One of the events that we attended just a couple of days ago was staged by Neo. The said Filipino company has been ardent and aggressive in reaching consciousness of consumers from various levels through new products and concept stores. Last year, we spotted Neo as one of the participants at COMDDAP. This time, Neo has launched the Edge as the latest addition to its other lines of notebook computers, namely Basic, Vivid, and Elan.

 

 

 

 Intel Asia Pacific's Product Manager Ms. Victoria Chen.

 

 

 

Microsoft's newly-appointed OEM Director Mr. KT Ng.

 

 

 

Neo Team, from left to right: Partner Alliance Officer Ms. Sandy Shih, Business Development Manager Mr. Jim Sarmiento, Marketing Manager Ms. Lissy Relova, Production Manager Mr. Joseph Panganiban, VP Planning and Operations Ms. Mutya Syling, Product Manager Mr. JP Domingo, and President & GM Mr. Jason Cheng.

 

 

The event was graced with the presence of representatives from Intel and Microsoft which are amongst Neo’s strongest partners. Needless to say, the entire Neo team was also present during the occasion, headed by Mr. Jason Cheng, President and CEO of Glee Electronics, Inc. Noteworthy, Mr. Cheng put stress that though Neo is locally branded, its notebooks are made by OEMs who manufacture the products of other known brands.

 

 

 One of the main propositions of Neo’s Edge lineup is ultra-portability. This was clearly conveyed through an interpretative dance presentation performed by Airdance Company which was inspired by the stealthy movements of ninjas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the entertaining introduction, Neo went on to the meat of the matter and discussed the details of their strategy. Through the following slides that we got from their presentation, we can see that Neo’s notebook product lines are divided into categories based on Intel processor type. Atom-powered offerings, which are obviously netbooks, are positioned as travel companions. Celeron-powered notebooks are designed for basic productivity. Notebooks coming with dual core processors, which can be based on either the Pentium or Core microarchitecture, are tailored for business use and multimedia.

 

 

 

Moving from the processor-level perspective, Neo broadened the categorization into netbooks and notebooks. However, realizing in some way that consumers are limited with these options, Neo placed in an intermediate series – the Edge – which improves on the strengths and weaknesses of the two types mentioned. With that said, the Edge series is typified by its lighter weight, thinner form factor, longer battery life, and better computing performance when compared with regular netbooks. Depending on configuration, the Edge series notebooks can deal with tasks such as business productivity, content creation, and gaming, though they are not as powerful as the gaming laptops of the Elan series.

 

 

 

 The pioneering product in the Edge series is the 13.3-inch Neo Edge Z3240. It utilizes an ultra-low voltage Pentium processor with 2MB of L2 cache and 3GB of system memory. It is complemented by connectivity options including HDMI, VGA, LAN, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi, and 3G/HSDPA. All things considered, the most notable feature of the Z3240 is its ultrathin design, sleek silver metal finish, and lightweight construction, tipping the scale at less than 1.5Kg and thinner than 22mm all throughout.

 

 

 

Another 13.3-inch notebook, the Neo Edge Z3265 is still thinner and lighter than most notebooks at only 23mm closed height and less than 1.5Kg weight. Running on an ultra-low voltage Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB of L2 cache and 2GB of system memory, the Z3265 boasts of a much higher CPU class with dual core advantage to boot. Doubling the storage capacity of the previous model, it has 320GB of hard disk space. While perhaps a little more conservative in aesthetics, the Z3265 is still a vision among regular notebooks with its glossy finish, sleek dimensions, and lightweight feel.

 

 

 

And last but definitely not the least, the 10-inch Neo Edge Z1280 goes beyond the conventions of an average netbook packed with 6-cell battery for long computing hours on the road. It is powered by the single-core Intel Atom N280 processor with Hyper-Threading technology. Its performance can be greatly enhanced by the free memory upgrade to 2GB of RAM and a jump to 320GB hard disk space. Additional features such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth bestow users more storage and wireless capability.

 

 

 

What’s more exciting about the Edge’s release, select models of the series come pre-installed with Windows 7 operating system. This means that through Neo, consumers can now get a decent notebook up and running on Windows 7 at a competitive price point. We are looking forward to seeing an Edge notebook up close and personal very soon.