Portables powering up

 

latest developments

Between new power-saving chips and the one-upmanship of adding DVD players and rewritable-CD drives, laptops are gaining major ground on desktop PCs.

Dell laptop doubles up on disc drives The new Inspiron 8000 sports both DVD and rewritable-CD drives, making the laptop look more like a portable workstation than a typical notebook. Notebooks with Transmeta chip arrive in U.S. Sony ships its Vaio C1 PictureBook, a 1-inch thick, 2.2-pound machine based on a 600-MHz Transmeta chip, giving chipmaking rivals Intel and AMD a run for their money. previous coverage NEC is third manufacturer to release Transmeta notebook The company follows Sony and Fujitsu as it unveils a mini-notebook powered by a 600-MHz Crusoe chip at PC Expo Japan.