Getting a grip on the Atom

IF YOU’RE INTO this latest UMPC fad, or at least curious to see what Atom-based designs have to offer, you can read UMPCPortal’s hands-on article with the LG Xnote UMPC. It looks tremendously like the OQO, but this range of UMPC’s will be the first with Intel’s Atom chippery. It runs Vista, so it has to be pretty powerful. We doubt the 800x480 touchscreen will be that handy in Vista, though. Get your eyes on and the hands-on, here.

We can’t remember (honestly) the last time we spoke of speakers – you know, the movie oriented kind. So here is the Logitech Z Cinema Speaker system at Tech Gage. The trend seems to be to “regress” to 2.1 sound that can convincingly simulate surround sound, maybe in an attempt to flush out the enthusiast/deep pockets crowd. Rory, the reviewer, was quite impressed – even considering some minor shortcomings of the product. The big shortcoming might be the price on one of these... $299. Read about them here.

Laptop Magazine has reviewed HP’s MediaSmart Server EX475. Now, you ask, what the heck is a laptop magazine doing reviewing servers? Well in case you haven’t noticed, laptops aren’t really suited to carry around your collection of hi-def video but they are quite capable of playing back the aforementioned multimedia stuff. Apart from media server it doubles (quads?) as backup server, remote access and user manager. It’s not expensive as you’d think considering some competition. Gigabit connections or Wireless N recommended tho’. We wouldn’t mind having one, ourselves, so take a gander.

Another day, another rehash of the Catalysts. Extremetech has their take on the 8.3 version. Again there’s a lot of mixed feelings with GPU scaling, but it’s still a cheaper deal than going tri-SLI with Nvidia. Or rather, forget Quad Fire, go straight to Tri-Fire, it’s got way better scaling and the price/performance is up there. Four cards aren’t worth it... read on.

CNET Reviews has a very “official” review of the latest generation of Mac Book Pros – or 2008 Edition as they’re called. These are 15.4-inch beasts on Penryn-shrunk Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz processors with the revamped graphics chipset, DVI out and multitouch... uhmm... touchpad. You also get ExpressCard/34 (that will come in handy for those nice SSD drives et al). It pretty much squashes everything there is under the (Apple) sun, except on battery life... Get some fanboy fixation here.

Kitting out your laptop can be as simple as kitting out your car (only cheaper, probably). The NVS Carbon laptop, on review at Computer Shopper, is a petite little thing with a 12.1-inch screen that allows for a fully custom paint job. This isn’t a Voodoo PC, mind you, it’s vanilla flavoured hardware with a nice paint job on top... and a pretty expensive one at that, according to the reviewer. Pimp your rig over here. µ