14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that even Thanksgiving and Black Friday cannot completely shut down the happenings on the IT market, as ASUS is still working on a certain laptop, one of the ultrathin variety and which is set to soon reach European stores.
As end-users know, even in absence of press releases, certain upcoming products can be revealed, along with the stage of their development, by other means.
Most often a leak will make its way to the web, sometimes even well ahead of the actual release date, though such details, as well as those related to pricing, aren't always available.
In this case, however, the upcoming ASUS PC that was discovered to be approaching fast has been given both a price and a time of arrival, more or less.
As Notebook Italia has it, the company will send the U31 mobile personal computer to European stores.
This computer is an ultrathin laptop powered by the Intel Core series of processors, either a Core i3 or Core i5 to be exact.
The chosen CPU is backed up by a solid amount of memory, of up to 8 GB to be exact, while the integrated graphics are supplemented by the GeForce GT 415M discrete card from NVIDIA.
The NVIDIA Optimus technology will automatically switch between the two GPUs, depending on application demand.
There is also a hard disk drive, whose capacity can be of 320 GB, 500 GB or 640 GB, according to user preference.
As for connectivity and I/O, there is Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a 0.3 megapixel webcam, a 3-in-1 card reader, Altec Lansing speakers and optional Bluetooth 2.1.
Finally, all of the hardware is packed inside a 13.3-inch frame whose LED-backlit LCD panel has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels.
ASUS even went as far as to throw in the Super Hybrid Engine technology, which balances overall performance, while power is supplied by a 6-cell or 8-cell battery.
The starting price is said to be 799 Euro and shipment are set to commence by the end of December, 2010.