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Intel, AMD battle over claims on battery life for laptops
Seattle Times Benny Villanueva recalls being in a Starbucks rushing to finish a college paper that was due when his laptop battery, which he'd been led. … For AMD, following Intel's numbers hard to do |
I was obviously intrigued and skeptical when I heard that a netbook was being sold for under a dollar, so I felt the urge to investigate further. Here’s what I was able to uncover. Sprint Nextel has teamed up with Best Buy to offer the Compaq Mini 110c-1040DX Netbook for 99 cents. As incomprehensible as that seems, its true, but the required two-year service contract is where the money is being made.
The Compaq Mini offers a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor and 160GB hard drive. It also features a 10.1-inch anti-glare widescreen display, 5-in-1integrated digital media reader, 92 percent keyboard, built-in-webcam, and a variety of eye-catching features.
The 3G wireless service that you are required to purchase through Sprint will cost you $60 a month for 5GB of data per month. This adds up to costing you around $1,440 once you have purchased the wireless service over the two years.
Verizon Wireless and AT&T plan to also sell the Compaq Mini with a two-year service plan for $199.99 through Best Buy. Verizon currently offers two different wireless service packages. You can select the $40 a month plan which offers 250MB of data monthly or the $60 a month plan that allows for up to 5GB of data per month.
AT&T offers very similar pricing. For up to 5GB of data it will cost you $60 a month, and for 200MB of data it will cost $40 a month. The advantage to AT&T’s deal through Best Buy is that it doesn’t just offer the Compaq Mini but gives you the option to choose between it, the Acer Aspire One, Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and Mini 12, or the LG Xenia all for a base price ranging from $50 to $250.
Although this is an offer that could easily draw in a crowd, if customers do the math they will realize that with the two-year service plan these netbooks will end up costing them way over $1,000 in the end. Hopefully people will realize that this isn’t such a hot offer and will search for a better, cheaper mini-laptop deal.
The price of netbooks just continues to go further and further down. Each year they offer better parts and lower price tags. The new HP Mini 110 definitely carries on this pattern. It resembles HP’s Mini 1000, but has many improvements and a much lower price point.
On the surface, the HP Mini 110 looks almost identical to the Mini 1000 and the Mini 1000 Mi. It features a glossy black top embellished with chic gray swirls. As you examine the netbook closer though, you are able to distinguish a few external differences. The HP Mini 110 is thicker than its predecessors, measuring more than one inch thick. This added thickness, to make room for the larger feature set and new battery set up, barely adds any extra weight to the netbook though. It manages to weigh in at a very reasonable 2.6 pounds.
The 10.1-inch widescreen is now LED-backlit and comes with 1,204 x 576 resolution. It features speakers that have been built below the screen into the frame in order to keep them hidden behind the hinge. Other important aspects to consider include the Mini’s 92 percent keyboard and mouse buttons. It also has a VGA port, an Ethernet port, a multi card reader, a headphone jack, three USB ports, and a built-in webcam. The Mini has upgraded with a 160GB, 5,400-rpm spinning drive, with the option to upgrade for something even more powerful.
Another interesting fact is that the Mini now includes a third-party software application called Syncables. Syncables allows you to connect different machines on your local network and effortlessly share photos, documents, video, and music. You can even sync e-mail accounts from Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
HP has definitely made some huge improvements with the Mini 110. It now includes a faster hard drive and a variety of new features. No its not the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 or the Acer Aspire One, but for the reasonable starting price of $329.00 it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
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