With the Samsung NC215S you’ll have an excuse to work outside in the sun all day long. Just two hours of sunlight will you give you up to an hour of power with zero cost or carbon emissions. Using a netbook or laptop in the sun can be a nightmare when it comes seeing what you’re doing on the screen. But thanks to Samsung’s SuperBright anti-reflective 10-inch display you will be able to see everything as clear as day. The anti-reflective display means that the screen is always bright and clear.

The netbook features an integrated solar panel on the front of the netbook, allowing it to automatically charge when in sunlight. The NC215S PowerPlus battery lasts for up to 14.5 hours on a single full charge. Samsung’s PowerPlus battery uses intelligent charging technology, making the battery’s lifespan three times longer than that of conventional batteries. The battery can handle 1,000 charging cycles over a three year period. Samsung claims that the intelligent charging technology also allows for quicker charging.

The netbook also features Samsung’s Fast Start technology ‒ the ‘Instant on’ feature gets you started within a few seconds of opening the display or pressing the power button. Hybrid sleep mode also combines the fast start-up of sleep with the stability of hibernation, so you don’t have to wait 30-60 seconds for the netbook to boot-up.

Weighing at just 1.32kg the NC215S features a powerful dual core Intel Atom processor combined with an Intel GMA 3510 graphics processor. It also has a unique Sleep-and-Charge USB port allowing for portable devices, such as smartphones or MP3 players, to be charged even when the PC is sleeping, turned off or if the battery has run out – all through the use of solar power.

The Samsung NC215S netbook will be available locally from September 2011 at a recommended retail price of R3 499.

Razer haven’t skimped on the specs, managing to cram plenty of hardware into that svelte chassis.

And what a gap-filler they have made. I have to say, I’ve never been a great fan of Razer’s peripherals, finding them a bit odd and often ugly. But the Razer Blade is something different. They have really produced something quite beautiful. At just 2.24cm/0.88″ thick, the rich black, 17″ all aluminium chassis is gorgeous. With a 17.3″ 1920×1080 full HD screen, Intel core i7 2.8GHz CPU, 8GB of RAM and plenty of connectors, including a USB 3.0 port, Razer haven’t skimped on the specs, managing to cram plenty of hardware into that svelte chassis.

But Razer’s aim wasn’t just to make a desktop replacement, they wanted a truly portable gaming laptop. And to that end they’ve added a few other, custom innovations. Instead of a standard touchpad, you’ll find a Razer Switchblade UI, resting on the right side of a high quality, backlit, anti-ghosting, keyboard. Offering an LCD backed touchpad with programmable tactile buttons. The Switchblade UI can be used for quick access to in game commands and macros as well as providing an extra screen to keep tabs on important info.

While it may not find its way into the office or board room, with its gaming design accents, high end gamers with the cash to spare will love it. (est. price $2,799)

Specs

CPU
Intel Core i7, 2.8GHz dual core
RAM
8Gb 1333MHz DDR3
Display
17.3″ 1920×1080 LED backlit
Graphics
NVIDIA GT 555M GPU, 2GB dedicated DDR5 memory, Optimus technology
Built-in webcam
Storage
320Gb 7200rpm sata
Connections
HDMI
1x USB 3.0
2x USB 2.0
Gigabit ethernet
Battery
60Wh
Communications
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 3.0

At 1.3 kilograms and 0.64 inches the Series 9 is super lightweight. But don’t let its small size fool you –on-board you’ll find an impressive array of features and fantastic specs. The Series 9 sports a Core i5-2537M processor, a 128GB SSD, and 4GB of RAM. It’s also built from some of the toughest stuff on earth (duralumin: which is the same stuff used in airplane construction), has a backlit keyboard, and an incredibly high quality 400 nit LCD. The 13.3-inch display on the Series 9 has a 1366×768-resolution and boasts Samsung’s SuperBright Plus technology gives users an extremely crisp and vivid view.

The design of the Samsung Series 9 is quite minimalist however blue LED indicators in the keyboard, on the deck as well as the chrome-outlined power button serve to give it that extra pizazz. The island-style keyboard and large touchpad, are similar in design to Apple’s Macbook Air. The Series 9’s ports can be found along the edges, rolled up into little pull-down drawers. Pull down the left drawer to access a Gigabit Ethernet port, mini HDMI, and USB 3.0 port. Pull down the right side drawer for a combo headphone/mic jack, USB 2.0 port, and a microSD card slot. The curve on the back edges house the power jack on the left and a lock slot on the right. You’ll also find a 1.3 megapixel HD webcam above the display. On the right and left edge you’ll find two speakers.

