Li-ion battery will become the latest low-carbon economy excitement

As environment-friendly vehicles worldwide are sought, the hybrid electric cars and sells the next few years, the automotive battery market is booming. “It is predicted that by 2014 the market size will expand rapidly to 2.25 trillion yen (about 24.8 billion U.S. dollars), is about 215 times in 2008.; It is d a professional market research agency Fuji, Japan Economic Research Institute has recently taken statistics Inspiron 6000 battery.

Reducing emissions and oil resources in response to the twin pressures of an increasingly scarce in most countries, the development of new energy vehicles will be seen as a revitalization of the domestic auto industry and energy savings of how the most important, while reducing the more stressful, and the United States for promoting the flagship development of new energy vehicles. Recently, China and the United States issued the “Joint Declaration”, said that both parties will be launched at the initiative of the U.S. electric car, the two countries in years to come, more 1 million electric cars used.

In China, in March last year, “issued by the restructuring of the automotive industry and the revitalization of planning” in the development of new energy vehicles have also developed a broad target - the next three years, China will form a plug 500,000 electric hybrid type and common hybrids Energy Qijuchanneng. In 2012, the new production vehicles, there will be 10% energy saving and new energy vehicles, vehicles with new energy should reach 500 billion output value of RMB.

Faced with such an interesting cake market, prices of domestic cars, spare parts and other upstream companies have exposure to these products to very good early position.

Compared to conventional vehicles, new energy vehicle technology gap with foreign countries do not, there is the possibility of exceeding bend over to help companies involved to increase investment in new optimism energy vehicles . Among them, the battery powering the vehicle - lithium-ion battery is a major R & D related to the Latitude D830 battery target.

It is understood that the current hybrid cars use nickel-hydride technology battery metals major, but the nickel-metal hydride battery a number of technical features such as energy density, charge and discharge rate is close to its theoretical limits. The lithium battery has an energy density, high capacity, no memory, etc., are car manufacturers and battery suppliers unanimous support of the current national focus on R & D is the lithium-ion batteries .

According to the different cathode materials, lithium batteries are cobalt oxide, lithium, lithium manganese oxide, ternary materials, and four types of lithium iron phosphate. Lithium iron phosphate is the best hybrid vehicle using lithium cathode materials. Currently, prices of cars in China introduced models in purely electric vehicles, batteries power batteries are lithium, Chery, BYD uses iron phosphate lithium.

Although China Li-ion battery production ranks third in the world, but in products, and technical level with Japan, the United States, there is a certain gap, the lithium batteries of the automobile are not yet in the industrialization of the essay. Xinhua noted that the letter and other research institutions, China’s relatively backward production facilities of battery power, many companies focus on the subject, ignoring the improvements of the manufacturing equipment . At present, China will depend mainly on the production of batteries and equipment imports expensive, which is our development of battery power vehicle is very unfavorable power batteries in mass production It should be equipment for advanced automation, the focus of advanced research. In addition, most independent research firms in China battery power and development, funding is limited, only the fundamental problems to solve cell technology is difficult to advance further. Lack of adequate communication between businesses, all want to know the circumstances of other people do not want to talk about their own experiences, there is widespread low-level study of the phenomenon of repetition.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with an Atom N450 processor is just the latest Dell laptop to bear the Mini 10 name. It follows the Dell Mini 10 and Mini 10v, which had Atom Z520 and N270 processors, respectively.

Performance-wise, the new Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is a lot like the recently retired Mini 10v. But thanks to the new energy-sipping CPU, it gets significantly better laptop battery  life. And Dell has given the 10 inch mini-laptop a major design overhaul as well.

That includes a battery that no longer sticks out of the bottom of the laptop, and a new keyboard layout. Unfortunately one thing that hasn’t received a major update is the touchpad, which features difficult-to-use integrated click areas instead of dedicated left and right buttons.

The unit featured in this review has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, an HSPA modem, 1GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. It runs Windows 7 Home Premium.

