laptops

Techno-color Sony Vaio CR laptops

Forget Roy G. Biv--the rainbow according to Sony includes such colors as sangria, cosmopolitan, dove, and indigo. At least, those are the shades the company offers for its new Vaio CR series laptops. (City-dwellers, take heart: they're also available in black.)

Sony has long led the laptop-as-fashion-accessory movement (see previous C series models and the FJ series that started it all), offering laptops in wild colors when other manufacturers were just starting to experiment with hues beyond black and gray. The CR series is no different, featuring a case that is saturated with color, right down to the … Read more

Dell selling laptop as world's greenest

It may not come in a sustainably-harvested bamboo case, but if you're shopping for an eco-friendly computer, the Dell Latitude D630 is in a league of its own. This model is the first laptop on the market worldwide to win the highest, gold rating from EPEAT, which measures energy-efficiency and green design elements in electronics.

EPEAT ratings, run by the nonprofit Green Electronics Council, take into consideration low-toxic materials as well as the energy conservation and ease of recycling of computers, printers and monitors. The acronym stands for Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool. When that program launched last year, … Read more

Photos: Easy does it with Asustek's 'Eee PC'

Amid all the talk of One Laptop Per Child and whether its machines will turn commercial after being first offered to developing nations for use by schoolchildren, it looks like Asustek and Intel are going straight to the head of the class. They've just announced a new teeny, affordable PC that's stripped-down but still pretty versatile. We've got pictures for you! With a full-size grown-up's keyboard and price tag around $200, the machine just might cause a market disturbance. Click on the image for more.

NEC laptop falls victim to Hello Kitty

Oh my. We don't know where to begin. Is it dimestore-looking Swarovski crystals? The metallic Pepto-Bismol pink? And we wouldn't dare leave out the hideously overdone logo, of course.

No matter how you look at it, there's not much good to say about NEC's "LaVie G Hello Kitty" laptop unless you happen to be one of the unfortunate victims who have consumed the pink Kool-Aid. Akihabara News points out its middling AMD Sempron chip, but the negatives go far beyond that--too many to number here, in fact. But we'll just leave you with … Read more

Apple unveils upgraded MacBook Pro laptops

Apple announced Tuesday that it has updated its high-end MacBook Pro laptops with faster processors, better graphics, and more memory.

The laptops are still available in three models: two 15.4-inch versions that retail for $1,999 and $2,499 and a larger 17-inch edition that costs $2,799. But with Tuesday's update, the lower-end 15-inch model is now equipped with 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors (previously, it had a 2.16GHz chip); the higher-end 15-incher and the 17-incher now come with 2.4GHz processors, up from 2.33GHz. These new processors are indeed Intel's latest Centrino (… Read more

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