-power internet connectivity. It’s likely that other devices in this ARM tablet segment hit the same figures.

Keep an eye on high-end ARM-based platforms over the next year or two. Honeycomb and iOS are leading the way into the professional space with their software and application ecoystems and you might find that this always-on advantage starts to lock people in soon.

The product page for the Acer Iconia Tab W500 is now live and populated with links, specs, gallery and videos.

I’ve been through the details with a fine toothcomb and on one had I’m quite excited about a sub 1KG tablet with an acceptable CPU, good GPU, hi-res wide-view screen, UMTS and docking station for 599 Euro (current average online prices, Germany) but when you look at the weight / battery life ratio, it isn’t that good. Acer have only managed to squeeze in a 36Wh battery which means you’re looking at 3-4hrs usable battery life. Add the dock (which doesn’t look like it’s built for the road!) and you’re up over 1.5KG.

Taken as a tablet only, it actually looks like an interesting proposition. With CPU power up at the top end of the netbook range and GPU that blows away anything based purely on Intel netbook platforms it should perform smoothly. 2GB of RAM and Windows Home Premium give it media serving capability. Throw in the UMTS/HSDPA and it gets even more exciting.

See the W500 gallery for more.

At the end of the day, and specifications list, I’ve a feeling that this is going to work well as a hot-desking solution. It should serve well as a home desktop for anyone not getting involved with hundreds of browser tabs or video editing and the grab-and-go capability means it can be used in a more casual manner now and again. It looks fun too!

For UMPC fans though, it’s just too heavy. An upgraded 1.25KG Asus 1015PN with 6hr battery would be a much better choice for true mobile computing.

Today Acer revealed 7” and 10.1” Android slates, but that’s not all. They also unveiled a 10.1” device running Windows 7 that is set to launch in February of next year.

The device seems to be unnamed at this point, but let’s just call it the Acer 10 Windows Slate for the time being. So then, Acer’s press conference shows that the Acer 10 Windows Slate will be using the “latest AMD dual core processor with dedicated graphics”, it will have a 1280×800 resolution 10.1” touchscreen (presumably capacitive) as well as an “HD” front facing camera (minimum resolution of 0.9MP if they are actually talking about real HD standards), a 3MP rear camera, and internal 3G. There is also HDMI-out for playback on an HDTV. Hopefully it’ll be able to handle smooth HD playback through said HDMI port.

While this does sound like pretty much ever other Slate you’ve heard about recently, Acer is doing something at least slightly unique. They’ve cooked up a docking station that will add a full sized keyboard to the device, and they say it comes included with the Acer 10 Windows Slate. So you’ll be able to do your word processing at home, then grab the 15mm thick slate out of the dock and stick it on your bag to use it for… um… whatever it is that people use a keyboardless Windows 7 slates for. I guess you could always bring along a nice Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to have a portable productivity kit.

Our pal Joanna Stern has early hands-on impressions and photos of most of Acer’s recently announced slates, go check it out!

[Engadget]

Many of you have asked about the inking ability of the Acer 1825 PT I reviewed two weeks back, so I thought I would do a short demonstration video of it.

As you can see its not a perfect experience and won’t provide the same level as a full tablet PC with an active digitiser but it usable for short note taking sessions.

I wanted to live with the Acer 1825 PT [image gallery] for a couple of weeks before I posted a review because using it for a couple of days isn’t a good test of any device. Its been a great work horse but not without its faults. If you haven’t already, check out my unboxing video.

Hardware

Overall the look of and feel of the Acer is good, its very compact and not too heavy, although at 1.72 kg (3.79 lbs) it does begin to feel weighty when using it one handed. The screen is bright and crisp and the 1366 x 768 resolution is perfect for the 11.6” screen size, touch input is accurate on the capacitive touch display and you rarely find yourself having to press multiple times when trying to hit on screen buttons like the classic close program. One of the major downsides to the screen is its highly reflective, probably more so than any other device I have used or owned. This is a major point, when using the screen in a well lit room like an office or for example a hospital waiting room, the viewing angle is tiny, this often means the angle you are holding it at is a strain. I’ve lived with this problem for two weeks and have learnt to deal with it but if you spend a lot of time in well lit places then you must take this into consideration, even more so if you plan to use this device in tablet mode often.

