HP Mini 110 Review

The big difference between the new model and its predecessors is a couple hundred bucks. Available since June of this year, the Mini 110 XP (available in "Black Swirl") sells for $329, while the Linux-based 110 Mi edition starts at $279. Compare those prices with the $549 tag on the Mini 1000 that we reviewed last fall.

The hardware hasn't changed too much: The Mini 110 carries the same N270 Atom CPU, the same 1GB of RAM, the same 160GB hard drive, the same awesomely large 92-percent-of-full-size keyboard--even the same crummy mouse button layout that's been driving me bonkers since HP introduced it on the HP Mini 2133. The new model also comes loaded with a three-cell battery--as did the Mini 1000, which achieved a mediocre battery life of 2 hours, 47 minutes on a charge. In our tests, the Mini 110 survived for 1 minute longer. (Travelers' advisory: Consider popping an extra 40 bones for the BX06 Mini Battery, to pick up a little extra on-the-go gusto.) That's miles hours behind pack leaders such as the Toshiba NB205-310, which posted a magnificent 10-hour run-time. On our WorldBench 6 test suite, the Mini 110 unsurprisingly notched a mark of 33--a hair better than the Mini 1000's original score of 30.

What do you gain and what do you lose with this more affordable model? Well, HP swaps out the multimedia dongle port in favor of a built-in VGA port (plus a built-in RJ-45 ethernet jack for good measure). The sweet-looking speaker grille planted inside the 1000's hinge is absent from the 110, replaced by a horrid-sounding speaker mounted beneath the display. That display offers a 10.1-inch-diagonal image with a native resolution of 1024 by 576, and the slick edge-to-edge plastic cover has has vanished in favor of a big plastic bezel that makes the Mini 110 look like the love child of the Mini 1000 and the Acer Aspire One.

Upgrade options exist, naturally: 802.11b/g not enough, and you want wireless WAN? Done. Wish you could get this netbook in "White Swirl" or "Pink Chic"? It's yours, for a price. Feeling cramped? You can slot in a 250GB hard drive and boost the RAM to 2GB.

I also appreciate the Mini 110's software selection, which is slightly more robust than the usual feeble bloatware. For instance, Syncables allows you to sync five PCs on a network.

Otherwise, this looks like a slightly thicker, economy-class version of last year's model. The 110 measures 10.3 by 6.6 by 1.2 inches and weighs 2.33 pounds, compared to the Mini 1000's 10.3 by 6.6 by 0.99 inches and 2.25 pounds. And that isn't a bad trade-off when you consider the extras inside the machine--and the lower price.

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Introducing Nokia X6 new mobile

The new X6 is Nokia's 5800 model follow-up, a music-centric device, hence the 32GB on built-in storage. The 5800 camera got an upgrade as well on the X6, up to 5-megapixel with dual LED flash, now on the par with the N97 Mini.

The Nokia X6 handles connectivity well, with WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, and A-GPS, plus a 3.5mm headphone jack. The X6 integrates with Facebook as well, bringing a Facebook widget and 20 of your friends' activity on the homescreen.

The Nokia X6 will cost also around $640 unlocked, due out in the fourth quarter. Nokia will introduce a Comes With Music version of the X6 as well, but only in selected countries. Nokia announced on Monday that it is delaying the lunch of the Comes With Music service in the U.S. until 2010.

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Introducing new mobile Nokia N97 Mini

The N97 Mini is the follow-up of Nokia's current flagship device, the N97, only in a smaller form. Featuring a 3.2-inch, 16:9 aspect ratio display, the 3G-enabled N97 Mini rocks a full kick-out QWERTY keyboard and a 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash.

Around 0.3 inch smaller than the N97, the N97 Mini packs WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, and a GPS receiver next to the now standard 3.5mm headphone plug. Unlike its bigger sibling, the N97 comes with only 8GB of built-in storage (32GB on the N97) that can be expanded with another 16GB via microSD cards.

But the new selling point of the new N97Mini is what Nokia calls Lifecasting. The Finnish company partnered with Facebook, and the new phone can now share to Facebook your location, together with your status, directly from the N97 Mini's homescreen.

The Nokia N97 Mini is due out in October and will cost around $640 unlocked, and hopefully less if AT&T or T-Mobile decide to subsidize the phone. Also, for a quick look at how the Facebook location and status sharing work on the N97 Mini, check out the video below.

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Nokia Booklet 3G netbook cost €575 (US$816)

Nokia Booklet 3G netbook will ship with Windows 7 and cost €575 (US$816) before subsidies and taxes, Nokia announced on Wednesday at its World conference in Stuttgart, Germany.

The company expects the device will be cheaper when it reaches consumers as a result of subsidies by network operators, Nokia Executive Vice President Anssi Vanjoki said during his keynote speech at the conference.

However, getting some operators to subsidize the netbook may be difficult, according to Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight. Nokia's plan to push a suite of its own online services with the Booklet 3G will not sit well with carriers offering competing services of their own, he said.

The device was announced on August 24. It should run for up to 12 hours on one battery charge, Nokia said. It weighs 1.25 kilograms, has an aluminum chassis and is slightly more than 2 centimeters thick. The device has a 10-inch screen with a 1280x720 pixel resolution, and can connect to bigger displays using an HDMI port, according to Nokia.

Under the hood there is a Intel Atom Z530 running at 1.6 GHz, 1GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive.

The Booklet 3G can access the Internet using HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) mobile broadband or 802.11n Wi-Fi. There will also be a version that comes without a built-in modem.

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7 coat types in dogs variations in just three genes

From short to shaggy, nearly all the differences in dogs' coat types result from variations in just three genes, according to researchers studying how genes work together.

