There are already Apple iPad cases with builtin keyboards, but the new Crux Loaded case is something more. This case doesn’t just add a keyboard to your iPad – it also has a built-in touchpad and an extended battery that essentially turns your iPad into a netbook.   Crux says that when you dock your iPad to the case you can get an extra 7.5 hours of run time, making the total run time just about 20 hours with the iPad’s impressive built-in battery.

The iOS user interface isn’t designed for use with a touchpad, but the Crux Loaded case trackpad is designed to let you scroll through pages, resize pictures, and even play games using multitouch gestures on the trackpad below the keyboard without reaching up to the screen. Crux says you can also use the touchpad with remote desktop software such as LogMeIn or Splashtop to remote control a Mac or Windows computer.

via UberGizmo

Pixel Qi  has announced that they’r working on an external USB (or wireless USB), version of their display. In other words, you can use the Pixel Qi display as a second screen for your notebook, tablet, or desktop computer.

The screen is the same Pixel Qi display we’ve come to know and love. It’s a 10.1 inch model with a 1024 x 600 pixel resolution and support for 262,144 colors with the backlight on. The backlight can be turned off and flip to transflective mode which offers 64 color grayscale and a higher resolution of 3072 x 600 pixels for sharper text. Oh yeah, and it uses available light, which allows it to look almost as bright as an E Ink display.  All that, while the display uses just 1.5 Watts and is powered by the USB connection.

Display Solutions will begin offering the screens in October. There’s no word on pricing yet.

Chip maker Marvell has announced a new 1.5GHz tri-core processor called the Marvell ARMADA 628. The new ARM-based chip which can handle 1080p 3D video and 3D graphics performance. There are two “high performance symmetric multiprocessing cores,” and a third core which is “optimized for ultra low-power.”

The ARMADA 628 supports DDR3 memory and USB 3.0 connectivity. It can support DirectX, OpenGL ES 2.0 and Open VG 1.1. It can project images to 2 LCD displays simultaneously, or pump out HD video over an HDMI cable.

The chip supports Android, Linux, Windows Mobile, Adobe Flash, and RIM OS.

Good news everyone! Pixel Qi‘s 10.1 inch, outdoor readable display is finally shipping! [UPDATE:  Already sold out!] You can now the DIYnetbook screen kit which will replace your current netbook screen and swap it with one from Pixel Qi display.  Supposedly, the whole process takes just 5 to 10 minutes.  The kits cost a whopping $275 (only available in the US for now), but to be fair,  the kits are aimed at early adopters and enthusiasts at this point and the price should come down as more quantities are produced.

So what is it?  The Pixel Qi 3Qi display is a 10.1 inch screen that has been tested with the Samsung N130 and Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 netbooks. The main difference between a Pixel Qi screen and a typical LCD display is that Pixel Qi uses a unique LCD technology that lets you use the screen in two different modes. In full color mode, the backlight is on and the screen looks almost like any other LCD display.   You can also cut out the backlight, which leaves you with a high contrast screen that looks almost, but not quite black and white. This mode uses 5 times less power and is very readable in direct sunlight.  Check out the hands-on post we did with the Pixel QI screen here.

You can purchase the Pixel Qi display kit from Make Magazine’s Maker Shed. [UPDADE:  Sold out in one day!]

Netbooked reports that the latest version of Flash 10.1 RC4 allows the Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics chipset to playback 1080p HD Flash video smoothly!  If this has you scratching your head, you may have missed that these latest (pre-beta) versions of Flash allow for video hardware acceleration (rather than just relying on the Atom processor).   One of the previous releases (RC2 or RC3), provided  fullscreen 1080p Flash on Nvidia ION devices, but this appears to be the first one to support the built-in Intel Graphics.

You can download Flash 10.1 RC4 here.