Design

Dell pretty much broke the mold with the new Inspiron Mini 10. The company’s previous netbooks looked great with a low capacity 3 cell battery. But when you added a high capacity 6 cell GD761,TD347 battery, your netbook looked like it had a cancerous growth near its rear. The new Mini 10 does away with that. Both the 3 and 6 cell batteries sit flush with the base of the computer.

But the way Dell accomplished this is by redesigning the shape of the laptop to give it a bit more junk in the trunk. Basically, the base of the laptop is now bigger than the lid. This means that when the lid is closed, you can see a bit of the base. And when you open the lid to use the laptop, the screen no longer rests behind the notebook. Instead the hinge rests on top of the netbook base.

I’ve heard a lot of people complain that this design is just as unattractive as the enormous battery found on earlier netbook models, but it sort of grew on me. While the laptop might not look quite as slim as some netbooks on the market, I appreciate the effort that Dell put into making the new Mini 10 look better.

And there’s an unexpected benefit to the extra space behind the lid: I found it provided a perfect place to put my thumb when picking up the laptop with one hand. That makes it much easier to move the Mini 10 from room to room without closing the lid and putting the computer to sleep first.

The demo unit Dell Inspiron 1501 battery sent me has a shiny white plastic case and a black interior finish with a textured pattern printed on the palm rest and other areas surrounding the keyboard. The cover is surprisingly adept at not showing fingerprints. I’m not sure if this is due to the color or the finish. The laptop is also available with red, blue, pink, green, purple, or black lids.

Around the sides of the laptop you’ll find 3 USB ports, a VGA port, Ethernet, and mic and headphone jacks. There’s also card reader for SD and MS flash media.

The display is glossy, but easily readable under most indoor lighting conditions. The shiny black bezel around the lid, on the other hand, is quite reflective.

Hidden in the battery compartment is a SIM card slot, at least on the demo unit I received. The 3G HSPA modem is an optional component that won’t ship with all models.

On the bottom of the laptop you’ll find some vents, but no access panel. That means you’re going to have to perform some minor surgery on this laptop if you want to upgrade the RAM or other components.

One nice touch that Dell adds is single-piece power adapter. While most laptops come with a power brick and a separate cable, the Dell Mini 10 comes with just a single cord (with a rather bulky plug), making travel a little bit easier. The picture above shows the Dell Mini 10 power adapter on the left, and the adapter for a Lenovo IdeaPad S12 on the right. As you can see, they’re both about the same size. But it’s a lot easier to carry around a one piece solution.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The new Dell Mini 10 has a new keyboard that’s not that different from the keyboard used in earlier netbooks from Dell. The new design features keys with raised areas. The result is that the keys almost touch each other, but there’s space between the typing surface of each key. It’s sort of like a cross between one of those island-style keyboards that are all the rage these days and the original Dell Mini 10 keyboard which featured flat keys with little distance between them.

I like the keyboard, and in an online typing test I was able to eke out a score of 102 words per minute using this netbook. Your results may vary, but the keyboard certainly didn’t seem to slow me down any.

Dell takes an unusual approach to the top row of keys on its netbooks. While most companies provide you with a series of Fn keys that let you trigger alternate actions such as adjusting the volume or display brightness by hitting Fn+a Fn key, by default Dell’s top row of keys control those other functions. In other words, you hit F4 or F5 to adjust the screen brightness. If you’re using a program that actually requires you to use the F5 key, you’ll need to hit Fn+F5 to trigger that action. This makes sense, since most people probably use the brightness, volume, wireless , and other buttons more often than the Fn keys.

While I really like the keyboard, I really dislike the touchpad. In order to increase the surface area of the touchpad, Dell integrated the left and right buttons directly into the touchpad itself. Instead of pushing a separate button to click, you press down on the bottom right or bottom left corner of the touchpad.

