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Hewlett-Packard Asia executives counted off China projects ranging from customized netbooks to a rural sales push on Wednesday, reflecting the firm’s commitment to the country.

The statements came at a global product launch event in Beijing, where HP announced its latest netbook, the Mini 110. HP has worked for several years to expand into rural China while keeping strong sales along the country’s prosperous coast.

“China is increasingly a big part of our market,” See Chin Teik, senior vice president for HP’s personal systems group in Asia, told reporters.

Netbooks with mobile broadband are one of HP’s latest initiatives in China. The world’s top PC vendor last month said a version of its Mini 1000 netbook would support the next-generation mobile standard developed in China. That standard is being promoted by China Mobile, the biggest mobile carrier in China and the world.

HP is cooperating with China’s other two mobile carriers as well, said Isaiah Cheung, HP’s vice president in charge of personal systems in China.

Netbooks are increasingly popular in China’s coastal cities, but HP has also sought to expand its service and sales operations in inland provinces. China’s smaller cities are generating huge PC demand likely to spread to more rural areas in the next few years, said Cheung.

An HP factory being built in Chongqing, a sprawling city in central China, is on track to start production early next year, Cheung said. The factory, part of an agreement with the Chongqing municipal government, will ship its desktops and notebooks only within China, he said.

HP now has business in 700 Chinese cities, up from fewer than 30 cities seven years ago, said Cheung. One product HP announced at the Beijing event, the all-in-one Pavilion MS200 desktop PC, will go on sale in China before other markets.

HP was the number two PC vendor in China in the final quarter last year, but its 10.9 percent market share was barely more than a third of leader Lenovo’s, according to IDC. HP’s market share in China fell that quarter despite its ongoing expansion of retail centers, IDC says.

What It Is: Netbooks have hit a nerve. According to DisplaySearch’s forecast, sales for these small, low-cost notebooks will rise 65 percent in 2009, compared to just a 3 percent growth for standard notebooks. The form factor is attractive. For example, the HP Mini 2140 costs just US$500, sports the low-power Intel Atom processor, has a battery life of six hours and weighs just three pounds.

More on CIO.com

Six Reasons Netbooks ARE Enterprise Ready: IT Pro Speaks

How to Choose: Netbook Vs. Ultraportable Laptop

Why The Hype: Netbooks meet a need. Smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone, are intended for what DisplaySearch analyst John Jacobs calls a three-minute experience–enough time to check e-mail or call the office. A notebook is for longer sessions, maybe three hours. A netbook fits in between. It’s designed for a 30-minute experience including Web access, e-mail and document editing. Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, says netbooks are travel-friendly, fit well with enterprise hot-swap repair procedures (since they are easy to manage) and thus can work for both IT managers and mobile professionals such as sales agents.

The Real Deal: Netbooks seem viable. JeffreyBreen,the CTO at Yankee Group, tells of an employee who bought his own netbook and found it worked well for quick Web and e-mail sessions. Yet, if there was a jury for enterprise decisions, they would still be deliberating netbook value. Gottheil notes that more robust e-mail products, such as Outlook or Notes, run best on a dual-core processor. In a mass deployment of netbooks, an enterprise might have to add more wireless access points or change wireless configurations to avoid interference issues, which add to the cost. “Netbooks may be an optional [device] in enterprise environments in the future,” says Thomas Endres, CIO with Lufthansa. But right now, they’re not fit for engineering and other complex applications.

Bob Hersch, the global managing director of the workplace technology and collaboration practice at Accenture, thinks netbooks work well for consumers of information but not creators of information.

The company, with 180,000 knowledge workers across the globe, has given a solid “it depends” answer on netbooks. Hersch says it is important to match the needs of the end user to the device. In many ways, that’s even the consensus among netbook manufacturers. Lenovo, which makes the IdeaPad S10, markets the netbook as an accessory.

Should You Invest? In an enterprise environment–where standardization is key and superfluous accessories are verboten–the netbook is a hard sell. It’s another form factor for IT to support, and the more limited processor is not a good fit for anyone who creates information–say, in an Excel spreadsheet. Interestingly, netbooks–and related nettops (for example, thin desktops)–may become a good option for thin computing after the hype of massive consumer interest subsides. According to Jacobs, the sub-$500 price point is also attractive as a quick replacement unit in the enterprise–a Hyundai loaner while your Audi gets repaired.

