Notebook News: Top 100 Unwired Cities and Colleges, New Averatec Notebooks, Intel Price Cuts

Intel Publishes Report for Top 100 UnwiredCities and Universities

The annual report by Sterlings Research on behalf of Intel Corp. has been published, and once again the West Coast of the U.S. is tops in wireless accessibility. San Francisco has won the wireless crown this year. Here are the cities that round out the top ten:

Top 10 Unwired Cities 2004

1. San Francisco, CA


2. Orange County, CA


3. Washington DC


4. Austin, TX


5. Portland, OR


6. Seattle, WA


7. Bergen, NJ


8. Middlesex, NJ


9. San Diego, CA


10. Denver, CO

The results were based on number of public and commercial wi-fi hotspots in a city, local wireless networks and wireless email devices and Internet availability. The report to be released by Intel also included a Top 100 Unwired college campuses, here are the top five from that survey:

Top 5 Unwired College Campuses 2004

1. Indiana University, Bloomington IN


2. Purdue University, West Lafayette IN


3. University of Texas, Austin TX


4. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH


5. Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Congratulations to San Francisco and Indiana University, but we still don't know what a Hoosier is.

Averatec Launces 3200 Series of Affordable thin and light notebooks

Averatec is known for producing competitive notebooks at very competitive prices. Today they have announced a new line of notebooks, the 3200 series. These mobile notebooks are equipped with the low voltage Mobile AMD Athlon(TM) XP-M 2000+ processor and weigh 4.3 pounds. Compact into a 1-inch slim form factor with a 12.1" XGA screen, the 3200 series notebook features an integrated DVD/CD-RW combo drive and 54g(TM) wireless connectivity. With AMD PowerNow!(TM) Technology the 3200 series performs with optimal power management, boosting battery life to more than 3 hours.

The three models in the 3200 series include the AV3220H1-01 with 256 MB memory running Windows XP Home at $949 and the AV3225HS-20 which doubles the memory for only $50 more. A business-oriented model, the AV3255P1-01, runs on Windows XP Professional with 512 MB memory for only $1,079.

The integrated DVD/CD-RW combo optical drive and built-in stereo speakers allow users to burn media and data files, watch DVD movies, and listen to music while they work. The three high-speed active USB 2.0 ports provide connectivity options for a complete range of peripherals from digital cameras to printers, scanners, fax machines, and more. While the notebook is powered OFF, the USB ports remain active, acting as a power source for continuous peripheral use or as a cell phone recharger.

Intel Price Cuts on Mobile Chips

Intel cut prices on its Mobile Celeron chip yesterday from $134 per chip to $107 per chip and in addition to this the 1GHz ultra-low voltage Pentium M chip price was cut 11% from $161 to $144. This might indicate price cuts to come in the future for the more powerful chips in the mobile line, but for now that's rather unexciting news because these are such low-end processor speed mobile chips.