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Apple’s new MacBooks are mighty speedy, but they suffer from a huge performance drop if you remove the battery and use the AC adapter as the sole source of power.

Gearlog’s Zach Honig discovered that the MacBook sees a 37-percent drop in speed when running without a battery.

Honig benchmarked a 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro using a multiprocessor test called Cinebench R10. With the battery present, the MacBook Pro turned in a score of 5,549. Without the battery, it scored 3,504.

While this may appear to be a minor issue — since most people keep their batteries in their MacBook — Honig pointed out that some like to remove their batteries and run off the AC in an effort to extend the battery’s life cycle. Also, eventually all batteries reach the end of their life cycles, and if you’re running the MacBook off the AC, you’ll see a significant plunge in speed.

Apple acknowledges the issue at its support site. The reasons?

If the battery is removed from a MacBook or MacBook Pro, the computer
will automatically reduce the processor speed. This prevents the
computer from shutting down if it demands more power than the A/C
adaptor alone can provide.

Makes sense. But a 37-percent drop seems an awful lot, doesn’t it? Personally I don’t mind much: I run my MacBook Pro with the battery normally, and I’ll just buy a new battery when the time comes. That big number is the interesting part here.

Apple Notebooks Take Huge Performance Hit Without Battery [GearLog]

Photo: William Hook/Flickr

Take that Apple! HP has launched a new convertible notebook with multi-touch technology popularized by Apple’s iPhone.

The new HP TouchSmart tx2 notebook PC’s convertible design allows for three modes: PC, display and tablet, says the company. It comes with a rechargeable digital ink pen that users can use to draw and take notes on the screen.

The notebook includes an enhanced HP MediaSmart digital entertainment software suite that supports the familiar touch computing gestures such as pinch, flick, tap and drag with two fingers that can be used to interact with photos, video and other multimedia on the computer.

The laptop weighs about 4.5 pounds, has a 12.1-inch diagonal display and has an AMD Turion X2 processor. It is priced starting at $1,150.

HP already has a TouchSmart touchscreen desktop that it launched earlier this year.

Photo Gallery: HP Touchscreen Notebook

Apple has issued MacBook Pro Trackpad Firmware Update 1.0, a fix for the trackpad troubles experienced by many users of the new glass-trackpad equipped unibody notebooks.

Many owners have reported that the muti touch trackpads were failing to register clicks on the giant, full-pad button, with some seeing a failed click around one time in 10 (Kevin Rose and Leo Laporte both mentioned this on the This Week in Tech podcast).

It’s an odd firmware update which acts more like a plain calibration fix — normally a firmware update requires a restart. Our suspicion is that Apple was a little conservative with the click-detection settings in the original release to stave off complaints about accidental clicking, and has simply tweaked them with this release.

One of the things I always turn off on older Mac notebooks is the “Tap to Click” option. And our ongoing mission to add two-finger scrolling to the Gadget Lab Hackintoshes shows just how difficult it is to calibrate a trackpad to work perfectly.

If you have experienced these troubles, grab the download from Apple’s site now, or check your Software Update.

Firmware update [Apple]

In its effort to put affordable, educational notebooks in the hands of
third-world children, One Laptop Per Child is reviving its Give One, Get
One promotion on Monday.

The deal enables consumers to buy an XO
laptop for themselves for $400, which in turn donates a second unit to
a child in a developing country. The organization is working with
Amazon to offer the deal, according to an Associated Press story.

Since
2005, OLPC has been striving toward the goal of producing a $100 laptop
with the idea that technology can rectify e-learning and computer
illiteracy issues throughout the world. The closest the organization
has gotten to that price point was last year, when it sold the XO for
$188. Now, the laptops carry a $200 price tag because of increased
production costs.

To date, the organization has distributed about 473,000
laptops in 31 countries. A large chunk of those sales — 160,000 units — came from OLPC’s two-month Give One, Get One promotion in 2007. Though successful, the program suffered from logistical problems, because the
notebooks were being sold through multiple vendors, which frustrated some buyers
with shipment delays. The organization is hoping that working with Amazon
will help avoid such issues.

While OLPC has not succeeded in bringing the cost of its laptop down to $100 — and its sales numbers are diminutive to the tech industry — the XO did play an instrumental role in giving birth to the netbook category. When manufacturers such as Asus saw that there was consumer interest in inexpensive, ultraportable laptops, they ran with the idea and produced their own. It turns out that was a smart move, because low-cost netbooks are looking more attractive than ever to consumers tightening their spending as the economy continues to collapse.   

