The mad race is on, the smallest, the fastest, the cutest and now we have the lightest in weight off course the Sony Vaio X series of laptops which weighs a mere 1.6 pounds. The laptop comes with pre-installed with Windows 7 Premium, including some goodies like the Works SE 9.0, AOL, Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (wait a minute what happened to the ads driven MS office we were promised? old is gold hmm!) and Norton Internet Security. These by the way are trial versions.

The screen size is a respectable 11.1 inches and there is cam and mic for the much needed face to face video conferencing. Oh and by the way the screen is scratch resistant, the body made of Caron fiber and at full charge the battery lasts for around 3.5 hours. An additional battery can be thrown in at the cost of increased weight off course which pushes the running time to 14.5 hours (if you can sit and work that long!). This additional battery also works as the tilt rest for the machine, ingenious indeed.

The innards comprise of an Intel Atom Z550 processor clocking at 2 GHz, a solid state drive up to 128 GB, 2 GB SD RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi (802.11 b/g/n), Stereo Bluetooth and Intel High Definition audio. The 11” screen size is a new entry as we have laptops mostly in the 12” categories and NetBooks in 10”. The price a mere $1300. Who said shedding weight was easy or even cheap?

Laptops are nowadays all rage. They come in all sizes, big, small, slim and fat, they are cute, ugly and irresistible. The newer ones are fast, then there are notebooks which promise to make a hole so large in your pocket that you will have  a hard time recovering form this dilemma. Oh and then the inevitable NetBooks which look like toys, or kids stuff. But now we have Rugged Laptops, or hardened Laptops built for tough environments.

Any electronic gadget can basically sustain a certain degree of abuse, which includes extreme temperatures, bumps and jumps, resistance to liquids (quite rare) and even an occasional drop. But these machines, called Rugged Laptops are built to withstand all such abuses. They are generally meant for the military folks, but may as well be used by anyone who has a lot of outdoor work to do for example archeologists, filed workers (civil engineers), environmental engineers, marine biologists and even wildlife researchers.

The degree of protection immunity to these effects that a machine has is governed by its IP (Ingress Protection) level. This rating simply tells us the amount of abuse a certain machine is able to withstand.

A rugged machine may it be a laptop or a PDA has all the accessories of a normal machine like USB, memory, processor, RAM etc. The only difference is that these machines are able to withstand punishment like strong electromagnetic fields, shocks, extreme vibrations, falls etc. So they are waterproofed to some degree, have shock absorbers, rubber padding or even advanced cooling features for hot climates.

The various items being marketed include rugged thumb drives, rugged laptops, Swiss Army Knives, semi-rugged iPhone protection, iPod covers and waterproof cameras.

As a laptop user we are often confronted with situations where our laptop’s battery are running out of juice at the most critical moment and there are no power sources around. This situation is quite frequent whenever people are on travel or outside homes and with laptops which have average battery lifetime of 2-3 hours. Laptop battery time has always been a sticky point and to get a decent battery life of more than 3-4 hours, usually one has to buy top of the line, expensive and underpowered laptop, but NOT anymore.

Finally Acer has announced Aspire Timeline 1810T ( This model will be known as the Acer Aspire 1410 in US/Canadian markets) which boasts 8 hours battery life, a cool breeze isn’t it. Acer The timing of this release couldn’t be any better, with upcoming release of Windows 7 which is more sophisticated OS than Windows XP and provides better and highly optimized power management thus resulting in longer battery timings.

When an established an well known Mobile phone manufacturer unveils plans to bring out a laptop one is a little surprised and bound to take note. After all jumping in to the PC/Laptop category is no joke. And so it happens when Nokia announces to introduce a mini laptop or Netbook to the already saturated and competition ridden market, Nokia Booklet 3G Mini, ain’t that a mouth-full?
The machine is small by all standards measuring 264 x 185 x 19 (mm) and weighs a mere 1.95 kg. The screen size is a respectable 10.1" and an Intel Atom processor is supposed to fire up the machine. Glaring features include built in 3G support, Blue tooth, WiFi, A-Gps, ability to sync with mobile phones in a jiffy, music support by Nokia Music store, OVI support and secure corporate E-mail. Off course the much needed Windows still runs the machine. Oh and before I forget it a 12 hours battery life, ain’t that good. Whatever, that means I guess when this gizmo hits the shelves most N97 owners would be tempted to sell their mobile phones and go for a Mini or will they?

The newest fad I guess is Netbooks, and that goes not only for buyers but top brand PC manufacturers also. ASUS started this trend by making a low cost, ultra small and cute machine, one that could perform most if not all the tasks for an average PC user. The trend caught on in big way since then and resultantly now you have every second branded PC manufacturer offering a newer model every few months. So what’s this fuss all about? I mean why buy a laptop or desktop if a Netbook costs much less, weighs less and is small enough to fit a ladies handbag. Well frankly the answer isn’t all that easy and forthcoming.

Here is my take on this, firstly, a Netbook in most cases is run by an Intel Atom processor, with normally 1 GB of RAM and 80 ~ 120 GB HDD. So if you are making a switch from your traditional heavyweight desktop or even a present day laptop which has at least a Core2Duo running in its chest, you will definitely feel the change.

 A Porsche and a Beetle won’t feel the same way when driving on a freeway, will they?

 Yes and with a smaller screen size just about 8 ~ 10 inches you might feel the need to scroll through web pages or documents quite frequently. Or how about having no CD/DVD drive, I mean no optical medium, no sir. On the plus side a Netbook will last longer than a standard laptop, say at least 3 hours, since it draws less power. It won’t even bruise your shoulder like a normal laptop does! Umm did I mention a price difference of a mere $100 ~ $200, between a Netbook and a normal laptop. (Normal laptop I mean ordinary and not a Macbook or a top of the line Toshiba). So what is the simpleton supposed to do? I would say look at the pros and cons, and importantly does it fulfill your needs. So people I am going to list down some of the pros and cons here for you guys.

Pros.

• Small size.
• Less weight.
• Relatively longer battery life.
• Cheap.
• Has all necessary features less modem and Optical drive medium.
• Comes preloaded with Operating system. (Normally Win XP Home, with Windows 7 relesing soon new netbooks will be using the light footprint of windows 7 and in some cases Linux).
• Good connectivity options like WLAN, Ethernet, Bluetooth and USB.
• Good for word processing, music, movies and surfing the net.

Cons.

• Small screen size needs scrolling.
• Not ideal for multi-tasking and extensive processing since processor is Intel Atom.
• No optical medium or modem.
• Not suitable for image intensive applications or gaming.

Well these pros and cons should help you decide if and why you should go for a Netbook instead of a laptop or desktop. Frequent travelers or students might be tempted to buy it, and these machines are also not a bad choice for home users. Some of the models are catalogued for you to see them out in detail.

• HP Mini 1000.
• Samsung N110.
• IBM .
• Acer Aspire One.
• Asus EE PC.
• Dell Mini.
• Mac book Air