John Brandon is a Minnesota-based freelance writer

It’s the question vexing hardware vendors everywhere: How do they seize on the fervor and froth of the netbook craze without cannibalizing sales of their higher-priced, higher-margin notebooks? After all, if the current crop of netbooks can run the majority of users’ day-to-day computing tasks — and my recent personal experience with an HP Mini 2140 shows that they indeed can — then what’s to stop these same users from ditching their notebook habit altogether in favor of the lighter-weight and increased battery life of a full-time netbook?

Now we’re hearing that Microsoft is about to weigh in on the matter. The company already muddied the netbook hardware waters when it set forth its byzantine “maximum hardware requirements” for netbooks running Windows XP Home. And with Windows 7 just around the corner, the company is reportedly preparing an updated set of parameters. In a nutshell, the acceptable netbook screen size is decreasing (from 12.1 inches to 10.2 inches), the acceptable storage capacity is increasing (from a 32GB solid-state drive or 160GB hard disk drive to 64GB SSD/250GB HDD), and restrictions on touch and other Windows 7-centric features are being lifted.

[ Get the lowdown on the coming netbook revolution from InfoWorld's Neil McAllister. | Follow Randall C. Kennedy's test of working only with a netbook. ]

It all centers around Microsoft’s archaic, multilevel pricing strategy. If you’re a hardware vendor and your device fits within these restrictions, you qualify for the lower-cost netbook edition of Windows 7. If not, you have to offer one of the pricier versions and pass the additional cost onto your customers. And given the price-competitive nature of the netbook marketplace, this latter option would be suicide, so expect most vendors to fall in line.

On the surface, the whole situation reeks of the worst kind of collusion, with Microsoft helping certain at-risk hardware vendors to deny their customers choice by letting them hide behind the straw man of software licensing costs. Do you like that shiny, new netbook on the shelf? Want one with the same general specs but a slightly larger screen? Then get ready to go with a second- or third-tier vendor and pay through the nose!

What those involved in the great netbook price-fixing scam of 2009 fail to realize is that denying customers choice is never a smart move. The savvy ones will find a way around the restrictions, while the regular Joes will scoff at the arbitrary nature of the “rules” and walk away. I, for one, am encouraging enterprise customers to fight back, to demand that their hardware providers take the business netbook concept seriously and provide the configurations and form factors users are asking for.

And if you, like me, find yourself retching at the thought of this latest Microsoft money grab, there’s always the Ubuntu netbook remix .

 
For more IT analysis and commentary on emerging technologies, visit InfoWorld.com. Story copyright © 2007 InfoWorld Media Group. All rights reserved.

Dell has announced in the U.K. a ‘new’ netbook, the Inspiron Mini10v, an eerily similar model to the company’s previous offering, the plain Mini 10. The obvious difference is price, which drops to US$300 (£200) in the cheapest Ubuntu Linux version.

The price reduction has been achieved by stripping out the odd feature that most netbook buyers would hardly have used, specifically the HDMI interface, and by using a different graphics chipset, the plain Intel GMA 500 rather than the equally basic Intel GMA 945GSE.

The idea that the average netbook user would have hooked their machine up to an HDMI-capable monitor always seemed fanciful given the limitations of the integrated graphics sub-system.

The Inspiron Mini 10v comes in two versions, one Ubuntu Linux, the other Windows XP. Both use Intel’s 1.6GHz N270 Atom processor, and come with 1GB of RAM, and 160GB of hard disk space - the Linux-based Mini10v comes with an 8GB SSD drive.

The original Mini 10 used a 10.1 inch, WSVGA LCD, while the Mini10Vs use a 10.1 inch WLED equivalent, but both feature the same 3 or 6-cell batteries.

The price is what will be noticed, which now starts at £200 ($299) for the Ubuntu Linux model, or £279 for the version with XP. This compares to the Mini 10 models, which now cost US$453 (£299) and US$528 (£349), both of which running XP. What does the extra cash actually buy?

Not very much is the answer. The more expensive models use different Intel Atom chips, the Z520, and there are also options such as the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi, a £10 add-on for the dearest Mini 10. Whether this is worth up to an extra £150 is debatable.

