AllWinner A10 processor has been used in tablets in the past. The folks at Shanzhaiben have found out they power netbooks too. The spotted netbook has a 10.1 inch screen with a 1024 x 600 pixel display and a 1.1 GHz processor. These also have 512 GB of RAM and 4 GB of storage. The netbook runs Google Android 4. It has WiFi and other standard features we have come to expect in netbooks. A SD card slot, 3 USB ports, audio jacks are also included.

So how much are these going to cost? Apparently, around $79. They will be available in China though.

The days of netbooks may be over. But Ultrabooks are expected to stick around for a while. Plenty of new Ultrabooks are expected to be released to the market in the upcoming months. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon is certainly one of the most elegant ones around. It is a 14 inch Ultrabook that weighs less than 3 pounds. The device has a carbon fiber frame, so it will be light and durable.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon is expected to be released in August. It will most likely have Intel’s 3rd gen core processors on-board. The details on this device are sketchy though.

[via GizMag]

Getting more than a couple of hours of battery life when using a laptop is not exactly special these days. Many netbooks can go well over 8 hours per charge. The Let’s Note J10 netbook by Panasonic, which is now available in Japan, promises over 12 hours of battery life though. It has a 10.1-inch (1366 x 768) screen with an Intel Core i3-2350M CPU with 320GB of hard drive storage. You also get 4 GB RAM. These are not cheap though ($1500) if you happen to live in Japan.

[via Engadget]

Intel is optimistic about ultrabooks challenging the MacBook Air in the upcoming months and years. But Apple is not planning to stop innovating anytime soon. The company is allegedly working on retina MacBooks. Apple’s next generation of MacBook Pros which will be unveiled at WWDC will be thinner with retina displays and flash memory on board. As Bloomberg suggests, the new MacBook Pros will be less than 0.95 inch thick. They will have Ivy Bridge processors inside.

Apple is expected to remove the optical drive from its future MacBooks. That won’t be a huge loss. We will have to see how well these “retina MacBooks” will perform. But they could prove very popular.

Ultrabooks are expected to challenge MacBook Air in the upcoming months. HP is expected to be one of the players going after Apple’s market share. The HP Folio 13 is now priced under $800 at Best Buy. HP’s upcoming Ultrabooks will be going for as low as $749. Of course, we don’t know whether these discounts are permanent. Retailers such as Best Buy do change their prices a lot. But Ultrabooks will have a better chance to be competitive with aggressive pricing.

Netbooks have lost their position as must-have devices. People are buying more tablets and thin ultrabooks these days. Many have been wondering how things went so wrong so fast for netbooks. It does seem that the rise of iPad contributed to the fall of netbooks. Apple priced its tablet aggressively and made it hard for netbook makers to stay competitive. Fast forward to today and tablets are still going strong. Netbooks are still struggling.

According to research firm Canalys, netbook shipments have been down by 34% from the first quarter of 2011. Shipments of iPad and other tablets are up by 200% year over year for the same quarter. Tablets are expected to remain very popular for the foreseeable future. Can ultrabooks catch up? It seems unlikely but things can change quickly in these markets.

We don’t see too many new exciting netbook models these days. But companies such as Acer are still making them. The Acer Aspire One 725 comes with AMD Fusion and has a 11.6 inch screen. You get a 1366×768 display, AMD Radeon HD 6290 GPU, 4GB Max RAM, and a 320/500GB hard drive. This is under one inch thick and will come with a 4-cell battery. WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 are also offered. It is not clear how much you should expect to pay for such a netbook though.

Are you impressed?

[via Slash Gear]

Apple has been quite successful with its MacBook Air laptops in the past couple of years. The company is planning to take its game to the next level by offering these tiny laptops for as low as $799 in the third quarter of 2012. The exact specifications for these budget MacBook Air devices are not known. The price should still give Apple the chance to put more pressure on ultrabook makers. MacBook Air is going to be very tough to beat if Apple keeps this up.

[via SlashGear]

Ultrabooks are supposed to be thin laptops with more power in comparison to netbooks, right? Sony’s first ultrabook, the 13 inch Sony’s VAIO T, is not as thin or lightweight as the company’s Vaio Z series laptop. The new T13 is 3.5 pounds (in comparison to 2.57 for Sony Vaio Z) and 0.7 inches thin. You do get 4 GB of memory, a 1366×768 display, and a hybrid 320 GB HDD and 32 GB SSD storage.

The Sony T13 laptop promises 9 hours of battery life and an “any time” charger for smartphones. It will be available in the European market within this month. But we don’t know how much it will cost.

[via Wired]

Netbooks have been losing momentum for quite some time now. These laptops were responsible for 13% of global PC shipments just a couple of years ago. But now they make up about 5% of those, which is a huge drop. According to Canalys, netbook shipments were about 34% lower during the first quarter of 2012 in comparison to the same period in 2011.

Netbooks are not completely dead. People are still buying them. But these don’t have any momentum behind them. People are not super excited about devices that were deemed “cool” a couple of years ago. Many top netbook makers have exited the market already. The future is indeed not that bright for these devices.

[via Liliputing]