"What's important for human health is the way we found the genes involved in dog coats and figured out how they work together, rather than the genes themselves," said Dr. Elaine A. Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

"We think this approach will help pinpoint multiple genes involved in complex human conditions, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity," Ostrander, chief of the cancer genetics branch, said in a statement.

Variations in the DNA — the blueprint for life — in more than 1,000 dogs from 80 breeds were studied by the researchers. The results were then compared to descriptions of various coat types.

The study, published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science, found that nearly all of the varieties of dog coats can be accounted for by combinations of genes called RSPO2, FGF5 and KRT71.

The findings apply to purebred dogs: "We don't know enough about the genetics of mutts," commented co-author K. Gordon Lark, a biology professor at the University of Utah.

Dogs are descended from wolves and, like wolves, short-haired dogs such as beagles had only the ancestral forms of the three genes, none with variations.

On the other hand, dogs like President Obama's Portuguese Water Dog have variations in all three genes, producing animals with curly hair plus a "mustache" and large eyebrows.

Other findings:

• A variation in the RSPO2 gene produces wire-haired dogs.

• Combine variations in the RSPO2 and KRT71 genes and you get dogs with wiry and curly hair, such as Airedale terriers.

• A change in the FGF5 gene results in longhair breeds such as golden retrievers.

• But long-haired dogs with beards such as the bearded collie have variations in both the FGF5 and RSPO2 genes.

• And combining the FGF5 and KRT71 genes results in curly hair dogs such as Irish water spaniels.

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Sony PCs with Google Web browser installed

Sony Corp. is giving Google Inc.'s fledgling Web browser a boost by installing it on new computers.

Google spokesman Eitan Bencuya, confirming the deal Tuesday, said Chrome has been shipping on Sony devices since earlier this summer. Sony is the first PC maker to sell computers with Chrome pre-installed.

Bencuya would not say whether Chrome is set as the default browser on those machines, as was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

"Users' response to Google Chrome has been outstanding, and we're continuing to explore ways to make Chrome accessible to even more people," Bencuya said in an e-mailed statement. "We are in the process of testing one such channel with Sony."

Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser in the world; the distant No. 2, Mozilla's Firefox, is gaining in popularity. Google's Web browser launched in 2008 and commands only a sliver of the browser market.

Distribution deals such as this could help Google win over consumers who think of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company only in terms of its Web search dominance. Google has also built a smart phone operating system and is now working on a free PC system to challenge Microsoft's Windows.

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Apple approves mobile application

Internet phone company Vonage Holdings Corp. said Tuesday that Apple Inc. has approved its mobile application for iPhone and iPod devices.

Vonage said in a statement that it is currently conducting a beta test and general availability will be announced at a later date.

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Opera Releases final version

Opera Software on Tuesday took the lid off its final version of Opera 10. The free, open-source browser works on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms and offers three key features it hopes will woo browser users.

First, Opera 10 features Opera Turbo, a new compression technology that, when enabled, automatically detects slow speeds and provides broadband-like speeds. Once turned on, Turbo instantly compresses pages so less data needs to be transferred over a limited connection.

Second, Opera 10 offers a new interface. And finally, Opera promises better tabs.

More than 40 million people use Opera, but the company has only two percent of the browser market. By contrast, Google Chrome has a 2.8 percent share, Safari holds four percent, Firefox boasts 22.9 percent, and Microsoft Internet Explorer dominates with 66.9 percent, according to Net Applications.

"At Opera, we have always worked hard to innovate new ways to improve everyone's browsing experience," said Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "Opera Turbo is our newest innovation, and one we think everyone should try, because we all will face a slow connection at some point."

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Singapore Boosts Free Wi-Fi Speed

Singapore's free Wi-Fi service, Wireless@SG, got a speed boost this week as the government agency that oversees the service outlined plans to add new features to the network, including location-based services.

On Tuesday, access speeds for Wireless@SG users were increased from 512K bps (bits per second) to 1M bps, with location-based services and secure automated login capabilities to be added to the service by January, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said in a statement.

The three operators who manage Wireless@SG's 7,500 hotspots -- iCell Network, Singapore Telecommunications, and Qmax Communication -- are putting the location of all network access points into a database that will be made available to third-party developers working on location-based services for the network, IDA said.

Other services that are in the works include using Wireless@SG for advertising, payments and facility monitoring, the agency said, without providing specific details.

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Sony to launch 3D TVs next year

Sony Corp (6758.T) plans to launch 3D TVs next year in a move to spur sales amid slowing growth in flat TV demand, the Financial Times said. Sony CEO Howard Stringer will announce the 3D TV launch as well as plans to make its Vaio PCs, PlayStation 3 game machines and Blu-ray players compatible with the technology at the IFA electronics trade show in Berlin on Wednesday, the FT said.

The newspaper said Stringer is expected to tell the audience: "As with high definition a few years back, there are a variety of issues yet to be addressed. But the 3D train is on the track, and we at Sony are ready to drive it home."

Sony said the company plans to hold a news conference at the IFA at 1500 GMT and that it may update progress on its 3D TV development there, but declined to comment on the timing of any 3D TV launch.

Shares in Sony, the world's second-largest LCD TV maker behind Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), were down 3.2 percent at 2,440 yen, underperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index (.IELEC.T), which lost 2.5 percent. (Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Edwina Gibbs).

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Some Good Ways to Upgrade Your Netbook

Netbooks are universally regarded for their portability, but no two netbook models are exactly alike, and each seems to come with different trade-offs. A netbook with a superior battery might have a horrible keyboard arrangement; a netbook with a solid-state drive might slip out of your price range; a netbook with a killer list of specs might be missing 802.11n connectivity. These are all common problems--and you won't find common solutions.

you can make a wealth of netbook customizations, and they range in difficulty from 5-minute routines to soldering-gun-based surgeries. We'll take you through some customizations for a Dell Mini 9, as it's one of the more tweakable netbooks we've come across. While your mileage (and procedures) will vary with your own netbook model, this guide will give you a good idea of the kinds of upgrades that could be possible for your machine and skill level.