Dell is currently quoting its UK customers delays of four weeks on the new models, which can be ordered from its website.

Canonical on Thursday released a Linux distribution optimized for netbooks with features to improve battery life and rapidly access programs.

The Ubuntu Linux 9.04 Netbook Remix is designed to run basic Web and office applications typically used on netbooks. Netbooks are lightweight laptops characterized by limited computing resources and small screen sizes.

The OS boots faster than other Ubuntu distributions and has better power-management features to boost battery life, Canonical said. It also centralizes applications and bookmarks under one interface to rapidly access programs and Web sites. Numerous design changes have resulted in a better visual experience, the company said.

It comes with the Firefox Web browser, the OpenOffice office suite and multimedia tools. Minimum hardware requirements for the OS are 4GB of storage, 384MB of RAM and an Intel Atom processor. The install file can be downloaded from Canonical’s Web site.

The Remix edition works on netbooks including the Acer Aspire One, Asus Eee PC 1000 and Dell Mini 9. It can be downloaded directly to a USB stick, from which it can be used to boot a netbook. Typically, netbooks do not include CD or DVD drives, so USB sticks are used as an alternative to launch an OS.

In an early review, Scott Gilbertson of Webmonkey wrote that configuring Netbook Remix to work on an Asus EeePC 1000H took a while, but its interface was impressive.

“The result is a powerful but simple interface that’s far snappier than competing options like Windows XP,” Gilbertson wrote.

Netbook makers typically recommend not changing the preloaded Linux OS because of hardware issues. For example, switching to another Linux distribution could render a Wi-Fi card unusable because drivers are unavailable. However, one blogger was impressed with the range of drivers provided in Ubuntu Netbook Remix.

Testing a beta version of the OS on an Acer Aspire One 110 a day before its official launch, blogger Neil Ashley wrote the OS booted quickly off a USB stick. It also effectively loaded a Bluetooth software stack and drivers for a network printer from Samsung.

The OS was a welcome change from Linpus Lite Linux, which typically comes preloaded on the Acer Aspire One. “The amount of hassle getting those [drivers] … working on Linpus Lite is not believable,” Ashley wrote. Linpus Lite has been criticized in the past for its unfriendly interface and lack of drivers for external hardware.

Canonical on Thursday also released Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition and Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition. Ubuntu 9.04 is referred to as “Jaunty Jackalope” in the Linux community.

Going hand in hand with my earlier observations about the MacBook’s sleep battery usage, I gave myself quite a scare by leaving my MacBook asleep unplugged for an extended amount of time. I plugged in my mouse and wireless headset USB receivers. However, as the sleep light was absent, I assumed it ran out of power and shut down.

I pressed the power button to rouse it and got greeted by a blank white screen. No Apple symbol or spinning wheel appeared to reassure me. My companion stared back at me with a cold, blank expression. I waited. Nothing happened. I turned it off and tried turning it on again. No matter what I did, the result was the same.

Some quick research into the white screen symptom for MacBooks yielded a common answer–the hard drive was fried. Every person who experienced what I seemed to be going through ended up replacing the hard drive. While I’m well within the warranty period, I was more upset that I would have to postpone my computing plans.

Out of desperation, I took out both receivers and tried it again. After a short blank screen greeting, I was treated to a translucent version of what I was doing when I put my to sleep computer originally. Safe Sleep had apparently captured what I was doing and started restoring it before my eyes.

The next time you leave your MacBook asleep for a long time, be wary about plugging in USB devices before trying to wake it.

Thought Out has released the MagStay Uni, a version of the company’s MagStay accessory compatible with the latest “unibody” MacBooks and MacBook Pros (but not the MacBook Air). An update to Though Out’s older MagStay Pro–we covered that version last year–the MagStay Uni is a plastic collar that fits around your laptop’s MagSafe jack, using the adjacent Ethernet port for support, and makes it more difficult for your power cable to detach. A small opening in the collar lets you view the charging light on the MagSafe connector.

The idea behind the MagStay is that Apple’s MagSafe connector, designed to prevent damage to your laptop by allowing the power cable to easily disconnect under strain, makes it too easy to accidentally disconnect. The MagStay avoids such accidental disconnections in situations where it’s safe to circumvent the MagSafe’s protection.

The US$18 MagStay Uni is available now from Though Out Web site.

