14 DAY TRIAL // The many mobile PCs at Computex right now, be they slates, netbooks or notebooks, definitely have a wide variety of hardware to brag about. Tablets alone have been built in not just Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, but also NVIDIA's Tegra 2 SoC and Intel's Moorestown CPU. Even in the wake of such products, there is room for certain new/unusual ideas to take form. On the vide front, Galaxy has already taken care of this field with its dual-GPU GTX 480. Coming to do something similar on the laptop front, Gateway has brought forth a new use for backlights.
Among the products currently exhibited at Galaxy's booth are two less than ordinary laptops by the names of EC39C and ID49C08u. As far as their insides go, they aren't all that revolutionary.
The ID49C08u, for instance, is powered by an Intel Core i5 central processing unit paired with 4GB of memory, a hard disk drive with 500GB of storage space and an optical disk unit. The EC39C uses the NVIDIA Optimus to switch between the integrated graphics and the GeForce 310M discrete GPU, all the while leaving the computing to a Core i5 ULV.
What makes these two machines stand out is the ability of the touchpads to light up when utilized. This is a step away from the backlit-keyboards that have started to show up on higher-end or travel-intended machines. Basically, the touchpads, with integrated mouse buttons, glow blue when touched. Other design upsides of the notebooks include chiclet keyboards and a dedicated social networking key.
The EC339C measures 13.3 inches, whereas the ID49C08u has a screen size of 14 inches. Of course, as has been the case with most electronics shown off in Taipei, there is no hint as to where and when they will show up in stores, nor on how much they will drain from one's finances.