Dell Latitude XT2

Dell's Latitude XT2 convertible was leaked to us way back in March,and although it missed that planned November ship date, it's suddenly showed up in an absolute downpour of documentation -- great news if you didn't have any light reading for the weekend. We did a nice heavy skimming of the material for you, and spec-wise, it's basically just the expected bump up to Montevina: an unspecified ULV Core 2 Duo on an 800MHz bus with integrated Intel GMA X4500 graphics, up to 5GB of DDR3 RAM and the same 12.1-inch multitouch-capable capacitive touchscreen as in the original. (Hellooo Windows 7!)

Intel's convertible Classmate PC

The third-generation Classmate PC looked completely unprepared for the real world comin' out of IFA, Intel has clearly hit the books during the fall term. Now, the convertible Classmate has graduated to the FCC, where we're shown a user's manual, label ID and a smattering of pathetic images.

MSI PR211 Notebook

New notebook coming out from MSI - the MSI PR211 Notebook. The PR211 is equipped with a 12.1″ display with a resolution of 1280×800, graphics card ATI Radeon HD 3200, processor AMD Turion X2 Dual Core ZM-80 2.1 GHz and 2 GB of RAM, with the possibility of expanding up to 4 GB if necessary.

Data storage is done through a 250 GB SATA hard drive. In addition, there are also built optical drive DL DVD-RW, adapter Wireless LAN 802.11 a / b / g / n, slot ExpressCard, 1.3-megapixel webcam, port HDMI, three USB 2.0 connectors and 3-in-1 card-reader .

Gigabyte M912 Netbook

The M912 will feature an 8.9-inch panel (resolution still unknown) with an Intel Atom CPU, and according to "sources," it'll support either Linux or Windows XP and could come stocked with Bluetooth.

Really HP Mini-Note 2133 officially official?

The HP Mini-Note 2133 is fashionably late. Specs are exactly what we'd heard and what was up on Amazon earlier: 2.6 pounds, Via C7-M processor, 1280x768 8.9-inch screen, full QWERTY keyboard that's just 8 percent smaller than normal, and a variety of configurations ranging from a $499 1.0GHz Linux-powered unit with 4GB of flash and 512MB of RAM to a maxed-out $749 config with a 1.6GHz processor, 120GB drive and Vista Business. Laptop managed to score some hands-on time, and from the video it looks like this thing might actually be as popular as HP is predicting -- except for those crazy side-mounted vertical mouse buttons, which are totally messing with our heads. Still no word on availability, but it seems like HP's ready to go

Acer Aspire Gemstone 8920G

Acer has recently launched a premium entertainment notebook model for the new Acer "Blue" series. The flagship of the said series is the Acer Aspire Gemstone 8920G. The series got its name from the predominant color scheme of laptop which is composed of silver, black, and blue. The 18.4-inch Acer Aspire Gemstone 8920G notebook has a 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution LCD, up to two 320 GB HDD, Nvidia GeForce 9650M GS or 9500M GS graphics card, Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo Processor, and an optional Blu-ray disc drive. Other features include six integrated speakers with Dolby Home Theater surround sound support, integrated TV tuner, and touch-sensitive media console. The new Acer Gemstone Blue is expected to sell with a MSRP of $900 to $1,700.

Tiny laptop mouse

Everybody who owns a laptop knows about touchpad, thing that was designed to replace mouse. However, when you need to work with big amounts of text, touchpad becomes very annoying. Of course, usual mouse can do this much better, but if there is no room for it to operate normally, you will remain with slow touchpad. There are different kinds of mice, even designed especially for laptop use. They can perfectly fit on your lap or on the laptop itself, and operate just like a normal mouse would. Because of their size they cannot be called very comfortable, but they are way much more comfortable than using touchpad, especially in games. One of those small mice, a very unusual one, is a hero of this review.

