'Small Laptops' Category on Laptoping

Lenovo has put on sale this week the ThinkPad X130e, a 11.6-inch ruggedized ultraportable for the education market. Aimed at K-12 students, the ThinkPad X130e has a durable chassis with a top cover rubber bumper, spill-resistant keyboard, and strengthened corners, hinges, and screen bezel. The laptop is available with AMD or Intel processors with their integrated graphics.

The Open Pandora, a laptop-like handheld computer based on an OMAP processor and Linux OS will go into mass production next month, after four years of waiting, and is available for pre-order now. Pandora’s design and features are based on suggestions and requests by open source comunity gathered on the gp32x forums. The device runs a modified version of Angstrom-Linux distro and is primarily oriented toward game emulations. It has a 4.3″ resistive-touch screen and game controls on the base, alongside the QWERTY keyboard.

Asus has quietly released the Asus Eee PC R051BX, a budget 10.1″ netbook with an AMD processor and HDMI output. The R051BX has the first generation AMD Fusion C-series C-50 1GHz dual-core processing unit with integrated Radeon graphics and full HD video decoder. The downsides of this laptop are RAM and battery. The memory size is 1GB and it’s solidered on the motherboard, so RAM on this netbook is not upgradeable. The battery is a 3-cell unit, without 6-cell option. The R051BX has only two USB ports, a webcam, and media card reader, besides HDMI.

In the US, Hewlett-Packard has launched the HP Mini 110-4100 series, the latest addition to their netbook line. The new HP Mini 110-4100, also known as 1104, is aimed at the business and education markets. It’s based on the Intel Atom “Cedar Trail” N2600 1.6GHz dual-core processor with the GMA 3600 graphics and has a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 display.

Sony has announced refresh of their laptop line, including new configuration and color options for the VAIO Z, new internals choices for the S and E series, and new finish designs for the VAIO C.

After a long time, here’s an announcement of a netbook with built-in mobile broadband. AT&T has started offering an Acer Aspire One A0722 11.6-incher with built-in HSPA+ connectivity, a low-end AMD C-50 dual-core 1GHz processor, a 320GB HDD, 2GB RAM, HDMI, and Windows 7 Home Premium.

We haven’t seen an announcement of an Intel-Celeron based laptop since mid-2008, but at 2012 CES, Samsung unveiled a Series 5 Chromebook with Intel’s bugdet processor.

Asustek has released the B23E, a 12.5-inch ultraportable laptop with full-voltage Intel Core series processors. It’s not colorful, but that’s not a drawback for a business laptop like the B23E. The B23E-XH71 model offered for pre-orders on Amazon is plain black with matte surfaces and is designed to deliver a better ruggedness than widely used consumer laptops. It’s made of magnesium-alloy and sports a spill-resistant keyboard, metal hinges, and and anti-shock hard drive.

After watching Hot Hardware’s video of the upcoming AMD “Trinity” A-series Fusion Accelerated Processing Units in action, we concluded that these chips will be used in AMD-based laptops which will compete with Intel Ultrabooks. So, our previous report on AMD Deccan-based Ultrabook competitors is apparently incorrect, and the word on the street is that Deccan will be delayed or even canceled.

Intel Atom Cedar Trail platform for netbooks is already well known, and we knew that Acer will release their AOD270 Aspires with the new Intel chips. But now we have names of the first models for the US market, their pricing, and active pre-order buttons on Amazon.

Toshiba has showed off their Intel Cedar Trail powered netbook, the Toshiba NB510, successor of the NB505.

Besides with the new IdeaPad G, Y, and Z series, Lenovo has expanded its notebook consumer line with the 13.3″ U310 and 14″ U410, both scheduled for release in May. According to the new model names and specs, the U310 and U410 appear to be updates rather to the classic thin-and-light U300 and U400 series laptops than to the company’s first ultrabook – the U300s.

AMD has plans to get into the market of ultra-thin laptops, which is currently dominated by Intel’s ultrabooks. The company has showed off at the CES Show a Compal-made ultrabook-like notebook, measuring 0.71″ thin. The big news regarding AMD’s plan is pricing. According to the chip maker, the price for AMD-based ultrabook-like systems is targeted at $500.

Samsung Electronics today announced the new Series 9 premium-class thin-and-light laptops, featuring 13.3 and 15 inch 1600×900 400 nit displays with thin bezels, baclit keyboards, the Intel Core i5-2467M CPU, a 128GB solid state drive, and aluminum bodies. The laptops are expected to arrive on February 27th in the US, with prices of $1,399.99 for the 13.3-inch and $1,499.99 for the 15-inch model.

Lenovo IdeaPad Y, Z, and G series laptops for consumers have been announced at CES.