SHOWCASE: Our team is currently in Computex Taipei and they’ve been busy covering the event here and putting videos up for this post.

The first video shows Mr. Drew Henry, General Manager, Desktop GPU Business Unit from NVIDIA and Mr. Murray Vince, General Manager OEM Division, Microsoft, demonstrating video encoding speeds of Windows 7 using DirectX Compute. Of course, there’s a tidbit segment where Mr. Jen-Hsun Huang, NVIDIA CEO went on stage to solve a slight wardrobe malfunction. For additional coverage of the conference, including videos, go here.

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"Low cost small notebook PCs" might not have the ring we want but if it sticks, Microsoft might reap ready benefits from it.

CORP TALK: Considering that Psion has decided to give the all-clear for the usage of the netbook term as reported by The New York Times here, we hear news that Microsoft wants to redefine mini-notebooks with a new term - low cost small notebook PC.

This was expressed by Mr. Steven Guggenheimer, General Manager for the Application Platform and Development Marketing Division for Microsoft at Computex 2009, as reported by DigiTimes.com here.

According to Guggenheimer, the term netbook is misleading, because these mini-notebooks have feature capabilities that allow a user to not just surf the Internet but do a great many other things. According to the DigiTimes report, market watchers are speculating that this renaming strategy by Microsoft is aimed at distinguishing mini-notebooks/netbooks from regular notebooks, so that the company can reduce the number of low-end Windows shipments.

This way, mid- to high-end mini-notebooks can benefit from the adoption of higher-end versions of Windows 7, recently announced for launch on October 22. In addition to this, Microsoft has also lifted the 3-app restriction on Windows 7 Starter Edition when there were plans to originally allow only three concurrent apps to run on the PC at any one time.

CORP TALK: DigiTimes has followed on a Commercial Times report where AMD is planning to unveil its new notebook platform (Tigris) at Computex 2009 in Taiwan. The platform is based on a 45-nanometer (nm) dual-core Caspian CPU, RS880M chipsets, and either a 55-nm or 40-nm M9X graphics processor unit.

According to the report, AMD might also unveil its notebook platform, codenamed Danube, for 2010, featuring its 45-nm quad-core Champlain processor and SB8xxM series chipset. So expect AMD to push its Yukon and Congo platforms for 13-inch and below notebooks while promoting Tigris 14-inchers and above at Computex 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan (2-6 June 2009). (Editor opinions: 1)

Vijay Anand, Editor, HardwareZone.com

Vijay (HardwareZone.com): AMD has had a very decent notebook platform ever since Puma debuted at last year’s Computex (we first reported it as a preview here, then Computex here and finally the Singapore launch here).

However, there is a need for the company to design its notebook platforms within a certain thermal design specification to maintain decent performance and uptime, considering the workload demands and the multi-tasking culture of notebook users today. (more…)