With the back-to-school shopping season drawing to a close and the holiday shopping season not quite begun, life in the world of laptops is relatively quiet.
Relatively, but not completely: there were a handful of new products for notebook enthusiasts this week. Lenovo unveiled the wide-screen X200 Tablet and a sporty X200s at an event in New York. Dell announced two new business ultraportables, the Latitude E4200 and Latitude E4300. And Averatec launched the Buddy, which promptly won the Crave Best Netbook Name Ever™ award.
Meanwhile, we spent some time with the Asus N10, a Netbook that's not quite a Netbook. We also took a closer look at HP's new 16-inch and 18-inch laptops. (It's a bona fide trend: Gateway is reportedly readying its own 16-inch model for a November release.)
In Reviews this week, we took a look at the expensive end of the laptop spectrum, from the $2,100
Also worth reading: DRM's reach extended into CNET Labs, where the install limit on Crysis: Warhead prevented us from using it as a gaming benchmark; Sony released a new round of Graphic Splash Edition laptops, this time featuring the winning entries from a design contest; Intel's Sean Maloney riffed on laptops and WiMax challenges; and Peru announced that it would be the first country to try out XO laptops running Microsoft Windows.
Finally, a little something for the fanboys: numbers released this week indicate that Apple is gaining North American notebook market share--even without the rumored new MacBooks.
Have a great weekend!