This generally works well enough if you’re only using a single hand on the touchpad. You move the cursor around, lift your hand and move your finger to the bottom to click. But if you’re using two fingers to perform an action like dragging and dropping, you might run into some problems. I frequently had trouble clicking down on the touchpad with one finger while trying to drag a program or icon using the other finger. And if you have a tendency to hover your trigger finger over the mouse button while scrolling, you’d best be careful not to set your finger down lest the cursor should jump away just before you can click.

This short video should give you a sense of what I’m talking about, even though I don’t experience too many problems in the video itself. It turns out it’s kind of hard to reproduce these touchpad problems on demand. They only really occur when you’re trying to do something else.

Dell has also chosen to drop support for multitouch gestures. You can scroll up and down and left to right by moving your finger over the right or bottom edges of the touchpad. But there’s no support for two-finger scrolling or pinching to zoom.

Performance

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 performs pretty much as you’d expect from a netbook with Intel Atom N450 processor and GMA 3150 graphics. It can handle 720p HD video playback, but 1080p HD video is a non-starter, as if HD Flash video.

Dell Inspiron 1520 battery will soon offer users the option of ordering the Mini 10 with a Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator which will add support for HD video playback. Right now that means local videos only, but Adobe and Broadcom are working to add support for HD Flash video in the upcoming Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta 3.

The Mini 10 got got a score of 2.3 on the Windows 7 Experience Index, with the low CPU score counting as the weakest link.

I ran a handful of tests on the netbook to test its performance at transcoding audio and video files, launching resource-intensive applications, and copying and zipping files. Overall, the Mini 10’s scores were pretty close to those of the Asus Eee PC 1005PE, another netbook with an Atom N450 CPU and GMA 3150 graphics. Which is to say, the performance is pretty much on par with what you’d expect from any netbook released in the past two years with an Intel Atom Nxx series processor.

The tests involve transcoding a 4 minute, 34 second video file using VirtualDub and a 13:25 audio clip using WinLAME. The folder copy and zip tests involve copying a folder with 2186 files totaling 478MB to a new folder and then creating a zip file containing all those files using 7-zip.

Of course, you’re probably not going to spend a lot of time transcoding audio and video files on a netbook. But as with most Atom powered netbooks, I had no difficulty surfing the web using Firefox or Google Chrome with multiple tabs open. Skype video call quality was passable, if not great. And resource-intensive applications such as image editor GIMP and Openoffice.org opened reasonably quickly.

Battery

While the new Dell Mini 10 performs about the same as the earlier Mini 10v with an Atom N270 processor, there’s one major difference: The new model gets significantly better battery life. When I tested the Mini 10v, I was able to get between 6 and 7 hours of run time on a charge by surfing the web over WiFi with the screen brightness hovering somewhere near the middle setting. Under the same conditions, I’ve been getting about 9 hours of run time out of the new Mini 10.

Both netbooks ship with optional 6 cell, 56Whr batteries, so the improved run time isn’t coming from the battery. It’s hard to say if the new Pine Trail processor is the only reason for the improved battery life. It could also be software-related. The new Mini 10 ships with Windows 7 Starter Edition while the Mini 10v came with Windows XP. Whatever the reason, the new Mini 10 gets significantly better battery life, and that’s a good thing.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is also available with a 3 cell, 28Whr battery which should be good for around 4 to 4.5 hours of run time.

Software

The demo unit Dell sent me to review came preloaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition and a handful of programs from Dell and third parties. That includes the McAfee Security suite, which seemed to bog down the system. The first time I ran my benchmarks, for example, the video transcoding test took 475 seconds. After removing McAfee, the score dropped to 427 seconds. I’d recommend using a lighter weight anti-virus application such as Microsoft Security Essentials, which also happens to be available as a free download.

Dell also loads up the Mini 10 with the Dell Dock application. I’m personally not a huge fan of docks, and I find this one to be particularly annoying since I accidentally wind up pulling it up every time I move the cursor to the top of the screen with the intention of clicking on a program window. So I disabled the dock at the first opportunity. But if you prefer an OS X-style dock to the Windows 7 Start Menu, you might find the Dell Dock to be useful.

