SHOWCASE: Ultra cool and super-thin notebooks seem to be the rave among the media in Malaysia and Indonesia over the past week as both Dell and Taiwan-based component/consumer electronics manufacturer MSI launch their versions of slim notebooks to the media. Dell introduced the Adamo notebook of course, while MSI launched their X-Slim notebook.

You can check out our review of the Dell Adamo here (and our last post on the Adamo here) and a preview of the MSI X-Slim X340 notebook here including specifications. The other MSI X-Slim notebooks being launched (for Malaysia at least) also include the X320, X400 and X600.

The HWM Malaysia and HWM Indonesia teams were able to send us photos of the two separate event launches in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta respectively. Check it out:

Singapore's StarHub had a public launch of their HTC Touch Diamond2 offering on 9 May with these two 'raider girls'.

SHOWCASE: Smartphone manufacturer HTC, announced the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 to the media in countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand during the mid- and end-April period but the availability of the Touch Diamond2 is only made public today (in Singapore at least), while the QWERTY-based Touch Pro2 is expected to hit stores a few weeks later.

Ever since the Touch Diamond was first launched in June 2008 (in Singapore), the strength behind its abstract looks and TouchFLO 3D interface was further echoed when the Touch Pro was later introduced. Both the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2 are follow-ups to those two successful models respectively. For a detailed spec list of these two models in one glance, check it out here.

If you want a quick overview of what exactly the Touch Diamond2 (and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 really is all about), here’s a video produced by the HardwareZone Singapore team for you:

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Dell has claimed that the Adamo is the world's thinnest laptop at 0.65 inches thick at its thickest point.

SHOWCASE: Style-minded people take note. Dell unveiled the world’s thinnest laptop as part of its new Adamo line today. According to Dell, even at its thickest point, the notebook is thinner than any other laptop. Adamo, which means “to fall in love” in Latin, will serve as a flagship line of products that combines new design aesthetics, personalization choices and must-have tech.

The marketing campaign for Dell's Adamo includes imagery shot by acclaimed British-based photographer Nadav Kander, which features high-fashion models that reinforce the “fall in love” positioning.

What makes the Adamo impressive is the craftsmanship and feature sets, including a chassis milled from a single piece of aluminum (with scalloped backlit keyboard), a prominent high definition edge-to-edge display, full connectivity for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and optional integrated mobile broadband, solid state drives and a color choice of either Onyx or Pearl.

With pre-orders now available online, the Adamo notebook will ship from 24 countries from 26 March 2009 onwards, including Singapore (starting from S$3,249/US$2126), Malaysia (RM7399/US$2009) and Indonesia (price to be confirmed) for South-east Asia.

Specs and images after the jump. (Editor opinions: 1)

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First launched for Singapore, BuUuk, a free iPhone app, will soon allow iPhone 3G users in Indonesia to collectively rate a restaurant in Jakarta and Bali.

CORP TALK: Looks like all five countries HWM is in (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines) will finally see the Apple iPhone 3G officially being launched and made available to all. Indonesia’s Telkomsel will be launching the phone on the same day as Malaysia’s Maxis (as announced a few days ago), completing the much documented and final official push of the iPhone 3G (and its highly attractive App Store) into the region. 

The Indonesian launch will be held at Pacific Place South Pavilion, Jakarta and customers can buy the iPhone 3G during the launch period over three days starting from 10pm on 20 March 2009.

One-year service plans include the cost of the iPhone 3G with the lowest being 2,622K rupiah (US$219) for the 8GB to the highest being 5,912K rupiah (US$493) for the 16GB. Subscription plans, which offer free data capacity of either 500MB or 1GB with different free talktime minutes and SMS, would then cost between 354K rupiah (US$30) and 733K rupiah (US$61) per month. (more…)

While the price plans are up, we're curious as to whether the App Store will be a popular haunt for iPhone 3G users in Malaysia.

CORP TALK: Malaysian telecom company Maxis has joined the ranks of SingTel (Singapore),  Globe (Philippines) and TrueMove (Thailand) to make Malaysia the fourth country to officially bring the Apple iPhone 3G into the ASEAN region. Available for pre-order on their website, the iPhone 3G will launch in Malaysia on 20 March with a price plan dependent on the type of contract a user chooses.

There are three main contract plans: 6-month, 12-month and 24-month, with each plan having four different tiers of free talktime minutes, data usage, additional data usage, SMS and so on. For those who take up the 6-month plan, there are two tiers where voice rate charges differ if a Maxis user calls a non-Maxis user versus a Maxis user.

Anyway, for a 12-month contract, the 8GB iPhone will cost between RM1080 (US$295) and RM1900 (US$519) while the 16GB version will range from RM1470 (US$400) to RM2290 (US$624). That’s just for the phone. For free talktime and data usage rates, plans like i-Value 1 costs RM100 (US$27) monthly and gives users 333 minutes and 500MB of data. The highest plan, i-Value 4 costs RM375 (US$102) monthly and gives users 2500 minutes and 3GB of data. (more…)