VX900: Blu-ray, PCI Express, dual monitors ...

VIA's VX series of Media System Processors has been given a boost this week with the announcement of the VX900 chip, which brings Blu-ray support and a lot of output options to the table. The VX900 is on VIA's chipset list on their website in the Mobile and Ultra Mobile chip section - so it's being targetted at ultra mobile notebooks, netbooks and mobile Internet devices.
While the VX855 supported CRT, LVDS and TTL monitors, the new VX900 supports HDMI as well. Furthermore "DuoView support allows multi-monitor extended desktop support where two independent display engines can display different content at different resolutions, pixel depths and refresh rates."
There is also a lot of upgrade capability with this new chip since it offers a PCI Express 2.0 interface with 1 8 lane and 3 single lane slots. There's also two PCI slots and an 8 channel HD audio codec.
This is a very feature rich, flexible single chip solution. ''The VIA VX900 MSP supports the latest DDR3 system memory at speeds of up to 1066MHz and is compatible with the VIA Nano™, VIA C7® and VIA Eden™ processor families. The VIA VX900 integrates all the features of a traditional North and South bridge solution into a 31mm x 31mm single chip package, offering a reduced overall silicon footprint compared with competing twin-chip core logic implementations."

VIA's Nano shown to best Intel's Atom in Lenovo IdePad S12

Computer Power User has given a fair and balanced review of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12, an ultra mobile notebook that's been around for a while now but is still readily available on New Egg and at other online and retail sales spots in the US. In Australia you can pick them up for as little as $692 from Electronic Bazaar.

The model sporting the VIA processor is cheaper than the Intel one even though, as the test results from Computer Power User show, the Nano is the better performer. However, to be fair, the better processing grunt does result in a hit to the battery life.

Better performance, lower price, reduced batterty vs higher price, better battery, lower performance. You choose!

VIA based tablet for $199

This 7 inch "iLet" - because everyone loves to use the little i in their product names these days - could be a good deal for an e-book reader. It actually runs Android OS, so it could be used for much more than just reading. The specs are on the light side, however, with a 600MHz VIA CPU (probably C7-M), 128MB RAM and 2GB onboard flash. But the price is very nice indeed. So long as the batter life is not on the lite side, it could make for a very nice way to read the paper online. - Source