Verdict

The new Dell Mini 10 is a bit thicker and heavier than many contemporary laptops. It measures about 10.5″ x 9.2″ x 1.4″ and weighs just over 3 pounds with a 6 cell battery. But I appreciate the way Dell has designed the laptop so that it looks no different with a 6 cell battery than with a lower capacity 3 cell battery. The shiny, but fingerprint-free lid is also a nice touch.

Performance-wise, there’s no real reason to choose the Mini 10 over any other Atom Pine Trail netbook. But with over 9 hours of battery life, the new Mini 10 is one of the best laptops around when it comes to endurance. And Dell is expected to offer a number of customization options soon including a model with a higher resolution 1366 x 768 pixel display and Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, the 3G modem option found in the unit reviewed here, and a number of color choices for the lid (although I have no idea why you’d want to spend $40 to change the lid color on a $299 netbook).

If Steve Jobs and company are paying attention, we’ve got a handful of requests for the upcoming Apple press event. I know we’re all very excited about the mythical, but still unconfirmed, Apple PA3191U-3BRS tablet, but there are some other Mac products that could use a little attention as well.

The MacBook line of laptops is a big part of the company’s product mix, and though we’re not going off the reservation by saying we’re generally very fond of the current generation of systems, there are still a few missing features that should be filled in.

So, Steve, if in the midst of announcing the all-powerful uberslate, you could find a few minutes to address a handful of MacBook issues, we’d sure appreciate it.

New Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs
We’re not saying that any laptop without Intel’s new mainstream CPUs is ready for the recycling bin, but now would be an ideal time to update the processors inside the entire line, to take advantage of the improved power efficiency and other advantages of the new Core i-series chips.

SD card slots across the board
Even a $299 Netbook has one of these useful little media card readers. And finally, after years of gentle ribbing from us and others, Apple added an SD card reader to the 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro models. But, it’s still not on the most popular MacBook, the $999 base model PA3191U-4BRS.

Blu-ray drives
For a high-end laptop with plenty of media cred, it’s a bit awkward for MacBooks to not at least offer the option of adding a Blu-ray drive. It’s clearly not a cost issue, as expensive SSD options have been available from Apple for some time. At this point, many high-end PCs in the MacBook’s price range include a Blu-ray drive by default.

Mobile broadband options
With the sheer number of Mac laptops we see at coffee shops and airports, having an always-on Internet connection seems like another natural fit. It’s widely available as a built-in option from most PC makers, and newer antenna hardware can work with more than one carrier. Sure, using a USB key antenna is always an option, but why mess up that sleek Apple silhouette?

HDMI outputs
While the mini-DisplayPort is Apple’s video connection of choice, actually hooking it up to monitors besides the ones Apple sells is a bit of a hassle. Some laptops, especially larger desktop replacements, offer a combo of HDMI, VGA, and even DVI. We’ll settle for a single HDMI, which carries both sound and video, and would make getting iTunes videos up on our big-screen TVs even easier.

Make a low-cost Netbook-style system
Nah, never going to happen…

If any of these sound familiar, that’s because we’ve mentioned several of them before. Interestingly, while most of these have been on our wish list for some time, a few of our long-time MacBook suggestions have made their way into real life, from the SD card slots on select models to the inclusion of the large multitouch track pad filtering down on the base $999 white MacBook.

Apple’s iPad was probably the most talked about unannounced devices in the laptop battery technology space over the past year, but did it live up to all of the rumors and speculation? At least a couple industry analysts who spoke with CNET after the event in San Francisco think so.

“Apple threw it down today,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy and analysis at market research firm Interpret. “They (Apple) came and did what they needed to do.”

Van Baker, research vice president at technology research firm Gartner, agreed. “It’s a home run. You can use it in classrooms, the living room, or anywhere else,” he said.

The one part of the presentation that surprised everyone was the price reveal. Market expectations were that Apple would price the iPad somewhere between $600 and $1,000. At $499 for the base model, Apple appears more aggressive than many expected PA3191U-3BRS.

