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The 4th Generation Eee PC – ASUS Eee PC 1015PE, 1016P and 1018P

calvin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:59:07 +0000

ASUS yesteday announced the launch of the new 4^th generation Eee PC™. These latest iterations of the iconic netbook deliver the best cloud computing experience in an array of bold designs to suit the tech-savvy lifestyles of the social elite, professionals, and just about everyone else.

With features like 500GB of ASUS WebStorage, ASUS GamePark, ASUS@Vibe, LocaleMe and Boingo, these ultra-thin and lightweight netbooks have everything to support a cloud computing lifestyle.

Other features include USB 3.0 ports for faster data transfers and USB-charging capabilities, Bluetooth 3.0, as well as a camera covers for additional privacy.

Eee PC 1018P—the Premium Netbook

At less than 1-inch thick, the Eee PC 1018 Series features a lightweight (1.1kg) aluminum chassis that gives a premium and sophisticated touch to suit the stylish and jet set.

Its tactile, patterned finish is available in Brushed Black and Etch White, and houses a chiclet keyboard and a large Multi-touch trackpad.

Eee PC 1015PE—the Seashell Revisited

The Eee PC 1015 Series features the power-saving ASUS-exclusive Super Hybrid Engine technology which gives it a 13.5-hour battery life*, making it ideal for travelers.

The 1015 Series’ streamlined shape is complemented by ergonomic features like a 10.1-inch LED-backlit display, chiclet keyboard, and touchpad with Palm-Proof technology. Available in an array of colors, it comes with matte, textured, or glossy finishes.

Eee PC 1016P—the Business Netbook

With its brushed aluminum chassis finished in Casual Black or Modern Silver, the Eee PC 1016 Series’ understated elegance makes it ideal for the business world.

The 1016 Series caters to the business professional’s needs, with a single hotkey that immediately sets it up to presentation mode. With the Syncables Desktop, the 1016 Series easily syncs up emails and calendars with other PCs and mobile devices to keep the user’s information up-to-date.

As of right now, there’s no word yet with the pricing and availability of these new netbooks except for the Eee PC 1016P which will arrive late August.

ASUS N61Jv SonicMaster delivers best multimedia performance on a laptop

calvin — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:12:46 +0000

If you want a laptop that can handle your picky ears when using it for high definition entertainment or gaming, take a look at this ASUS SonicMaster (N61Jv). This one belongs to ASUS’ N Series revolutionizing the multi-role nature of notebooks with professional multimedia and hardware.

SonicMaster gains from the expertise of both the audio professionals at the ASUS Golden Ear Team and the respected experience garnered by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower®. This notebook consists of larger speaker chambers and stronger amplifiers to render unmatched fidelity, in addition to extensive software equalization for wide range reproduction and full-liveness vocals, where previous notebooks settled for tinny output.

Aside from superior audio, the SonicMaster is no slouch when it comes to video. The 100% zero-dot-guaranteed LED screens that ship with the N Series make the most of ASUS Video Magic image enhancement. This unique tool upscales DVD playback up to full HD. It also supervises GPU computing for greater output during intense multitasking, and works together with ASUS Splendid HD to balance color, brightness and contrast for constant viewing pleasure.

The N61Jv is available in the Philippines for Php55,900.

Specs:

Intel Core i5-430M (2.26GHz)
Windows 7 Home Premium
16.0″ LED-backlit TFT LCD display (1366 x 768, 16:9)
4GB DDR
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 325M with 1GB DDR3
500GB SATA HDD
2-megapixel webcam
Altec Lansing® Speakers with Sonic Master Technology
6-cell 4400maH Li-Ion battery
Comes with Sleek Messenger Sling Carry Bag With Mobile Mouse
SRP: Php55,900

“Best Choice of the Year” for laptops at Computex 2010 goes to ASUS G51 3D

calvin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:44:15 +0000

The Asus G51 3D, the world’s first true 3D-ready laptop, was named as the “Best Choice of The Year” and the “Best Choice” in the “Display & Digital Entertainment” category at this year’s Computex in Taiwan.

The G51 3D, which brings compelling 3D to the masses with its full resolution and fluid 120Hz 3D images, superb 2D-to-3D conversion capabilities and surprising affordability, was selected for its innovative overall design, rich functionality, power saving features and uniqueness.

