Position number ten, we have Amazon Kindle. This is the latest technology from Amazon, which is actually the upgrading from two other generations from Kindle formerly. It has Wi-Fi, 4GB, 3G and an LCD display that easy for eyes to look at.

Ninth position there is the HP Slate. Inside this device there is an Intel Atom CPU, memory 1GB of RAM, 64GB flash storage, WebOS platform and Windows 7. This WebOS platform can beat the iPad, because this window used tablet will give better service for customers.

Position eight is Dell 7-inch Android powered tablet PC. This is tablet that has 7 inch look will be soon launched in the market. It is using Android for the interface. The screen is 5 inch wide, which many people said it would be a bit too minor for a tablet standard.

Position seven there is Viewsonic ViewPad. This one has 7 inch with Froyo 2.2 Android is running in this device. The processer is using Qualcomm Snapdragon at 600MHz. This multi-touch screen tablet has integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G data. There are front and rare facing cameras.

Number six we have Archos70 Internet Tablet. The screen is 7 inch screen with 300g weight. its thickness is 10mm. This tablet is in two versions, which are the 8GB with microSD card slot and the other version is HDD with thick of 14mm and weigh 400g. This device has a built in Froyo 2.2, Bluetooth, WI-Fi and GPS. But there is absence of 3G data.

Position five there is Dell Streak. The screen is 5-inch; it is powered with Android 1.6. It is already available in the market. The size of this tablet is small, simple and very portable. It iPad’s rival.

Coming in position four is the Toshiba Folio.  The screen is 10.1 inch screen, it looks wide and inside it has Tegra 2 Nvidia platform, Froyo 2.2 of Android. It has Bluetooth, WI-Fi but no 3G data. SD card slot, front facing camera and HDMI are there in the 769 g tablet.

Position three is HP PalmPad. This tablet is using WebOS, which will support excellent performance of this tablet.

Position two is RIM Blackberry PlayBook. It has 7-inch screen with 1,024 x 600 resolutions. This tablet has 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 dual core CPU, 1GB RAM and 32 GB Storage. The camera has 3 megapixels for front and 5 megapixels for rare side. The Wi-Fi, Bluetooth are there but without 3G data. Inside this tablet is using QNX OS.

Number one is Samsung Galaxy Tab. It will be in the market on November 2010. This tablet has 7-inch screen with 1,024 x 600 resolutions; it has Froyo 2.2 versions of Android that is running inside with 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU. The connection is Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and 3G. MicroSD is available there. This tablet is light, portable and appears great.

Design

Design quality is a step above most consumer netbooks with a very sturdy chassis and durable finishes inside and out. The brushed metal screen cover held up well against everything except fingerprints-easier to wipe off than scratches — and also added some extra protection for the LCD. When closed, the netbook had very little flex, which is just what you would expect from a business-grade system. The only aspect that seemed to clash with the business-theme was an abundance of glossy finishes, including the touchpad, keyboard bezel, and screen bezel that increase reflection and attract fingerprints more compared to matte or rough finishes.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the Mini 5103 is easy to type on with its Chiclet-style design. Spacing between keys was wide enough to help reduce mistakes while typing, and the design was very comfortable to type on for hours at a time. The slightly-smaller than full-size design did take some adjustment to get used to, since some of the outer perimeter keys are condensed compared to keys around the center of the keyboard. The tab, `, and 1 buttons were smaller than average to help make room for other keys. Typing pressure needed to activate each key was minimal, with each key only needing a soft touch to engage. Key noise was minimal, allowing me to type without annoying others in meetings or coffee shops.

The HP Mini 5103 has a unique Synaptics touchpad in that it has no multitouch capabilities enabled. Unlike the majority of the current netbooks on the market, HP didn’t opt for a unit with more than single-finger input. This is probably because it featured a multitouch display, but in any event it would have been nice for when you didn’t want to interact with the screen directly. Sensitivity was excellent out of the box, requiring no adjustments during the review. The glossy surface was easy to slide across and didn’t seem to have problems with a wet or oily finger. The touchpad buttons are adequately sized, coated with the same rubbery paint as the rest of the chassis. Feedback was shallow, with a mild click emitted when fully pressed.

Features

As with its predecessor, the 5103 sports a speedy 7,200rpm hard drive. The 160GB capacity, however, falls short of the 250GB ones found in the Toshiba NB305-N410 and Acer AO521-3782. Attached to the motherboard is a Broadcom HD decoder card, which allows you to playback high definition video, since the dual-core processor isn’t powerful enough by itself. All my 720p and 1080p video files played back beautifully, even though its viewing capacity is limited to a 10-inch widescreen.

Performance

The HP  Mini 5103 is now being offered with the latest dual-core Intel Atom N550 processor. In our tests this significantly increased the responsiveness of the operating system, with programs loading faster, webpages scrolling smoother, and startup and shutdown times improving. Our review unit was also equipped with a 7200RPM hard drive which also added to the better user experience.

In normal daily activities the dual-core processor was nice when it came to flexing the multimedia power of the notebook. We were able to decode 720P videos played locally on the notebook and also play 720P HD videos on sites like YouTube without stuttering. Currently to get that level of performance you need to include an external decoder card to help with HD video decoding. Compared to other single-core Atom netbooks we didn’t notice an increase in 3D performance, although it could be a side-effect of the higher resolution panel on our configuration.

