electronics News

The Viliv N5 looks like the love child of a netbook and a smarpthone. Or rather, it looks like a netbook that’s abotu the size of a smartphone. It has a QWERTY keybaord, an Intel Atom processor, and runs Windos 7. But it has a 4.8 inch display and can almost fold up and fit in your pocket. Dynamism is selling the netbook for a rather hefty starting price of $649. Is it worth it? Chippy at UMPC Portal has posted a detailed review that may help you decide.

Overall, it sounds like chippy is pretty pleased with the design and finish of the N5. He says it’s a bit heavier than comparable mobile internet devices. And because of the small size, there aren’t a lot of ports, just a USB, headphone, and microSD card slot.

Performance-wise, the Atom Z520 chip is designed first and foremost as a low power chip that won’t overheat in small devices while offering decent battery life. In other words, the Viliv N5 isn’t quite as fast as a typical netbook, but Chippy seemed pretty happy with the overall performance.

For more details on audio and video performance, software, and wireless performance, check out the complete review at UMPC Portal.

Acer tends to pull out the eMachines brand name when it’s got a cheap product to sell. And the eMachines eM350 is no exception. While the cheapest Acer Aspire One netbook with an Intel Atom N450 processor has a list price of about $300, the eMachines eM350 goes for $280.

Sure, $20 might not seem like a big difference, but when you’re talking about dirt cheap computers, every little bit counts.

There is a slight catch though. Kind of. Most recently launched Acer netbooks ship with Windows 7 Starter Edition. The eMachines eM350 ships with Windows XP. Some folks might consider that an upgrade though.

Rounding out the specs are 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, 10/100Mbps Ethernet, 2 USB ports, and a 10 inch 1024 x 600 pixel display. The computer measures 10.2″ x 7.3″ x 1″ and weighs 2.4 pounds. it has a 3 cell, 2200mAh battery.

You can find some hands-on photos at Blogeee. The eMachines eM350-2074 is available from B&H for $279.99 plus free shipping.

As expected, Jolicloud has started allowing beta testers to update the netbook-focused operating system to version 1.0. And one of the first users to receive the update is is Sascha from Netbook News. He’s posted a video overview of Jolicloud 1.0, which you can check out after the break.

The biggest change in version 1.0 is that Jolicloud has completely replaced the Ubuntu Netbook Remix program launcher and user interface with a new UI built using HTML5. Now the entire operating system has a more uniform look and feel, including the app launcher, app store, and social activity stream area where you can see what apps your friends and followers have installed on their netbooks.

While Jolicloud is based on Linux and can run native Linux apps, the operating system is designed to blur the distinction between native apps and web apps. So you can install a desktop application such as Skype or GIMP from the app store, but you can also install Facebook or Twitter and an icon will show up on your home screen that you can press to launch the web browser and visit those web sites.

One of the the other things that sets Jolicloud apart is the fact that you can login to your account from any computer with an HTML5-compatible web browser to install apps, reorganize your home screen, or check on your social activity stream.

But it’s not just the focus on cloud-based apps that makes Jolicloud good for netbooks. The OS also plays nicely with the power management features of Intel Atom chips, underclocking the CPU to save battery life when it can, and cranking up the CPU cycles when you need a bit more performance.

You can check out Sascha’s first look video after the break. Jolicloud 1.0 is rolling out as an update to existing Jolicloud beta testers starting this week.

USB flash drives are generally pretty sturdy, since flash storage doesn’t rely on any moving parts. But the plastic or metal casing surrounding many cheap drives can break, bend, or melt — and that can damage the storage media or the USB connector. But LaCie’s new XtremKey USB flash drive is one that you probably don’t have to worry about.

LaCie claims that this little guy can deal with temperatures as high as 392 degrees Fahrenheit or as low as – 58 degrees. The company also says you can run it over with a 10-ton truck without causing any damage. Seriously.

LaCie has put together a video showing the flash drive standing up to all sorts of other abuse in a somewhat realistic environment. You can check it out after the break. And if you watch one video of a USB flash drive getting run over, frozen and boiled in water this week, this should be it.

The XtremKey comes in sizes between 8GB and 64GB and has a top read speed of 40MB/s and write speed of 30MB/s. It should hit the streets in August with a starting price of $49.99.

The Asus Eee PC 1015N isn’t the only computer on the horizon with one of Intel’s shiny new dual core Atom N550 netbook chips. In fact, I suspect we’ll see an awful lot of mini-laptops sporting this processor soon. But right now it looks like Asus and Acer are the first two companies with products in the works. Macles has posted details about a new Acer Aspire One D255 netbook with the dual core Atom chip.

The Acer Aspire One D255 features a similar case design to the recently launched Aspire One D260. The main difference is the chipset.

Powering the netbook is the Intel Atom N550 processor, which features dual 1.5GHz cores with 512KB of L2 cache. Like other Atom processors, the N550 supports hyperthreading, which means that Windows will report you have 4 CPUs… even though you don’t. Still, the hyperthreading should give you a bit of a boost when performing some tasks or multitasking.

The Pandigital Novel bucks the eBook Reader trend by shipping with a color LCD display instead of a low power, high contrast E Ink screen. It also runs Google Android, although the Pandigital Novel has a locked down version of Android with just a few apps inclduing the eBook reder, a photo viewer, media player, and web browser.

The device may not get the same kind of battery life you’d get from other eBook readers, but it should run for up to 6 hours, which isn’t bad for a mobile device with a 7 inch, 800 x 600 pixel touchscreen display, WiFi, and Google Android.

Now one user has figured out how to gain root access to the Pandigital Novel, which is the first step toward installing third party apps, adding functionality, or even upgrading the Android operating system or installing custom ROMs.

The only catch? There are no physical buttons on the tablet. Most Android apps are designed to work with the back, menu, home, and search buttons found on Android smartphones. That means while you theoretically can root a Pandigital Novel and install officially unsupported apps, there’s no guarantee they’ll work perfectly. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed that many apps won’t work perfectly… but they do reportedly work.