Lightweight Notebooks From Compaq

Compaq Computer India has launched two lightweight notebooks, the Evo N200 and Evo N600c for SMEs and large corporate bodies.Ravi Swaminathan, director, Access Business Group said, "With the addition of these two new offerings, Compaq today has the largest portfolio of mobile computing products in the country. We believe, our competitive pricing strategy, broad portfolio of mobile computing products, and dedicated distribution channel of 'Compaq Mobile' stores across the country will help us capture significant market share in the mobile computing market".

The Evo N200, powered by the ultra low voltage mobile Intel Pentium III 700 MHz processor, is ultra-light at 1.13 kg notebook and can operate more than 6.5 hours without having to recharge the batteries.

The portable has a 10.4-inch color display, 192 Mb SDRAM memory and a large 20GB hard disk at a price of Rs 1,44,900.

The Evo N600c comes with MultiPort technology that provides a superior platform to integrate next generation wireless technology such as Wireless LAN and Bluetooth. The notebook weighs around 2.2 kg and is powered by a mobile Intel Pentium III 1.06 GHz or 866 MHz processor.

The Evo N600c includes a 14.1-inch color display, 128 Mb SDRAM memory, an ATI Radeon graphics controller and 64 bit video graphics with 16 Mb DDR SDRAM for increased color depth and graphics performance.

A special feature of the Evo N600c, priced at Rs 1,75,900, is its MultiPort technology, that allows users to connect using multiple wireless standards such as wireless LAN or Bluetooth for networking by simply changing out the MultiPort module.

The new Evo notebooks will be available through Compaq's network of authorised distributors and resellers.

Apple Bets on Notebooks

Focuses on prosumers and education segments
Apple Computer will continue to bet on notebooks as it sees good growth in this segment in the next few years.

Parminder Singh, marketing manager of Apple, said, "We believe that the notebook market will increase by leaps and bounds in the next 3 years with new users in prosumer and education segment acting as catalysts for this growth."
The Prosumer, a combination of consumer and professional was coined by Apple and denotes a customer who is technology savvy.

Rubbishing claims that Apple is not doing well, Singh said, "We are profitable in the markets we chose to address, viz., creative and education."

According to Apple, the education sector and biotechnology labs have been its major customers. Its strategy is to ensure that its products have the widest reach and usage in these segments.

In addition to its flagship products, the IMacs and the PowerMacs, it had launched its Powerbook in February this year and targeted it at corporate segment.

Powerbook 400 is priced at Rs 1,82,600 and the Powerbook 500 is for Rs 2,48,800. According to Singh, response from the reseller community to the Powerbook launch has been good.

Apple has Ingram Micro and Neoterique as its national distributors and has a network of 60 authorized resellers.

Apple is also aware that other PC manufacturers have been coming out with trendy designs but discounts them as imitations. Singh said, "We are still streets ahead on both technologies and designs."

Second Hand Notebooks in Demand

The need for notebooks has been felt not only in the high-end segment but also in the SMEs and the home segment.

Its tremendous potential has created a market for second hand notebooks.

One of the market participants in this business is Mumbai-based Panatron Infotech Systems, which has been dealing in portable computer devices since 1994.

It offers an exchange scheme for old Pentium notebooks of IBM, Toshiba, Compaq, Acer and HP in working condition. The models can then be exchanged for IBM ThinkPad (i - 1161-96A) at Rs 84,900, Toshiba Satellite (2805-5202) at Rs 89,900 and Sony (Vaio FX - FX -120) at Rs 98,900.

Panatron deals in mainly four brands out of which Toshiba and Sony are directly imported, while Compaq and IBM are bought from local dealers.

Kamlesh Nihalani, CEO of Panatron, said, "The prices for these second - hand laptops are very economical and are apt for the segment that is constantly on the move and needs to be connected."

The market is presently flooded with major vendors offering notebooks at comparatively low rates. Thus there is really no need to invest in a used laptop.

However, Suresh Keswani, manager of Panatron at Pune pointed out one distinct advantage. A used laptop is a source of genuine components, as necessary original components may not be available when a custom made laptop is to be configured.

Apple Mac book

Apple has started selling laptops in india with a very limited number of stores all over india, and i own a Apple Mac book which i bought from a apple store in banglore and overall i had a bad experiance because i bought the laptop for my brother and he wanted to use it at his college on a wireless data card usb connection and the macbook is not able to connect to the reliance data card USB connection because of some driver problems, and this is the problem with any wireless internet connection. This macbook can only be used on a broadband connection with the inbuilt wifi port. The macbook series are one of the best if you can sort out this wireless internet connection problems because of the superb quality inbuilt camera, mac os operating system which can be upgraded to Mac OS X Leopard though i have a dual boot system of Mac OS withwindows xp professional. The pricing of Macbook’s start at 65000Rs in india and include a 1 year warranty.

HP Laptops

HP Pavillion laptops were the products HP started manufacturing with the latest models being HP Pavilion dv2600 series Entertainment Notebook PC, HP Pavilion dv2000 series Entertainment Notebook PC, HP Pavilion dv6000 series Entertainment Notebook PC and HP Pavilion tx1000 Entertainment Notebook PC. With the screen size ranging from 12.1″ to 15.4″ HP offers a stylish design, high-definition viewing and wide-screen twist and turn touch-screen. Current offers from HP include a Hauppage TV Tuner with HP Pavilion/Compaq Presario Notebook PCs worth 5000 INR.

Dell XPS

Dell used to be a market leader in all their products series long back but now its position has been taken by many other laptop manufacturers, and Dell has recently launched a new model - The XPS 1730 which is a powerful notebook with Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.0GHz) / T7500 (2.2GHz) / T7700 (2.4GHz) / X7800 (2.6GHz) processor and is the first laptop to have intel’s latest Core 2 extreme x 7800 mobile processor.

Sony Vaio

My favourite laptops since i own 2 Sony vaio CR and they just rock because of the performance, neat designs , light weight and best of all the other laptops in my opinion. The design part of sony laptops are the design which are very neat though apple macbook gets number #1 rank in terms of looks. The pricing part is very important in case of sony vaio laptops because if you are looking for the basic models they start around 1500USD (or) 55000 Indian Rupees and the latest vaio series come with inbuilt webcam and a fingerprint scanner below the cursor keys which are the latest technology.