Battery life

Intel promised that the extra core wouldn’t impact battery life and the 5103′s battery life is still impressive for a netbook. On our video rundown test, which loops the same standard definition video at 65 percent brightness with WiFi on, the 66Wh battery lasted for six hours and 16 minutes. That’s decent for a netbook, but not as long as the 5102′s eight hours. However, it’s important to note that the Broadcom chip and the higher-resolution 1366 x 768 display on the 5103 could be affecting the endurance. The plus six hours of battery life is much better than the runtime we’ve seen on AMD’s Nile systems, but very in line with the ASUS Eee PC 1215N.

The HP Mini 5103 offers a lot of features we like; good looks, great build quality, nice screen, good battery life, and high performance. With a starting price of $399 this system isn’t that much more expensive than other consumer netbooks, meaning all those cool features don’t come at a huge premium. HP has a good thing going with the current Mini 5100-series netbook and they understand this since they have kept the same design for three generations now. The brushed metal exterior finish combines good looks with durability and on the inside the rubbery paint gives a unique texture usually reserved for business notebooks. If you are in the market for a new netbook, don’t mind the looks of a business notebook, and want excellent build quality (look no further than the HP Mini 5103).

Acer Aspire One D250 resembles the D150: It has the same keyboard, the same glossy black bezel surrounding a glossy 10.1-inch screen, and it’s even a similar shade of blue on the lid and the keyboard deck. It doesn’t have the metallic flecks of the D150, and the blue is more purple in tone, just enough for a noticeable difference. This netbook will also be available in black, white, and red.

At 10.2 x 7.2 x 1 inches and 2.2 pounds, it’s 0.8 inches narrower, 0.3 inches thinner, and more than half a pound lighter than the D150. In fact, with its charger, the AOD250 weighs just 2.8 pounds, the same as the D150 alone. Remarkably, it’s almost identical in thickness and weight to the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA, but, because it doesn’t have tapered sides, it looks larger at first glance.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The D250’s keyboard, unchanged from the D150, is firm and easy to type on; we had no problems typing this review in Microsoft Word. But there’s still a quarter inch of chassis on either side of the keyboard; a missed opportunity for Acer to install a larger, edge-to-edge keyboard, along the lines of the HP Mini 110 or Eee PC 1008HA.

The touchpad is comfortable to use, and offers very little friction, but at 2.0 x 1.5 inches, could be a little wider. The mouse button below is a single bar, lacking a divot to separate the two sides.

Performance

Like every other netbook with a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, the D250 provided fairly decent performance. Its PCMark05 score of 1,492 is about 100 points higher than the netbook average, but not quite as robust as the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA (1,584), which has the slightly zippier 1.66-GHz Intel Atom N280 processor. Similarly, when we transcoded a 114MB video file from MPG4 to AVI using Handbrake, the D250 took 28:51 to complete the task, which is about 30 seconds faster than the netbook average and on a par with the HP Mini 110, but about 90 seconds slower than the Eee PC 1008HA.

The 160GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive booted Windows XP Home in a decent 49 seconds, almost the same time as the D150. On the LAPTOP Transfer Test (duplicating a 4.97GB folder of mixed media), however, the drive was marginally slower, taking 5 minutes 9 seconds to complete, at a rate of 16.5 MBps. That’s about 2 MBps faster than the netbook average, but about 1 MBps slower than the AOD150.

The D250 was capable when it came to our graphics benchmarks, however. The Intel GMA 945 GPU notched a score of 741 in 3DMark03, more than 100 points above average, and its score of 123 in 3DMark06 was about 30 points above average. We had no problems streaming videos and playing movies off the hard drive. While it took a few seconds to render the Grand Canyon in Google Earth, we were able to fly around the southwest U.S. fairly smoothly. Still, zooming in and out of lower Manhattan with 3D buildings enabled proved choppy.

Software

The Acer Aspire One D250 comes preloaded with a fair amount of software, including a 30-day trial of Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Works (which seems a bit redundant), Acer GameZone, Google Desktop, Carbonite Online Backup, and a 60-day trial of McAfee Security Center. It also comes with the Acer eRecovery Management application.

Battery Life

The 3-cell battery achieved a runtime of 3 hours and 4 minutes, which is about 15 minutes longer than the average 3-cell netbook battery. Acer will also offer a 6-cell battery which, if the battery on the D150’s past performance is any indication, should provide about 6 hours of battery life. Unlike the 6-cell battery on the D150 (4400 mAh), the 6-cell battery being offered with the AOD250 will be a 5200-mAh, which should provide even more runtime.

Design

The 2.8-pound NB30 has the same basic design, features, and size (10.4 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches) as the N210, the main difference being the semi-rugged aspects of the outer chassis. The lid and underside of the netbook feature raised ridges that flow in wavy curves, giving the NB30 a bit of class while providing users with an easy-to-grip surface. Under the lid a matte bezel and deck greeted us, just as on the N210. We were pleased to see the same keyboard layout and matte screen, but not so happy to note that SD Cards still stick out about half an inch when plugged in.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Samsung NB30 features a spill-resistant keyboard with a chiclet-style layout, meaning there are flat keys with a little space between each one. It also features a spill-resistant design, meaning you should be able to spill a glass of water over the keyboard without causing any serious damage to the laptop — a nice feature to have, but not one that I would recommend testing just because you’re bored one day.

The touchpad is a little on the small side, but it works reasonably well. It supports multitouch gestures, including using two fingers to scroll. The left and right buttons below the touchpad, on the other hand, are somewhat small and a little tough to use for two reasons. First, there’s actually just one button with a divider in the middle, making it a little difficult to detect the left and right click areas without looking. And second, you have to press the button somewhat firmly or the clicks won’t register.

Display & Audio

Here’s another notable novelty on the NB30: it has a matte screen. The 10.1-inch wide-screen LCD display offers a 1,024×600-pixel native resolution, which is standard for a screen this size, although we’ve seen 10 inchers with 1,366×768-pixel resolutions more often lately (and some for only $20 more than this model).