One of the other advantages of an 11.6” device is the keyboard, the Acer 1825 PT has a full size short press keyboard which is perfect for typing on. In no time at all, my words per minute speed was up to the same level as it would be when using a full sized desktop keyboard which is a huge boost to productivity. There is some flex in the keyboard which does leave a feeling of low quality but it certainly doesn’t effect typing speed.

There are two additional hardware buttons on the Acer, a ‘P’ button the screen bezel and a Acer Backup Manager button above the keyboard. The ‘P’ button has three actions, CTRL + ALT + DEL, print screen or a customisable program launcher. It lacks a screen brightness function which given how reflective the screen is, should have been included.

Another issue I have come across during everyday use of the Acer is the screen hinge. The hinge itself feels pretty solid and robust but it isn’t stiff enough, when you pick up  the device in laptop mode the screen almost falls back to the flat position and you have to be weary when moving the Acer about because of this. The screen can also only be twisted in one direction which isn’t uncommon for convertibles, although is a learning curve.

Performance

The Acer 1825 PT’s performance has been excellent, the Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 is clocked at 1.3GHz which when coupled with 4GB of RAM means Windows 7 steams along. I have done some serious multitasking on this device, Chrome with several tabs open, Windows Live Writer, photo editing, Outlook 2010, Evernote, Skype, Live Messenger all open concurrently and with no noticeable slow down or reduction in performance. For a convertible of this size its mightily impressive when it comes to productivity. Cold boot times for Windows are nice and quick and your looking around a 30 second wait for the device to boot into the operating system.

Video playback has also been excellent, YouTube HD isn’t at all an issue as you would expect from the Intel 4500MHD graphics unit. As a further test I had the film 2012, both in 720p and 1080p encoded in the matroska format. On the Acer’s display the 720p version played without a hitch with no noticeable frame’s dropped. When outputting 1080p to a 40” LCD via the HDMI port, video became choppy and the audio lost synchronisation, however 720p video playing at the TV’s native resolution of 1920 x 1080 worked perfectly and looked great. With Xvid, WMV and H.264 file formats and encoding, video playback at both 720p was near on perfect. This is down to the 4500MHD GPU which can share up to 1695MB’s  of the system RAM.

Battery life has excellent and not far off Acer’s figure of 8 hours. I have regularly achieved 7 hours with 40% screen brightness and WiFi turned on when web browsing or writing. This figure drops significantly under certain circumstances, one of which is video playback. Running the 720p version of the film 2012 on a loop the Acer managed a measly 3 hours and 50 minutes before going into hibernation, this has been true of any situation that utilises the graphics controller on the device, including flash video playback. The other strange circumstance I have suffered with the Acer is sleep. If you sleep the device the battery life time is significantly reduced in less than a 12 hour period, I found that if I used the devices for several sessions in a day with a one to two hour intervals of sleep in between sessions the battery would be reduced to 5 hours. I’m really not sure what is draining the battery when the Acer is asleep but by using hibernation this problem is resolved. The obvious issue with hibernation is the 10 seconds for Windows to resume which hinders productivity.

Software

There is an unfortunate amount of crapware that comes preloaded on the Acer, this took a good 30 minutes to remove the unnecessary software. Acer include a whole host of  software with the 1825, including crystal eye webcam software to enhance video calling through Skype and Live Messenger and a backup manager linked to the hardware button I mentioned earlier. Also included is the Acer Touch Portal which has the Microsoft Touch Pack programs and Windows Media Player enclosed into a custom user interface, you can access it through a corner of the desktop which looks like a folded over page. Its a pretty poor attempt at a UI, it looks ugly with a front room type layout and lacks finesse. You can access the Microsoft Touch Pack programs separately through the start menu which makes the Touch Portal redundant. A 64 bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium is also included with full touch support including the Tablet Input Panel (TIP).

Touch Features

We have said before that Windows 7 isn’t built from the ground up to be finger touched, there are too many small buttons and scroll bars that require a precise input like a stylus or pen to operate. However, at the panels standard resolution I have found it actually very easy to operate and navigate around Windows with finger touch, the pixels per inch seems to be a good balance of resolution without making items too small to hit accurately.

I also wanted to demonstrate the screen with a capacitive stylus for ink input. I know many of you would be looking at the Acer 1825 PT as a device to ink on and I believe it is achievable. If you are happy to hold your wrist or palm on the bezel of the screen, then stylus input works without issue. I have ordered a capacitive stylus but it has not yet arrived, if and when it does I will do a demonstration video of ink input.