Contributing to the decision was also the G51 3D’s accurate surround sound imaging and enthusiast-level hardware specifications:

Intel Quad Core Q9000 Processor 2.0GHz
15.6-inch Full HD 1920 x 1080 LCD Display
4GB of DDR2 800Mhz RAM
NVidia GTX 260M Dedicated Graphics with 1GB DDR3 VRAM
640GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
DVD SuperMulti Drive
Windows Vista Home Premium (64 Bit)
Weight: 7.26 pounds

Asus EeePC 1201N vs. Eee PC 1201T

Abe — Mon, 17 May 2010 09:25:26 +0000

Asus made two versions of their Eee PC 1201 netbooks — one running an AMD processor and the other on an dual-core Intel Atom processor. We checked the specs of both and compared how they perform against each other.

From the outside, both the Eee PC 1201T and the Eee PC 1201N looked similar (the stickers/decals are the only ones differentiating them).

We compare the specs of the 1201N versus the 1201T:

We did the same with the results of their respective Windows Experience Index.

Of course, there’s the difference in battery performance because of the TDP of the CPU+GPU combo. The Atom N330 with GeForce 9400M has a total TDP of 20 watts (8w + 12w) while the Athlon Neo MV-40 alone is already at 15 watts. But then again, the numbers on WEI isn’t really that far off.

The Asus Eee PC 1201N sells for Php27,000 (Windows 7) while the Eee PC 1201T sells for only Php22,000 (no OS).

Asus Eee PC 1201T Review

Netbook for kids, the ASUS Disney Netpal

calvin — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:00:56 +0000

I don’t know how young you should start your kid on a laptop but I didn’t get one until I graduated from college. Anyway, if you feel your kid deserves a laptop, get one that are kid-friendly appeals to the youngsters.

The ASUS Disney Netpal was launched globally last year and has now arrived in the Philippines. Its design concept has the parents and kids in mind with its unique interface featuring Disney characters, Disney graphics on the lid and even the Mickey-shaped webcam.It runs on an Intel Atom N270 with Windows 7 Starter as its OS. With the ASUS Magic Desktop on top of Windows 7, your kid is presented with an easy-to-use interface with their choice of different Disney themes from Toy Story and WALL-E to Hannah Montana or the Jonas Brothers. Something you can’t do on a bare Windows 7 Starter edition. There are loads of Disney applications as well like Disney Mix for media and Disney Pix for photos.For parental control, the Disney Netpal comes with options allowing parents to choose the websites their kids can visit, the people they can communicate with via email, and the programs they can use. Parents can even schedule the days or times their kid can use the NetPal so they won’t neglect doing more important stuff, like eat or sleep.

The Disney Netpal by ASUS is available already in select ASUS authorized dealers for Php19,990.

Specs:

Model: Disney Netpal by ASUS MK90H
OS: Genuine Windows® 7 Starter
Display: 8.9" LED-backlit
CPU: Intel® ATOM N270
WLAN: 802.11 b/g/n
Memory: DDR2 SO-DIMM 1GB expandable 2GB max
Storage: 160GB HDD
Interface: 3 x USB 2.0 ports
Camera: 0.3 M Pixel
Reader: MMC and SD (SDHC supported)
Weight: 1kg with battery
Color: Princess Pink, Magic Blue

Asus releases new N82J multimedia laptop

calvin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:13:16 +0000

If you’re in the market for a powerful multimedia laptop, do check out the Asus N82J featuring a whole lot of performance hardware on a 14-inch slim body.

The Asus N82J sports Intel’s 2010 Core processors (from i3 to i7) and an NVIDIA® GeForce® GT335M GPU with up to 8GB memory. It’s also compatible with USB 3.0 devices for the fastest data transfer available.

It comes with a custom-built Altec Lansing speakers and coupled with the Asus SonicMaster. it will give you surround fidelity that you would expect from full-size audio systems. It also has the Asus Video Magic which accelerates frame rates up to 72fps and upscales HD video to 1080p without stuttering.

Through NVIDIA® Optimus™ technology, the Asus N82J will manage your display by switching between dedicated and integrated graphics depending on the system’s need to optimize battery usage.