Text and icons come across clearly and images looked sharp, but Web-browsing tended to feel a little cut-off at this foreshortened vertical resolution–you’ll most likely need to browse with all toolbars off-screen. Though matte definitely cuts down on glare, the side effect is a slightly grainy look to images and video, but we’ll take that compromise gladly. Built-in stereo speakers do the job for YouTube and basic audio, but they don’t achieve very high volumes and they lack any serious musical clarity.

Ports and Webcam

As with the N210, the NB30 includes one chargeable USB 2.0 port on the left side. Otherwise, the port spread is typical for a netbook. On the left: the aforementioned chargeable USB 2.0, Ethernet, headphone, and mic. On the right: VGA, two USB, and a Kensington lock slot. The front houses a power switch and 3-in-1 media card reader. The 0.3-megapixel webcam delivered images with decent color and backlight balance; we weren’t surprised when our Skype friend noted that our image blurred each time we moved while chatting, even if the motion was slight. Samsung bundles CyberLink YouCam with the NB30 for adding effects to stills and video capture, plus one-touch uploads to YouTube.

Performance

Like most netbooks with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, the Samsung NB30 offers more than enough power for basic day to day tasks such as surfing the web with multiple browser tabs open. It also supports some light multitasking and you should have no problem, for instance, editing a document while listening to music and keeping an instant messenger window open. The computer can handle 720p HD video playback, but 1080p video looks like a slide show rather than a movie. The computer cannot handle HD Adobe Flash video from the web, since the processor isn’t fast enough to process the video and the integrated GMA 3150 graphics don’t offer hardware acceleration for Flash (or H.264) video.

Since the introduction of the first VAIO P last year, Sony has insisted that the VAIO P is not a netbook. No sir. It’s a “Lifestyle PC.” What’s a “Lifestyle PC,” you ask? I’m not sure but somehow the Sony VAIO P seems to fit perfectly. For starters, netbooks generally cost under $500, feature 10- to 12-inch screens with relatively low resolutions, and function similarly to standard laptops. The newest VAIO P, on the other hand, starts at $900, features a small screen with a huge resolution, and functions somewhere in between a UMPC and a standard laptop. It doesn’t really function similarly to a phone aside from the built-in accelerometer and the fact that it’s small.

Design

The VAIO P’s unique form factor is, by far, its greatest asset. At 9.7 x 4.7 x 0.8 inches, the VAIO P is small enough to fit in a woman’s purse or in a man’s long coat pocket. And at 1.4 pounds, it weighs half as much as a netbook, yet has a full-size keyboard that’s fit for touch typists. If you’re familiar with the original P series, you’ll notice that the biggest design difference is the color. While the original P had a classy metal keyboard and deck with tasteful lid colors such as Garnet Red or Onyx Black, the new P has a plastic keyboard and deck that matches its lid and comes in loud neon shades like lime green or hot pink. Conservative white and black colors are available, too.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Most low-priced, full-size notebooks currently on the market feature poorly built keyboards that show significant flex/bounce when typing pressure is applied. Thankfully, most netbooks have remarkably firm keyboards due to the fact that the chassis is so small there isn’t much empty space inside the notebook for the keyboard to flex or bounce. The keyboard on the VAIO P is less cramped than what we’ve seen on the 7-inch and 8.9-inch netbooks, but the Sony keyboard is still very compact. Most netbook keyboards are quite frustrating to use because the small footprint and tiny keys require you to use a “hunt and peck” style of typing rather than traditional touch typing methods. This means that passwords get mangled, emails look like gibberish, and playing games that require keyboard commands becomes quite aggravating.

The touchpad is, well, completely absent on the VAIO P. Rather than a typical touchpad the VAIO P uses a touchpoint or trackpoint pointing stick similar to what you find on many business-grade notebooks. The trackpoint is quite sensitive and easy to use, and even though I usually prefer to use touchpads I found the trackpoint to be very enjoyable. The left and right touchpoint buttons are located in the correct position beneath the space bar and have a shallow feedback and produce a light “click” when pressed.

Display

Note to self: Be careful what you wish for. I’ve personally been cursing the 1024×600 netbook screens since the very beginning, so to see that Sony somehow managed to cram 1600×768 pixels into an 8-inch LED backlit screen is truly a sight to behold. Unfortunately, trying to actually behold text on websites is another story. Unless the screen is about six inches from your face, forget about reading most of the web without zooming. Thankfully, Sony’s not only included zoom-in and zoom-out function keys, but a handy quick-resolution toggle button that kicks the 1600×900 display down to a much more legible 1280×600 in a matter of seconds. However, you run into that godforsaken 600 lines of vertical resolution that plagues cheap netbooks. It cuts off information windows and makes web page scrolling an almost non-stop activity. In the end, I found myself using the VAIO P most often at the full 1600×768 resolution with a liberal amount of zooming.

Ports

Port selection was something of a surprise with this Sony, since some netbooks that are slightly larger have fewer ports than what the VAIO P offers. You get two USB ports, two memory card readers, a headphone jack, and a dedicated expansion port used to connect a dongle that provides Ethernet/LAN and VGA out. The dongle connects to the AC power adapter so you can either keep it with the power adapter or carry it separately. There isn’t much to complain about here, although there might have been enough space in the chassis design to support an additional USB port or Firewire.

Performance

Regardless of how cool the Sony VAIO P looks there are many potential buyers who only care about one thing: performance. This is one area where the VAIO P might be a tough sell for some. In order to keep temperatures and power consumption as low as possible in this little notebook, Sony decided to use a 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor rather than the 1.6GHz Atom processor used in larger netbooks. While this helps keep the VAIO P from overheating and promotes better battery life, the bottom line is the VAIO P has a pretty weak processor.

