Wednesday 19 September 2007

GPS equipped Asus laptop

Something which caught my eye recently and which seems to be setting a new trend; a laptop with GPS integrated capabilities. Asus looks to be keeping busy on the GPS front these days, with it now following up its just-introduced navigators with what it claims to be the "world's first mainstream notebook PC with integrated GPS capability" (certainly the first one I've read about).

That particular distinction goes to the company's new U3S laptop, which relies on NXP Software's swGPS system for navigation duties. Amongst other things, NXP's system does all the necessary GPS signal processing entirely in software, which not only allows it to be much smaller but also opens up the possibility of fairly significant software upgrades (including support for Galileo). From the looks of it, the laptop itself is also no slouch, with the usual Centrino Duo-related goods and some unspecified discreet graphics under the hood. Just don't expect "mainstream" to mean "cheap," with the laptop set to run €2,300 (or $3,200) when it's released later this month...

Still, something that will hopefully be a trendsetter, there's enough PDAs out there with built-in GPS, having computationally more powerful devices also come with one can only open up possibilities...

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