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IDF news and the end of back-to-school: The week in laptops

The Intel Developer Forum brought a host of new technologies, and we finish out our back-to-school roundup. It's the week in laptops!

Michelle Thatcher
2 min read
Lenovo UMPC
Rafe Needleman/CNET News

This week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco kept us all busy this week, with plenty of new components and products that use them. We'll start off with the event host, Intel, which announced small-form-factor versions of its Centrino 2 processors (that should ignite plenty of rumors about a Centrino 2-based MacBook Air). Intel also broke out a SATA solid-state drive and announced a dual-core version of its Atom processor, due next month. The company also showed off an update to its tiny Classmate PC, which will include a touch screen.

There were plenty of other manufacturers' Netbooks and UMPCs on display at the show as well; check out our photo gallery for a peek at all the little guys. We also got wind of more details about Dell's upcoming Netbook. Given the sheer number of these devices that are being released these days, is it any surprise that Intel reportedly expects to ship 20 million Atom processors this year? (If you're feeling overwhelmed with Netbook choices, check out our article on building the perfect Netbook.)

In product announcements, Lenovo refreshed the ThinkPad X300 with Centrino 2 and called it the ThinkPad X301; HP broke out some ultraportable EliteBooks; and Dell started decorating the cases of its Studio 15 and 17 laptops. Also, we filled in the gaps on the mobile workstation front with news about two new Dell Precisions.

In Reviews, we had a look at Dell's latest business system, the Latitude E6400. We also all but closed out our roundup of back-to-school laptops, where the Dell Studio 1535 took top honors in the sub-$1,000 category and the Gateway P-7811FX was declared king of the desktop replacements. In fact, the Gateway's $1,449 price tag was so low that it prompted us to wonder whether there's even a place for high-end expensive gaming laptops any more.

Also worth reading: Eric Franklin takes a look at Hydra multi-GPU technology from LucidLogix; Acer dropped the price of its Aspire One Netbook; NotebookReview continued its How It Works series with an explanation of graphics hardware; and David Carnoy wonders why tech companies have to make their product names so incoherent.

Have a great weekend!