Like most Atom-based netbooks, the VAIO P has enough processor performance for basic tasks like web browsing or working in Microsoft Office, but don’t expect to use this as a multimedia entertainment notebook. Since Sony includes Windows Vista with the VAIO P we also decided to test the new Windows 7 beta during our benchmark tests. Thankfully, Windows 7 seems to improve the overall performance of the VAIO P and makes this mobile computer a much more useful laptop. Windows Vista is okay, but Windows 7 makes the VAIO P much, much better.

Design

The Mini 311 combines elements from several of HP’s larger notebooks: its black lid (also available in white) bears HP’s Swirl pattern. A black speaker grille unobtrusively lines the front edge of the chassis, and the silver deck, keyboard, and touchpad remind us of the company’s Pavilion Series. Measuring 11.4 x 8.0 x 1.2 inches, the Mini 311 is roughly the same size as the Acer Aspire 751h and the MSI Wind U210. We were glad to see that HP’s battery is well-integrated with the chassis, and doesn’t jut out the back. With a weight of 3.2 pounds, the 311 isn’t much heavier than other 12-inch netbooks, which weigh around 3 pounds.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The keys on the keyboard have the same slightly scalloped shape and wide faces that we’ve seen on HP’s other Netbooks, such as the Mini 110. It’s a design we approve of, but in this particular case, the keys themselves felt a little loose and wiggly when typing. Likewise, the touch pad did not impress. Made of the same material as the rest of the wrist rest, it offered too much resistance to our fingers. There’s a legitimate reason most laptop touch pads have a distinct, slick surface. We also had to go into the control panel to crank up the pointer speed–perhaps the default settings were created with an older 1,024×600 Netbook in mind. Two sliverlike mouse buttons under the touch pad also felt cheap and insubstantial.

Display

Those hoping to watch HD video on the Mini 311-1025NR will be pleased by the 11.6-inch LED backlit display that features a high 1366×768 resolution. This allows 720p playback on the screen. It is possible to play a 1080p video source on an external display through the HDMI video port. While the screen does have a high resolution, the color isn’t quite up to par with some other netbook screens. This is likely a cost cutting measure to try and keep prices down.

Ports and Webcam

There’s no surprises when it comes to the port selection on the Mini 311. On the left side is a USB and HDMI port; on the right is Ethernet, VGA, two USB, headphones, and a 3-in-1 memory card reader.

Performance

Performance on the HP Mini 311-1025NR is slightly improved not because of the processor which is still the Intel Atom N270 but from the memory system. Unlike typical netbooks that ship with a single gigabyte of DDR2 memory, the Mini 311 uses faster DDR3 memory. In addition, it ships with a two gigabytes over the standard one. This is due to HP using the standard Windows 7 Home Premium operating system license over the netbook restricted versions.

Battery

Despite having a discrete graphics card, the six-cell lithium ion battery in the 311 lasted a very respectable 5 hours and 43 minutes on our battery test (Web surfing via Wi-Fi); while that’s about half an hour short of the six-cell netbook average, it’s a worthy trade-off, given the performance boost.

Design

Easily one of the best-looking notebooks we’ve seen for less than $450, the Aspire One 721 measures just 1 to 1.1 inches thick and weighs a mere 2.8 pounds. We especially like the mesh black textured lid (no fingerprint smudges), which has a subtle cross-hatch pattern. The inside of the machine has a sleek gunmetal gray strip underneath the black keyboard, and the power button is made to look like spun metal. A lighter gray strip wraps around the bottom of the 721, adding to the sophisticated aesthetic. The left side of this ultraportable houses a VGA port, power jack, HDMI, and USB. A Ethernet port, lock slot, two more USB ports, mic and headphone jacks, and a 5-in-1 memory card reader can be found on the other side.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

The 521 and 721 have the same chiclet keyboards that Acer’s been using on its recent netbooks and laptops, albeit the 521′s is narrower. While the rounded keys are well-spaced and have a slight gap between them, overall we just find them to be too flat. We got used to typing on the very level panel, but the plastic keys still don’t really mold to your fingers. Both systems have rather small touchpads that are flush with the metal-like palmrest. They’re fine for navigating, but the multitouch gestures are very off — two finger scrolling barely worked in Firefox and IE. We like the dedicated right and left mouse buttons, though the ones on the 721 are incredibly stiff.

The Aspire One 721′s display is one of the better screens we’ve seen in this size, an 11.6-inch panel with 1366 x 768 resolution. The picture was bright and crisp when surfing the web, and an HD trailer of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows exhibited an impressive level of detail, right down to the dark circles under Harry’s eyes and his stubble.

Performance

We know, this is part of the review you’ve been waiting for – the part where we answer if AMD has made improvements in battery life, graphics, and heat, and if they can start to really compete with Intel in the small laptop space. Well, the answer isn’t that cut and dry, but we’re happy with what we’ve seen. On the performance side of things, the 1.7GHz Athlon II Neo processor scored right in between Intel Atom and Intel ULV CPUs on benchmarks, which in our opinion is a perfect place to be. We’ll let the benchmarks below speak for themselves, but in everyday performance we found the systems to be relatively snappy – especially after we uninstalled the McAfee Internet Suite. Both the 521 and 721 kept up with our everyday chores, which included simultaneously writing in Microsoft Word 2007, surfing the web in Firefox, chatting in Digsby, and checking our Twitter feeds in Tweetdeck. When we threw in a 720p video into the mix, we noticed it took a few more seconds to open the file, but it played back flawlessly.