The little dynamite will give you seven hours of battery life and is a great option for those wanting an alternative to the Macbook Air. If you’re looking for size, portability and outstanding performance that will measure up to Apple’s offering look no further than the Samsung Series 9.

The laptop comes in matt-black and the 14.5-inch display has a resolution of 1,366×768 pixels. The Envy 14 Beats Edition weighs 2.58kg and provides an array of multimedia delights through a multitude of ports. On board you’ll find an Ethernet port, a mini DisplayPort, an HDMI output, three USB ports (one of which doubles up as an eSATA port), a DVD rewritable drive, a webcam, and 3.5mm sockets for headphones and a microphone.

On the ergonomics front, the Envy 14 Beats Edition holds up reasonably well and the keyboard is a pleasure to use. The soft-touch palm-rests ensure your hands rest very comfortably while you use the device. One of the keyboard’s coolest features is that it’s backlit in red. This allows you to type in the dark and it adds a cool-factor to the laptop’s look in low-lighting.

The HP Envy 14 Beats Edition comes with a host of accessories including a thickly padded carrying pouch, cleaning cloth, and two thick red cables (one plain, the other with a ‘control center’ offering volume controls, a call-answer button and microphone).
All-in-all HP Envy 14 Beats Edition is a great laptop for those who want a premium device with a few extra-cool features.

The latest range of Dell Inspiron N5110 features an Intel Core i5-2410M processor and your choice of integrated graphics or AMD Radeon discrete graphics for gaming. The machine runs on Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit operating system. On-board you’ll find 6GB DDR3 memory, 500GB 5400rpm HDD, 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth, HD webcam, 6-cell Li-ion 48WHr battery and 9-cell 90WHr battery. The HD+ (720p) WLED display is great for viewing movies, videos and pictures. The little laptop has a 15.6-inch display, weighs in at 2.6kg, and is 14.7 x 9.6 x 1.2 inches.

The Inspiron also has more than enough inputs and outputs to keep any techy happy; with USB 2.0 ports, two ‘Super Speed’ USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and VGA-out, audio jacks, and Ethernet you’ll always be jacked-up.. It also features a SDHC-card reader and a CD/DVD optical drive.

Fashionistas will love the funky changeable SWITCH lids by Design Studio. With over 25 different designs to choose from the lids allow you to customise your laptop to suit your mood or match your outfit. If you’re not keen on spicing up the appearance with colourful lids the notebook comes in standard black, red and blue.

The Dell Inspiron N5110 is a great value for some looking for a notebook with lots of good features, decent speed, and good battery life. At R7999.94 it’s a great choice for those looking for a study notebook that will get the job done and look great while doing it.

Stock of all the SWITCH lids will arrive next week at our stores.

The Netbook forerunner was Asus, with their EeePC range. They launched these machines in 2006, but the tiny machines only became popular here in South Africa, mid 2007. Back then these machines had a puny 7″ screen (smaller than the average mans hand-span), flash memory for hard drives, came in 2GB and 4GB Models, and no CD Rom drives. All this was available for a mere R1999, in 2007!

They were popular as novelty devices, but weren’t really much use in terms of actual computing. But then, as the demand for Notebooks increased, THEIR parts became significantly cheaper and made their way into Netbooks, in 2008. As more and more brands jumped on the bandwagon, Netbooks got bigger screens, up to 10″, bigger hard drives, and more RAM. The most common processor used in Netbooks is now the 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor.

So essentially Netbooks are mini-laptops. There is some confusion as to what a Netbook is useful for, and what it isn’t. So let’s try and clear things up a little.

What you can’t do on a Netbook. Your Netbook won’t be able to do any heavy lifting. So editing videos, extensive photoshop work, graphic design etc, will be a problem. The processor isn’t fast or strong enough, and there generally isn’t enough memory available to run the needed applications. The screen is also a limiting factor. At 10″ there really isn’t a lot of space. Video and picture editing becomes problematic on small screens, and so do large spreadsheets. If you’re a bean counter, and spend a lot of time working with complex spreadsheets, the Netbook probably isn’t the right option for you.

What a Netbook is perfect for. If you’re an avid web surfer, social media addict, and you check your email relentlessly, the Netbook will work nicely. It’s very light because of it’s small form factor, so if you move around a lot, travel a lot, or just like working from the local coffee shop, then this may be your machine. It’s also great for typing up assignments, so it fits in well with student life.

