NEC Launches Power-Saving Laptops

NEC is boosting the battery life of notebook computers, with two new models unveiled Monday. The company is launching two notebooks based on Transmeta processors, which incorporate three power-boosting technologies to take battery life to eight hours on a single charge, the company says in a statement.

Both machines are expected to retail for between $2299 and $2499, NEC says.

The Versa DayLite machine features a Transmeta Crusoe processor running at 600 MHz. The processor uses less energy than conventional chips from competitors like Intel or Advanced Micro Devices, the first of three areas where NEC is able to extend battery life.

Just as important is the computer's 10.4-inch thin film transistor SVGA reflective liquid crystal display panel. Unlike conventional display panels, which use a power-guzzling backlight to illuminate the screen, reflective LCDs make use of ambient light. This means no backlight is required, which offers space savings in addition to the power benefits, but does mean that users might have some problems using the machine in low light conditions. NEC is advertising it for use outdoors.

The third area where battery life is extended comes in the battery itself. The machine has an internal lithium polymer battery, a higher capacity battery than the lithium-ion packs that are common on other notebooks.

The combination of these three technologies adds up to eight hours of battery life on a single charge for the Versa DayLite, says NEC.

The Versa UltraLite, the second Crusoe-based machine announced by NEC Monday, includes the same 600-MHz processor but has a higher resolution 10.4-inch TFT XGA display with backlight. It has a combination lithium-ion and lithium polymer battery.

Standard configuration on each machine includes 128MB of memory, a 20GB hard disk drive, Universal Serial Bus CD-ROM and floppy disk drives, and Windows 2000 operating system.

NEC first launched Transmeta-based notebook computers in Japan in October last year.