Insert a Better Battery

n our testing the Dell Mini 9's battery lasted around 3 hours, 34 minutes. That's not too shabby for a four-cell battery, but you can do better. Though you may find a few guides online that teach you how to create a laptop battery using a number of aftermarket batteries all wired together, that's a recipe for disaster. Instead, look to eBay: There you can pick up a 77-watt-hour, eight-cell battery that's entirely compatible with the existing connections (and size) of your Dell Mini 9. You'll double the longevity of your netbook--provided you aren't bothered by the unruly mass sticking out from underneath your system. To replace the battery, flip your netbook upside-down and move the two switches from the locked icon to the unlocked icon, and push up on the battery tray.

Upgrade the Operating System

If you want to install a new operating system onto your netbook, you certainly can: Just pop the CD in any external USB optical drive and install away.

Want to dual-boot your netbook? Grab the GParted utility, by downloading the .iso file for its LiveCD and burning the file onto a disc. Insert that disc into the external optical drive, restart your netbook, and jump into the BIOS to change the boot settings for your machine. Boot off of the optical drive first, and GParted will load. Right-click on the primary partition and select Resize/Move. Microsoft recommends at least 16GB of space for Windows 7; if you were hoping to use that OS but your netbook doesn't have that much room, your experiment ends here. For any OS, if your netbook does have space for it, enter a new partition size of your choosing. Click Resize, and you'll see the newly unallocated space sitting to the right of your primary partition in GParted's graphic. Right-click on this area and select New. Enter zeros for the 'Free Space Proceeding' and 'Following' selections, select Primary Partition under 'Create as', and click the add button.

If you prefer not to use an external optical drive, you can follow these steps for using GParted and installing the new OS with a simple USB thumb drive.

Rearrange the Keyboard

Is the default layout of your netbook's keyboard conflicting with the muscle memory you've built for desktop keyboard layouts? Pop an offending key off of your netbook by wedging a tiny screwdriver under the key and gently applying upward pressure. As long as the keys you're swapping around are of the same size, you'll be able to interchange them as you please. Once you've made the physical transformations, use the Sharp Keys utility to reassign how your operating system interprets the keystrokes. If you don't mind a bit of visual confusion, you could leave the physical keys exactly where they are and simply redefine their purpose with this helpful application.

Upgrade the Hard Drive

What's worse: the underwhelming capacity of the typical solid-state drive that comes with a brand-new netbook, or the price difference you'd have to pay just to get a larger drive in your preconfigured netbook build? Here's a way around both of those nightmares. First, pick the lowest-capacity drive you can purchase when you're building your netbook on the manufacturer's Web site (or, if you have no configuration options, just buy the netbook as it is). Next, consult the appropriate user forums to get a sense of which aftermarket solid-state or magnetic hard drives are compatible with your machine. Finally, grab your screwdriver.

Upgrade the RAM

Did you know that memory is one of the main areas of a netbook where system manufacturers can jack up the price? It's true. Don't let a netbook maker empty your wallet by selling you RAM that you can find on the aftermarket for a lot less. In the case of the Dell Mini 9, we purchased the bare minimum of RAM necessary to complete the configuration: 512MB. To upgrade your machine's RAM, first open the back of the netbook and look for the memory. On the Mini 9, it's in the upper-right quadrant (with the battery facing north). On the RAM you should see its specifications. Either you can purchase the same type of RAM in a larger size (in our case, that came out to a 2GB stick of DDR-2 SODIMM running at 533MHz), or you can check the manufacturer specifications for your netbook to discover the maximum supported speed. You'd barely notice the speed difference between DDR2-4200 memory and DDR2-5300 memory, but there's no sense in maxing out with DDR2-6400 if your machine can't support its full speed.

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Microsoft Apologizes for Racially Charged Image Alteration

Microsoft apologized Wednesday after a Polish version of the company's ad had a black man's head replaced with the head of a white man. News of the image alteration in the picture was making the rounds on forums last night. Microsoft pulled the picture today from the Web site hosting the image.


The edit of the Microsoft ad for its Polish division was crude. The U.S. ad depicted three people at a conference table: an Asian man, a black man, and a white woman. When localizing the marketing image for Poland, Microsoft replaced the black man's with that of a white man.

The photos are basically identical (as pictured above). However, in the picture, only the black man's head was replaced -- the hands noticeably a different color.

Originally many thought this was originally a joke, but Microsoft's public apology set the record straight. Microsoft told Cnet it was "looking into the details of this situation."

A couple of other details are peculiar about Microsoft's (even unedited) image. First of all, the laptop in front of the black man is an Apple MacBook (yes, another Apple product in a Microsoft ad with the logo covered) and the computer monitor in front of the woman is not plugged into anything, even though the keyboard is.

Perhaps Microsoft should either look twice before buying stock photography or just hire a local photographer when they want to localize some marketing images.

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Which Free Antivirus Software Is Best for You?

When the results came in, Avira AntiVir Personal claimed the top spot in our rankings. It excelled in the essential malware-detection tests and also boasted the top scan speed. We weren't big fans of its interface, but function matters more than form here. Even the shiniest security tool wouldn't be worth a darn if it couldn't keep a PC safe. As such, our detection, disinfection, and speed tests account for the lion's share of each app's final score.

