Interesting notebook and tech stuff this week:

• Some guys got their hands on a Dell Mini roadmap showing future upgrades and new models.
• A year after launching the first Atom 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 230 and N270 processors, Intel is unveiling its next generation Atom chips. This means faster and less power consuming netbooks!
• Cool MSI Wind U123 unboxing pictures from PortableMonkey.com, the successor of the U120 with an Intel Atom N280 processor.
• Do you know the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid? It’s the netbook with a hard drive and SSD built-in, and thus less power consuming. A new test showed amazing 25 hours of battery life with a 9 cell battery!
• Good news for Eee PC fans, the Asus Eee PC 1008HA Shell arrives at the FCC and is coming soon.

Microsoft is taking another shot at Apple with their new Laptop Hunters ads. The commercials feature young hip people who go to shopping malls to buy notebooks, equipped with a certain budget which Microsoft is going to refund them, once they buy a precious Windows powered laptop and speak bad about Apple. The campaign is focused on pricing differences between Macs and PCs.

Third ad: Lisa and Jackson get a Sony VAIO

The latest television advertisement continues the “Laptop Hunters” theme in which a mother and her son, Lisa and Jackson, are tasked with finding a speedy $1500 sub-laptop with a large hard drive that is also good for gaming. As usual they don’t like the Apple notebooks and finally decide for a Sony VAIO. Like the previous ads, they specifically point to higher cost of the Apple machines.

Second ad: Giampaolo gets an HP HDX

In the new commercial, “Giampaolo” is given a budget of $1,500 with which he has to find a laptop with his desired features of portability, battery life and power. After browsing several PC’s, Giampaolo takes a look at Apple’s notebook offerings, but ultimately decides against them saying: “This is so sexy, but Macs to me are about aesthetics more than they are the computing power. I don’t want to pay for the brand. I want to pay for the computer.”
Finally, he buys an HP HDX 16t closing the commercial with the comment “I’m a PC because I’m really picky.”

First ad: Lauren gets an HP Pavilion

In the first commercial, “Lauren” is given a $1,000 budget with which she has to find a 17-inch notebook computer. After a brief stop at a “Mac Store” where she comes away empty-handed noting that the only computer available for under $1,000 has a 13″ screen and saying “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person,” she settles on a $699 HP notebook from Best Buy.

What should the undecided customer think?

First of all, don’t go out on a shopping mall without preparation and buy a notebook. Everybody has different requirements for a laptop computer, not only concerning the hardware. The design and operating system are also important, you decide how important each category is for you. If you don’t know your personal computer requirements yet, the first thing to do is to get a piece of paper and to write down what you will do with the notebook, how large the screen should be, where you will take it and so on. All without looking for actual offers yet, preparation comes first.

After you have your requirements, do your research on the Internet. Sure, Apple notebooks are more expensive, but on the other hand they feature the best design and a very stable operating system. Depending on what you do, you will probably not need great performance, but if you use Vista, you will not get lucky with 2 GB RAM. And speaking of customization, the best way to get that is on the Internet. Not only Dell lets you customize your notebook, other manufacturers have similar shop systems now, too.

Netbooknews.de got their hands on a very interesting Dell Mini roadmap for the next quarters. It includes some interesting infos about future upgrades for the Inspiron Mini 10 promised by Dell some time ago. The new features include a 6-cell battery and a 250 GB hard drive.

According to the roadmap, a 11.6-inch Dell Argos model is planned, too. Based on a ULV Celeron/Pentium and equipped with a 250 GB hard drive and 2 GB memory option, it will cost around $499. The Dell Argos will then replace the Dell Inspiron Mini 12. On the other hand, it also seems like the company will focus on netbooks with a screen size of 10-inch and more, while the Inspiron Mini 9 line may be canceled in the future.

Another good news is that Ubuntu Linux is coming to the Dell Mini family for almost all models which should make the netbooks a bit cheaper. Possible model will be the Dell Mini 1011 Bear with standard netbook features (Intel Atom N270, 1 GB memory, 160 GB hard drive) and Ubuntu for a price of $299. Personally, I’m very happy about this since Linux is an excellent alternative for XP, especially on netbooks. It may also once against boost the development of Linux a bit.

As always, that’s just a rumor and not confirmed, so be cautious. Also, the roadmap refers to “Financial Year” quarters, not regular quarters, so 2010 is actually 2010 minus 3/4 year or something, which makes it a bit hard to read. However, it’s nice to see that Dell is actually pushing it’s netbook line forward with quality components and some minor innovations.

By the way, we now have a brand new Deals & Coupons category including Dell Deals & Coupons. Check them out and save money!

