We’ve given you a heads up (or two) about Intel’s AppUp application store wanting to expand into Ultrabooks. It’s a move that could even see some synergy in the Windows 8 Metro UI [Tenuous, Insider] and could be a serious earner for both Intel and developers but it needs seeding. That’s why Intel are offering prizes. In this case $250 for a Web app submission and and five chances to win an Ultrabook.

Amazon are usually a reliable source of true specs and recommended retail price so when new devices go into their system, we take note! Today we see the ASUS UX21 and two variants of the ASUS UX31 at Amazon Germany now available for pre-order. The UX21 11.6”, the cheapest of the three models (KX004V) is now available for pre-order for €999 That’s more than we expected. €200 more than we expected. For €999 you’re getting the Core i5 with 128GB of SSD , 4GB of RAM and Windows Home Premium. […]

There are a couple of things I want to bring to your attention about the WeTab 11.6 inch Atom-based Tablet, currently available in Europe. Firstly, they’ve obviously got to migrate everything from Meego to Tizen now. They’ve released an up-beat statement saying they’ll be ready for the release in 2012 but my heart goes out to this company that put many eggs in the Meego basket. Yes, others have too but they had the first Meego product and have worked hard over the last year to bring updates to the […]

Some 5 months after the launch of the Blackberry PlayBook, not only has the Android Player not even been released, but new details tell us that it’s going to be much less impressive than we were initially led to believe.

The Toshiba Portege Z830 is lining up to be one very interesting Ultrabook indeed. It’s the lightest 13” model there is at an amazing 1.13KG [see Ultrabook weight comparison here by clicking ‘weight column] and has a great line-up of ports and features. Even better news, and solving the mystery of why some people are reporting the casing to be structurally solid when we felt something a little wobbly at IFA, is the news that the casing is now a magnesium alloy and aluminum structure.

Echoing what we reported a few days ago is the official announcement that AppUp, the Intel-funded app store for Meego, Windows and Tizen will expand its product focus out to all PCs. Originally Intel had a keen eye on the Atom ecosystem for AppUp but by moving to support HTML5 apps, they think that all PC platforms could benefit. Peter Biddle who heads-up the AppUp project at Intel had this to say in a blog post introducing the AppUp Elements conference in Seattle. “Today we disclosed the expansion of the […]

With an estimated notebook ship volume of 5.4 million units forecast for Q3 2011, top-3 notebook manufacturer Acer is hoping that Ultrabooks will make up 30% of volumes in 2012. That’s something in the region of 6 million unit for the year. The news comes from Taiwan News who’s article makes an interesting read. Read this section from the ‘half-full’ angle and then again from the ‘half empty’ angle. "In our survey of 200 local consumers, we found that 77 percent are interested in an ultra-thin notebook PC, with 49 […]

The MSI Windpad 120W is the Cedar Trail version of the Windpad U110W – an AMD Fusion device.  We reported on the 120W in June where it showed at IFA with a Cedar Trail 1.86Ghz CPU. We saw it at IDF a few weeks ago and it had a low-power platform inside. We had the chance to give it a few tests. The Windpad 120W shown at IDF used the Intel Atom N2600 with 32nm CedarView-M with dual-core, 2-threads per core (contrary to specs) and 1.6Ghz clockrate. The PowerVR SGX545 […]