Wyse presents notebooks

Wyse Technology is launching two new thin notebooks - the X90 and X90e - offering multimedia video playback, Bluetooth 2.0 and build-in smart card support, says Smart Office.

Unlike traditional notebooks, the Wyse X90e displays applications housed on VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Citrix Application Delivery and Microsoft Windows Terminal Server data centres, storing data on the user`s office network server, instead of a hard drive.

The thin client notebooks reflect the growing number of professionals who require broadband access when on-the-go, according to the company.

A dramatic fall in the price of computers, making laptops affordable to the masses, could help to close the digital divide, says The Australian.

Notebook prices dive as Myer begins selling the $499 Asus Eee PC, a new style of notebook made without a hard-disk drive.

Instead of disks, which in the rough-and-tumble of a notebook`s life can cause reliability problems, the Asus machine uses flash memory for data storage. The Eee PC also pushes down the sticker price by eschewing Microsoft`s Windows operating system for free open source software.

For almost two decades, personal computers have been a bellwether of IC industry health, accounting for one-third or more of the world`s IC revenue since the early 1990s, says evertiq.

Through the end of this decade, the status of PC systems will not change, despite periods of slow annual growth rates for units shipped and worldwide revenue from products.

Stronger growth rates are now materialising worldwide in the notebook segment, which is rapidly catching up with desktop personal computers and expected to nudge ahead in terms of unit-volume shipments in 2010, according to the 2008 edition of IC Insights` IC Market Drivers report.