Design
The S12 has similar design features common to other models in the IdeaPad line; not only does it share traits with the smaller S10-2, but its keyboard is also reminiscent of the larger IdeaPad Y450. While it has the same polarizing pattern on its lid (which is either a subliminal advertisement for Target or misplaced nostalgia for 70s-era wallpaper), we like the S12’s design a bit more than the S10-2, mainly owing to its larger size. While its edges are still beveled like the S10-2, they’re not as pronounced, making the S12 seem more like the original S10, whose boxier design we admired. Still, the chrome-wrapped edges of the Samsung NC20, and the fact that it better conceals its six-cell battery (the S12’s protrudes out the back) give the Samsung a slicker look. With an 11.5 x 9.0 inch footprint, and tapering from 1.4 to 1.0 inch with its six-cell battery, the IdeaPad S12 is nearly the same size as the NC20 and the Acer Aspire One AO751h. Weighing in at 3.4 pounds, the S12 is the same weight as the NC20, and about half a pound heavier than most other 10-inch netbooks. The bottom line is that this system is easy to carry.

Display
The IdeaPad S12 features a bright, glossy, 12.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel widescreen display. While larger than most netbook screens, the S12 display is also significantly sharper. I don’t feel the need to squint as much as I did with the HP 2133 Mini-Note, which had a 1280 x 720 pixel 8.9 inch display. But if your eyesight isn’t perfect, you might want to adjust the system fonts and page zoom settings in your web browser in order to make the display more comfortable. Of course, the best thing about a higher resolution display is that it lets you cram more material onto your screen.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The IdeaPad S12′s keyboard is, in a word, superb; it is full-size and requires no adjusting from a standard notebook keyboard. There is no flex and key travel is just right. The keyboard feels of high quality and allows for precision typing; each key is anchored securely and does not wobble at all. It has excellent tactile feedback and enough resistance that you can rest your hands on the keyboard in typing position without pressing keys accidentally. Lenovo designers made good use of the keyboard real estate – I am pleased to see the PrintScreen key is its own key and not mapped as a secondary function (as in, needing to press the [Fn] key in conjunction with the corresponding key to use it), and that the PgUp and PgDn keys are near the arrow keys. The Home and End keys are secondary function keys, but looking at the space the designers had to deal with, it was clearly not an option to make them separate as well.

Ports and Webcam
For a netbook, the S12 has pretty much the standard array of ports. On the left side of the system are two USB ports, a Wi-Fi on/off switch, and a 4-in-1 memory card slot. On the right side is a third USB port, VGA, Ethernet, an ExpressCard/34 slot, and headphone and mic ports. We especially like having an ExpressCard slot on board for adding a mobile broadband card; although you can easily use a USB device, we favor ExpressCard modems because they protrude a bit less and are less likely to snap off. The 1.3-megapixel webcam on the S12 delivered decent video, although colors appeared slightly more washed out than on the NC20. Still, in a Skype chat, our caller said that the visuals were more than acceptable, and that the S12’s mic picked up our voice clearly.

Performance
I used the S12 more or less as my primary computer for one week and I quickly found out what a netbook is good for and what it is not good for. Its Internet surfing performance is reasonable, as is its performance in most everyday activities such as playing music and reading email. OpenOffice.org ran without any hitches. I was able to use Firefox and listen to iTunes simultaneously without trouble.

That said, doing anything more strenuous than surfing the Internet can quickly overwhelm the Intel Atom processor. Despite its Hyper-Threading technology, which makes Windows think it has two cores, the Intel Atom is still a single-core processor and a very limited one at that, and therefore multitasking with several programs is not going to be smooth. Alt-tabbing between applications is not instant. In everyday performance, users coming from faster computers will notice programs take longer to open, web pages take longer to render, and in general performance is toned down a notch. Going through ten megapixel images and trying to watch high-res movies from my video camera were clearly too much for it to handle. Know the limits of a netbook before you buy one. Overall, the S12 is what a netbook is supposed to be – a more portable compliment to a user’s primary computer. I found the S12 to be a great companion at work – I used it to listen to music and keep a web browser with my email open. For everyday tasks, the performance is just fine.

Design
Toshiba trimmed down its netbook where it could: instead of the frame being uniform in thickness, as on the NB205, it tapers from 1.4 inches in the rear to approximately 0.5 inches in front, resulting in a svelte look. The front edge is also more beveled, so the system looks more rounded than before. The new screen bezel sports tapered edges; while it’s the same thickness as on the NB205, it doesn’t look as clunky. The major aesthetic change from the NB205 and the NB305 is the battery. The former battery jutted out from the rear, but now it’s tucked in underneath, trimming nearly an inch off the system (although the weight remains constant, at 2.8 pounds). The new position of the battery also adds the effect of slanting the keyboard towards the user; while this is supposedly more ergonomic, the change in angle is so slight that it’s practically nonexistent. Apparently pink wasn’t a big seller, as Toshiba is no longer offering its mini in that color. The NB305 comes in blue, brown, or white.

Keyboard & Touchpad
Under the lid, the NB305 still has one of the best netbook keyboards out there. The chiclet layout works extremely well, and the silver keys are coated in something that makes them feel soft on our fingertips — there’s a $350 version of the NB305 that has a flush matte keyboard. Our one complaint lies with the volume controls, which are located on the number keys; no on-screen rocker appears when you adjust them. Speaking of sound, the speakers on the NB305 seem louder than that on the NB205, but they’re still weak compared to the 532h’s. We appreciate that the touchpad is larger than most, and features dedicated right and left mouse buttons instead of a cramped rocker, but the multitouch pad is too sensitive and we were constantly zooming in on pages. We’ve become quite speedy at switching off this function in the Synaptics menu — a skill that we’re rather proud of.