Despite Avira's number one finish, some of the other free programs still merit consideration. For example, if you dislike Avira's daily pop-up ad, you might opt for Avast Antivirus Home Edition's Web traffic scanning and less-intrusive ads--but then you'll have to deal with an even worse interface. Meanwhile, AVG 8.5 Free is a good deal easier to use, but its protection lags a bit behind the other two programs'.

And then there's Microsoft Security Essentials, which uses the same antivirus engine as the company's canceled OneCare paid suite. It isn't yet publicly available as of this writing, and won't be done until the end of the year. But since it promises to shake up the world of free antivirus, we ran tests on the current beta to give you an idea of how well the final version might work.



Rounding out your primary-care options are PC Tools Antivirus, Comodo Internet Security, and the new Panda Cloud Antivirus. Panda's use of online servers to analyze potential malware holds promise, and the app did better than any other in malware detection. Its unfinished-beta state and its unique approach, however, prevented us from giving it a full score and ranking. We did rank the PC Tools and Comodo apps, but both fell flat in detecting malware. PC Tools says that its program purposely leaves out antispyware protection and thus shouldn't be compared with other security apps; but when every other company has left distinctions such as "spyware" and "virus" behind in favor of keeping everything bad off your PC, the artificial separation of categories seems tired.

We also tried two free products that are designed to supplement existing security. PC Tools Threatfire proved a real winner with its excellent, proactive malware detection. It can capably spot a nasty intruder based solely on what the file tries to do on the computer, without the need for signatures. It can work in tandem with any of the free antivirus apps we tested. ClamWin Free Antivirus represents the open-source entry in the free-antivirus competition. It scans only when you tell it to, and it won't automatically run a safety check when you save or run a file. You could use it for a second-opinion scan as backup for your main antivirus tool--but its rock-bottom malware detection means you wouldn't get much extra protection from it.

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Google Should Fear Microsoft-Yahoo Partnership

With the arrival of the Bing search engine and the Microsoft-Yahoo search partnership, it's been a hectic summer for search -- not that you'll see market leader Google sweating.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said back in June about Bing: "I don't think Bing's arrival has changed what we're doing. We are about search, we're about making things enormously successful, by virtue of innovation." For the most part Google is ignoring Bing, at least publicly. Google has not made any outward strategic moves that imply worry about Bing or the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, other than to state that it's bad for innovation and competition.

Indeed, the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership will face the scrutiny of antitrust regulators and some experts question whether the partnership will be approved.

But if the partnership does pass legal muster, the search wizards in Mountain View will have a legitimate threat on deck. Microsoft has the money ($100 million is being spent on Bing marketing) and Yahoo has the users (98 million Yahoo Mail users in the United States, four times as many as Gmail). Both companies have the technology.

Google's plan, according to an upcoming Time magazine feature story, is to keep on innovating in search and let Microsoft mass market the heck out of Bing. But here are three reasons why quietly innovating may not be enough to keep the tenacious Microhoo at bay.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made it clear that Microsoft's foray into search is not a flirtation, it's a marriage. He said at Bing's launch in late May: "Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search."

Microsoft has said that it plans to spend 5 to 10 percent of its operating income on search over the next five years, a number that works out to be roughly $10 billion per year.

From the outset, Microsoft pointed all its guns at Google with Bing, working to make its interface warm and colorful and structure its search results into categories, as opposed to Google's minimalist interface and long list of links. The subsequent $100 million ad campaign for Bing has focused on how it is more organized and user-friendly than Google.

Google Doesn't Market Itself

Google is one of those companies, like Starbucks, that doesn't do much consumer advertising. Why should they? When your company name is a worldwide verb, you don't exactly need to get the word out. But with the Microsoft-Yahoo partnership, the ground is starting to shift under Google.

The Bing ads have changed perceptions. They rather humorously portray Google's search results as a random collection of links, many of them useless. If anything, the ads have made people question, for probably the first time, whether Google's search is the best way.

The Time magazine story mentions that Google's search engine does have features that most users don't even know about such as providing "the local weather and movie times and performing currency conversions with a single search query."

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Five reasons Apple fears Windows 7

Here are the five reasons Apple fears Windows 7:

1. Clean and Simple User Experience.
There is now very little difference between the easy user experience on Windows 7 and Mac OS X. Gone from Windows 7 are Vista's loads of unnecessary bloatware applications, confusing and poorly designed configuration dialog boxes, and moronic UAC popups that impeded a user's productivity at every turn. The new task bar is more simple and straightforward than Mac OS X's crowded icon bar. Windows also has very good screen configuration settings that make switching between monitor configurations extremely easy. And the Control Panel has been redesigned to the basics of what end users need to manage Windows 7. Like it or not, we're now down to personal preference when it comes to usability and ease of use.

2. Mac Crashes More.
Fact is, my Windows 7 systems don't crash... ever. Those days of frequent Windows Explorer crashes went away when I installed the Windows 7 RC. My Mac now crashes more often (about once a month or so) than Windows 7, and my Mac isn't over laden with junk on it.

3. Flexibility and Lower Cost.
Microsoft has updated its "PC hunter" commercials but they still show how easy it is to find a better value when buying a Windows PC over a Mac. You have to use some pretty convoluted math to come to the conclusion Macs don't cost more than PCs for the equivalent devices. If you buy a Mac it's going to be because you consciously have decided you want a Mac instead of a PC, you hate Microsoft, you prefer the Mac user interface, etc.

4. Performance.

We may not have side-by-side Windows 7 and Mac OS X performance comparisons yet (I'm sure we will soon) but Windows 7 isn't the performance hog Vista was. The experience is great. Windows 7 tools are fast, applications don't freeze up waiting for resources, disk I/O performance is great, memory utilization is much more efficient. Startup, shutdown and sleep are fast. Outlook still has its issues with not responding but overall we're talking a speedy experience on Windows 7. Now add that to the fact that Windows has access to the latest hardware advances -- you can crack the core on the latest Intel i7 or other hardware advances.

