June 16 - 4:00pm EDT   BenQ recently announced the upcoming release of its ultra-portable netbook, the 13.3-inch Joybook Lite T131. Weighing in at just under 4lbs, the 13.3-inch T131 sports a 1.6GHz AMD Sempron 200U processor based on the same platform as the Athlon Neo and which should give performance better than netbooks without a major increase in bulk. A minimum of 1GB of RAM is onboard, as is an ATI Mobility Radeon X1270 graphics chipset that can drive HD video playback. The standard 250GB hard drive -- a 320GB drive is an option -- comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Basic. [full story]

June 3 - 3:10pm EDT   Taiwanese hardware maker BenQ on Tuesday announced the upcoming release of its latest ultra-portable netbook PC, the 2.9lb, 11.6-inch Joybook Lite U121 Eco. Sporting a screen resolution of 1366x768 and a 16:9 aspect ratio, combined with the availability of large-capacity storage drives and an HDMI output, the Joybook Lite U121 Eco is intended as a minor media hub. Processing power comes from a 1.33GHz Intel Atom Z520 that, with the optional six-cell battery, gives it a life expectancy of eight hours. A three-cell battery is the default choice. [full story]

March 5 - 11:35am EST   BenQ on Wednesday announced the release of the new Joybook S57, a media-centric notebook with a 15.6-inch, LED-backlit screen capable of a greater-than-720p (1366x768) resolution. The high-spec screen, which also has a relatively quick 8ms response time, plays movies at their native 16:9 ratio. The system is also taxed only lightly when playing HD video from the optional Blu-ray combo drive thanks to hardware decoding on an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 graphics chipset, which also brings mid-range gaming to the notebook. [full story]

December 1 - 4:00pm EST   BenQ has released its Joybook Lite U101 netbook in its home market of Taiwan. The netbook sports a 10.1-inch, 16:9 aspect ratio screen with an LED backlight unit that provides a resolution of 1280x800 pixels and a response time of 8ms. It uses an Intel Atom CPU rated at 1.6GHz and can be ordered with either 120GB or 160GB hard disks or 4GB or 16GB solid state drives preloaded with either Linux or Windows XP Home. Graphics processing is handled by the onboard Intel 945GSE chipiset while built-in memory is rated at 512MB, upgradeable to 1GB. [full story]