HP intros Android touchscreen smartbook, Airlife 100

HP has unveiled its first smartbook, the Compaq Airlife 100. The device features a 10.1-inch touchscreen, (purportedly) a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 16GB SSD, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, an SD card slot, a webcam, a QWERTY keyboard around 92% the size of a standard laptop's, and it runs Android. HP says the system boots up instantly and it's good for up to 12 hours on single charge or 10 days on standby.


The Airlife 100 will be subsidized through Telefonica in Europe and Latin America. It should be in European stores this spring, but there's no information about US availability. That said, most expect a US carrier like AT&T or T-Mobile to sell the smartbook, and it could carry the HP Mini branding. Pricing also hasn't been disclosed, but it will probably vary between providers and contract terms.

From the images, the Airlife 100 looks pretty sleek -- almost like a miniature MacBook Pro -- but a convertible hinge would have been a nice touch.

Microsoft touts Office for Mac 2011, drops Entourage

At this week's Macworld Expo 2010 conference in San Francisco, Microsoft provided an early look at some of the new features in its forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 desktop suite. The company said it is focusing on three things with this release: better compatibility across platforms, improved collaboration tools, and a refined ribbon-based interface that combines the Mac menu with the standard toolbar.

Among its newfound collaboration abilities is a new coauthoring feature that will allow users in multiple locations to view and work on the same file whether it's in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. Another feature called Presence Everywhere aims to further enhance this experience by providing real-time status updates on who is working on a file.


Like the upcoming Office 2010 for the PC, Office 2011 will provide a connection to Microsoft Office Web Apps, the company's cloud-based version of the desktop suite, allowing users to access and share Office documents online. They will also be able to share files and collaborate on documents with other Mac and Windows users via Microsoft's SharePoint and SkyDrive.

Entourage will no longer be Office for Mac's email and calendaring client. Instead, it has been replaced by a Mac version of Outlook built in Cocoa "for the latest Snow Leopard integrations and appearance." It will work with the same .PST file format used by the Windows version to store messages and other items.

Unfortunately Microsoft isn't making pricing information or recommended system specs available this week. The company isn't providing a release-to-manufacturing target date either, other than to say the product will be on store shelves in time for this year's holiday season.

Super Talent announces USB 3.0 Express Drive

Super Talent is expanding its family of USB 3.0 products today with a new thumb drive series supporting the SuperSpeed standard: the USB 3.0 Express Drive. This is the company's USB 3.0 thumb drive series in just over three months, following the RAIDDrive USB 3.0 which was announced in November and shown at CES.

Available in 16GB and 32GB capacities, this new drive supports USB 3.0 speeds of up to 125MB/second. Sustained transfer rates seem quite lower than the quoted maximum, however. Super Talent says the drive can copy a 600MB video in "only a mere 12 seconds." That works out to 50MB/s but the company expects to improve this performance further in coming weeks by applying their advanced driver technology.

The USB 3.0 Express Drive is backward compatible with USB 2.0/1.1 ports, although naturally transfer rates will be restricted by the 2.0/1.1 standard's limit. The new drives are slated to become available next month from Super Talent resellers worldwide. Unfortunately, prices have not been mentioned as of yet.