5. Mac Security Is NOT Better Than Windows 7.
Many still live with the myth that Mac OS X doesn't have any security issues while Windows does. That myth ignores the facts. For example, Apple just released 18 security patches (the smallest collection of patches this year) for Mac OS X on August 5th. Many try to argue that not all the fixes are for Mac OS X, but rather for other software that might be included with it. To compare apples-to-apples (pun intended) you have to stack up the software each vendor ships with their products, not selective parts of it. While it is true that Windows is still a much larger security target because of it's market share, it isn't true that the Mac doesn't have plenty of security issues of its own.

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Toshiba Portege R600-ST520W Review

While Toshiba's new Portege R600-ST520W hits the ground running with a base weight of 2.4 pounds (3 pounds with the power supply included) and a thickness just over the 1-inch mark, its price tag of well over 2 grand and its so-so hardware reduce the Portege R600 to a good--not great--showing (and it becomes a tough sell when compared to netbooks that cost less than a quarter of its price).

Toshiba sent us their midlevel R600 configuration. Priced at $2149 at the time of review, it includes an Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor at 1.4GHz, 3GB of DDR2 RAM, integrated graphics from Intel, a Wimax-capable wireless card, and a 160GB hard drive with a 32-bit version of Vista Business Edition installed. (That choice of operating system should make this machine's intended audience clear enough.)

In general office performance, the R600 does all right, but it won't win any medals: It scored a 67 in Worldbench, beating out Fujitsu's LifeBook T2020 and Dell's Adamo (these notebooks scored 64 and 65, respectively), but came up short compared with the Macbook Air's 78. You probably wouldn't expect to play any games on this thing--and we confirmed that. Unreal Tournament 3 couldn't squeeze out more than about 6 frames a second at its lowest supported resolution. At least the R600's battery hung in for just under 6 hours to a charge.

While the numbers might indicate a lackluster user experience, I didn't find this to be the case. The R600 felt very responsive, handling several running programs and DVD playback simultaneously with no hitches. This is probably due to the 3GB of installed memory, but in any case, the R600 was easy on my patience, and on my wrists.

The keyboard takes up about half of the notebook's main body below the screen. While you won't find a 10-key input or a lot of function keys, you will find a comfortable and uncompromised layout. Unlike the truncated, clipped keyboards of netbooks and other ultraportables, the R600 features full-size keys and a well-placed FN key that doesn't get in the way. My only complaint is related to one of my major issues with the notebook itself. Its superlight weight and thin construction make it feel positively dainty at times, and as a user with large hands, I often felt I was going to break it. There's also a moderate amount of flex toward the middle of the keyboard. The touchpad is smaller than those on many full-featured notebooks, but it isn't tiny, and it gets the job done.

The R600's display is pretty impressive for its size. Packing a 1280-by-800 resolution into a small footprint, it features excellent brightness and a glare-resistant screen that remains viewable in any lighting conditions it's likely to see. It also has an outdoor lighting option, which deactivates the monitor's backlight. Though the vertical viewing angles are slightly spotty, this isn't an issue for the most part. Color reproduction is good, image quality is razor-sharp, and text is readable without causing too many headaches.

Maybe Toshiba would really prefer you didn't upgrade the R600 at all on your own. While the laptop has a pretty wide array of kits, including a WiMax radio (you'd need to find an area with WiMax coverage to use it), upgrading it is a nightmare. You'll need jeweler's screwdrivers to open the expansion panels on the R600's underside, only to be met with a paltry DIMM slot and not much else.

Sound is where the R600's nature as an ultraportable presents its other big compromise; the mono speaker's maximum volume is too quiet to be heard over even low levels of ambient noise, and the sound quality is awful. Even the external audio controls leave something to be desired--the old fashioned dial on the left side of the notebook looks dated and awkward. The R600 fares a little better with headphones, landing somewhere around the lower end of average for sound quality, but volume remains quiet.

As an ultraportable, the R600's inputs are reasonable. You get two dedicated USB ports and a third that pulls double duty as both a USB and an e-SATA port (the latter is always nice to see), plus gigabit ethernet, SD and Express Card slots, and a VGA output. The business audience will likely appreciate this last touch, as most office projectors continue to support primarily VGA. As for included software, you have the standard packages for backup and for hotkey and wireless management. The HDD Protection utility (which stops the hard disk's heads in a safe position if movement is detected) is well-intentioned, but you'll want to turn down its sensitivity right away.

The R600's design looks stylish enough, at least with the lid closed. It features a brushed metal surface in silver--subdued but not boring (and it's nice to see Toshiba move away from high-gloss, high-fingerprint surfaces). With the lid open, the design is not so great, at least in my opinion--mismatching surfaces don't look modern, they usually look bad. Other than this (admittedly minor) qualm, the R600 is a handsome ultraportable that will catch more than a few glances.

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Lenovo Ideapad U110 Review

Lenovo's supersvelte IdeaPad U110 is about as flashy as ultraportable laptops get. Somewhere between the fire-engine red, laser-etched lid and the rugged rubbery base coating, the U110 establishe itself as a bonafide MacBook Air rival.

This IdeaPad weighs 2.9 pounds with the seven-cell battery in place. It measures 10.8 inches by 7.7 inches by 0.72 inch, and for an ultraportable it packs a reasonable amount of power under the hood: A 1.6-GHz Intel L7500 Core 2 Duo CPU and 2GB of RAM help the U110 run a little faster than Apple's Air. In our WorldBench tests, the U110 scored in the middle of the pack with a score of 65 versus the thin-and-light MacBook's slower 57.