‘$100 laptop’ group reboots Give One Get One offer [AP]

Photo: RFMiller/Flickr

The new four-finger trackpad gestures found on the new MacBook and MacBook Pro could be coming to older Mac notebooks, too. A curious (and jealous) member of Mac Rumors – michaelb – was so envious of the four-finger gestures his girlfriend was enjoying on her new MacBook that he stole the installation disk and popped it into his first-gen MacBook Air.

Because the installer discs that Apple ships with its computers are ror restoration purposes only, you can’t use it for a fresh install on other machines. However, there are ways and means, and michealb ended up with the new system on his old machine.

But it didn’t work. Michael had to do some rummaging deep in the system to make it recognise his trackpad, and then up popped the new options right there in the System Preferences. Michael now enjoys the same four-fingered fun as his girlfriend.

Now, reinstalling the entire system to grab a new feature is a little extreme, but this proves that the older trackpads are capable of the new multi touch goodness — this should also work for MacBook Pros. We have our hopes that Apple will bake this into the next OS X software update (10.5.6). I took a new unibody MacBook for a test run in the store last wek and the four finger gestures, which invoke Show Desktop and Exposé behaviour, are great.

Old MBP. Do we get the 4 finger swipe as well??? [MacRumors Forum]

Here’s an interesting factoid you probably didn’t know about our tech-savvy president-elect: He’s a Mac user, according to Telegraph, who compiled a list of 50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama.

He’s not an iPhone user, though. "He says his worst habit is constantly checking his BlackBerry," Telegraph writes. That’s kind of a relief, because in terms of security, the iPhone has as many holes as a worn-out pair of Vans slip-ons. 

Barack Obama: The 50 facts you might not know [Telegraph via BBG]

Photo: 24gotham/Flickr

Typically when the word "educational" is slapped in front of a gadget, it’s relatively inexpensive. Apparently French company Leximark missed that memo. Its 8-inch educational netbook costs 299 Euros ($381) — and there are plenty of far more capable netbooks that cost less.

It’s unclear what makes the Leximark "educational,"  other than the fact it’s bright orange. The specifications aren’t all that impressive:

• Operating System: Windows CE 5.0
• Proccesor: 400MHz Samsung CPU
• Memory: 64MB of RAM
• Storage: 2GB solid state drive,
• Connections: Ethernet, two USB ports
• Multimedia: SD card reader
• Mic input and headphone output
• Battery: 1500mAh battery (up to 3 hours of use)

What makes this netbook more educational than, say, a $350, Atom-powered MSI Wind? Beats me. But hey — it’s bright orange! Kids love orange, yeah? Orange you itching to buy one? (OK, I know — that was bad.)

Product Page [via Liliputing]

Photo: Leximark

Complaints about the new MacBooks’ trackpads appear to be prevalent enough to force Apple’s mouth open.

Some customers are complaining that the glass trackpads on their new MacBooks or MacBook Pros are occasionally unresponsive. Two customers this week said they e-mailed Steve Jobs about the issue and received responses. One said he received a call back from an Apple representative, and the other said he received a short e-mail from the CEO himself. In both responses, Apple indicates it’s working on a patch to fix the problem.

More interesting than the issue itself is the increasing frequency of customers reporting e-mails from Jobs. Just a few weeks ago, a MacBook customer said Jobs sent him an e-mail justifying the new notebook’s lack of FireWire ports. And in recent months some dissatisfied iPhone customers said they received e-mail responses from Jobs as well. Increasingly regular responses from Apple suggest that the company is having a difficult time upkeeping its culture of secrecy.

Software Fix for MacBook Pro Trackpad Issue "Coming Soon" [MacRumors]

Photo: William Hook/Flickr

Getting out of awkward situations is a fake phone call away using a new iPhone application.

As its name implies, Fake Calls simulates receiving a phone call shortly after launching the app.
You can name the caller as anyone you wish, too: Steve Jobs, Mickey
Mouse, Tupac Shakur — whatever gets you out of a bind.

The app costs $1 — a sound investment to me. I just gave it a test, and I can see it coming in handy on a weekly basis.

"Sorry, [insert high school acquaintance's name here]. It’s Monica. She be callin’ me."

Check out a video demoing the app on YouTube.

Product Page [Magic Tap via PC World]

Image: Brian X. Chen/Wired.com