Dislay
The 10.1-inch glossy LED-backlit screen on the Mini NB305-N410 has a 1,024×600-pixel native resolution. Though this lower-than-HD-resolution screen is common, there are plenty of Netbooks with 1,366×768-pixel resolution displays, including the Sony Vaio W series. Colors and icons are crisp and bright, offering a better-than-average experience once resolution is forgiven. The NB305′s audio has received a welcome bump up from the NB205 series, adding a second speaker for stereo sound. The speakers still lean toward tinny and soft, but they are significantly louder than they were before.

Port
Around the netbook are the standard ports: three USBs, VGA, Ethernet, an SD card reader, and mic and headphone jacks. Many have been asking about the lack of HDMI ports on these new netbooks, and while we’d welcome the additional port for easily hooking up to a larger monitor or HDTV, it’s obvious Atom alone can’t handle even 720p videos, and thus it’s been left off the list.

Performance
Like most newer netbooks, the NB305 utilizes Intel’s new Pine Trail CPU, the 1.66-GHz Atom N450, which offers better power efficiency and a modest increase in performance over the NB205. On PCMark05, the difference was negligible: 1,383 vs. 1,341, respectively—and both scores are about 140 points south of the netbook average. There was more of a gap with Geekbench: The NB305 scored 925, 85 points higher than average, but the NB205-N330BL model reached just 805. Other Pine Trail systems were in the same ballpark: the HP Mini 5102 got 1,408 in PCMark05 and 896 in Geekbench, and the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE-P scored 1,410 and 918 on those same two tests, respectively. The NB305’s 5,400-rpm, 250GB hard drive performed well, copying a 4.97GB folder of multimedia files at a rate of 20.6 MBps, 4.8 MBps faster than average. It booted into Windows 7 Starter Edition in 1 minute and 9 seconds, which is 10 seconds longer than average. When converting a 114MB, 5-minute-and-5-second MPEG-4 video into AVI using HandBrake, the NB305 took 28 minutes and 26 seconds, about 1 minute faster than average, and approximately 2 minutes faster than the NB205. However, when performing the same task using Oxelon Media Converter, the NB305 took 6:03, about 15 seconds longer than the NB205.

We also saw a greater difference between the two systems when it came to graphics tests. While its 3DMark06 score of 159 is about 70 points below the netbook average, it’s still about 50 points greater than the NB205-N330BL. Still, this system is unsuited for gaming. When playing World of Warcraft with the resolution at 800 x 600 and the effects set to default, we only averaged 19 frames per second. If you want to game on a netbook, you’re better off buying an Ion-based system, such as the HP Mini 311, which saw 35 fps at a resolution of 1024 x 768.

Design
The 1201PN looks identical to the 1201N, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Despite its graphics horsepower, the 1201PN remains very easy to carry, weighing just 3.2 pounds and measuring 1.06 inches to 1.3 inches at its thickest point. We still like the black glossy exterior, but the chassis picks up fingerprint smudges. The system also has a few chrome accents, including the power button, touchpad on/off button, and the mouse bar beneath the dimpled touchpad (more on that below). The left side of the 1201PN houses a VGA port, tiny AC adapter jack, HDMI output, and a USB port. You’ll find two more USB ports, an SD Card slot, headphone and mic jacks, an Ethernet port, and a Kensington Lock slot on the right. We like that both edges of the netbook have grooved horizontal lines, a nice touch.

Keyboard & Touchpad
Inside, more shiny black plastic frames an edge-to-edge raised Chiclet-style keyboard. The double hinge on the lid straddles either side of a battery that has minimal bulge on the 1201PN’s bottom and fits right into the back. The keyboard’s easy to type on and comfortable to work at on a desk or perched in one’s lap. The dimpled multitouch touchpad below is flush with the rest of the keyboard deck but responds well to finger gestures. A thin chromed-plastic rocker bar for button-pressing could have been a little more ergonomic. The dimpled black touchpad remains as accurate and responsive as ever, and we like how easy it is to find by feel. Multitouch gestures like pinch to zoom also worked well. However, we really dislike the narrow and stiff touchpad button. We especially found it annoying when trying to select text or crop a photo. In fact, we tried to avoid this button after a day of testing.

Display
The glossy 12.1-inch, LED-backlit display is about as roomy as netbook displays get. The generous 1,366×768 native resolution has a 16-to-9 aspect ratio; it’s a treat compared with the limited 1,024×600 resolution offered by the majority of Pine Trail entrants. And thanks to the Ion 2 graphics, streaming video looks much better on the Eee PC 1201pn than it does on most other netbooks. (Nvidia recommends downloading Adobe Flash 10.1 and browsing in Mozilla Firefox for the highest-quality experience.) Videos on Hulu.com played much more smoothly than on typical netbooks and only seldom stuttered. The HD version of the Avatar trailer (via YouTube) was smooth and completely stutter-free in 720p, although the color and crispness weren’t quite on a par with true HD. (When we watched the same video on the Dell Mini 10, we witnessed the choppy slide-show effect that is common among netbooks without Ion graphics.) Even locally stored HD video, downloaded from Microsoft’s WMV HD Content Showcase, played like a dream in 720p. Overall, we were thrilled by our media experience on the Eee PC 1201pn and prefer it to more affordable netbooks equipped with a Broadcom Crystal HD video decoder, such as the HP Mini 210 HD Edition.