The U110's reasonably roomy 120GB hard drive spins at a pokey 4200RPM, but the notebookit had a respectable battery life of 4 hours, 38 minutes on a single charge.

Lenovo's business-class ThinkPad X300 beat the Air by the same margin in our performance tests. But unlike the U110 (and the Air), it squeezes in optical and solid-state drives (for a higher price, of course).

The rugged, rubberized IdeaPad matches the durability and design of its stablemate, with three USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, PC Express and SD card slots, an ethernet jack, and VGA out.

On a laptop with an 11.1-inch screen at 1366 by 768 resolution, a scrunched-up keyboard with inhumanly small buttons would hardly seem out of place. But the U110's buttons are huge by ultraportable standards. Though the wide, flat keys took a little getting used to, I had no trouble tapping out this review on it.

One negative: The U110 is a fingerprint magnet. Its glossy coating renders the four shortcut keys almost unnoticeable. Run your fingers along the top of the keyboard for the faintly lit, stylized buttons to appear. Good luck seeing them in broad daylight, though.

As on the IdeaPad Y510, Lenovo's glossy treatment creates an annoying amount of glare, even with the brightness control set all the way up. At least you'll be fine indoors.

The software included with ThinkPads is vastly superior to what included you get with an IdeaPad. Exhibit A: the ThinkPad's smartly executed ThinkVantage Suite versus the U110's Shuttle Center II entertainment hub, which borders on being useless bloatware.

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Acer Timeline 3810T Review

The Acer Aspire 3810T, aka the Acer Timeline, has two things going for it: This model is one of the first laptops out the gate to use an Intel CULV processor (in this case, the 1.4GHz U9400). The 3810T also has a sharp style that's sure to grab attention. How does this laptop stand up to the MSI X340 or to the HP Pavilion dv2 (which uses the first-gen Athlon Neo CPU)? Pretty well.

In WorldBench 6, the Timeline trounced the Pavilion dv2 (which scored a 46) and outpaced the MSI X340 (which earned a 56), notching a mark of 68. That's the kind of score we've seen from some typically expensive ultraportables--but in this case, you're paying only $799. While this machine manages to outrun similar competitors for the price with a U9400 CPU and 4GB of RAM, it lacks a discrete graphics card. As a result, though the Timeline surprisingly sails through 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium, you shouldn't expect it to be a multimedia marvel. It does, however, hang in for a ridiculously long stretch of time--it lasted about 8 hours, 21 minutes on a single charge in our tests. That's a pretty solid run, and that battery life was one of the things that helped push the Timeline ahead of the X340 in our evaluations.

But where do you peg a portable like this? Is it a high-powered tweener, or is it a low-performance ultraportable on the cheap? That depends on whom you ask. The dv2 stretches the definition of a netbook. The X340 is a slim, plasticky, poor-man's MacBook Air. The Timeline is a sleek, solid notebook, but it's the size of a conventional ultraportable. Measuring 12.67 by 1.13 by 8.97 inches and weighing 3.5 pounds, this system could be easily confused with a traditional laptop.

Now, the layout of the Timeline--namely, the keyboard--might prompt some love-hate reactions. For an advanced hunt-and-peck specialist like myself, the keys feel springy and good to the touch. But the flat, seemingly floating, psuedo cut-out keys aren't suitable for everyone. Say you're munching on snacks while typing (this review brought to you by Cheetos)--grit and debris will quickly, easily, and frequently fall between the buttons. And my editorial partner in crime, Melissa Perenson, was quick to point out that anyone with long fingernails will find their fingertips catching underneath the keys. Does that mean you'll break a nail every time you type or try to wedge up a key? I don't know, but folks in need of a manicure should consider themselves warned.

Among the Timeline's handy and unique features are a couple of touch-inducive shortcuts. A Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n toggle sits next to a shortcut to Acer Backup Manager (an easy-to-use software utility) and a quick toggle for a battery-saving mod.

Camping below all that is a good-sized touchpad. It has the same texture as the wrist rest, and the only indicator that you're in the strike zone is a slight speed bump surrounding the area. The mouse-button bar has an odd lip that your finger can slip into so that your thumb can rest while you navigate. I'm not particularly crazy about the cheap plastic feel of both the wrist rest and the button, but the setup certainly gets the job done. I know it's an entirely different class, but I wish that more portable makers would take a cue from the Asus Eee PC 1008HA, which has golf-ball-like dimples dotting the active touchpad area. And metallic buttons on the Timeline wouldn't hurt, either.

The screen is nice--provided that you use the Timeline only indoors. The glossy 1366-by-768-pixel panel has colors that pop. If you saw this system on a store shelf, you'd be drawn in by the rich reds and blues that don't drown each other out. Try typing on it outside, however, and you're looking into a fairly expensive mirror. It's not exactly unusable--I wrote half this review outdoors. But the display is extremely dim, and making out much more than black text on a white background under broad daylight is hard. In short, it's just the continuing curse of the glossy screen coating.

Judging from its size and shape, the Timeline seems capable of accommodating an internal optical drive. But it doesn't. What it does have, however, are a reasonable number of ports. VGA and HDMI video-outs complement three USB plugs, an RJ-45 ethernet port, a Webcam, and headphone and microphone jacks.

As for the software, yes, you get some of the usual trialware (Microsoft Office, for instance). However, Acer has also thrown some helpful applications into the mix, ones that might be worth your while to try. Beyond Office, you get Microsoft Works, the eSobi news reader, the aforementioned backup utility, MyWinLocker for safely stowing files, and Orion, a soup-to-nuts IM/communication client. Oh, yeah--you'll also find a host of obnoxious casual-game demos in the "Acer GameZone" that you'll probably want to uninstall the second you power the Timeline up.