I-T Click Click looks very different from all the mice I've seen. It has oblong form, which resembles a stick, two buttons and a scroll wheel - all needed functions that you'll expect from normal mouse. However, this is where the differences begin. Because of its oblong form two buttons simply cannot fit on top of it. So the left button, or at least, the button which does the "Left Mouse Button" functions, is on top, while the "Right Mouse Button" is... no, not on the right side, but on the LEFT side of it.

Pretty unusual to click "Right Mouse Button" with a finger that is to the left of "Left Mouse Button". It may be confusing at first, but it is a matter of habit - after some time you will be operating with this mouse easily without even thinking about unusual button map. In case if this left-right swap is making you nervous, you can always change it in Mouse Settings afterwards. The scrolling wheel is placed near the front button; it has a comfortable size and position. Unfortunately (or fortunately for some), it is not wireless, so you will be limited with a cord going right inside your laptop.

MSI shows off bevy of new laptops at CeBIT

the GX600 would be showing itself at CeBIT this year, but apparently, quite a few siblings made the trek to Germany as well -- including the aforementioned unit's 14.1-inch sister, the GX400. Moving on, we've got the 15.4-inch GX620 and 17-inch GX720, and while the former looks to arrive in a wood, leather or carbon fiber finish, the latter supposedly arrives with a black lacquer coat and a built-in subwoofer (among other goodies). The GT-730 gaming lappie was also mentioned, but unfortunately, all we know is that it gets its graphics prowess from some form of ATI Mobility Radeon. The AMD-powered EX610 (15.4-inches) also turned heads with its integrated Blu-ray player and HDMI output, while the 17-inch EX700 sported the same along with a GeForce 8400M GPU. Hit up the links below for a couple more snapshots, won'tcha?

Asus spills more details on the 9-inch Eee

In a recent interview, Asus CEO Jerry Shen talked up the company's newest edition to the Eee family, and also dropped a few more details on the forthcoming laptop. Apparently, the new set of miniature PCs will carry SSDs as opposed to the flash memory we saw in previous iterations, with sizes ranging from 8GB in the XP-equipped model, up to 12GB or 20GB in the Linux versions -- though it's hard to say why the smaller-footprint Linux would need more drive space. Shen also revealed that there are tentative plans to release WiMAX and HSDPA-enabled models sometime in Q3 of 2008, and he confirmed that come May the company will trade up from VIA CPUs to Intel's Diamondville (er, Atom) chips. In addition, more colors are on the way, and the base price in the US will be $499 at launch -- though that figure is expected to drop in the following months.

Samsung rolls out 12.1-inch P200 business ultraportable for Europe

We don't see much of Samsung's laptops around these parts, and it doesn't look like the P200 is headed Stateside either, but it's certainly a solid entry into the ultraportable market -- which seems to be the new hotness these days. The laptop has been circulating in the UK since February, but is finally "official" here at CeBIT. The P200 runs on "Intel's latest" chips, up to the Core 2 Duo 9500, and integrated graphics come courtesy of ATI's Radeon Xpress 1250, with the laptop wringing 3.1 hours of life out of those chips with a 6-cell battery. The 12.1-inch 1280 x 800 screen is no-gloss, and includes a built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam. The laptop also packs Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, Atheros Super G WiFi, 6-in-1 memory card reader, PCI Express card slot a whopping two USB ports. The whole kit weighs in at rather hefty-for-its-class 4.2 pounds, and is available in Europe today starting at € 999 ( $1,517 US).

Virtuity Backstopp Makes Laptops Self-Destruct

British company Virtuity, recently announced their new spy movie-like technology -- Backstopp. Backstopp has the capability of monitoring the "heartbeat" of your laptop. Simply said, you set a zone where you put your precious laptop. The moment it gets moved from that space, the software automatically starts disintegrating sensitive data. Nifty. There's also been some talks of putting a camera in to start snapping pics of the culprit. Just make sure your pet won't get to your laptop, lest you want to be blaming an innocent playful little animal for a false alarm. Backstopp is available for US$20 per laptop per month.