Battery
The Eee PC 1201pn held its own on our battery-life test, given its graphics. Our strenuous battery-rundown trial consists of streaming video wirelessly (with volume and display brightness set to 50 percent) until the battery dies. It’s a test that energy-efficient Pine Trails should excel at. However, high-end graphics always take a toll on battery life, and the 1201pn is no exception. The six-cell battery lasted only 3 hours and 17 minutes, half the time that the Asus Eee PC 1005pe logged (6:34). We expect about five hours from the average netbook; the 1201pn came up considerably short, though it should eke out closer to five or six hours when performing light tasks such as word processing.

Performance
Moving from a dual-core processor to a single-core 1.6-GHz N450 CPU definitely has an impact on speed. In PCMark Vantage, which measures overall performance in Windows, the 1201PN notched a score of 1,329. That showing is higher than the netbook average (1,211) but lower than the older 1201N (1,488). The GeekBench scrore also saw a drop-off (903 vs. 1,064). Even anecdotally the 1201PN struggled at times; we noticed delays when starting video calls in Skype and when opening the AT&T Connection manager software we installed. Otherwise, the 1201PN performed fairly well. The netbook didn’t get bogged down when we had multiple tabs open in Google Chrome—one of them streaming Pandora—while we switched between the browser, WordPad, and TweetDeck. The 1201PN’s 5,400-rpm 250GB hard drive proved faster than 1201N’s, delivering a transfer rate of 23.5 MBps (up from 17.7 MBps) on the LAPTOP Transfer Test (copying 4.97GB of files). Too bad the boot time increased form 53 seconds to 1:07, which is 6 seconds slower than the average netbook.

Design

The N5′s elongated form factor and incredibly rounded corners certainly have a pocketbook-look, but it’s also very clean and stylish. But you’ll forget about how it looks the moment you discover how it feels. The entire outer casing of the N5 has the softest, smoothest rubber-like finish of any device I’ve ever come across. It’s a texture that you can’t help but stroke/pet; if you let someone else hold it, good luck getting it back! Even when I hold the N5 in both hands to thumb type, I still find myself rubbing the back with my fingers. I hate to use the expression “softer than a baby’s bottom,” but it really is that silky and smooth (my 7-month-old baby girl will be thrilled by this public reference when she gets older, I’m sure).

Complementing the device’s amazing finish is its superb build quality. Viliv products are solid. Period. Everything is sturdy and strong; no creaks, warping, or flexing. It’s very nicely put together. One of the design elements that makes the N5 more unique than other handheld clamshells is that it has the kind of hinge that lets the bottom edge of the screen appear as though it’s underneath the lower half of the unit. The hinges themselves are strong and tight; the device literally snaps shut.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Despite its diminuitive size, the N5 sports a full QWERTY keyboard with fairly large keys (for its size) that provide tactile feedback that reminded us of our favorite ThinkPad keyboards. Don’t expect to do a lot of touch typing, though, because the entire device is just too narrow for an adult (or even a large child) to place one’s hands on the home row.

However, with the N5 sitting on our desktop, we were able to achieve a score of 32 words per minute on the Ten Thumbs Typing test, which is a far cry from our typical 80 word-per-minute rate, but much better than we’d do on most smart phones. Because the keys were so responsive, we had little difficulty typing when holding the N5 aloft, though our words-per-minute were in the mid-twenties when we tried the typing test in that position.

For the most part, keys appear in their typical positions, but to make them this large on a device this small, Viliv had to make a couple of compromises. The most awkward of these involve the placement of the colon/semicolon key, the bracket/braces keys, the hyphen key, the +/= key, and the question mark/slash key. The colon/semicolon characters, which normally sit to the right of the L key, share a button with the single/double quote characters. That means you have to hit the Fn key + quote to get the semicolon and Shift+Fn + quote to get the colon character. The brackets and braces characters, which normally have their own keys to the right of the P key, are available by hitting the Fn key + V, B, N, or M. The hyphen character, the +/= characters, and question mark/slash characters all have their own dedicated keys, but these are located to the right of the space bar, rather than in their typical QWERTY positions.

Display

Like the Viliv S5 Premium, the N5 is outfitted with a 4.8-inch WSVGA display. It isn’t remarkably bright, but it’s a great screen with crisp text, excellent clarity, and accurate colors. We’ve seen this screen size and resolution combination on many MIDs/UMPCs in the past, so there’s nothing new or unusual to report here. If icons and text are too small for your comfort, you can boost the size of them through Control Panel -> Appearance -> Display -> “Make it easier to read what’s on your screen.” You can also adjust the DPI through the “Set custom text size” option in the Display sidebar in the Control Panel.

Ports and Webcam

On a chassis this small, one can’t reasonably expect a lot of ports, and the N5 is notably sparse, offering only a single USB port, a microSD card slot, and a headphone jack. If the N5 had a way to output VGA or HDMI, it would make a great mobile presentation device, but as it stands the lack of video-out options is a huge missed opportunity. The N5 has a 1.3-megapixel webcam, but we were unable to produce an image larger than 320 x 240 either when shooting stills or videos. Worse still, the camera had real trouble handling florescent and low lighting. The low-light image we took at our cubicle looked really washed out, but when we moved next to a window with the sun shining through it, the picture quality improved a great deal.

