News Bits: Gateway Buyout?, Nokia Internet Tablet, Sony FS790, Sony VAIO FJ

Gateway in Trouble Financially -- Second U.S. PC Maker to Be Bought Out?

Gateway was big back in the 90's, in the USA at least.  They were founded in South Dakota and used their humble location and setting as part of the marketing strategy by putting cow patches on the boxes they sold computers in.  Fast forward and they're now in a dull building in Orange County California, close to all the other tech companies.  Gateway has been crawling back of late with the introduction of some nice notebooks, the buyout of eMachines and starting to sell through mainstream retailers in the U.S. and also Japan (as of last month).  But according to financial analysts, Gateway is struggling to make a profit and are ripe for a buyout.  It appears that IBM might not be the first and last U.S. PC maker to be bought out by an international company, all signs point to an eminent takeover of Gateway too.

More: http://news.com.com/2100-1003_3-5866796.html?part=rss&tag=5866796&subj=news

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

We attended a press event in New York this week in which Nokia was showing off an upcoming device called the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet.  Nokia claims their new Tablet handheld device 770 is going to be huge with Bloggers.  That's good for bloggers I suppose, but whatever you use this for it's true that the 770 is flat out just a cool piece of hardware. You can't see it in the pictures we took, but the web browser does support full screen, no toolbars, and several zoom levels. I pulled up NotebookReview.com on the device, which looked great. The 770 also supports multiple windows.  The 800x480 pixel display looks very good.  This device runs on the Symbian OS, so it's more a PDA than a Notebook type of device but we'll talk about it anyway.  Pictures below.

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Sony VAIO FS-790 Launched

The Sony FS Series has received another update this week in the same way that S series received an update a little over a week ago. The FS-790 is available for purchase right now on SonyStyle.com.

Improvements:

• Choose between XBRITE 400 (2 lamps) or XBRITE 200 (1 lamp) LCD Technology. XBRITE 400 is the moniker for the original XBRITE technology while XBRITE 200 is also known as XBRITE ECO.
• Up to 120 GB HD
• GeForce Go 6400 128 MB (on pre-configured models)

One caveat, like the S-580, there is no option for customizing the FS-790 with an nVidia 6400 graphics card right now. You can only get an nVidia 6400 by buying a pre-configured model. It is likely that Sony will offer the 6400 as an option in the near future.

Thanks to Eliwood for this news tip, discussion and more information is found in our forums here: Sony VAIO FS790 discussion

New Sony VAIO Slimline 14" Screen FJ Series

Sony has been doing some major overtime in their notebook department the past month.  It seems every week for the past 2 months we've had either a product update, refresh or new VAIO line altogether.  Well here's another, Sony will be releasing the VAIO FJ series soon, a 14" screen slimline laptop that will be available in silver, blue or red finishes.

Thanks to Yufufi for this news tip, discussion and more information is found in our forums here: Sony VAIO FJ discussion

Intel Chips Cost $40 to Make?

According to a report made by The Register this week Intel is able to stay fat and happy by keeping it's cost of making processors to about $40 a piece and then charging a few times that when selling the processor.  We have to keep in mind though, although it might only cost $40 to make a processor (materials and die), but think about all the research and other overhead a company like Intel has to pay for in developing these products.  So don't think that Intel is riding the best gravy train ever, the world of developing and selling processors isn't exactly a low barrier to entry market or one that's easy to succeed in.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/14/intel_die_costs/