Specs:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-720QM, Intel® Core™ i5-540M, Intel® Core™ i5-520M , Intel® Core™ i5-430M , Intel® Core™ i3-350M, Intel® Core™ i3-330M
OS: Windows7 Ultimate/ Professional/ Home Premium/ Home Basic (64-Bit)
Display: 14.0" 16:9 LED backlit (1366*768)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT335M with DDR3 1GB VRAM
HDD: SATA 250GB//320GB/500GB/640GB
RAM: DDR3 1066MHz, up to 8GB
Battery: 8-cell battery
Size: 345 x 243 x 33-35 mm, 2.3 kg

Will keep you guys updated once I get the starting price for this small beast.

ASUS N61Jv SonicMaster delivers best multimedia performance on a laptop

Asus UL20 Review

Abe — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 11:55:19 +0000

Asus’ premium ultraportable notebooks fall under the UL (ultra-light) series and the Asus UL20 is the smallest and lightest of the lot at 12.1 inches.

The the thin and light notebook comes in a silver, brushed-metal finish with black glossy bezel. Its got a thin form factor and light weight comparable to the cheaper but plastic-built Asus Eee PC 1201T and 1201N. The UL20 has a more solid built and not prone to smudges and finger-prints, unlike the Seashell series.

The chiclet-type keys are appropriately sized and spaced although I’d prefer the keyboard styling Asus did with the Seashell models. The trackpad is contiguous with the palm-rest and the only demarcation are pimple-holes which also provides ample friction to the touch.

The clickers are also not split but is wide enough that you don’t get confused between the left and the right click.

The 12-inch screen has a glossy display; and while its got some pretty bright and crisp resolution (1366×768 pixels), it’s also prone to glare when outdoors are against bright light sources.

As for performance, the UL20 is one of the best performing CULV notebooks I’ve tested with a Windows Experience Index base score of 3.4 (GPU) while the CPU scored 4.1 (the additional 0.1 from our chart is due to the 64-bit OS).

The notebook can easily play HD videos locally and handles YouTube HD 720p just fine (YouTube HD 1080p is already choppy though). Full benchmarks of the Asus UL20 is published on the PCLabs blog.

(Top) Asus UL20A vs (bottom) Asus Eee PC 1201T. It will be interesting to match the UL20 with the Acer Timeline 1810tz.

The UL20 comes with a 2GB DDR2 RAM but I was able to bump it up to 4GB. The 320GB HDD is also more than enough. For connectivity, it’s got WiFi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1 (absent in the 1201 models). Standard ports include a VGA port, 3 USB ports and an SD card reader. The absence of an HDMI port is a little disappointing.

As for battery life, the unit has 6-cell Li-Ion battery rated at 4400mAh which is similar to the one used in the Eee PC 1201T and 1201N (they’re practically inter-changeable). BatteryBar gives it a decent 3 hours 40 minutes on regular use but I can stretch that to 4.5 to 5 hours if I dial down the display brightness (or run the Asus Power4Gear Hybrid utility).

I can forgive the battery capacity on the cheaper 1201 models but for a notebook twice the price, I was hoping Asus had put in a higher capacity 6-cell pack. Something like a 5600mAh 6-cell battery could probably push this rig to at least 6 hours on a single charge.

The Asus UL20A started out with a whooping retail price of Php49,990 which is on the higher end of the price spectrum. Fortunately, they dropped it to Php37,990 in February. That puts it on the top of the contenders in the 12-inch CULV category.

Design
Performance
Battery
Value

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Asus UL20A Benchmarks

Abe — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:22:34 +0000

We gathered simple benchmarks of laptops and netbooks to get their relative performance when compared with each other. We used PassMark Performance Test for this purpose, among others. In this round, we looked at the Asus UL20A.

Asus UL20 specs:
12.1″ display @ 1366×768 pixels
Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3GHz
Intel GMA 4500MHD
4GB DDR2 RAM
320GB HDD

PassMark Results:
CPU Compression: 3050.4KB/s
CPU Encryption: 18MB/s
Find Prime Number: 468.5 operations per second
CPU Integer Math: 123.4 million operations per second
CPU Floating Point: 476 million operations per second
Graphics 3D Simple: 419.3 fps (32-bit)
Graphics 3D Medium: 78.6 fps (32-bit)
Graphics 3D Complex: 21.1 fps (32-bit)

CPU Mark: 835.6
2D Graphics Mark: 147.3
3D Graphics Mark: 166.1
Memory Mark: 344
Disk Mark: 242.7
Passmark Rating: 376.6

Windows Experience Index:

Here’s a reference for Windows Experience Index of the CPU compared to others in the netbook/ultraportable category:

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Asus Karim Rashid Eee PC 1008P launched

Abe — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:30:14 +0000

Ever since the popularity of netbooks, it really hasn’t melded well with fashion but ASUS plans to change that with its limited edition Eee PC 1008P Karim Rashid Collection which they launched in the country yesterday.

