MSI unveils X360 X-Slim ultra portable

MSI has been peddling its thin and svelte X-Slim line of notebooks for a while now and they are all nice looking machines. MSI has added a new ultraportable to the X-Slim line today called the X360.

The new machine has a 13-inch screen with a resolution of 1366 x 768 and Intel HD graphics. The operating system is Windows 7 Home Premium and the machine can have up to 4GB of RAM. Storage is to a 2.5-inch HDD up to 500GB and a memory card reader is integrated.

Other features include HDMI out, D-sub, dual USB 2.0 ports, RJ45 and more. A 1.3MP webcam is also built-in. The thin notebook runs an Intel Core i5-520UM processor. Pricing and availability are unknown.

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DailyTech reports Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight vie for dominance amid HTML5 threat

Microsoft's Director of Developer Platform Marketing, Brian Goldfarb, and Adobe's Director of Technology Strategy, Anup Murarka, recently participated in an interview together about their competing rich web formats and what the future holds. Currently, Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash both are well entrenched, with a legion of developers sitting on each side of the fence.  However, Microsoft and Adobe are both warily eyeing HTML5, an open standard that could unravel support for their proprietary platforms. 

In terms of PC user base, Microsoft's latest figures show it to have 45 percent market penetration for Silverlight worldwide and 60 percent in Europe and Asia.  Meanwhile Adobe, benefiting from 10-plus years on the market, is in 98 percent of computers worldwide.  Reportedly, it was able to bump 95 percent of users worldwide to Flash 10 within a year of its release.

Adobe has a large developer base, but it isn't releasing exact figures.  Microsoft openly claims a developer base of 500,000 developers.  Its recent high profile content victories have included using Silverlight for coverage of the Winter Olympics, the upcoming March Madness (college basketball's annual championship tournament), Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and the Netflix Watch Instantly service.  Adobe, meanwhile, continues to control the rich content backend for some of the web's biggest sites like YouTube and Hulu.

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Acer's Aspire One 532G Is First Netbook With NVIDIA's Ion 2 Graphics

Acer's keen on racking up lots of firsts for its netbook arm, with this Aspire One 532G having the claim of being the world's first to use NVIDIA's Ion 2 graphics technology for 1080p playback.

The 10.1-inch LED-backlit screen will playback videos at 1080p with 7.1-channel audio output. It'll also be suitable for 3D gaming, Acer claims, though why you'd want to do that on a little netbook is beyond me. A 10-hour battery life, Wi-Fi and the choice of embedded 3G all figure, along with an Intel N450 Pine Trail chip and HDMI video output. On sale in just a month or two, it'll be available in several colors—blue, red, and silver.  The Aspire One 532G will start shipping at the end of Q1 2010.

Acer developing true MacBook Air rival?

Acer is reportedly readying an ultraportable that it hopes could take on Apple and HP in one fell swoop, the company reportedly said today. While it has had a relative amount of success with its Timeline lightweight notebooks, the Taiwan firm is believed to be developing an "ace in the hole" system that would use ULV Core i5 or i7 processors and measure just 0.75 inches thick, slightly thinner than the MacBook Air and much thinner than HP's current lineup.

The system would consequently be sleeker than the existing Timeline series but offer speed closer to a full-size notebook. Although the low-energy Core i5 and i7 have at most a 1.2GHz regular clock speed, they can ramp up to 1.86GHz and 2.26GHz in Turbo Boost mode and support Hyperthreading to occasionally perform more like quad-core processors.

Acer recently overtook Dell for the second place spot in world PC shipments but has set the ambitious goal of unseating HP for the top spot as soon as this year. Much of this has been accomplished simply by shipping inexpensive PCs but also by dominance of the netbook space, where the Aspire One actually has more traction than netbook pioneer ASUS' Eee PCs. HP has a large presence in netbooks but hasn't caught on in popularity; most of its sales are of low end, full size notebooks.

Laptop Makers not using Intel’s i5 are in the slow lane

As performance laptops powered by the Intel I5 family of processors begin to appear in stores in quantity, it is clear that laptop makers not using them, including Apple, are behind the performance curve.

More and more laptop manufacturers are releasing models powered by Intel’s mobile i5 chipset, which by far outperforms the now lower-end Core i3 model processors. To get an idea of the performance improvements, one just need look at the reviews of the newer chips. AnandTech says that the i5 chips represent “the single largest performance improvement we’ve seen from a new mobile processor in years.” Tom’s Hardware said that the i5 “boasts the best balance between desktop-class speed and true mobile usability we’ve ever seen.”  Other reviews of the new Intel chip are equally glowing.

The new Intel Core i5 is built using on Intel’s cutting-edge 32-nanometer manufacturing process. It is positioned between the Core 3 line, which it outperforms significantly, and the Intel i7 family of processors, Intel’s highest performance chipsets, along with their Xeon processors. The i5 processors were released in January 2010 and laptops using the chipsets began to appear shortly after, according to a CNET story. Manufacturers that have released notebooks based on the i5 include Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, and Toshiba, among others.

One manufacturer noticeably missing from that list is Apple computer, usually at the forefront of the performance wars with its MacBook Pro line of computers. Savvy laptop shoppers know that the i5-powered portables are quite a lot faster than the previous-generation i3s and those looking for performance (who isn’t?) and those willing to pay for it (most of those who want it) have been waiting for the new Windows machines to come out. No doubt Apple MacBook users are also biding their time, which could hurt Mac notebook sales until they update the MacBook pro lineup. That being the case, it is fairly easy to predict that we will see a series of Macbook Pro upgrades coming from Apple sooner rather than later.

Google's 1Gbps Experimental Fiber Network

Check out Google’s plan to build an experimental ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States to make the Internet better and faster.

Video of Google Buzz: Google’s New Social Networking Tool

Check out video of Google's new Buzz social networking tool in action.

Google announced their new social networking tool Google Buzz today. Buzz is built right into Gmail so users already have an existing set of contacts and friends and won’t have to start from scratch. One feature that sets buzz apart from services like facebook is it’s mobile location-based integration. This feature allows users with mobile phones to leave comments tagged with geographical information which provides an extra dimension of context.