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HP Elitebook 2530P Review

There's so much to like about the HP EliteBook 2530P that it's hard to know where to start genuflecting. This little black and silver beauty meets all the basic expectations--great performance, full set of connections--and then piles on nifty extras such as two sets of pointing devices and a keyboard light. It's by no means cheap at $2499, but if you want your laptop to mean business (in this case Windows Vista Business), HP has a fairly desirable ultraportable for you.

Equipped with a 1.86-GHz Core 2 Duo SL9400 CPU and 3GB of RAM, the EliteBook notched a reasonably speedy WorldBench 6 score of 89. And don't forget the 80GB solid-state drive--it's skimpy capacity-wise and it's the main contributor to the machine's high price, but it also deserves some of the credit for the laptop's speed. (Want to save some bucks? 120GB and 160GB SATA hard drives are also options.)

The standard ultraportable disclaimer also applies here: This system can't play 3D games, because the video memory is integrated and the squeaky speakers sound pretty awful. Also, the EliteBook carries a standard DVD writer, not a Blu-ray high-definition drive. Otherwise, however, this little laptop should be able to handle just about any type of business or entertainment application. How does it compare with other ultraportables currently on the scene? Well, it outperforms and outspecs the HP Voodoo Envy 133 in just about every way except sex appeal. It solidly outperforms the Samsung X360 (an SSD-based notebook that scored a 64 in WorldBench 6) and lags a little behind Sony's pricey VAIO VGN-Z598U (which earned a 96).

The EliteBook comes with a big power pack that extends the back of the unit by about half an inch. The design isn't overly clunky, however, and the battery lasted a good, long time in our tests: 12 minutes shy of 7 hours. Most impressive, it outlasted most other laptops, save for the Samsung X360 and the Lenovo ThinkPad X200.

It even has an external power gauge, especially convenient for checking battery life when the unit is turned off. Just 3.8 pounds, the EliteBook would be perfect for stuffing in a briefcase or backpack and then working offsite all day, without needing to lug along the power adapter. And the 12.1-inch, 1280-by-800-pixel, wide-aspect screen is glossy and bright but not annoyingly reflective--one of the benefits of using a backlit LED panel.

The keyboard is a cut above. The stroke is short and hard, but the layout is elegant and includes two pointing devices, not only a touchpad but an eraserhead embedded among the keys. The eraserhead tip is wide and concave, with tactile nubs that make getting the hang of maneuvering the pointer easy. Each pointing device has its own dedicated set of mouse buttons, both exceptionally comfortable thanks to a soft rubberized finish. Need to get work done in a dark room or on a plane? Pressing a small black button at the top of the screen pops out a nearby keyboard light, an LED mounted in a tiny hood that shines a pale white glow on the keys.

The standard laptop connections are well covered. The EliteBook has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless capabilities, gigabit ethernet, an ExpressCard/54 slot, a separate SD Card slot, and a Firewire port, not to mention both modem and network jacks. Hate remembering a bunch of passwords? A fingerprint reader is provided in the lower-right quadrant of the wrist rest. You can communicate face-to-face with the built-in 2-megapixel Webcam, too. Though the machine has only two USB ports, one is powered. (If you need more, HP's $109 docking station for the EliteBook provides four USB ports.) The unit even has a plastic sheath on the bottom for slipping in a business card to quickly identify you as the owner.

One thing that isn't standard: This corporate raider can take a beating. While we can't vouch for dunking it in a fish tank or dropping it in the desert, it does look like it can handle a desk-to-floor drop--and maybe a splash from a small latte.

And on the software front, it comes with a bunch of business-minded appliclations. You'll find security management tools, including a drive encryption option that seems pretty useful. I also really liked the HP Webcam software. It's a colorful, attractive and easy-to-use interface with lots of options, including taking stills, video with audio, or audio alone. In short, the software does a good job of answering (but not quite matching) Lenovo's ThinkVantage software suite that you'll find on ThinkPads.

We do have one design complaint worth mentioning, however. The futuristic touch-sensitive membranes that a lot of laptops now incorporate as quick-launch panels have been a mixed bag, and the EliteBook's is no exception. It was responsive to taps and included an on/off for the touchpad, which is always nice, but the volume gauge needed recalibrating. It didn't always respond, even to repeated swipes.

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Asus U6V-A1 Review

If you're looking for a speedy ultraportable laptop without breaking the bank, look no further than the Asus U6V-A1. This $1649, Windows Vista Business-based notebook offers up strong performance scores and is a nicely balanced overall system.

Powered by a 2.26-GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of memory, and an nVidia GeForce 9300M GS integrated graphics chip, The Asus U6V exhibits excellent performance compared with other ultraportables, earning a WorldBench 6 score of 93. The U6V held its own on the gaming front, garnering 38 frames per second in Doom 3 and 68 fps in Far Cry (1024-by-768 resolution with antialiasing turned off). Those frame rates may not sound so hot, but ultraportables rarely rise above mediocre game performance. Compared with others in this class, the U6V trounces lesser machines that offer only weak-sauce integrated graphics chips (ahem, Intel) and puts up a decent fight against most of its competition. In fact, it's a hair faster than Lenovo's ThinkPad X200.

The Asus U6V comes equipped with a 320GB hard drive--plenty roomy for all your media. But grab a good set of headphones or external speakers to go with it; the U6V has only a crummy speaker, with poor volume and all the sound quality of an alarm clock radio. That said, the 12.1-inch 1280-by-800 glossy wide-screen display is bright, crisp, and evenly lit--what you put on the screen will look great indoors and still hold up decently outside.