Separating itself from those glossy, black or decal-painted netbooks, the Asus Eee PC 1008P Karim Rashid Collection sports a rubbery-texture crocodile-looking hide that looks so good that you don’t want to put it in a bag or a sleeve.

This designer edition netbook is based on the Eee PC Seashell 1008HA that was released last year. It has the same slim form factor and light weight at only 1.145kg. What’s new with the 1008P is the Intel N450 processor, Windows 7 OS and 250GB hard drive.

The Eee PC 1008P also has a 3-cell Li-polymer battery which Asus claims can go for 6 hours on a single charge. More like 4 hours in normal usage which is pretty low considering that it’s already using the Intel N450.

People would want to have this netbook mainly for its style and at P25,900, it’s already a good price IMHO. The Karim Rashid Collection comes in glossy Hot Pink for the ladies or matte Coffe Brown for the gentlemen.

This limited edition Asus netbook is only available in select dealer stores: Octagon – Megamall, Complink – MOA, Villman – North Edsa and Accent Micro in Park Square, Makati.

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Asus Eee PC 1201T Review

Abe — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:54:07 +0000

The Asus Seashell design was continued with the introduction of the Eee PC 1201T, a 12-inch AMD Athlon-powered netbook. We took the unit for a spin and shared my verdict in the review below.

The Intel version, which is the 1201N with Atom N330 dual core and nVidia Ion, will not be released by Asus in the Philippines. But that shouldn’t prevent you from seeing some units sold in the grey market.

If you’re familiar with the Seashell 1008HA and 1005HA, the 1201T is the 12.1″ version with respect to design and construction — slim and tapered at the edges.

The unit is glossy all over — from the lid, to the keyboard panel and the palm rest — so expect a lot of smudges and fingerprints when using this. Some people like it, others hate this type of piano-black finish.

The chiclet-type keyboard is well-spaced although the individual keys are a bit small and prone to slipping when touch-typing. I kinda liked that style though.

The display screen is 12.1″ in diagonal and has a resolution of 1366×768 pixels. The glossy screen is bright and crisp — a big disadvantages when used outdoor because of the glare.

When I ran Windows Experience Index, the processor got a rating of 3.2. This is 0.1 higher than the same Athlon MV-40 on the ThinkPad X100e (WEI: 3.1) because I installed 64-bit version of Windows 7. More benchmark information here using PassMark. Here’s a comparison against the ThinkPad X100e with the same CPU and GPU.

Now at least we know that 64-bit OS does some improvements on performance. There’s also a difference in the GPU performance but that’s for another entry. I guess the most revealing about this CPU is that it can’t play YouTube HD (720p) smoothly — playback is choppy at best. It can play Full HD 1080p video files but that’s because of the help of the GPU.

One unique design feature of the Asus 1201T is that the trackpad area is continuous with the palm rest and that it’s pimpled (dotted like that of a Braille). This gives you some tactile feedback and I think works very well. The other drawback though is that the left and right click buttons are not separated.

The system is pre-installed with the Asus Express Gate, a quick-boot OS that allows for basic functions like instant messaging, browsing, games, video and photos. It’s a nice feature that’s built into the system and saves a lot of time when you’re in a hurry to get connected and just wanted to do a quick check.

As for battery life, the 6-cell battery only provides up to 2.5 hours but that’s because of the low rating of 4400mAh. I reckon if it had been 5600mAh, it could do about 3.25 hours. The Athlon CPU and Radeon HD3200 graphics are really juice-guzzlers.

The unit sells for Php21,900 without an OS — pretty affordable price if you asked me. However, the poor battery life and slightly above average performance of the CPU isn’t something to be too excited about.

In some respects, it’s actually better than a regular Atom-powered netbook with a 3-cell battery selling at the same price point. At the same time, if you compare this to the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e which has the same specs, the Eee PC 1201T looks attractive with the Php21,900 but don’t forget you still need to shell out some more money for the operating system.

Asus EeePC 1201N vs. Eee PC 1201T