Conclusion

There is a lot to like about the Acer 1825 PT, its performance and video playback features are excellent, even the battery life is good and has been better than expected. Windows 7 performs very well on the dual core processor and the 300GB’s of storage means you shouldn’t have to worry about space. For me I’m still unsure if its going to have to be returned, the screen reflection is a big drawback and I have found constantly changing the position of it in tablet and laptop modes is a real pain.

If you have any questions then fire off below and I will do my best to answer them.

Acer has taken what seems like an age to get stock of the 1825 PT and PTZ out to distributors but finally I have managed to get hold of one. I will be reviewing it over the next two weeks to give you an insight of the devices capabilities but in the meantime here is the unboxing video.

Specifications;

• Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
• Intel® Core™2 Duo processor SU7300 (1.3 GHz, 800 MHz FSB)
• 11.6″ HD Acer LED LCD (1366×768), 2 point multi touch
• 4 GB Memory
• 320 GB HDD
• Multi-in-1 card reader
• 802.11a/b/g
• Bluetooth
• Webcam, 6-cell Li-ion battery
• Weight 1.7KG

How does it look to you? Netbook upgrade?

[I'm interested in seeing how Guy's testing goes. With 3G and a fast SSD, this could be a nice upgrade from my Touchnote which, with the extra battery that gives me 8 hours, weighs over 1.5KG! - Chippy]

Warning. This is another ‘our reliable sources’ story!

Shanzai.com, a website dedicated to tracking China’s tech industry, is reporting that Lenovo, and Acer will launch products based on the Nvidia Tegra platform and running Google Chrome OS.

If it’s true it means that Google OS is months ahead of schedule. Previous Google said that we wouldn’t see devices until 2010.

Apart from those ‘reliable sources’ and a few very strange looking pics that were purported to be Google OS, there’s nothing much to go on here.

Thin and light mini notebooks will come soon, I have no doubt, but there’s a huge question mark hanging over the choice of OS. Linux looks to be the big winner here but what flavor it will have is anybody’s guess.

Exclusive: Lenovo and Acer to launch Tegra devices with Google’s Chrome OS

Got any thoughts on this one?

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items from around the web.

• AT&T Rolls Out Barely-Subsidized Acer, Dell, Lenovo Netbooks Across the Country – AT&T fires up a bit of netbook subsidization, offering the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page], Acer Aspire One [Portal page] and Lenovo S10 [Portal page] for $200 with a two-year, $40/month (minimum) contract.
• ASUS Eee PC T101 tablet reportedly facing uncertain future – Though the Asus Eee T101H [Portal page] was seen quite a long while back on an Asus’ Eee roadmap, it seems to have a questionable release at this point. Most likely the success or failure of the Asus Eee T91 [Portal page] will decide what comes of the T101H.
• Samsung Go (N310) reviewed, gets 8.5 hours battery life – The Samsung N310 [Portal page] which we saw several months ago is being branded as the Samsung Go in the US. Apparently its standard 6-cell battery is good for 8.5 hours which is quite impressive.
• Sony- Netbooks are Here to Stay; Touch Enabled VAIOs This Year – Sony recently hoped into the netbook game after sitting on the sidelines since the genre appeared. Now they are recognizing the netbook as something that they need to get involved in. In addition to the release of their Vaio W [Portal page] netbook, they are planning on releasing touchscreen computers after Windows 7 lands.
• Asus Finally Launches the Eee PC 1004DN – Another one that we’ve known was coming for a while: The Asus Eee 1004DN [Portal page]. Asus’ first netbook with optical disk drive and the Intel GN40 chipset. Asus has now released it in Taiwan.

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items from around the web.