• The new Samsung netbooks announced last week can already be bought in the US. The Samsung N110 is available in several shops, go get it and report back!
• The popular netbook site Liliputing turns 1 and the author, Brad Linder has decided to give away lot’s of prizes in April. Congrats and keep the good work up!
• More and more notebook manufacturers are considering alternative operating systems for their netbooks including Google’s mobile platform Android. Now HP confirmed considering Google Android on netbooks
• For all iPhone owners out there, Skype is official on both the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. However, you obviously cannot make Skype calls over 3G or EDGE but you can make VoIP calls over Wi-Fi.
• Yet another mode for Apple fangirls. Apple’s girliest computer just got girlier, just adorable.
• And finally, for all of you who want to get themselves an 13-inch Apple MacBook, this MacBook review written by my friend Adrian Thomas might be helpful you.

One cool thing about Amazon.com is that you can see what other people are interested in. Customers can create wish lists based on their interests, Amazon brings them together and the result is this Most Wished For List.
Since the topic of NotebookNotes.com is notebooks, here is the list of the Top 10 Most Wished Notebooks in March 2009:

#1 ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10-Inch Netbook (1.66 GHz Intel Atom N280 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB Eee Storage, Bluetooth, XP Home, 9.5 Hour Battery Life) Black
$389.00

#2 ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10-Inch Netbook (1.66 GHz Intel Atom N280 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB Eee Storage, Bluetooth, XP Home, 9.5 Hour Battery Life) Blue
$389.00

#3 ASUS Eee PC 1000HA 10-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB Eee Storage, Windows XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Fine Ebony
$345.76

#4 Acer Aspire One AOD150-1165 10.1-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270, 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM, 160 GB Serial ATA, 10.1-inch WSVGA 1024×600, Windows XP Home) Sapphire Blue
$349.00

#5 Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, 160 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive, 10.2″ Wide, 1024 x 600 WSVGA , 220 nits, 6 Cell Battery, Windows XP Home) Blue
$424.95

#6 ASUS Eee PC 900HA 8.9-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, 160 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive, 10 GB Eee Storage, Windows XP Home) Black
$293.99

#8 Acer Aspire One AOA150-1447 8.9-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB DDR2 RAM, 160 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive, Windows XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Sapphire Blue
$341.26

#9 HP Pavilion G60-230US 16.0-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core T4200 Processor, 3 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD Drive, 3 USB, 1 HDMI, Windows Vista Premium)
$593.99

#10 Apple MacBook MB881LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics, 8x double-layer Slot Loading SuperDrive)
$994.00

You see, really a lot of people want a netbook.
What notebook do you want? Tell me in the comments!

From now on, there will be a weekly roundup of cool notebook stuff here at NotebookNotes.com on Saturdays, provided we aren’t to tired from parting on Friday nights ;) Feel free to send in links to us at notebooknotes@gmail.com!

What happened this week:

• Samsung revealed its new Samsung N310 netbook with a colorful, rounded design and a fancy price. We covert the N310 for you and there are first hands-on photos and videos available.
• Expanding its netbook line, Samsung also unveiled the Samsung N110 and the Samsung N120. While the N110 is build like the NC10 Special Edition, the N120 features a full-sized keyboard and 10.5 hours of battery life.
• There is a new Linux distribution for Eee PC, OpenGeeeU Linux. OpenGeeeU Luna Serena 8.10 is using EasyPeasy 8.10 as a base and therefore runs out-of-the box on Eee PCs. Download, install and see for yourself! Or try it first on a bootable USB drive.
• You probably know that you can install Mac OS X on netbooks and transform it into a cool Hackintosh. Well, even Woz thinks they are awesome, so he put his signature on a guys’ fake Apple netbook. Woz rules!

Samsung revealed its new N310 netbook which is scheduled to launch in the next months. The N310 differs from usual netbooks because of its unique, rounded pill shape design and Super Bright glossy display.

According to Samsung Hub, the funny looking Samsung N310 features the usual specification for last generation netbooks: 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive, integrated GMA 950 graphics, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The netbook weighs just 2.7 lbs / 1.23 kg and has HSDPA and/or WiBRO (Korea’s WiMAX), most likely depending in which country it will be sold. There will be two battery options, a standard battery which lasts 5 hours and a high capacity battery which will probably last up to 11.5 hours.

Some prices have leaked already. Electric Pig reports that the N310 will be available in the UK in May for £399. No word on the US price or release date yet. At first, the N310 will only be sold in black, followed by the blue model in the UK.
The netbook will also be available in Germany for 499 Euros on April 6th, according to Netbooknews.de.
Due to this rather high price, there might be even more inside the stylish N310, but that’s speculation.

While the insides of the new Samsung N310 netbook are quite usual, the design is not. It’s about time that netbooks differ more on the design side and Samsung clearly takes a shot at this. The choice of colors and the rounded shape make the N310 look kind of toyish and playful. Finally, a notebook besides the new Apple Macbooks features a display that eliminates into the frame. Check out the image gallery above to get a first impression.

What do you think about the Samsung N310?

Update: Pocket Lint has first detailed live photos!

