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Shuttle are best known for producing a wide range of small form factor PCs including complete systems and barebone units which can be filled with components to suit the user’s needs. The main selling points are the small size of the units, but also the high quality finish of the cases which aren’t out of place sitting next to your flatscreen TV.

Surprisingly the design aesthetics Shuttle are well-known for have never been applied to a product outside of its desktop range, but there are rumors that is about to change and Shuttle are considering manufacturing a line of laptops.

DigiTimes is reporting that Shuttle are issuing 150,000 new shares in order to raise capital and wants to build a new 40-person team for the design and production of the laptops. Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has also been mentioned as a company housing the talent Shuttle needs and intend to tempt staff away from for its new team. ECS are a Taiwanese company specializing in the design of motherboards, but also manufacture a range of systems including barebones PCs and laptops.

ECS says it has no knowledge of any of its staff being approached and Shuttle has not released any information regarding such a move. The company did, however, recently unveil the X50 Touchscreen all-in-one PC which is a tablet PC with a carry handle and can be seen above.

Read more at DigiTimes

Matthew’s Opinion

I really like the design of the Shuttle small form factor PCs, but have always found them to be an expensive option when considering building a small footprint system. You pay a high premium for a small box that looks so nice. The X50 is quite attractive too and it doesn’t take much imagination to see it with a keyboard next to that screen in a laptop format.

I think a Shuttle laptop range, and netbook for that matter, would be quite popular as it could really stand out from the crowd with its design aesthetics. I fear they may carry the same premium as the company’s current systems, but then they may appeal to the same crowd as buys MacBooks, but would rather stick with a Windows-based solution.

At the moment this remains just an industry rumor, but I hope it happens just to see what Shuttle can produce.

Netbooks are clearly intended for light use and as a second machine for e-mail, Net surfing, and light office tasks. That’s due mainly to the limited power offered by the underlying hardware and the tiny screens to some extent. But it looks like netbooks are about to get a whole lot more powerful if a netbook on display in Japan is to become the norm.

The Japanese tech site Akiba PC Hotline has images of a new netbook from a company called Shenzhen Weibu Electronics. The specs of the machine can be seen in the image below:

As you can see, the Atom is a dual core 330 and has been married with Nvidia’s Ion 9400M graphics solution. Up until now such a configuration has only been seen in nettops and not netbooks.

The good news is you are clearly getting a much more powerful machine, but the power requirements will increase meaning attaining the 9 hour battery life some single core netbooks manage today isn’t going to happen. I’m betting most people may be able to put up with that in return for a faster machine though.

The cost of the Shenzhen netbook works out to roughly $527. The release date is unknown.

Read more at CNET

it's only a prototype at the moment, but the pressure-sensitive keyboard Microsoft has cooking up promises to make your typing far more efficient.









For example, font size could be changed based on how much pressure you apply to a key and typos could be reduced by gauging the pressure applied to simultaneously pressed keys in order to determine intent. And, of course, varied pressure on a key could make gaming controls more interesting.

Microsoft will be showing off the technology at the User Interface Software and Technology conference taking place in Canada this October. At the conference, students will be given a sample keyboard and asked to compete with one another in an effort to find applications for the technology that are useful, well implemented or creative. Each one of these categories comes with a $2000 prize and special consideration for a spot at SIGGRAPH 2010's Emerging Technology (E-Tech) demos. [UIST 2009 via CNET]