laptops

With the Digital Life expo coming up this week in New York, you can expect plenty of new product announcements from consumer technology companies. Toshiba is stepping up with some new laptop news, and we'll get the exciting part of it out of the way first.

We're pleased to see the company adding Nvidia SLI technology to its Satellite X205 gaming notebook series. That means two graphics processing units (GPUs) inside, just like high-end gaming desktops. Two new models, the Satellite X205-SLI1 and the Satellite X205-SLI3, will offer twin Nvidia GeForce 8600GT chips, which are DirectX10 compatible (if … Read more

I woke up Monday to the announcement that starting September 24, the XO laptop (famous as the little laptop that could) will be made available to buyers in so-called first-world countries, in quantities less than 100,000 units. In fact, for less than $400 you can give one and receive another--an excellent solution to an age-old moral dilemma.… Read more

The $200 Asus laptop won't be making its appearance this week after all. While earlier rumors were pointing to a late September release of the Asus Eee PC, it now looks like we'll have to wait a couple more weeks for the 2-pound, 7-inch, Linux-based laptop. I spoke with my contact at Asus' new PR agency earlier today, and he confirmed that the Eee PC will go on sale sometime in October. (Three models are available for pre-order on AllAsus.com and are estimated to ship in early October. They range in price from $259 to $399; the … Read more

Apparently, and somewhat to our surprise, people are actually buying laptops that bear the nameplates of Italian sportscars--at least those with the Ferrari emblem. There must be some reason that Acer keeps coming up with new models, anyway.

According to the company's German Web site, Acer is introducing the Ferrari 1100 as the latest member of its Ferrari laptop family. The ultralight carbon-fiber laptop has a 12.1-inch screen, AMD Turion dual-core processor, hard drive up to 250GB, Dolby sound system and DVD burner. Laptoping says it even has a fingerprint reader for heightened security.

There's no … Read more

It seems everyone is jumping on the rainbow bandwagon nowadays. From Dell Inspirons to Sony VAIOs, black, white and gray just don't cut it anymore.

Which is probably why MSI decided that its latest 12-inch portable should go the funky route. Available in pink, blue or green, the MSI PR210 YA Edition looks good enough to bring to your next rave. But don't look too closely under the hood because a business-like fingerprint sensor kind of throws off its wild image. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Webcam, Gigabit Ethernet and DVD writer actually make this a respectable corporate machine. A little … Read more

You know those suitcases that are handcuffed to wrists in the movies? This is kind of an updated version of that for laptops.

The "Laptop Wallet" from Vienna-based Working Class Heroes (we don't often get to cite an Austrian company) is a slip cover with an invaluable feature for those of us who suffer the occasional lapse in basic motor skills--a leather wrist strap. As Gadget Grid notes, it's ideal for butterfingered students who might otherwise jeopardize their parental relationships by dropping their brand-new MacBook.

It's not a bad idea for some coordination-challenged adults as … Read more

Hello Kitty laptops are certainly nothing new, unfortunately, but their influence on design seems to be getting disturbingly deeper with each new model. Take, for example, Epson's two new "A4 Monogrammed Laptops."

As spiritual leader Hello Kitty Hell observes, these are distinctly different from the earlier laptops that simply had some Swarovski cat faces glued onto them. The nauseatingly familiar pink and white accents are thoroughly integrated into the design of these Epson computers, which come in your choice of two HK themes.

These are no cheap toys either: They have a Celeron M 1.73GHz chip, … Read more

We've looked at the OLPC project before--the One Laptop Per Child Foundation wants to give schoolkids around the world access to inexpensive laptops, and has long touted its prototype "$100 laptop," an open-source-based, low-power system built for the rigors of third-world life. We've also seen other companies interested in this space, most notably Intel's Classmate PC, a similar low-cost laptop we got a hands-on preview of recently.

A laptop that costs $100 is still a ways off, and the OLPC XO-1 device was up to around $176 as of earlier this year (although in contrast, … Read more

A group of kids from one of our local elementary schools has formed a "mini-laptop club." They don't use electronic machines. Instead, these first-, second- and third-graders draw their own laptops on construction paper and pretend to e-mail each other. They dedicate a surprising amount of time to this activity. I once had a chance to examine one of their "keyboards." I was fascinated to learn which Internet functions had sunk into the minds of these kids, who are just getting their first exposure to computers from watching their parents work, and from using kid-friendly sites. Follow the page jump to see one of their designs.… Read more