There have been rumors going on about new Acer netbooks and now it seems like two are on the way: the Acer Aspire One Pro 731 and 531. If the rumors are true, Acer is developing a Pro series alongside the existing 10-inch Aspire One D150 models.

The new 731 Pro model is supposed to have an 11.6-inch 16:9 display running at 1366×768 resolution, an Intel Atom Z530 processor and the Intel SCH USW15S chipset, also known as Poulsbo, paired with GMA500 graphics with hardware support for decoding HD video. It will be called Acer Aspire One Pro 731, while the smaller model with an 10.2-inch display will be called Acer Aspire One Pro 531. Both are expected to offer integrated 3G HSPA.

While there is no reliable information what sets the Pro series apart from Acer’s consumer netbooks, it seems like these laptops will be thinner, lighter and more business looking. It’s believed that the Acer Aspire One Pro 731 will weight around 1.25 kg with a standard battery. Due to the processor, the notebook could reach 4 hours with a standard battery and circa 8 hours with a high capacity battery.

A release date and prices are not known yet, but since the Acer Aspire One Pro 531 and 731 are supposed to be “Pro” models, we can be sure about a higher price than usual. Of course, nothing is carved in stone yet.
Meanwhile, the 10-inch Acer Aspire One D150 models are selling great. If you don’t need the pro features, you might consider buying one.

via SlashGear, Liliputing

A lot of people like Macs because of its stylish desktop design and look for ways to emulate certain design elements in the Microsoft environment. One major difference between the Apple and Microsoft operating systems is the Macintosh dock. Fortunately, there are two programs that bring the Mac dock to the Windows system: ObjectDock or RocketDock.

What is a dock?

In case you don’t know what a dock is, let me explain it to you. A dock is like the taskbar in Windows but only with icons of programs installed on the computer. You can click on the icons and the program which belongs to it will start. Additional features are pointers below the icons that show which programs are running or an extra space at the right side which includes active documents or programs. It is also possible to install widgets on a dock that show you the weather, stock prices or your current system performance.

Windows dock with RocketDock

RocketDock developed by Punk Labs and is a free, smoothly animated, alpha-blended application launcher with good performance and a lot of addons. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. You can download additional icons, skins, docklets and lots of other stuff on the official project site.

Windows dock with ObjectDock

Another great dock for Windows XP and Windows Vista is ObjectDock by Stardock. The software enables users to organize their shortcuts, programs and running tasks into an attractive and fun animated dock. Same as with RocketDock, there are plenty dock extensions and themes available for download. ObjectDock also has a Plus version for $19.95 with even more features, but you should be fine with the free version.

Conclusion

While these two programs will allow you to get a Mac-like dock on your Windows PC, you have to check them out for yourself and make a comparison. They are both highly customizable and will certainly bring you a more Mac-like computer experience.
If you prefer the real deal, take a look at our Apple laptops and get more information about Macs and currently available notebooks.

When you have a regular notebook with an optical drive, it’s no problem to burn a CD of a new operating system or software you want to try out. But what if you have a netbook? They usually don’t feature an optical CD/DVD drive and that’s where bootable USB flash drives come in handy.

Advantages of bootable USB sticks

There are some clear advantages of bootable USB flash drives over CDs/DVDs:

• Your notebook doesn’t have an optical drive or it’s broken
• You can carry around a fully functional operating system on your keyring
• Data can be stored on the flash drive while on Live CDs you can’t

Most likely you will want to install a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or a system utility like Super Grub Disk. A bootable USB drive can also come incredibly handy when you have to backup your broken computer, and there are a lot more scenarios.

ISO image to flash drive

Lucky for us, there is a tool which makes the process easy to get an ISO image on a flash drive and it’s called UNetbootin. You can create USB startup disks on your USB flash drive from various Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE and many more.
You can either let it download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux ISO file if you’ve already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn’t on the list.

Step-by-step instructions

Preliminary Note:

Although data on your USB stick should not be deleted, it is possible that UNetbootin could erase files during the process, so please back up your drive first.

What you need:

1. Download and install UNetbootin

2. Connect your flash drive to your computer

3. Open UNetbootin, select the Diskimage option and browse to your source ISO file (in case you don’t have one, select the Distribution option and a preferred image. The download will take a while)

4. Select your thumb drive and hit OK to start the installation

After UNetbootin is done, you should now be able to boot off the flash drive at startup. Reboot and make sure your computer boots from the USB drive. If it doesn’t work make you might have to change the boot order in the BIOS.

Conclusion

You really can’t do much wrong here, except you select the wrong destination drive which you can prevent by only showing mounted USB drives.
One final note, there might be the possibility that your machine will not boot from an USB drive. In this case try another OS but there is still the chance that it might not work. By the way, this also works with any other form of flash memory, like SD cards.

If you need a reliable flash drive with lots of storage, then please take a look at our USB flash drives category.