An Apple official may have trashed netbooks for cramped keyboards and “junky” hardware, but shipments for the inexpensive laptops are showing no signs of slowing down.

IDC last week said worldwide netbook shipments went up sevenfold to roughly 4.5 million during the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter last year. Netbooks comprised approximately 8 percent of all PC shipments during the first quarter.

Despite an early backlash due to uncertainty surrounding the device, netbooks have been grabbing more attention since early 2008, said Jay Chou, research analyst at IDC. Netbooks are attractive as secondary devices because of their low prices and small sizes, he said. Low prices helped fuel netbook sales, although people in general have reduced spending during the recession.

“People in different areas have different expectations of what [netbooks] are supposed to do. Some of our surveys show students using it as a note-taking device. They don’t want to take a 6-pound [laptop] to campus,” Chou said.

Netbooks also meet the needs of many people for Web surfing and word processing.

“Vendors are waking up to the fact that people respond to so-called ‘good-enough’ computing. They don’t really need all the power of a Core 2 Duo CPU most of the time. Most of the time CPU usage is about 5 percent,” Chou said.

Netbook shipments for the year should double to 22 million in 2009 compared to last year, taking a larger share of PC shipments as the year goes on. Shipments should pick up during the back-to-school season in the third quarter, and possibly jump in the fourth-quarter holiday season.

However, shipments may record slower incremental growth starting in 2010 as netbooks become a mainstay of the PC market, Chou said.

Chou couldn’t provide exact market-share numbers for each vendor for the first quarter of 2009, but he didn’t expect a change in rankings from the fourth quarter. Acer was the top netbook vendor during the fourth quarter with a 32 percent market share, followed by Asustek, with a 26 percent market share. Following Asustek were Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Samsung.

Acer President and CEO Gianfranco Lanci recently said the company expects to ship between 10 million and 12 million netbooks during 2009. It shipped just over 5 million netbooks in 2008.

Due to seasonal reasons, shipments fell sequentially from the 6.2 million netbooks shipped in the fourth quarter of 2008. Buying activity is higher in the fourth quarter because of the holiday season. Purchases slowed down after the holiday season ended, affecting netbook shipments during the first quarter of 2009.

Netbook shipments saw sharp growth in Europe and Japan during the first quarter, Chou said. Japan is usually a market where people crave small things, and netbooks fit into that category, Chou said.

Samsung was a relative latecomer to the netbook space but saw plenty of buyers for its NC10 laptop in Western Europe, Chou said. Samsung offered users a better overall netbook experience with a larger screen and a decent-sized keyboard.

Telecommunication companies are playing a big part in Europe and Japan to drive the netbook phenomenon by bundling it with telecom services. The trend is also reaching the U.S., with AT&T offering a US$99 Acer netbook with a two-year mobile broadband contract.

Netbook adoption will also continue to grow as PC makers add more and more features like bigger screen sizes and better graphics, Chou said. Asus, for example, added a DVD drive to one of its models. Early netbooks have been panned for poor graphics capabilities, but Nvidia has come out with a chip platform that will make it possible to watch full high-definition video on netbooks.

There is also a growing interest in netbooks with screen sizes between 9 and 12 inches, Chou said. Early last year, laptops with a 7-inch screen size dominated shipments, but interest waned as laptops with larger screen sizes shipped, Chou said.

IDC defines netbooks — which it calls mini-notebooks — as laptops with screen sizes between 7 and 12 inches with low-power processors like Intel’s Atom processors.

An Apple official may have trashed netbooks for cramped keyboards and “junky” hardware, but shipments for the inexpensive laptops are showing no signs of slowing down.

IDC last week said worldwide netbook shipments went up sevenfold to roughly 4.5 million during the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter last year. Netbooks comprised approximately 8 percent of all PC shipments during the first quarter.

Despite an early backlash due to uncertainty surrounding the device, netbooks have been grabbing more attention since early 2008, said Jay Chou, research analyst at IDC. Netbooks are attractive as secondary devices because of their low prices and small sizes, he said. Low prices helped fuel netbook sales, although people in general have reduced spending during the recession.

“People in different areas have different expectations of what [netbooks] are supposed to do. Some of our surveys show students using it as a note-taking device. They don’t want to take a 6-pound [laptop] to campus,” Chou said.