Performance

The 1.33GHz Intel Atom CPU + 1GB RAM duo housed inside the Viliv N5 isn’t new. We’ve seen it used for the past two years, since Menlow-based UMPCs were first released, with varying degrees of success depending on the operating system that went along with it. Windows 7 isn’t as trim as XP, but I think it’s a good choice for a mobile computer. Windows XP is almost 9 years old . . . and it looks it. Vista, on the other hand, looks incredibly dolled up in comparison . . . but it’s too slow. Windows 7 is the best of both words and it performs well on the N5. It’s obviously not well suited for heavy video editing or extensive multi-tasking, but for the kinds of things that most people do (web, email, Skype, video/music, casual games), it performs well. Faster processor options would certainly have been welcomed, especially since last year’s Viliv S5 shares most of the same specs, but the Z520 has a good power:battery life ratio and doesn’t cause the unit to overheat.

Design
With a footprint of 10.2 x 7.0 x 1.5 inches, the U135 takes up about as much desk space as other netbooks of its ilk. However, its battery sticks out the bottom of the system, increasing its thickness in the back to 1.5 inches. While not nearly as egregious as the Wind U110, this protrusion is more noticeable than those on many other netbooks with 6-cell batteries. Weighing 2.8 pounds, the U135 disappeared like every other netbook once inside our messenger bag. When we first opened the lid of the U135, we were struck by the similariries between this system and the ASUS Eee PC 1005PE-P (Seashell), and with good reason: The two island-style keyboards are almost identical, and both have a single mouse bar as opposed to discrete buttons. While our U135 came in blue, consumers will also be able to get the netbook in silver, red, or black. The wavy line pattern on the lid is also repeated on the touchpad, which adds a nice graphical element to the design. This pattern also does a decent job of masking fingerprint smudges.

Screen and Speakers
The Wind U135 offers a 10” glossy LED-backlit display that rates below average compared to other similarly sized netbooks. On our review model we noticed significant backlight bleed around all the edges when the brightness is near the top of the scale. During the boot sequence this is especially visible when the backgrounds are black. Turning the backlight down to 50-70% reduced the bleed, but it was still slightly visible if you were in a dark room watching a movie. Color and contrast are comparable to other competing netbooks thanks to the glossy screen surface. If the backlight bleed was lessened it would be a great machine to watch movies on while traveling. At peak brightness the screen is easy to read in bright office conditions and outdoors if you are in an area that the sun wasn’t reflecting off the screen. Viewing angles are average with the vertical viewing range spanning 15-20 degrees forward or back before colors started to invert. Horizontal viewing angles are better, keeping colors looking true even at steep angles.

Speaker performance is average compared to most netbooks on the market, meaning that they lacked volume and any hint of bass compared to a full-size notebook. For most users the speakers are great if you want to watch a quick streaming video clip or listen to some music in the background, but if you intend on watching a movie, headphones are the preferred option.

Keyboard and Touchpad
I really like the chiclet-style keyboard on the MSI Wind U135. It looks much the same as the keyboard on the Asus Eee PC 1005PE, but some of the Fn keys are in different spots. You can hit the Fn key plus a number of other buttons to adjust the volume, screen brightness, toggle the wireless connections, or turn off the touchpad. Hitting FN+ F10, for example will trigger the MSI ECo software, which adjusts your computer’s settings to improve performance or battery life for different situations (such as gaming, or presentation mode).

But back to the keyboard. There is a little flex in the middle of the keyboard if you push down too hard. But honestly, that’s the sort of thing I only notice when I take the time to press on the keyboard and look at it. When I’m typing, it’s not a problem. The keys are flat, with a little space between them making them easy to detect without looking down. I took a typing test and notched a score of about 100 words per minute, which is about average for me.

The touchpad is reasonably wide for a 10 inch netbook. There’s only a single wide button below the touchpad, instead of distinct left and right buttons. While the palm rest has a glossy finish and a smooth plastic texture, the touchpad is a bit rougher, which makes it easy to slide your finger across without generating much friction. But the touchpad doesn’t seem to support scrolling — at all. Most netbooks let you scroll through documents and web sites by either placing two fingers on the touchpad and dragging or by moving your finger up and down the right edge of the touchpad. The Wind U135 I tested doesn’t seem to support either scrolling method.

Performance
Stocked with Intel’s new Atom N450 processor and 1GB of RAM, the U135 performed about the same as the ASUS 1005PE-P. The U135 scored 1,418 on PCMark05, 8 points higher than the 1005PE, but 80 points below the netbook average—which to date has been mostly Intel N270 and N280 processors. In Geekbench, the U135 scored 906, about 70 points higher than the netbook average. We were able to go about our typical netbook activities—surfing the web and watching videos—without any issues. The U135 was a bit more lethargic in the LAPTOP Transfer Test. Its 250GB, 5400-rpm hard drive copied a 4.97GB folder of multimedia in 5 minutes and 6 seconds for a rate of 16.6 MBps, which is 9.8 MBps slower than the 1005PE, but 1.3 MBps above the netbook average, It also took 1 minute and 24 seconds to boot into Windows 7 Starter Edition, almost half a minute longer than average.

Similarly, the U135, which has the new Intel GMA 3150 integrated graphics chip, was fairly average when it came to graphics tests. In 3DMark06, the U135 scored 154, nearly identical to the ASUS 1005PE (155), and a shade below the average of 160. When we transcoded a 114MB, 5-minute and 5-second MPG4 video to AVI using HandBrake, the U135 took 30 minutes and 12 seconds, half a minute longer than average. When performing the same task using Oxelon Media Converter, which takes advantage of multithreading, the Ul35 took 6 minutes and 6 seconds.

Computer power-wise, the S10 is technically faster than the S7 with a 1.66GHz Atom rather than a 1.33GHz. But it doesn’t seem faster because it also uses Windows 7 instead of XP. Even with all of Windows 7’s fancy user enhancements turn off, there’s still some noticeable lag opening and closing programs. Things tend to stutter. But that’s a small price to pay for the goodies that come with Windows 7 Touch Pack.