And just to confuse things a bit, Asus also announced the 8-inch Eee Tablet. The company is calling it “the world’s most accurate and sensitive digital note taking device” that “gives the user the feel of writing on paper.” Though the above photo shows a black and white drawing, it looks like the tablet has some sort of power-sipping LCD display capable of attaining ten-hour battery life. There’s also a 2-megapixel camera that lets “the user grab screenshots of lecture slides and write notes on them instantly.” No word about connectivity options, though, except that “it easily syncs up with a PC or notebook via USB or Micro SD to ensure that all notes, content, and calendars are constantly up-to-date.” So it appears we’re looking at a non-connected eBook reader on steroids with a reported price tag of between $199 and $299. No word on a release date yet.
Notebooks! Netbooks!
MSI announced a handful of notebooks and netbooks, the most interesting being the 10-inch Wind U160 netbook (above, left) that “boasts over 15 hours of battery power per charge” and is less than an inch thin and weighs just 2.2 pounds. The company also updated its line of budget-friendly U135 and U140 10-inch netbooks, bumped its 12-inch U200/U250 netbooks up to Intel’s ultra low voltage CPUs, and updated its line of X-Slim ultraportable notebooks. No word on pricing or availability for anything yet.
Asus announced the “world’s first integrated WirelessHD notebook” series, capable of transmitting 1080p video at 60 frames per second wirelessly to a nearby television. Several models will be available in the fall although pricing hasn’t been set yet. From the sounds of it, the notebooks will have the wireless transmitters built right in, while your TV set will likely use some sort of small wireless receiver that connects to it via HDMI cable.
And speaking of netbooks, Intel unveiled its “Canoe Lake” platform for unbelievably thin netbooks like the one shown above. According to VentureBeat, the platform “can serve as the electronics for a dual-core netbook that is just 14-millimeters thick (half an inch). With that size, the prototype netbook is the world’s thinnest such device.” The Canoe Lake platform uses the currently-available “Intel Pine Trail” netbook CPUs. The above netbook is being shown off as a reference device, so it’s up to actual manufacturers to build these things in the future—hopefully not too far off.
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