“Price points are aggressive, but that will bring in a lot of customers,” said Gartenberg.

The iPad has a lot going for it. During his keynote today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said it contained the company’s “most advanced technology.” Perhaps more importantly, the iPad uses the same ecosystem built for the iPod and iPhone.

The iPad is able to run all of the same apps that the iPhone does. So, if you purchased apps, you can use them on the new device. That in itself will eliminate one of the biggest gripes users have about purchasing a new device.

Jobs made a point of saying that Apple already has 75 million people who know how to use the iPad because they own an iPhone or iPod Touch. That point wasn’t lost on Interpret’s Gartenberg.

“Apple is leveraging everything they taught consumers over the last few years,” said Gartenberg. “The iPod, iTunes, multitouch, iPhone, videos, music, and the App Store are all part of this.”

Apple positioned the iPad between the iPhone and a Netbook. Jobs said that “Netbooks aren’t better at anything,” and that Apple wanted something that was better PA3191U-4BRS.

While Apple may have dismissed the Netbook outright as competition, it may be a comparison consumers make when deciding which device to purchase in the future. If they do, Gartenberg doesn’t hold out much hope for the Netbook.

“Netbooks will have a hard time justifying themselves in this market,” he said.

The suspense of the 2012 Olympics laptop battery in London will have spectators sitting on pins and needles–and knives. Well, in a manner of speaking. Turns out the main Olympic stadium in East London’s Stratford will contain guns and knives confiscated by the Metropolitan Police Service.

The service said it collected more than 52 tons of scrap metal from guns, knives, and old keys in the last fiscal year. Some was melted down and used in bridges, buildings, cars, and trains, and some will be recycled and used to construct the Olympic structure.

The repurposed weapons add to the eco-friendly focus being pursued by designer Populous (formerly HOK Sport). It says it will utilize a range of sustainable materials for the project, possibly including hemp.

We’re really liking the Olympics’ emphasis on recycling. Medalists at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will get gold, silver, and bronze medals PA3191U-1BRS containing metal from recycled TVs, computers, and keyboards that might have otherwise ended up as e-waste.

CNET’s Ina Fried will be in Vancouver covering the technology behind the games and more, so stay tuned for lots from up north in coming weeks.

Apple laptop battery just had its best quarter ever, but much of the public focus on the company is concentrated on something else: whatever it is Apple plans to announce at a press event Wednesday.

With almost $40 billion accumulated in cash, revenue topping $3 billion, and almost 9 million iPhones sold in the last three months of 2009, the much-discussed tablet is what both investors and tech fans seem most concerned about.

The company didn’t shy away from providing even more fodder for hungry Apple fans related to Wednesday’s event. In a press release about Monday’s quarterly earnings, CEO Steve Jobs was quoted as saying, “The new products PA3176U-1BRS we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”

Until we do see that, there’s going to continue to be a parade of headlines trumpeting every latest morsel of info related to what Jobs will unveil. Here’s Monday’s round, from around the Web.

Leaked tablet ad
VentureBeat wonders if this really is a TV ad that Apple has prepped in advance of releasing the tablet. But TechCrunch says “no way.”

Verizon’s big day
Boy Genius Report says it heard that Verizon is planning its regular quarterly update for store managers for the same day and time as Apple’s event, and will include a “live Webcast” for the event, which is not the standard procedure, apparently. The implication is that Apple could be announcing that either the iPhone or tablet could be coming to Verizon.

An end to iPhone exclusivity
An analyst with Oppenheimer & Co. sent a research note to clients today predicting just that. Tim Horan says he believes over the next year and a half that all U.S. carriers will get a crack at the iPhone, and that could double or triple the number of the phones sold in the country. According to his report, T-Mobile would be up first sometime this summer, followed by Verizon and Sprint this fall. Clearwire would get its chance next year. It’s unclear how he sourced this report. On Apple’s PA3178U-1BRS earnings call today, COO Tim Cook was intentionally vague about Apple’s plans to add additional carriers.

