Taiwanese computer maker Asus has unveiled a bevy of new notebooks, including the UL-series—UL stands for “UnLimited”—and the media-focused N61 and N71 notebooks. All aim to offer strong performance and battery life—along with designs that won’t get you kicked out of a coffee shop.
First up, the new UL-series is comprised of the UL20, UL30, UL50, and UL80 notebooks; each feature Intel Core 2 Duo or Core Solo processors, with the UL20 and UL30 sporting battery-saving integrated graphics and the UL50 and UL80 offering a separate Nvidia GeForce G210M graphics controller with 512 MB of video RAM for handling games, media, and movies. Asus claims the notebooks offer up to 12 hours of use on a single battery charge: Asus enables UL50 and UL80 users to switch between dedicated and integrated graphics using a new GraphiX Boost feature—although the company doesn’t say whether a reboot is required to make the switch. The UL20 and UL30 offer 1,366 by 768-pixel 12.1- and 13.3-inch displays respectively; the UL30 also offers a 3.5 WWAN option—but neither packs an optical drive. The UL50 and UL80 step up to offer DVD Super Multi drives, and will be available with plain integrated graphics or with both integrated and Nvidia graphics: they also move up to hard drive capacities of 500 GB and 14 and 15.6-inch LCD displays, respectively&mdahs;although the native resolution is locked at 1,366 by 768 pixels.
Asus also unveiled its new N61 and N71 notebooks, which aim to be powerhouse media and entertainment machines with big screens and Nvidia graphics controllers carrying 1 GB of video memory. The system feature Intel Core 2 Quad or Core 2 Duo processors (running from 2 to 2.6 GHz), support for up to 4 GB of RAM, DVD and Blu-ray optical drive options, and either a 16-inch 1,366 by 7689-pixel display on the N61 or a massive 17.3-inch 1,600 by 900-pixel display on the N71. Both feature dedicated keypads for gaming (or, um, data entry…anyone remember data entry?), hard drive capacities up to 500 GB (the N71 can support dual hard drives), and either WIndows Vista Home Premium or various editions of Windows 7.
Unfortunately, Asus has not published any information about the availability or pricing on either the UL-series or the N61 and N71 notebooks: fans will have to wait to see if the units hit retailers or e-tailers in their particular markets.
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