Technology

HP and Lenovo made the biggest splash in terms of notebooks during this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in

Las Vegas. Lenovo, makers of the ThinkPad line of business notebooks, are determined to grab a larger market share among consumers this year.

The new IdeaPad S10 Tablet is an Intel Atom-based netbook with a 10-inch touchscreen that rotates 180 degrees in either direction. Available with either a flush 3-cell battery or extended life 6-cell battery this netbook tablet looks like it will give the ASUS Eee PC T91 a run for the money. As we've come to expect with Lenovo notebooks, the keyboard on the new S10 Tablet is second to none in this form factor. The screen bezel might be large, but that was done on purpose to provide more room for the larger keyboard. The keys feel fantastic with just the right amount of throw and there is no sign of flex in the pre-production keyboard we used.

Some Smartbooks Are Smarter Than Others
Smartbooks, a new category of thin and light laptops that bridge the gap between a smartphone and a netbook, will probably be a major push from several manufacturers in 2010. The Lenovo Skylight was the first of these smartbooks to go public.

Thankfully, it looks like our editors aren't alone in wanting smartbooks with touchscreens. Although HP isn't ready to announce a touchscreen smartbook, they did have an extremely interesting smartbook prototype on display at CES this year. The yet-to-be-named HP smartbook is based on HP's current Mini family of netbooks, but this ultraportable is thinner, lighter, and based on the Snapdragon ARM II processor just like the Lenovo Skylight. The HP smartbook prototype runs a customized version of the Google Android operating system and, more importantly, features a touchscreen like you'd expect to see on a device that's intended to act like an enlarged smartphone.

HP representatives were all quick to point out that this prototype may never see the light of day, but it should serve as an indication of what form factor HP thinks will work best for the smartbook category.

Not to be outdone, Lenovo also debuted the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 hybrid netbook and slate tablet/smartbook. Our entire staff was pretty impressed with this innovative concept ... and even more impressed that it's ready for sale. The IdeaPad U1 works just like a standard Intel Atom-based netbook with a full keyboard and touchpad running Windows 7, but with the flip of a switch you can unplug the touchscreen display and you've got an ARM-based tablet PC ready for travel with it's own operating system and flash storage. What makes the U1 even cooler is that you can connect the bottom half of system to an external monitor and use it as a Windows desktop PC while the top tablet portion of the laptop is being used by someone else. When you reconnect the tablet to the bottom half of the laptop then the data will automatically synchronize so that you don't lose your work. Time will tell whether consumers want smartbooks with thin standard screens or if they're willing to buy a slightly thicker smartbook with a touchscreen interface.

Best Buy Gives You The Blues
One of the major stories from Sony, Dell, and Toshiba at the 2010 CES was their partnerships with Best Buy. Best Buy's Blue Label 2.0 program will introduce exclusive notebooks that will only be available from Best Buy. The lineup includes a 14" Toshiba notebook, 15.6" Dell, and a 13" Sony. All of the Blue Label 2.0 notebooks feature Intel Wireless Display technology, enabling consumers to wirelessly stream HD video and pictures directly from the notebook to HDTVs. For example, Hulu and Netflix shows can be streamed in up to 720p quality. The notebooks feature the latest Intel Core i5 processors and start at $899.99.

While the Dell and Sony Blue Label notebooks are nice, we were most impressed by the Toshiba Blue Label laptop we saw at CES. The fresh design of the new Toshiba Satellite E205 14-inch notebook looks quite different from previous Toshiba offerings, and the addition of Intel Wireless Display technology should prove to be extremely exciting for consumers. Research suggests that many shoppers ask for laptops with HDMI out so that they can connect their notebooks to their HDTVs, but most of those same consumers never bother to connect the two devices because running a physical cable from your laptop to your TV is rather inconvenient. Wireless display technology finally solves this problem and should help the laptop become the wireless center of your home theater.

2010: The Year of AMD?
One of the biggest and perhaps most welcome changes on the show floor at this year's CES was the high visibility of laptops with AMD processors and ATI graphics. Dell, HP, Toshiba, MSI, Acer, ASUS, and Lenovo are just a few of the manufacturers offering high-profile laptops with AMD processors and/or ATI graphics in 2010. Although Intel still dominates the top of the CPU food chain with while multi-core CPUs like the Core i3, i5, and i7 processors, AMD is in a great position to dominate the ultraportable and budget mainstream laptop market in 2010. Ultraportable laptops like the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e and Acer Ferrari One offer fantastic performance and usability thanks to AMD processors and ATI graphics while keeping costs low enough for people to afford during rough financial times. ATI may likely continue to hold the largest market share for laptop graphics thanks to a strong price-to-performance ratio, but let's hope AMD/ATI learn a lesson from NVIDIA in 2010 and start offering mobile GPU drivers on their website.

Worst In Show: Rebadged Netbooks
If there was a single blemish on the shine from this year's CES it has to be in the netbook category. Despite new graphics options such as NVIDIA's ION or entirely new platforms such as AMD's CONGO processors and graphics, most of the netbooks we saw at CES were just minor refreshes of old netbooks with the latest Intel Pineview Atom processors. While it's true that the newest Intel Atom processors are a little beefier than previous models and the latest Intel integrated graphics are better (particularly when paired with the latest Adobe Flash plugin), these Atom-based netbooks are still horribly underpowered and simply don't deliver a great user experience. Manufacturers still haven't realized that consumers want more than just the same weak hardware inside a new netbook shell.