Apple Notebook MacBook Air

Steve Jobs introduced the world’s thinnest notebook, the MacBook Air. He first ditched the disadvantages on most subnotebooks, including smaller screens, slower processors and a shrunken keyboard.

With the MacBook Air, Apple has created the world's thinnest laptop--measuring an unprecedented 0.16-inches at its thinnest point (and 0.76 inches thick overall). Apple also introduces its vaunted multi-touch technology, found on the iPhone, to its laptops with the MacBook Air, enabling you to pinch, swipe, or rotate to zoom in on text, advance through a photo album, or adjust an image via the oversized trackpad.

Despite the its slender shell, the MacBook Air doesn't skimp on the specifications. It includes a 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, full-size and backlit keyboard, and a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing. The MacBook Air is powered by a custom-built 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which provides an optimized, multithreaded architecture for improved multitasking performance. Other features include 2 GB of RAM, an 80 GB hard disk drive, Wi-Fi connectivity via 802.11a/b/g/n standards, a micro-DVI video output (with included adapters), and up to a 5-hour battery life.

It comes pre-loaded with Apple's Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating system, which adds over 300 new features including easy backup of your most important data via Time Machine, a redesigned desktop that helps eliminate clutter, and the newest version of the fast-loading Safari web browser. It also comes with the iLife '08 suite of applications, including iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, and iTunes.

First impressions of the Cloudbook: rough around the edges

The folks over at Laptop already hooked us up with some unboxing pics of Everex's Cloudbook, and now they've posted up some quickie first impressions of the would-be Eee killer -- and it looks like Everex could use that extra delay time to polish things up. The Cloudbook's gOS build was found to be reasonably speedy and the minuscule trackpad designed for thumb usage actually grew on the reviewers, but what really killed the machine was a host of video glitches Everex says are the result of the wrong OS version being installed on the machine. Still, we're not ready to give up on this little guy yet -- we'll wait to see what the formal reviews say before crowing the Eee the winner of this round.

Lenovo's X300 gets splayed in detail

Sure, you probably caught a brief glimpse of the X300's innards earlier this morning, but the photos waiting for you in the read link below are what we nerds really crave. Some lucky cat in Los Angeles managed to wrap his paws around Lenovo's forthcoming machine, and rather than booting it up and keeping it a secret, he whipped out the pliers and went to work. You know the drill -- tap that link below for all the guts 'n bolts you can handle.

Dell updates to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon, adds DVD playback

Dell has told DesktopLinux.com that it will be announcing later today, Dec. 19, that it will be releasing PCs with Ubuntu 7.10 (aka Gutsy Gibbon) as part of its Dell Consumer Linux lineup along with the ability to legally play DVDs.

According to Dell spokesperson Anne B. Camden, the "Dell Inspiron 530N desktop and Inspiron 1420N notebook PCs are now available with Ubuntu 7.10 pre-installed." Both of these models were part of Dell's second wave of Ubuntu-powered PCs, which were released in June 2007.

Ms. Camden continued, "Possibly in the 'more importantly' category, we are now pre-installing DVD movie playback all Ubuntu 7.10 systems -- a feature we feel will resonate with … Linux enthusiasts as well as the mainstream consumer market. In fact, one of the key requests from customers interested in Linux is the ability to watch their favorite DVD movies."

According to Camden, this feature will enable users to play back commercial DVDs. While current Dell Ubuntu users will be supported by Dell if they upgrade their systems to 7.10 via the Ubuntu update system, Dell will not be supporting this functionality on its older systems even after being updated. Only users with the new pre-installed 7.10 Ubuntu systems will get this new DVD playback functionality. This is because Dell's contracts to enable this make it impossible for them to offer it as a 'retro-fit' to its older Ubuntu-powered PCs.