Netbooks also meet the needs of many people for Web surfing and word processing.

“Vendors are waking up to the fact that people respond to so-called ‘good-enough’ computing. They don’t really need all the power of a Core 2 Duo CPU most of the time. Most of the time CPU usage is about 5 percent,” Chou said.

Netbook shipments for the year should double to 22 million in 2009 compared to last year, taking a larger share of PC shipments as the year goes on. Shipments should pick up during the back-to-school season in the third quarter, and possibly jump in the fourth-quarter holiday season.

However, shipments may record slower incremental growth starting in 2010 as netbooks become a mainstay of the PC market, Chou said.

Chou couldn’t provide exact market-share numbers for each vendor for the first quarter of 2009, but he didn’t expect a change in rankings from the fourth quarter. Acer was the top netbook vendor during the fourth quarter with a 32 percent market share, followed by Asustek, with a 26 percent market share. Following Asustek were Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Samsung.

Acer President and CEO Gianfranco Lanci recently said the company expects to ship between 10 million and 12 million netbooks during 2009. It shipped just over 5 million netbooks in 2008.

Due to seasonal reasons, shipments fell sequentially from the 6.2 million netbooks shipped in the fourth quarter of 2008. Buying activity is higher in the fourth quarter because of the holiday season. Purchases slowed down after the holiday season ended, affecting netbook shipments during the first quarter of 2009.

Netbook shipments saw sharp growth in Europe and Japan during the first quarter, Chou said. Japan is usually a market where people crave small things, and netbooks fit into that category, Chou said.

Samsung was a relative latecomer to the netbook space but saw plenty of buyers for its NC10 laptop in Western Europe, Chou said. Samsung offered users a better overall netbook experience with a larger screen and a decent-sized keyboard.

Telecommunication companies are playing a big part in Europe and Japan to drive the netbook phenomenon by bundling it with telecom services. The trend is also reaching the U.S., with AT&T offering a US$99 Acer netbook with a two-year mobile broadband contract.

Netbook adoption will also continue to grow as PC makers add more and more features like bigger screen sizes and better graphics, Chou said. Asus, for example, added a DVD drive to one of its models. Early netbooks have been panned for poor graphics capabilities, but Nvidia has come out with a chip platform that will make it possible to watch full high-definition video on netbooks.

There is also a growing interest in netbooks with screen sizes between 9 and 12 inches, Chou said. Early last year, laptops with a 7-inch screen size dominated shipments, but interest waned as laptops with larger screen sizes shipped, Chou said.

IDC defines netbooks — which it calls mini-notebooks — as laptops with screen sizes between 7 and 12 inches with low-power processors like Intel’s Atom processors.

If you’re planning an exhibition to conquer Mount Everest, you need to make sure you have all have of the necessary supplies. If you’re list of supplies is anything like the most recent group to take on the Everest challenge, you should pack your MacBook Pro and a few iPods, too.

On the First Ascent Web site, Gerry Moffat, head of production for the team, films daily dispatches and uses his MacBook Pro to transfer and edit the data. All of the footage is shot on a solid state cards on the mountain.

“It’s then put into the trusty MacBook Pro,” Moffat said in a video on the Web site. “These have been functioning superbly all the way up — we’re at about 21,000 feet.”

After the footage has been backed up, the card goes to one of the sherpas who takes it to the base camp for editing. The video editor, Tom, then makes another backup of the data and begins editing the footage for public viewing.

The relevant clips are imported into Final Cut Pro, Apple’s professional video application. Music is added, the video is edited and the dispatch is ready to be encoded for the Internet. The files are uploaded via satellite connection to an FTP server in the U.S. and posted to the Internet.

Documenting the journey is not the only reason to carry Apple gear on Everest. Each climber has an entertainment pack that they carry for rest periods. Many of them chose to bring their iPods.

During a rest day, some of the climbers give us a glimpse of what they take with them to pass the time.

“This is what’s turing out to be the best entertainment on this trip — my iPod touch,” one of the climbers said.

“Of course, I’ve always got my trusty [iPod] shuffle,” said another climber when he was going over his entertainment kit.

One of the other climbers brought her iPod nano on the trip to sit back and rest with.

The team is scheduled to make the ascent to the peak of Mount Everest Friday. You can view all of the video dispatches on the First Ascent Web site.