I’ve always had a soft spot for Lenovo products. They’re well-designed, and they are what you can call sturdy. So when Lenovo unleashed a torrent of new products at CES 2010, I eagerly checked out their new offerings. This new smartbook, called the Lenovo IdeaPad U1, is still being developed, but I’d like to get my hands on one when it comes out. You see, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Smartbook is a clamshell laptop that can actually split in two. Read more…

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it. It seems that Acer has come up with a laptop that has a 3-D display effect. The 3-D effect is achieved by a transparent polarizing filter overlaid on the screen, which splits images into separate streams for each eye. You would need a pair of special polarizing glasses to get the effect, and if you look at the screen straight-on, you’d get the 3-D effect. Looking at the screen at an angle may actually not show the 3-D. Read more…

So the world waited with bated breath this November for Michael Arrington’s much-awaited $200 internet tablet, the Crunchpad. And it never arrived. In fact, the way it just disappeared from the zeitgeist made people speculate about its premature demise.

Well Arrington came out and said that no, the CrunchPad is not dead. In fact, it’s going to be out sooner or later and it’s going to cost between $300-$400, with sponsorship (probably like Google sponsoring Firefox by being its default search engine). Read more…

Mobile phone users, rejoice! The top mobile phone manufacturers have finally agreed to develop a universal standard for phone chargers.

The agreement, which was signed by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other manufacturers, paves the way for the development of mobile phones that will accept the same standard charging device as early as next year.

This is really a welcome development. Any mobile phone user knows how much of a hassle it is that whenever we upgrade to a new phone, it generally means we’ll have to use a different charger, basically junking the previous charger. These unused chargers eventually find its way to the garbage dump, which helps create more waste. It’s really not an environment friendly strategy and quite wasteful of resources as well.

Under the agreement, an European Union norm or standard will be implemented and new mobile phones will now use a standard micro-USB socket as a way of ensuring utmost compatibility.

Aside from Nokia and SE, other companies that supported the move included Motorola, Apple, LG, NEC, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments.

Via Technologies recently released its new Surfboard design, this is a reference design for low cost netbooks. Via’s design will run directly against Nvidia’s own Ion platform.

The Surfboard, though containing an older C7-M ULV microprocessor, is also built around the VX855 unified chipset that Via also introduced last week. The VX855 has capabilities to play 1080p videos while only consuming less than 40 percent of the CPU. This HD playback capability is also one of the features of Nvidia’s Ion. Surfboard is planned to be used for netbooks with displays between 10 to 12 inches. Surfboard will also have support for Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi and 3G.