The Inspiron 1420N, which comes in eight different colors, is powered by a 1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 processor. This chip set also comes with a 667MHz FSB (front-side bus) and a 2MB cache. Dell will let users who want a faster processor upgrade it to a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 with an 800MHz FSB and a 4MB cache.

For storage, the default setup starts with an 80GB SATA (Serial ATA) hard drive with a spin rate of 5,400 rpm. At the high end, Dell offers a 160GB SATA hard drive with 7,200-rpm speed. It comes with a 24x CD burner/DVD combo drive or an 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer DVD+R write capability.

For graphics, it uses an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 on the motherboard. The X3100 takes its RAM from the main system memory. The 1420N starts with 1GB of RAM.

The Inspiron Desktop 530 comes in a minitower form factor. It's powered by an Intel 1.6GHz E2140 Pentium dual-core processor with an 800MHz FSB and 1MB of Level 2 cache. It can be upgraded to an Intel 1.8GHz E4300 Core 2 Duo Processor with an 800MHz FSB and a 2MB L2 cache.

Its default storage device is a 160GB SATA hard drive. On the high end, users can upgrade to a 320GB SATA drive. All the drive options run at 7,200 rpm.

For an optical drive, the desktop comes with a 48x CD-RW/ DVD combo drive, but users also have the option of a single 16x DVD+/-RW drive or a dual-optical-drive configuration. To connect with the Internet, this laptop has both a Gigabit Ethernet port and a 3945 802.11a/g Wi-Fi Mini-card.

The 530N comes with a gigabyte of single-channel DDR2 (double data rate) SDRAM at 667MHz. That's more than enough memory to run Ubuntu 7.10. Users can crank the 530 all the way up to 4GB of dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM.

For graphics, the 530N comes with a 128MB Nvidia GeForce 8300GS graphics card. For an additional $100, users can upgrade to a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 8600GT-DDR card.

The system also comes with a Dell USB keyboard and Dell optical USB mouse. After plugging these in, the user will still have eight USB 2.0 ports. A 13-in-1 Media Card Reader and a 3.5-inch floppy drive are also available as options.

Dell has made it crystal clear since the introduction of Ubuntu 7.10 that it planned to pre-load the distribution on some of its PCs. Indeed, even before Ubuntu 7.10 was available, Dell had announced that it would be shipping systems with Ubuntu 7.10.

It has long been possible to play DVDs on Linux. However, with most Linux distributions, it is necessary to manually enable this functionality. That is because while the user may legally own both the DVD he or she is trying to play and the computer it's being played on, in the United States, enabling open-source-based operating systems to play commercial DVDs, with their wide variety of DRM (digital rights management) schemes, is something of a legal swamp. There are legal ways around this, and presumably Dell has invested in one of them.

Dell Product Strategist Daniel Judd will be releasing more details shortly on the Direct2Dell site about this next step forward in Dell Ubuntu-powered computers. The 1420N starts at a list price of $599 and the 530N starts at $754.

Zombu adds cheap notebook

It seems like the recent sales of cheap computers is a good strategy, and Zonbu wants to take advantage of that by offering a laptop that only costs $280 and is made by Everest. It can be more expensive, depending on the type of service plan that you picked.

As you can expect, for that low price, the notebook won't be have the latest technology, consider it a simple laptop that is good enough for plenty of people. It features a 1.5Ghz processor, 512MB of ram, a 15.4-inch WXGA display screen with a resolution of 1440x900, and a Dual Layer DVD recorder.

Other features include three ports for USB2.0, a built-in speaker, plus microphone and headphone ports for a decent audio experience, and a 60GB hard-drive.

Videophile's joybook BenQ latest addition is set to roam streets

The name BenQ is synonymous to affordable but quality notebooks. Athough not as famous as Dell and Acer, its built quality and performances is on par with its competitors.

