Computex 2006 – Mobile Coverage

Asus Mainstream Notebooks

Asus, MSI and Acer show off some impressive new notebooks including leather backed, Lamborghini, Ferarri and Turion X2 models.

Introduction

At this year’s Computex 2006 show in Taipei, there is no shortage of products to look at.  We have seen countless Intel P965 motherboards, AMD AM2 motherboards and Conroe ready products as well.  What has peaked our interest most though is the new mobile products including notebooks and UMPCs.  Below you will find a quick look at what we saw from Asus, MSI and Acer that stood out from the crowd of units at the show. 

Asus Computer

Asus has been pushing their way into the US market for just a short while, but with their successful designs such as the recently reviewed W5F and A7J models, they are making in-roads on the marketplace already.  At Computex they were displaying some of their current models as well as their future models for 2006 and early 2007. 

This notebook is the W7J and it shares a lot in common with the W5F unit we reviewed.  It is still a Core Duo-based notebook but the integrated webcam is much smaller here and because of that the screen area has moved from a 12.2″ screen to a 13.3″ screen.  The difference is very noticeable and I have to say after using the W5F during this show the extra space on the W7J would be weclomed.  This model also sports an upgrade to discrete graphics with the NVIDIA 7400 Go GPU with 128MB of frame buffer, adding gaming ability to it as well.

This Asus R1 model is the upcoming release featuring the tablet PC concept, as you can easily see.  It too has a 13.3″ screen and adds a hot swappable battery / hard drive bay for extended usage on the go.  It uses the Intel Core Duo processor and the Intel 945GM chipset with integrated graphics. 

Also on the R1 model you can see that Asus has integrated fingerprint security for some early biometric password protection.  Basically, instead of a password or login name, you simply brush your finger across the reader here to login to the system. 

At CES last year, we saw that Asus was planning for a unique notebook design that used different materials for the case.  Here we see the Asus S6F notebook in two different styles of leather, above and below.

The laptop itself uses an Intel Core Duo processor and 945GM chipset, utilizing a rather small 11.1″ screen.  Because of this, it is obviously a very light system.

Asus didn’t stop there, they are including an entire set of matching accessories with the S6F model notebooks including carrying bag and even a matching Bluetooth mouse.  While I might have at one time thought this was a crazy idea, the fact is that fashion-based technology is a rapidly growing area and this might do very well if Asus markets to the right people.