Cheaper than we think?
The 9to5Mac blog chatted with some publishers who say they’ve been approached by Apple to put their content on the tablet. Among other things, those publishers say Apple told them the device “isn’t going to cost anywhere near $1,000 as has been reported elsewhere.” That’s good news PA3191U-1BAS for some of the potential customers who’ve been polled by market research groups–a large chunk said they wouldn’t be interested in buying a tablet that cost more than $700.

We’ll be blogging the event live on Wednesday, so please do come back at 10 a.m. PST that day for up-to-the minute coverage.

Hewlett-Packard has partnered with Ominfone to distribute the U.K. music provider’s MusicStation service on PCs sold in Europe, Ominfone announced Sunday.

The service, which boasts unlimited access to more than 6.5 million music tracks from the four major recording labels, distributes music in DRM-protected WMA files. Songs are downloaded to the user’s computer for online and offline play, but the songs are playable only as long as the subscription is active.

MusicStation Desktop will be preloaded on 16 HP laptop battery models sold in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. The service will be free for 14 days, at which time users can sign up for a monthly subscription, which will cost 8.99 pounds ($14.47) in the U.K. and 9.99 euros ($14.10) in most of the other countries.

MusicStation competes with Apple’s iTunes download service and the Spotify streaming service, as well as Amazon.com’s MP3 Download Store.

This isn’t HP’s first foray into bundling music service on its PCs; the company dumped iTunes in 2006 to distribute RealNetworks’ Rhapsody music service on PCs dell-inspiron-2500.htm”>Inspiron 2500 battery sold in the United States.

There has been a lot of speculation as to what Apple’s laptop battery rumored tablet will look like and how it will work. One analyst is now speculating on how much potential revenue the device, expected to be announced next week, could bring the Mac maker.

Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital estimates that Apple will sell each tablet for $600, according to an AppleInsider report. At that price, the “base case” scenario of 5 billion units sold during the first year would bring Apple Latitude D830 battery an additional $2.8 billion in revenue.

Of course, we all know how important price is these days, when launching a new product, so Abramsky gave a couple of other scenarios to consider. If Apple sells the tablet for $800, Apple would see $777 million in revenue for the sale of 1 million units.

You can see the trend here–as the price goes up, the predicted number of units sold goes down.

“Anticipation for an Apple tablet (expected January 27) resembles that of Moses bringing down the 10 Commandments,” Abramsky wrote in a research note, reprinted on AppleInsider. “Despite high expectations, we believe that Apple plans to redefine portable computing–as the Mac redefined the PC–by ‘creating’ desire for a new converged portable device with innovative touch/gestures [and] iTunes content. A ‘hit’ could provide a possible new growth engine for Apple.”

Rumors surrounding the tablet Latitude X300 battery have hit fever pitch since the company announced its event on January 27, but few other than Apple CEO Steve Jobs really know what it will be yet. Expectations of a larger-looking iPod Touch with the ability to read magazines and newspapers, as well as watching video and listening to music, seem to be the consensus among the most popular current rumors.

UPDATE: Hands-on impressions added below. The IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is our Best of CES 2010 Award Winner in the category of Computers and Hardware. Also be sure to check out our hands-on impressions of Lenovo’s other Netbooks and smartbooks laptop battery from CES.

Tablets are rapidly becoming the hot chatter-buzzword of 2010. Netbooks were very 2009. Combine them both and perhaps you end up with a great idea–at least, so hopes Lenovo. In one of the boldest moves in laptop technology at CES, the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid doesn’t just flip its screen to become a tablet–the screen detaches completely as its own separately powered computing device.

Perhaps it sounds too good to be true, and we’re both skeptical and very curious here at CNET. At an estimated cost of $999, the U1 will have in its main body an Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor, and its 11.6-inch multitouch screen will house a separate ARM processor and battery. Both devices will produce completely different experiences, however, according to Lenovo’s press release. Availability hasn’t been revealed yet, but Lenovo should release those Pavilion dv2000 battery ,Pavilion DV4000 battery details soon.

