Engadget has a great review of HP’S 13-inch Envy laptop out, and I’m here to digest the review and present the most important parts for you guys. It’s been called a Macbook Pro clone, and from the looks alone, it really does deserve the title. It has an aluminum body, chiclet keys, even a buttonless trackpad. But how does it stack up to Apple’s premiere notebook?

Hardware-wise, it’s already supposed to be an ok notebook. Just look at the specs: Intel Core™ 2 Duo processor, ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330, and a 13-inch screen with a 1600 x 900 resolution. The “Beats”-branded speakers actually sound slightly better than in other netbooks as well. However, there is a bit of a drawback: the buttonless trackpad, obviously patterned after the Macbook’s trackpad, is a little, well, clunky. And of course what kind computer manufacturer would not install any crap and bloatware on a Windows 7 install, rendering the usually-snappy OS to slow down? HP does just that, true to form.

Here’s what Engaget says about the HP Envy:

Overall we’re very conflicted about the Envy 13. Hardware wise it’s one of our favorite laptops ever, but the trackpad almost destroys all of that good will built up by the other elements — no matter how great a laptop is, if it’s painful to interact with on the go (without an external mouse), what’s the point? We also have to say that Windows 7 doesn’t make this laptop crazy delicious in any particular manner. It’s certainly a better OS than Vista, but it’s not so much better to make it a huge selling point in our book or a lure for folks who don’t normally walk the Windows path, since many of the traditional pitfalls are still present. All we can say in summary is that we hope HP manages to update the trackpad drivers very, very soon, and that other PC manufacturers steal a bit from HP’s and / or Apple’s in other respects, since it seems to be working.

What do you think? Is the HP Envy worth it, or do you think you’re better off going for a cheaper netbook?

However Google seems to be on a collision course with Apple. After the search engine giant’s Google Voice app was pulled from the iTunes App Store, they responded by releasing the Google Nexus One. They’re also moving in the operating system business by way of the Google Chrome OS (I’ve been pretty unimpressed with it, by the way), and they’re poised to go for laptops/netbooks as well with the as-of-yet mythical Google netbook.

But it looks like they’re also going for the tablet market as well, because we’re seeing a Google Chrome OS tablet in the future. We’ve heard rants about the iPad a million times already and it’s not even out yet, so the Google Chrome Tablet is looking pretty attractive to those not yet fully convinced that the iPad is the future.

So the guys at Chromium just posted some picture mockups and a video simulation of the Google Chrome Tablet in action. Guess what? It can run more than one application!

Check out the video below:

Although I know that we’ll be seeing more touchscreen internet appliances in the future, I still don’t know if touchscreen devices are actually a good deal now or if we have to wait a couple of years more. And I still am iffy with the prospect of an all-cloud operating system, even though it makes more sense with a tablet PC over a netbook.

What do you guys think?

[via]

According to the same blog post, Dell’s move can be seen as a realization that in the netbook market the 10 inch display is where the money is.

Dell is selling the Mini 9 for $299 while the Mini 12 is sold at the Dell factory outlets for about $569.

The lithium-ion batteries that are contained in certain notebook computers were the subject of two reports that were submitted to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission as well as Health Canada. The said reports were said to contain examples of minor property damage.

The batteries affected by the recall were those manufactured between August 2007 and March 2008. Among the computer models that likely contain the faulty batteries are:

HP Pavilion
dv2000
dv2500
dv2700
dv6000
dv6500
dv9000
dv9500
dv9700
dv6700

Compaq Presario

A900
C700
F700
V3000
V3500
V3700
V6000
V6500
V6700

HP Compaq

6720s

The recalled batteries will also have the following barcode levels. Please note that the ^ denotes any letter or number in the code:

62940^^AXV^^^^
65033^^B7U^^^^
65033^^B7V^^^^
65033^^BGU^^^^
65035^^B7U^^^^
65035^^B7V^^^^
65035^^BGU^^^^
65035^^BGV^^^^
67059^^V8U^^^^
67059^^V8V^^^^

It is interesting to note that the last time a battery recall happened, which was in 2006, it began a series of recall announcements from a number of companies. This means that this could be the beginning of a massive recall move from other companies as well.

ASUS unveiled its two EEE PC tablets at the show recently. The T91 and the T101H are 8.9 – and 10 – inch screens that posses the Atom processor, a direct spec link the the EEE netbooks that are probably the most popular laptops in the market today. The great innovation for this line is the tablet functionality allowing a user to swivel the screen flush and fold it flush to the keyboard.

I am quite excited about the T101H not only because of the size but also because of the good looking chiclet keyboard. No price has been given yet for these new EEE stars but I’ll definitely be getting this when it gets released.

An update released this Monday for the Leopard operating system is proving to be a faulty one with users reporting that the update to Mac OS X 10.5.6 has completely killed their units.

According to reports, some people who turn on their updated Macbooks will hear a spinning sound, the LED lights will turn on but then nothing else will happen. The initial speculation is that it could be a logic board failure. The solution is a replacement board but then the cost of the board is as much as a new unit.

The update to 10.5.6 was released in order to make improvements to some features, and this includes syncing between the address book and the iPhone, the roaming capabilities of AirPort connections, encryption alert that appeared in the iChat window.

Now the errors reported with the update include broken Bluetooth connections, no sound to popping sounds during boot-up, and dead USB ports.

Apple has not yet issued any statement regarding this problem.

One part of this evolution would be in the area of broadband access. Based on an article on Wired, netbooks in the next few years may start arriving bundled with built-in WWAN radios, only with the caveat that a subscription will be required, which would fall along the $60 a month category.

Acer, Radioshack and AT&T are already requiring buyers of the Acer Aspire One to get a contract for broadband access. As I have posted before, the subsidy comes in the form of ultracheap Aspire Ones ($99) but a requirement of a two-year contract.

Is this development a good or bad thing for users? Time will only tell but it will depend on how much freedom manufacturers and provider will give users.

What Amazon is basically selling now is a place in the long line of desperate customers who want to buy the Kindle for themselves or as a gift.

At this point, I’d rather just use my trusty Nokia E61i as my default ebook reader. I’m currently reading Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule and I’m not experiencing any problems or difficulties in reading despite the smaller screen.

The company is now building on that success by releasing the TouchSmart TX2, its first multi-touch tablet for Windows.

Just like the other products in the TouchSmart line, the TX2 is built around multimedia. The touch functionality is in full use, although it is quite limited when it comes to other applications.

The TX2, though billed as a multi-touch PC, also stretches that claim a bit as the gestures that you can use are still limited to two fingers.

The TX2 has the following specs: a 12-inch widescreen, a stylus, dual-layer DVD burner, three USB ports, multi-card reader, 250GB 5400-rpm hard drive, a 2.2-GHz AMD Turion X2 ZM-82 processor, and 4GB of memory.

The price is pegged at $1,149.

The company is urging its workers to take up to five days of unpaid vacations as a way of cutting costs. This is on top of the 8,900 job cuts and global hiring freeze that it has already instituted.

Michael Dell himself announced it through email this week.

This economic downturn is really affecting a lot of people. I myself am a victim, having been laid off from a really lucrative consulting job. I just hope this won’t last too long and that things will improve very soon.