Wired.com is not one to print frivolous rumors, so when they break out the “breaking” title and create some (awesome) mockups, this is serious. Once you’re finished drooling at the pictures, you can enjoy this little tidbit:
“But the Air seems more like a ultra portable with a physical keyboard and multi-touch screen, according to our source (who we promised not to name but confirmed works at an Apple third-party vendor).”
When it comes to Apple, nothing is ever set in stone until Steve says so. With that said, quite a bit of credibility has been lent to the idea of a new ultraportable from Apple, with the possible moniker of “Macbook Air” or perhaps the “Airbook”. Interesting speculations include the possibility of integrated WiMAX technology from Intel, wireless charging capabilities, the lack of an optical drive and the inclusion of a solid state drive.
Why, you ask? A search for the term “macbookair” on the search engine DogPile reveals a yet to be run ad from Apple for the Macbook Air that leads to the Apple online store. It also looks like Apple is the owner of the macbookair.tld domain set.
9to5mac reader Jon Cotton discovered someone using a computer titled “MacbookAir” using the Adium program BEFORE the “something in the air” banner was unveiled.
Even Apple.com is getting in on the hype with a tantalizing “Something in the air” banner across their home page. The only sure thing is that Tuesday will bring us something interesting.
The wildly popular ASUS Eee PC this holiday shopping season has just gotten better. ASUS today announced that the Eee PC will now come in five pastel colors. Here is a quote from today’s announcement:
“Delightfully compact and supremely lightweight, the Eee PC is designed to go anywhere it is needed — home, office, school and everything in between. Complementing its highly personal purpose, the Eee PC comes in no less than five exciting pastel colors: Pure White, Galaxy Black, Blush Pink, Lush Green and Sky Blue.”
Thanks, MobileTechReview
The Asus G1Sn notebook is equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS mobile graphics processor. According to the system properties, the 9500M GS has a GPU code name of G84 and in this particular configuration, it is coupled to 512MB of frame buffer memory. Based on the naming convention, we would speculate that this is a mid-range mobile GPU - and we expect it to perform as such - but with features similar to that of the upcoming GeForce 9 series of graphics processors, there is a good chance that it might enjoy nVidia’s new Hybrid Power implementation when used with future nForce mobile chipsets.
Now, I’m pretty sure both Sony and Asus have already created this (both called “hybrid graphics”), but apparently nVidia wants a piece of the pie with their somewhat-misleading “Hybrid SLI” moniker. Nevertheless, its a step in the right direction for laptop GPUs.
GeForce Boost does what its name suggests. By coupling the motherboard’s integrated GPU with a discreet graphics card, the 3D rendering workload is shared between the two GPUs for a boost in performance. Currently, GeForce Boost is only supported by GeForce 8400 GS and 8500 GT discreet cards, as for the IGP, only the next-gen nForce 700a series of chipsets due to arrive this quarter will be supported initially. New IGPs for the Intel platform that support Hybrid SLI are slated to arrive in Q2.
Hybrid Power mode is also fairly self explanatory. With a monitor connected to the mGPU, the discreet graphics card can be completely shut down to reduce power consumption when no in use. A side effect of the reduced power consumption will also be reduced heat and potentially less noise output from the system. The discreet card is shutdown (or renabled) using the SMBUS connection inherent to the PCI Express graphics slots. We should also note, that Hybrid SLI is supporteb by both PCI Express Gen 1 and Gen2.
Shout out to HotHardware for the news.
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