LG focuses on mobile computingAt the LG digital showroom in Singapore Suntec City, the Korean company announced six new lines of notebooks and refreshed its LW series with upgraded specifications. Once building notebooks for other brands, LG's maiden foray into the competitive mobile computing market began with its LW series. With less than a year marketing laptops under its own branding, the Korean company is so confident its products can compete with the incumbent big names that it is making portable PC's one of its core businesses.
The LW20 Express, LW40 Express and LW70 Express lines have their processors bumped up to a Pentium M 760 2.0GHz processor, the second-fastest chip offered on the Centrino Sonoma platform. Apparently, LG felt confident that despite the increasing presence of the latest Napa platform with dual-core processors, the previous generation will continue to sell. This confidence even extends to LG introducing two new lines of Sonoma notebooks, the TX1 Express and K1 Express series. Though the new models based on the Napa platform are Windows Vista-ready, LG has plans to release new units with the latest Windows OS installed in the second quarter of 2006. Weighing only 1.1kg, the TX1 Express notebook is a thin-and-light machine capable of advance video rendering with its Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card which can utilize up to 256MB using the proprietary TurboCache technology. Complete with a 12.1-inch transflective screen and Dolby digital-capable audio, it offers a high-end multimedia experience in a very portable package. The K1 Express notebook is LG's first entry-level machine targeted at basic users. Offering a DVD Super Multi drive and integrated graphics, we are glad to see that this model comes with the latest ExpressCard slot. Priced at under S$2,000, this unit offers an adequate machine for most uses. Based on the latest Centrino platform and Core Duo/Solo processors, the T1 Express and S1 Express series cater to the high-end market, while the more affordable P1 Express and M1 Express should prove attractive to mainstream consumers. With business executives in mind, all these machines offer fingerprint scanners that increase convenience while decreasing security risks. Using the latest Bluetooth standard, BlueCore 4, they offer wireless connection to any Bluetooth-enabled devices. Multimedia functions can be quickly brought up using a dedicated DME (Direct Media Experience) button which, unfortunately, is not a pre-boot feature and requires the PC to be booted into Windows XP and CyberLink DVD solution. On the entertainment front, all LG models utilize the Dolby Digital-capably audio chipset for cinematic sound quality.
With affordability in mind, the P1 Express uses the less powerful ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 graphics card and slower Core Duo processor compared with the S1 Express, though both models sport similar 15.4-inch transflective widescreen LCDs. Doing away with extras like the integrated numeric pad and remote control, this model is still a strong performer in multimedia and business applications. The M1 Express is the only new unit not using a widescreen LCD, though it's still based on the transflective technology. Using an integrated graphics card and weighing a hefty 2.6kg, this mainstream notebook is the cheapest option to own a dual-core LG portable. With the exception of the refreshed LW series, which are available now, the new models target the end of the month to hit retail stores.
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LG LW20 Express
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