Netbooked speculates that two large players in the netbook space, Samsung and Lenovo, maybe be launching new netbooks based on VIA’s VX900 processor.  They point out that both manufacturers have used VIA processors before – the Samsung with the Samsung NC20 and Lenovo i the IdeaPad S12.   Supposedly the new VIA VX900processor will be able to offer 1080p HD playback and more comparable battery life to Atom based notebooks over current AMD based notebooks on the Congo platform.

We say bring it on – Intel needs some more competition for their Atom processors in the netbook space.

The new USB 3.0 standard offers data transfer speeds up to 10 times faster than the 480Mb/s that is possible from the current USB 2.0.  Normally, new tech like this is reserved for the high end machines, costing thousands of  dollars before it trickles down, but DigiTimes reports that Asus will be adding USB 3.0 support to the  Eee PC netbook and Eee Box nettop lines soon.

USB 3.0 offers data transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, which makes it ideal storing your data on large external drives which could be a boon for those of you that use a nettop as a home theatre PC, or if you just tend to backup your netbook regularly at home.

via Register Hardware

NVIDIA is introducing a new technology  that allow laptops and netbooks to switch between integrated and dedicated graphics chips.  For example, if you’re on Facebook, writing email, or just doing light surfing, you could switch to your chipset’s integrated graphics chip to save power.  Then, when you’re watching an HD movie, or playing a graphics intensive game, NVIDIA’s new technology will automatically switch to the higher performance, dedicated, graphics card.

The technology, which Nvidia showed off today, is called Optimus, and it’s designed to work with GeForce 200M, 300M, and GeForce M GPUs as well as the soon to be released NVIDIA ION 2 graphics processor. It supports Intel’s Core 2 Duo, Core i3, i5, and i7 processors and Intel Atom N450 CPUs.

This is a logical move for Nvidia, since Intel is pushing towards integrated graphics, which looked to be pushing Nvidia out of the laptop and netbook game since most of them use Intel processors.  The Optimus system will let users manually switch graphics, from the integrated, power efficient Intel solution, to the higher performing (hopefully) Nvidia Ion 2.

Engadget’s Joanna Stern has been testing the laptop for a few days and she noted that most of the the switches occurred seamlessly between the integrated and dedicated graphics solutions.   Gizmodo  also reports that as many as 50 notebooks with Optimus should be available by this summer.

“Although netbooks are small today – maybe 10% of the PC market at most – we believe over the next several years that could completely change around and that could be 90% of the PC market,”

That, of course, would be great news for ARM – upcoming maker of netbook chips but we think 90% is probably overstating things a bit.  He also notes,  that while the main CPU in most netbooks may not be an ARM processor, there are probably at least two or three other chips inside netbooks manufactured by ARM.

Furthermore, in the company’s earnings call preceding the interview, Warren East dropped a few hints about ARM’s upcoming roadmap.  Notably, “Cortex-A9 will comfortably run at those sorts of frequencies (1GHz) and, indeed, with physical IP optimization, we demonstrated can scale up to 2 gigahertz today.” East further added that the “other Cortex-A9 has a lot more headroom to go, it’s a multi-processor design, so you can have quad-core — or up to quad-core implementation.”

15" Nvidia Tegra Touchscreen Tablet

The prototype we’re looking at here is a Nvidia Tegra powered tablet with a resistive touchscreen display spanning somewhere around 15 to 16 inches.  It runs Windows CE , the company behind the machine is ICD.  This particular unit was built to try and convince T-Mobile to order some units – presumably to fit a 3g modem and bundle with a data package.

The device, being a protoype, wasnt’ as finished as a production unit, but nonetheless impressive.   The overall construction is under an inch thin and the tablet is capable of 720p video playback.  Even more impressiveas the  excellent wireless recharge station base which can magnetically support the whole tablet in an upright position.  It reminds us of what we imagined the Techcrunch tablet was to be (will be?), albeit a few inches larger.

This looks to be the shape of smartbooks / tablets to come.  You can check out the video over at Engadget.