The Return Of The Clamshell iBook - Sort Of
The Dutch PC-maker Ego Lifestyle B.V. introduced its new Lifestyle Notebook at the CeBIT trade exhibition in Hanover, Germany last week. Ego is claimed to be a more clever, innovative, and elegant design than the run of the mill in notebooks, with with its round forms and colorful case skins - the first luxury lifestyle computer for men and women with a cosmopolitan lifestyle, but Apple was there design-wise nearly seven years ago.
Of course, the EgoNotebook is a much more powerful and high-end laptop than the old clamshell iBook ever was. with all usual laptop functions and so some surprising extra. It's a portable DVD player and a PDA, and is supplied standard with an additional set of exchangeable skin coverings in the categories Classics, Specials and Trends made of materials including leather, and a bass reflex audio system with built-in Subwoofer and four speakers behind the screen.
Other EgoNotebook features include an integrated camera with mirror function, anti-virus software (with one year free of charge updates), speech recognition software, digital television receiver (optional), and access to Microsoft Media center over the Direct ACCESS key with which the EgoNotebook can be used like a PDA also without Windows by virtue of an embedded Linux system, among other things.
The Ego LifestyleNotebook can be operated as portable DVD/CD player for well seven hours without recharge, and incorporates Phoenix Recovery Pro technology for an extremely safe backup function which stores user data on a dedicated portion of the hard drive so that will always be available even if the system needs to be re-installed.
The EgoNotebook is comfortable to carry thanks to its integrated design handle (also pioneered by Apple with the original iBook) and modest weight (2.6 kg with battery) thanks to the use of sophisticated materials like Titanium.
Inside is an AMD Turion 64-bit CPU with 1GB of memory, an 80GB hard drive, a DVD+/-RW optical drive, plus Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless interfaces. The EgoNotebook will sell for about the equivalent of US$3975.00.
The EgoNotebook will available starting from April at http://www.egolifestyle and computer retailers, fashion/department stores, and airport boutiques in Europe, and in the future possibly through US retailers like Nieman Marcus and The Sharper Image.
For more information, visit:
http://www.ego-lifestyle.com/tulipego-intro.htm
Charles W. Moore
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