News Bits: Nvidia 8800M Reviewed, Philly Wi-Fi Problems, New Dell Inspiron

Geforce 8800M reviewed, benchmarked

Anandtech has done a 'paper' review of the new Nvidia GeForce 8800M series of mobile video cards. They were not able to secure a notebook with an actual 8800M card but did get plenty of other information to go on.

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Image courtesy Anandtech

From the looks of it, the 8800M-GTX should be slightly slower than a desktop 8800GTS. Both the GTS and the GTX are a huge leap up in performance from the 'enthusiast' 8700M-GT. We finally have a high-end DirectX 10 video card with a 256-bit memory interface. As the benchmark chart shows, memory bandwidth between the 8700M-GT and the 8800M cards has more than doubled.

Read More (Anandtech.com)

NotebookJournal.de has done an actual benchmarked review of the 8800M-GTX. They report that Crysis is playable at a 1600x1200 resolution with 'high' detail settings at 24 frames per second, which is extremely impressive. The full review can be found in the link below. Note the page is in German; use Babelfish to translate: http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/375/1


MSI to move into China notebook market next year

MSI estimates it will ship more than one million notebooks in 2007, and has plans to move into the China notebook market next year. The company wants to bring notebook shipments up to 1.5 million. MSI is a smaller notebook maker and will not be competing in price to increase market share.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)


Philadelphia Earthlink Wi-Fi service sees delays, slow downs



It has now been three years since Philadelphia mayor John Street announced that the city would be the first major city to have its own Wi-Fi network. It is now almost a year behind schedule and seeing large cost overruns. Technical problems and restructuring at Earthlink are impeding the process. Earthlink says it is considering a possible sale of its municipal Wi-Fi business. It is not clear at this time who will own or run the city's Wi-Fi network.

Read More (Yahoo.com)


Global notebook PC shipments to reach 116 million in 2008

Global shipments of notebook PCs are expected to top 116 million units in 2008, up from 93 million units this year. Acer and Apple are expected to see their volume sales rise 30% on year. Wistron, a first-tier notebook maker, is expected to see a 40% shipment growth in 2008.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)

Dell Inspiron 1525/1526 uncovered, expected to arrive next month

Image courtesy Engadget

The Dell Inspiron 1525 and 1526 have been uncovered by Engadget who claims these laptops are supposed to arrive next month. They are expected to be the replacements for the Inspiron 1520 and 1521; both feature 15.4-inch displays. The 1525 is powered by Intel processors and the 1526 AMD processors. The 1525 is based on the Intel Santa Rosa platform and the 1526 will have ATI Radeon X1270 integrated graphics. Both laptops will be avaiable with WXGA/WXGA+/WSXGA+ resolution displays, optional WWAN, and optional HDMI. Linux is expected to be an option alongside Windows Vista and a Blu-ray drive will be available on the 1525. The design has not bee changed much between the current 1520/1521.

Read More (Engadget.com)