laptops

Toshiba's new ultraslim ultraportable

One of the few laptops that has really grabbed our attention with eye-catching industrial design this year is the Toshiba Portege R400, a slim convertible tablet we saw back in January. The just-announced follow-up, Toshiba's Portege R500, is even more impressive.

We got a chance to play around with one of these a few weeks ago, and it was literally one of the thinnest, lightest 12-inch ultraportable laptops we've ever seen. It's got all the requisite ultraportable features, from an indoor/outdoor backlit LED display to a superthin 7mm DVD drive--similar in some ways to the 13-inch Dell XPS m1330 … Read more

New 13-inch Dell laptop leaked

It's getting pretty hard to keep a secret these days, especially when it comes to laptops. Eagle-eyed bloggers already managed to rain on the Santa Rosa parade in early May, and we've since seen leaked laptops from Sony and Lenovo.

The latest unplanned product announcement comes from Dell, where Engadget has managed to get their hands on some promo literature for the upcoming Dell XPS m1330, a new 13-inch laptop. Purported highlights include:

13.3-inch LED backlit screen 32GB SSD hard drive WWAN (Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T) 802.11n Wi-Fi HDMI output Slot-loading DVD drive

The … Read more

Notebook PCs for the accident-prone

Mobile computing can be a haphazard business, and new notebooks from General Dynamics and Panasonic give their owners permission to drop them (from a reasonable distance) as often as they like.

General Dynamics' GoBook MR-1 claims to be the smallest fully rugged ultramobile PC, and it may very well be. It weighs 2 pounds, and is about the size of a small jewelry box. It was made to have all the same features and capabilities of the full-size GoBook XR-1 but in a more compact form factor. That means four wireless connections: Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, GPS, and Wireless Wide Area … Read more

Lenovo adds more Santa Rosa systems

Fast on the heels of the ThinkPad T61 and ThinkPad R61, Lenovo has announced six more laptops to make the switch to the new Centrino. First up, ultraportable ThinkPads: The new X61 Tablet and X61s include low-voltage Core 2 Duo L7300 and L7500 processors, while the X61 runs on normal-voltage Core 2 Duo T7100 and up. All three new models are built on the Centrino Pro platform, which means an 800MHz front-side bus, integrated Intel X3100 graphics, and 802.11n Wi-Fi, plus Intel Turbo Memory (code-named Robson) and Intel's Active Management Technology for remote maintenance tasks.

Also new with … Read more

Averatec launches 11.1-inch laptop

Today, Averatec announced the new 1579 ultraportable laptop, which features an 11.1-inch wide-screen display, 1-inch thickness, and 3.4-pound weight. The rest of the specs:

1.06GHz Intel Core Duo U2400 ultralow voltage processor 1GB DDR2 RAM (1GB max) 120GB, 5,400 rpm hard drive Dual-layer DVD burner Three USB 2.0 ports, an ExpressCard slot, and a 4-in-1 memory card reader Windows Vista Home Premium

Because we're used to Averatec pricing its laptops so aggressively, the new laptop's $1,300 price tag struck us as merely average for its specs. Nevertheless, the Averatec 1579 promises to … Read more

Toshiba, AMD caught off guard by morning news

Turns out this morning's news that Toshiba will be using AMD processors in up to 20 percent of its laptops in the United States and Europe--thus ending its exclusive association with Intel--wasn't exactly a planned announcement. When we caught up with our PR contact for Toshiba, he was scrambling to put together an official release and would only confirm the content of the news stories that had appeared thus far. He did mention, though, that the first Toshiba notebooks to see AMD processors would be in the company's Satellite line, and that we can expect to receive … Read more

Kids, PCs and politics

CORONADO, Calif.--Say what you want about all the projects to bring low-cost PCs to the world, but at least someone's thinking of the children.

The Future in Review version of PCs-for-schools, Project Inkwell, tries not to get sucked into the increasingly competitive world of low-cost PC projects. Nick Negroponte of the One Laptop Per Child project recently traded blows with Intel Chairman Craig Barrett over who's more concerned about helping the poor, and who is simply looking for a new market.

"We think it should be a good business, we don't think there's anything … Read more

Decorate your laptop with GelaSkins

GelaSkins aren't new. In fact, I wrote about the ones made for the iPod a while back, and I had no trouble recommending them. And for the record, the Toxicity skin is still stuck on the house iPod to this date, over nine months later. Whether that's meant to be a testament to its stickiness quotient or my tolerance of the design, I'm not sure.

Anyway, GelaSkins recently released an array of stickers for Apple laptops, and although that's not exactly my department, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to dress up my iBook when … Read more

ThinkPad 'Reserve Edition' on the way?

It's taken awhile, but Lenovo seems to have caught onto the whole limited-edition marketing trend, especially for luxury laptops. Only a few weeks after introducing its "Cloud of Promise" laptop commemorating the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese PC maker has gone live with a Web site that cryptically teases a "ThinkPad Reserve Edition."

Electronista notes that the site implies a leather casing, speculating that it will likely include features using the latest Santa Rosa technology, but no details have been confirmed. (What's the deal with leather these days, anyway?) It will be interesting to see … Read more