After warning of strained U.S.-China relations, China's government has issued statements denying any state involvement in the cyberattacks on Google and defending its online censorship.

The statements, issued Monday Beijing time and carried on the state news agency Xinhua, come nearly two weeks after Google threatened to pull out of the country after finding that e-mail accounts belonging to human rights activists had been compromised.

Any "accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyberattack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless and aims to denigrate China," an unidentified spokesman for China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology told Xinhua. "We [are] firmly opposed to that."

In a statement posted to China's official Web site, the State Council Information Office defended China's regulation of the Internet as legal and said it should be free of interference from outside parties.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton formally denounced Internet censorship in a speech Thursday that was directed both at the private and public sectors. For corporations, she said, "Censorship should not be accepted by any company from anywhere. American companies need to make a principled stand."

China, which has stated that companies doing business in that country must respect and adhere to its laws, responded by warning that the new U.S. stance could hurt relations between the two countries.

"The U.S. has criticized China's policies to administer the Internet and insinuated that China restricts Internet freedom...This runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-U.S. relations," a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Google disclosed the attacks targeting it and other U.S. companies on January 12 and said the attacks originated in China. The company said it discovered the attacks in mid-December and while it did not specifically implicate the Chinese government, it says that as a result of the incidents, it may withdraw from doing business in China.

Source code was stolen from some of more than 30 Silicon Valley companies targeted in the attack, sources said. Adobe Systems has confirmed that it was targeted by an attack, and sources have said Yahoo, Symantec, Juniper Networks, Northrop Grumman, and Dow Chemical also were targets.

(CNET) -- Apple executives have spoken to the top four recording companies about plans to offer a streaming music service free of charge to consumers, multiple music industry sources told CNET.

Apple's managers haven't revealed many details about their plans but did discuss offering iTunes users a means to store copies of their music libraries on Apple's servers.

The benefits to an iTunes user

One thing that Robertson and music insiders can agree on: Apple has its heads in the cloud.

• Hiding drives of empty card reader slots!
• Ability to eject card reader memory cards
• Drive letter management
• Prohibit assigning specified letters to hot-plug drives
• Supports any kind of hot-plug device, including PCMCIA
• Snappy scanning of locking processes
• Stopping via "disabling"
• Multimonitor support
• Vista UAC as well as Windows 64 bit support
• "Return device back!" feature

Hiding drives of empty card reader slots!

Ability to eject card reader memory cards

Drive letter management

Stops any kind of hot-swap devices

Exploring a device drive in an alternative file manager

Mount point support

"Return device back!" feature

LAS VEGAS--There were e-readers aplenty at the Consumer Electronics Show, but there's substantial doubt if there are enough interested buyers to go around.

Amazon talks up the Kindle as its best-selling product, but even the market leader won't say how many digital readers it has sold. Sony has long had its own readers and Barnes & Noble has jumped into the fray with the Nook. But it hasn't stopped there.

CES: 2010 new e-book readers galore (photos)

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Plenty of other would-be rivals showed up at CES, each hoping to make a name for themselves. But, that could be tough, analysts say.

"Just being able to read a book on a device has become totally commoditized," said Gartner analyst Allen Weiner.

Indeed, the special e-book zone on the CES show floor was packed with book readers that looked like Kindle cousins, many sporting a nearly identical-looking electronic ink displays and little else of note.

Some, though did stand out. Several of the more anticipated e-readers had either bigger-thank-Kindle screens, like Plastic Logic's Que and the Skiff or, like Spring Design's Alex and the Entourage Edge, had a color LCD screen in addition to the e-ink display. But more screen real estate also typically means higher prices.

Spring Design wants $359 for its dual-screen device, while Plastic Logic said its Que will start at $649--and neither of those models have cellular connections. A pricier Que does offer an AT&T 3G connection, but sells for $799.

Beyond price, there's also the matter of getting on consumer's radar screens at all. Barnes & Noble is able to use its brand and large number of stores to garner attention for the Nook, while others are also trying to grab both mindshare and shelf space. The Que will be sold through Barnes & Noble, which powers its book store, while Spring Design on Thursday announced a partnership with Borders that the device maker says will eventually see the Alex inside Borders stores. Skiff, meanwhile, is counting on Sprint, which powers its wireless features and will carry the device in 1,000 of its stores.

And, if all those concerns weren't enough, there's also the looming Apple threat. "Certainly if an Apple tablet does come out and does what's expected it will instantly change the game," Weiner said.

Although most of the attention at CES was on new hardware, executives of Hearst-backed Skiff say their main goal is to build a good periodical platform and shopping experience that could someday power lots of devices, perhaps none of which the company would make itself.

"We want to lead by example with some cool devices and then get the hell out as fast as possible," said Skiff Chief Marketing Officer Kiliaen Van Rensselaer.

Some e-reader efforts are trying to bypass electronic-ink readers altogether. Ray Kurzweil's Blio focuses on using the power of tablets and smartphones to allow for digital books that combine text with video, audio and Web content. The Blio store, set to go live in the coming weeks, will initially work on both the PC and the iPhone.

Kurzweil, a pioneer in the digital reading arena in addition to being a computer industry luminary, says he just doesn't see that big a market for single purpose readers.

"People want to do everything--they want to watch their movies, they want to do all their computing, their e-mail on one platform," he said in an interview. "They don't want to take another device."