In its notebook form, the hybrid will run Windows 7 Home Premium and have an estimated battery life of 10 hours. Meanwhile, the “Slate mode” will run its own Lenovo Skylight OS with a multi-panel UI, using a Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU–and it has an estimated 8-hour battery life. Stereo speakers, a mic, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam are integrated on the Slate screen.

As for memory, the main body will house an SSD up to 128GB, while the Slate tablet will have 16GB of flash memory. Other specs of note: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 3G wireless, and a system weight of 3.7 pounds in notebook form or 1.6 pounds as a tablet/slate.

Hands-on impressions:

To start with, the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a fascinating idea. The sleek round notebook has a form almost like the old clamshell iBooks from years ago, or a Motorola PEBL as a laptop. Textured surfaces on the inside and a shiny, translucent ruby lid give the machine an instantly eye-catching appeal. The showcase feature of the U1–the undocking of its 11.6-inch screen to become its own handheld Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered tablet–is accomplished via a pin dock at the base of the screen that activates Wndows 7 when attached, or turns on Lenovo’s Skylight Linux-based OS when detached. Lenovo representatives handled the undocking for us, and it makes us curious as to how delicate the procedure is and whether the laptop might accidentally disconnect under casual use, but the tablet screen feels solid and attractive on its own.

Meshing a tablet and notebook into one device is conceptually smart, but fraught with questions. Will both devices sync well with each other? Will the battery life be suitable? None of these could be determined in the space of a few minutes, but the tablet’s Snapdragon-powered OS had a series of scrolling app-based windows that launched widgets, some of which looked more ready for prime time than others. Windows could be expanded and photos zoomed in on with iPhone-esque multitouch, but the performance was generally choppier and laggier than on an iPhone. Video playback was a mixed bag depending on the size of the video window, but we imagine its performance will be tweaked before release. The tablet’s edge-to-edge glass is comfortable and the chromed edges appealing, but the weight and slight heat dissipation on the sides made us wonder about long-term ergonomics.

Intriguingly, Lenovo told us that the 338794-001 base, when detached, can continue to function as its own Core 2 computer independent of the tablet–a monitor would need to be attached, but it opens up possibilities for the U1 to truly act as two devices in one. Separate batteries and Wi-Fi antennas are contained in both the base and the tablet screen, while the tablet has the 3G and Bluetooth antennas, as well as speakers and a webcam. The tablet doesn’t have a sensor for switching between landscape and portrait, but apps will allow easy flipping for e-reading, browsing and other functions. The keyboard is flat and somewhat squishy, a far cry from Lenovo’s generally excellent raised and tapered keys, but Lenovo said they’ll be updating to a raised keyboard before release.

The Hewlett-Packard Company Foundation today announced that it has committed $500,000 to the American Red Cross International Response Fund to support relief efforts in Haiti following the earthquake that devastated the country this week.

The HP laptop battery Company Foundation also announced that it has committed up to $250,000 to match eligible contributions by employees of HP in support of the earthquake relief efforts.

The earthquake is reported to have been the worst to hit Haiti in 200 years, and the United Nations estimates that tens of thousands of people may have been killed. The funds committed by the HP Company Foundation will, through the American Red Cross, go toward supporting short-term relief as well as helping the long-term reconstruction work needed to rebuild the country.

Marcela Perez de Alonso, chair of the HP D5318,HD438,KD186 Company Foundation and executive vice president of Human Resources, HP, said, “We are all extremely shocked by the devastation that has hit Haiti, and we are pleased to be able to support the critical relief efforts being conducted by organizations such as the American Red Cross.

“The road to recovery will be a long one, and we are working with our stakeholders, customers, partners and employees on additional in-kind services to provide ongoing support for this tragedy. Together we hope to help rebuild much of the vital infrastructure that was destroyed by the earthquake and help with many of the other relief efforts.”