• Netbook Cover Fashions Itself in the Likeness of an NES Controller – This handcrafted netbook slip case has a cool retro gaming style to it as it is designed to look like an NES controller. Looks as though the person who made it uses it to protect their Acer Aspire One [Portal page].
• Broadcom demonstrates video accelerator for netbooks – Broadcom has developed a part for inclusion in netbook platforms called Broadcom Crystal HD which works to accelerate video processing, apparently enough that a Mini 110 [Portal page] can play back 1080p video at full framerate, which is pretty impressive.
• Instant-On OS Makers Respond to Chrome OS – Makers of instant on pre-OSs Splashtop and HyperSpace response to the news that Google plans to release Chrome OS which will initially be targeted toward netbook users.
• HP Mini 110 Netbook Gains $30 HD Display Option – Speaking of the Mini 110, Kevin C. Tofel from jkOnTheRun let’s us know that the unit can now be configured with a 1366×768 resolution display, up from the previous 1024×576 option. Along with the aforementioned Broadcom Crystal HD option, you are getting real HD playback (1280×720) from a netbook!
• Asus Eee PC T101H touchscreen netbook coming later this year – Asus UK has confirmed the specs of the Asus Eee T101H [Portal page], the bigger brother of the T91 [Portal page]

We’ve seen Woot feature quite a few netbooks in the past, but today they have gone over the top. Everyone’s favorite (US only, sorry!) deal-a-day website is offering not one, but two netbook choices today, both from reputable netbook makers.

• Behind door #1 | Woot.com – Acer Aspire One D150 for $259.99 (+5 shipping)
  • Windows XP
  • 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU
  • 1GB of RAM
  • 160GB HDD
  • 6-cell battery
  • 1024×600 10.1” screen
  • Available in black, blue, or red
  • Condition: Refurbished
• Behind door #2 | Shopping.woot.com (Woot/Yahoo partner site) – Asus Eee PC 900A for $169 (+5 shipping)
  • Linux
  • 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU
  • 4GB SSD
  • 1GB of RAM
  • 1024×600 8.9” screen
  • Condition: New

Woot really seems to love netbooks. Head over an check out the two netbooks, and remember, if you are interested, you’ll want to buy fast because these deals will only be here for one day (and that’s if they don’t sell out!).

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the prospect of Android being employed full time as a netbook OS. It looks like Acer is taking one of the first big steps and officially stating that they will bring an Android running netbook to market in Q3 according to Acer’s head of IT products, Jim Wong. Acer has been showing an Acer Aspire One D250 [Portal page] around at Computex with Android as the OS. They are saying that this isn’t the actual product, but just a test platform. And that of course would leave one to believe that they won’t just be releasing one of their previous netbooks with Android as an OS option, but instead be developing a new netbook specifically for the inclusion of Android.

I still can’t quite see the major appeal to running Android on a netbook instead of a more mature computer OS. I’m sure costs factor into the equation; maybe Android is cheap and requires little configuration from the selling companies end, but then again, wasn’t that what they were trying for with Linux? Would you buy an Android powered netbook given the choice between Android and XP (or even Linux)? Let’s say that choosing Android saves $100….

[Register Hardware] [Engadget] (additional pics and video through the Engadget read link)

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting.

• 9 Cell Acer Aspire One battery good for nearly 9 hours – If you are looking for an ugly, but effective super-battery, one has become available for the Acer Aspire One. These are third party batteries, but could give you one hour of run-time per cell (that’s 9 hours, for the math challenged).

• Need help deciding what kind of device you have? – Engadget reports on a funny flow chart that will help you determine which exact category your preferred mobile computing device fits into.

• Eee PC 701 with a multitouch display – Video – A short video from eee-pc.de that shows an Asus Eee 701 with a capacitive multi-touch capable screen. Windows 7 is on the 701 in the video providing the software for the multi-touch demo.

• MSI Netbook Lasts 1.3 Days with Single Charge (On Saturn) – Kevin C. Tofel of JkOnTheRun jokes about the endurance of the MSI Wind U115 [Portal page], but it really does last quite long. Apparently eee-pc.de has tested the U115 and was able to run it for 13.25 hours on a single charge, which is extremely impressive.

• RoBe:Do netbook-powered autonomous robots – Click through for a cool video of an Eee PC powered robot making and delivering popcorn to its human owner, all initiated through twitter!

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but may still be interesting.

• Black Samsung NC10 now shipping, slightly cheaper — The slightly modified black Samsung NC10 [Portal page] with larger trackpad is now shipping and can be bought for less.

• Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Review — Laptop Mag reviews the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page]. “Dell’s first 10-inch netbook has a compact chassis, good keyboard, and a crisp 10-inch display, but we wish it offered better battery life for the price”.

• New Acer netbook hits the FCC web site — Looks like there might be a different new Aspire One 10″ netbook in the works. FCC docs give a few hints.