So, when you’re considering your next laptop purchase, have a look at the range of Netbooks available (from Incredible Connection, of couse). One of these little tigers just might suit your needs perfectly, and save you a few bucks in the process.

The Playbook will be powered by BlackBerry Tablet OS, courtesy of QNX, whom RIM acquired recently. Interestingly, the new OS looks very much like a mashup of WebOS (yes, THAT one, of Palm/HP fame) and Blackberry’s current phone OS. Guesses are that QNX will become the new Blackberry OS 7, in much the same way as NeXT OS became Apple’s OSX.

Lets look at the specs. The Playbook measures 193 x 130 x 10 mm, and weighs just 400g . The device has a Cortex A9-based, dual-core 1GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, and 16 or 32GB storage. The capacitive display features multitouch, and is 7-inch across, 1024 x 600 pixels resolution. Two cameras, 3MP front-facing (for video conferencing), and a 5MP rear-facing main camera. 1080pHD video playback, and HDMI. Connectivity features 802.11n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1.

And so the onslaught on mobility began. Prices began falling, specs began climbing and we all clamoured to clear some desk space and put down a shiny new piece of laptopery, aimed at making the guy in the next cubicle, green with envy. We saw the screens improve from Passive matrix (if you remember those you’ve been around for a little too long) to Active Matrix. Stiffy drives were replaced by CD-Roms and later DVD-Ram-Dual-Layer-Multi-drives-with-Light-Scribe (whatever all that is). The innards of the laptop have also come a long way. From scaled down desktop hardware, to a new breed of processors made to run cooler and faster, use less power and save your pocket a few bucks, while saving the planet in one fell swoop.

But somewhere in the rush to make it better, we’ve mislaid the little details that make a laptop really functional. It doesn’t matter how big your hard drive is, or fast your processor is, or how crisp your screen is, or how many giga-thingys you have. What matters is how much you can accomplish with your laptop. Can you get your job done better?

After more than a decade in IT consulting, a question that has popped up too many times to count in business environments, has been that of having a keypad on a laptop. Sounds simple doesn’t it? But yet, no one has really gotten it right. Well, until now that is.

HP have launched their Probook 4520s. And, it HAS that beloved keypad. They’ve done it in a way that doesn’t compromise on the keyboard, or make the machine overly bulky. A normal sized 15.5″ laptop, with a full keyboard, AND a keypad.

I recently spent some time playing on one, and was very impressed with what HP have managed to conjure up with the 4520s. But that’s not all. This laptop packs a serious punch, and still takes your pocket into consideration.

You get a build in HSDPA device, Core i5 processor, 3GB of RAM, 320GB Hard Drive, and a stunning LED screen. Built into a really good looking machine, that manages to accommodate a full sized keyboard and keypad.

So if you’re in the market for a new laptop, and do any sort of number crunching, or even gaming, this laptop should be a serious consideration.

Well, it seems that team at OLPC has had a rethink, and possibly taken some advice, and come up with a new concept for a second run at this idea. The XO-3:

Nicholas Negroponte, project leader at OLPC, has announced a tie-up with Marvell, to design and produce the new model. It’s planned to show the design in January 2011, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Some of the specs being leaked so far: An ARM processor,a multilingual, multitouch-screen keyboard with haptic feedback, two cameras, high-quality video (Flash 10 and 1080p) and a version of Google’s Android operating system (Intitially, anyway. OLPC has their own, favoured custom OS). Apparently, the XO-3 tablet will use only 1 watt per hour, a huge improvement on the already frugal XO-1, at 5 watts per hour.

The standalone Ideapad as a tablet like device

Now here’s where the hybrid and impressive part comes into play. The IdeaPad can slot into a its notebook shell and be used as a fully functional notebook too, once you’ve “docked” the tablet into its notebook bay the operating system switches to Windows 7!

The IdeaPad U1 looks like any other notebook when closed

The slate (or tablet like device) when removed from the docking bay has 16gb of storage space which should sufficient for all the multimedia you’d want on the run. The standalone tablet will also have around 8 hours of battery life.

Have a look at some of the demo videos on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSen-_2scIA , this will link you up to some more to get a better idea regarding this handy and innovative piece of hardware.

The U1 Hybrid is set to be available towards the second half of this year and was one of the most impressive showcases at the 2010 CES.