Acer Aspire One D255 netbook is powered by a dual-core Atom N550
The first netbooks with Intel’s dual-core Atom N550 CPU are beginning to appear. The Acer Aspire One D255 is powered by just such a processor. It’s not the first netbook with a dual-core processor (the Asus 1215N has it beat here), but it’s the first with a dual-core Atom intented for netbooks (the 1215N uses a nettop CPU)…
The Intel Atom N550 has two cores, each running at 1.5GHz and with Hyper-Threading, that makes up for 4 threads in total. The N550 has 1MB of L2 cache in total (512KB per core).
Anyhow, that’s slower than the D525 CPU inside the Asus 1215N, but the Acer Aspire One D255 has the advantage when it comes to battery life – D-series Atoms are more power-hungry than their N-series counterparts (it’s a matter of a few watts but it that’s a lot for a CPU that draws under 10W).
The Acer Aspire One D255 with dual-core Atom N550
Unfortunately, those are all the specs available right now – no GPU info (likely integrated Intel graphics), no RAM, HDD, not even pricing or target availability date.
Asus shows the Eee Pad Transformer Prime sleeve, the Smart covers smirk
Asus Taiwan just unveiled a pretty cool accessory for its yet-to-be-released Eee Pad Transformer Prime quad-core Android tablet. Quite strangely called “sleeve” the accessory is actually a cover for the Transformer Prime screen that easily transforms into a stand that can be used for watching video on the slate.
Yeap, it’s much the same deal as with the Apple iPad 2′s Smart covers, save for the slightly different folding pattern. And before you start pointing any fingers, don’t forget that the Smart covers aren’t exactly a new idea either.
The Transformer Prime sleeve is incompatible with the original Tranformer as the attaching mechanism is designed for the slimmer shell of the Prime.
Now if Asus could actually get the Transformer Prime to the US and European markets it would all be great.
BlackBerry ad shows how cool BB OS 7 and their new touch phones are - no wait, that's an Android
Well, someone really needs to start doing QA on the commercials phone companies make – check out this (now pulled) BlackBerry ad. It’s a “#BB7FanNight” party with people saying how cool the new BlackBerry OS 7 and the phones running it are.
Hey… that keyboard kind of looks like an Android keyboard. Is BlackBerry saying Android’s on-screen keyboard is so good that they’ve copied it? No, wait – false alarm. It’s just an actual Android phone – check out the Home button.
It’s not as bad as when Nokia ad that used a stock photo of a girl holding an iPhone, but still – if you’re going to have people gushing over how cool your new OS and phones are, make sure they’re actually using your new OS and phones.
Here’s the video, the droid infiltrator can be spotted at 0:15 and 0:27:
WhatsApp Messenger update brings Holo UI to the Android app
Popular instant messaging client WhatsApp has gone through a major UI redesign on Android. While the former version was nothing more than just a slight revision of the iOS app, the latest update takes advantage of the new Holo UI guidelines for Android.
Right off the bat you’ll be able to see that the menu bar on top is now flat and in line with the new UI guidelines. Drop into a conversation and you will find new flat message bubbles and a redesigned text input field. The emoticons have also been moved down and placed next to the text field, which makes them easier to access on smartphones with large displays. The Settings menu has also been redesigned.
Unfortunately, the new version of the app is not yet available through the Play Store, and you will have to click on the link below to download the APK from WhatsApp website. You can safely update the app with the new one and maintain all your current app data. There is also no beta sign anywhere, so the app should be stable enough for everyday use (I haven’t faced any issues with it yet).
If you are on Android and use WhatsApp Messenger regularly, you should definitely give the new update a try.
What IF your browser was your operating system - meet Chrome OS
Yesterday Google officially presented their Chrome OS to the world. Well, sort of. They’re still an year ago from release. But we got the heads up on what it’s all about. It will be online based and with rapid boot times and it will be optimized for specific hardware rather than run on all walks of rigs.
What hardware-optimized means is that Google Chrome OS will be tailr-made for specific hardware configurations and you won’t be able to just download and install it on any computer. Only that way Chrome OS will be able to offer the promised unmatched boot times as it skips any hardware checks other OSes do at boot. The netbooks and similar kind of internet devices are the primary target of the new OS as it’s heavily online-based.
Chrome OS won’t work with any native apps, instead it will operate with web apps. Got you interested, read on for more.
The core of Chrome OS is a web browser. In fact the entire OS will be this web browser. There will be no additional services and support for native applications. This will cut the whole booting process and now the Google Chrome needs only 7 seconds to power up. And it��s just the beginning of its development.
As I mentioned before �C there will be no apps �C the guys in Google think most of the today people use only internet-based stuff �C email, chats, blogs, online games, videos and music, etc. And they target exactly this kind of users.
Google Chrome OS
This way there are no updates to the OS to download and no anti-virus programs to run. With Chrome OS the computer turns into a web console with all your files constantly stored in the Google web cloud instead locally on your hard drive. This will help unifying the logging process on any Google Chrome running netbook. When you log on with your Google account your settings will be automatically retrieved (even your Wi-Fi ones) and you will feel at home on every Chrome-enabled netbook – even if you borrow one from your friend.
Of course when the right time comes and its market grows, Google Chrome OS will be able to take full advantage of more powerful computers with multi-core CPUs and modern GPUs �C that means desktop computers and laptops.
Right now Google Chrome OS is far away from its release �C so it’s too early to pass any judgments. But it’s a novel concpect, we’re only not really sure about its practicality. It’s like turning your computer into a smartphone – it will be easier to use, but it won’t have the full features of a desktop OS. Ad we’re not really sure if we’d like to dumb down our netbooks.
If you are enthusiastic to try the new OS, even its in very early stage, you may try through a compiled VMware image. Since the Google released the current code onlince for free use, the user Mark Renouf succeeded to make an image file from it. You may download it from The Pirate Bay.