• HP Now Offers Extended Battery for the HP Mini 1000 — HP has released the extended battery for the HP Mini 1000 [Portal page][Review]. It will run you $119.

• First look at the Eee PC 1008HA’s Eee Dock app – Video — The upcoming Eee 1008HA has some Asus built software that gets demoed on video at CeBIT 09.

Welcome to this week’s netbook roundup. In this space every Monday I’ll highlight netbook news items that might not need their own individual posts but are still be interesting.

• Dell Mini 10 dissected — Dell support released a guide for disassembling the Dell Mini 10 [Portal page]. Looks like there are some PCI-e slots which will be good for modding, but RAM is soldered to the mobo which will make it very hard for users to do RAM upgrades.

• HP Promises a Fix for Mini 1000 Webcam Woes — HP acknowledges that there is an issue with the HP Mini 1000′s webcam and says that there will be a method to fix it. Apparently the film over the webcam has a lower reflectivity than it should.

• Gigabyte M1022 netbook has a cool dock — Jkk shows us a pretty slick looking dock for the Gigabyte M1022 which has VGA out, USB slots, and some other ports. It’s nice to see a dock for a netbook, but I hope the base is heavy so the netbook isn’t easily knocked over!

• Dell Mini 10 Netbook Officially Available: $399 — The Dell Mini 10 becomes officially available in the US for $399.

• How to fix the dark webcam on the HP Mini 1000 — Liliputing links us to a new video (after the one taken down) that will show you how to remove the film over the HP Mini 1000′s camera, improving brightness.

• First look at the new slim Acer Aspire One — It looks like Acer is planning yet another 10 inch Aspire One, despite the fact that their latest update has just recently been released.

With an even bigger WVGA screen than the HTC Touch Pro2 that we highlighted earlier today, the Acer M900 Tempo is going to be another high-end smartphone to consider if you need a consolidated device. Its got a similar high-capacity battery to the Pro2, GPS and a higher resolution camera. The processor is still an ARM11 device though so once again, the form factor is good but the CPU isn’t quite there. I can also hear the simultaneous cheers and boo’s for Windows Mobile!

Full specifications:

• Operating system: Genuine Windows Mobile® 6.1
• Processor: Samsung S3C 6410 mobile processor (533 MHz)
• System memory: 128 MB SDRAM for user applications and storage, 256 MB flash memory for operating system and embedded applications
• Display:3.8″ WVGA TFT LCD touch screen, 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 65536 colors
• Expansion: microSD™ Card
• Dimensions: 119 (L) x 62 (W) x 17.1 (H) mm
• Weight: 188 g
• Battery: Rechargeable lithium polymer battery, Capacity: 1530 mAh; Talk time: 3G: 5h depend on usage / 2G : 5h depend on usage; Standby: 160h depends on usage
• CMOS camera: 5M pixels Auto-Focus with flashlight, up to 2560 x 1920 resolution
• Audio: Built-in microphone, speaker
• Communications: HSDPA Category 8/ HSUPA Category 5 ( 2100/1900/850 Mhz); GSM/EDGE: Quad-band, 850/900/1800/1900 MHz; GPRS/EGPRS: Class B, multi-slot class 11; WLAN: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi CERTIFIED® network connection; Bluetooth: Bluetooth® 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
• GPS: SiRFstar III®
• I/O interface: 2.5mm stereo jack / AC adapter, microSD™ Card, SIM card slot
• Sensor: G-sensor
• User interface: Acer Shell v2.0
• Phone Tools: Phone settings, SIM toolkit, Speed dial, Call filter, Wireless modem, Communication manager
  Add ringtone, CSD type, Voice commander, Connection wizard, SMS sender, MMS composer
  SIM manager, Video Telephony
• Multimedia tools: Pictures & Videos, Camera /Camcorder, Album, Streaming player, Media player
• Utilities: Backup utility, Default Settings, Application recovery, Memory Optimization
• In-box accessories: Mini USB headset, Mini USB sync cable, Mini USB AC adaptor, Battery pack
• Optional accessories: Car mount kit

I’ll try and get the in the database ASAP so you can side-by-side it with the Touch Pro2, N97 and others. Right now though, I think that’s enough smartphone coverage on UMPCPortal for one day.

Acer product page with images is here.

Via PhoneScoop