From the outside, the Joybook S41 tooks plain and normal with nothing appealing to the eyes. The bubbly exterior is mediocre at best and not as prety as the S32 we had last month. But when the Joybook's latchess lid is opened, it reveals totally different story. The interior of the Joybook S41 is sophisticatedly enclosed in brushed aluminum. The speakers of the Joybook also blends in beautiful above the keyboard.

The trackpad is unlike other trackpads where the surface is smooth. the Joybook S41's trackpad has a slightly rough texture, providine a more tactical feedback to he fingers. The trackpad button has two buttons disguised as one. It looks a lot like the Macbook's trackpad button but of course has two buttons. A very sleek design from BneQ indeed. The Joybook S41 14.1 inch screen is just right by today standards and the display color are vibrant and crisp.

The Joybook S41 comes with a flock of ports, all neatly arranged a both sides. There are four USB 2.0 ports, two on each sides, a LAN and modem port, a FireWire port, an ExpressCard slot, a memory card reader a VGA port and best of all, a HDMI port. The HDMI port is nice addition from BneQ which allows you connect the Joyboook to other likewise HD-capable devices. This will bringall joy to all videophiles who just can 't live without the utmost clarity in all their video.

The Joybook S41 is powerred by intel's Core Duo T7100. Graphic are juiced by nVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS. With these specs, this Joybook can certainly provide you with endless hours of gaming joy. It also comes with an integrated 1.3 megapixel camera on the lid. An 8x dual layer DVD writer is also bundled with the Joybook S41.

Lenovo G400 Notebook Quality Without Breaking the Bank

Lenovo introduced its G400 notebook - a new notebook offering mobility on a budget. THe Lenovo 300 G Series notebook has a stylish form and impressive feature set to offer user seeking performance at an affordable price. The G400 feature Intel's Premium Dual Core T2080 processor, and comes in a sleek black cover, boasting of a 14.1 WXGA high definition glossy wide screen display. The G400 is equipped with Lenovo's Trademark One Key Recovery, Which allows user to easily recover data in the event crash.

BenQ Joybook S32/S32W

BenQ new Joybooks notebook models comprise of the joybook S32 and the Joybook S32W. Both feature Intel's Cebtrino Duo Processor, SRS TruSurround XT, built in webcam, a bright 13.3 inch widescreen LCD display with BenQ's UltraVivid technology and a chic looking lid exclusively designed by BenQ's Lifestyle Design Center. Featuring svelte and smoothly contoured casing adorned by a silver strip with a chic diamond cut logo, you'll be the talk to the town. With fancy Laminated Color Metal, the S32W is by itself a mist motif on its aluminum lid. It seems there's no end to the fun since both sport 1.3 megapixel QEye webcam and internal microphone and a rated battery life of up to 4 hour.

Acer TravelMate 6921

The TravalMate is a series that Acer’s had around for some time. True to the name, the TraverlMate range is made to be lugged around whiter you will and we had one model travel to us, the Acer TravelMate 6921

No nonsense from this machine. On the outside it has no unnecessary frills and is not particularly easy tell apart from the rest of the business centric notebook crowd. Black, not shiny, business like and well, that is what most business user want. Not to mention the funny looks you get from McLaren fans if you decided to do a business presentation with an Acer Ferrari notebook instead.

On the specs side of the scale, its heart is intel’s Centerio Duo T5500 running at 1.66Ghz and a decent 1 GB of Ram to properly run the copy of Vista that was installed on the machine. Graphic Wise, it does also recommend this for games with high graphic requirement. But as far as basic specifications go, office application and nothing too taxing will run just fine on this machine.

Beside the processor and RAM, you also get a decent amount of USB ports - three to be exact. If any of you quibble about not having more, do remember you’re getting portability for the price of saving.

Apart from that, you don’t really feel short- changed because the notebook comes with all the standard WiFi, BlueTooth, a card reader, Firewire port as well as S-video/Tv out. Event better, they slapped on the web camera as well which is certainly a space saver.