By and large the U6V is an attractive, nicely designed notebook with some higher-end touches such as a leather palmrest. The keyboard feels firm, but the keys on the edges are smaller than usual to make room for the Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys along the keyboard's right-hand side; while not a big deal, you may have to adjust your typing-muscle memory a little. The trackpad is a bit small, but usable; the buttons, though, can be awkward to use, since they're not very large (thanks to the fingerprint reader between the left and right buttons) and can be difficult to press. Good thing our review unit includes an external Bluetooth mouse (I was certainly tempted to use it).

The U6V includes three USB ports, with ports on both sides of the notebook for easy mousing. Also included are eSATA, HDMI, and VGA ports, an ExpressCard/34 slot, gigabit ethernet, and a built-in Webcam. The hard drive and memory modules are easily accessed by removing their covers on the bottom of the unit.

The notebook weighs in at 3.5 pounds with the 6-cell lithium ion battery--about average for an ultraportable--but add another 0.9 pound if you want to lug around the power adapter. You'll need it: The U6V's included 6-cell battery achieved 3 hours, 29 minutes of running life in the PC World Test Center's evaluation. While this is about average for a typical all-purpose notebook, it's on the lower end of the spectrum for ultraportables. Some machines we've tested have lasted upwards of 6 hours. However, the U6V does include an extra 3-cell battery--a nice touch considering that most other PC makers would make this an extra-cost option.

ExpressGate--Asus's preboot interface for performing basic tasks--makes an appearance on the U6V. Press a button on the notebook, and within seconds you'll have access to a Web browser, Skype, a photo viewer, and more, in case you don't want to deal with Windows.

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Toshiba Portege A605-P210 Review

The netbook onslaught of the past 18 months has forced a sea change. No longer is small size alone enough of an excuse for a notebook to carry an exorbitantly high price. With some good performance levels and a great screen, plus light weight and outstanding battery life, the Toshiba Portege A605-P210 could fit the bill for users who need to get real work done on the go with a netbook-size system--and without murdering the bank account.

Toshiba sent us the A605-P210, which has a current MSRP, or list price, of $1399. This midlevel configuration for the A605 packs a 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor, 3GB of 333MHz DDR2 RAM, a DVD-RW drive, integrated graphics from Intel, and a 300GB hard drive with a 32-bit version of Vista Home Premium. In fact, the hardware isn't all that different from what we saw in Toshiba's Portege R600. But the latter, a higher-end machine, sells for about $700 more, yet scores almost the same as the A605 in performance tests.

Our tests show the A605 to be a decent office performer for an ultraportable, scoring a 69 on PC WorldBench 6, and beating out both the Fujitsu LifeBook T2020 (64) and the Dell Adamo (65), and even the pricier R600 (67). While it fell well below the Macbook Air in this regard (by about 14 percent), it's also several hundred dollars cheaper. Graphics-wise, set your expectations to "meh": At less than 6 frames per second in Unreal Tournament 3 at its lowest settings, don't expect to play decent games here.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the A605 handled multiple applications simultaneously without trouble and even dealt pretty well with high-def video content. The A605's memory footprint and full-fledged Core 2 Duo (versus the Atom processors behind most netbooks) are probably to thank for the snappy user experience. The A605 was generally a pleasure to use, a result aided a lot by the excellent display. The machine impresses in the battery life category as well, lasting more than 6 hours on a charge. The only ultraportable that did better was the LifeBook T2020, which also weighs and costs more and scored lower on our benchmarks.

The A605's screen is great for both the general office work and the odd media file for which it was intended. With a 1280-by-800 resolution that has enough real estate to get some serious work done, you'll find outstanding brightness and a low-glare screen that remains legible and sharp whether in an office or out and about. While the vertical viewing angle left a little to be desired, the hinge on the A605 only opens so far, and horizontal viewing angles were excellent. Color reproduction was very accurate, and text was quite readable, especially considering the size of the screen.

Small notebooks often feature compromised keyboards, hurting the user experience. Thankfully, that's not the case at all with the A605. The keyboard takes up about half of the laptop's base, and it offered the best typing experience I've found below 14 inches in any notebook. Unlike with its cousin, the R600, the keyboard feels sturdy, with no flex or give. You won't find miniversions of your keys or alternate key layouts like those found on some other ultraportables and netbooks. The touchpad is fine; though smaller than on many full-featured notebooks, it isn't so small that your wrists will ache after a few hours of use.

Apart from gaming graphics, sound is the A605's major failing, which is to be expected in an ultraportable. With just one lonely mono speaker that becomes unlistenable at high volumes (and is too quiet to hear over even moderate levels of ambient noise), the A605 is ill-equipped for media playback even in an office or bedroom situation. The old-fashioned volume dial on the notebook's left side looks dated, but it offers a reasonable level of control. If you're going to use this laptop for media, headphones or dedicated speakers will be a must.

The A605 comes with the standard update notifier and backup software (which works pretty well) and with biometric identification software tied to the fingerprint reader below the touchpad. Otherwise, it has no special software, but what it does have gets the job done. You'll want to dial down the hard disk protection software's sensitivity, which will otherwise steal focus with a popup message if you so much as breath heavily around the A605. The documentation is reasonably thorough and is specific to the A600 line.

The A605's look occupies a strange middle ground in Toshiba's design history. The lid and top panel of the base share the traditional Toshiba high-gloss, piano-black finish, while the lower half of the base has the brushed-metal look of the higher-end Portege notebooks. I'm not a fan of the traditional black finish, which is a fingerprint magnet, but it doesn't look bad, and the keyboard, with the same brushed-metal finish as the base, is easier to use because of its contrast with the rest of the notebook.

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Fujitsu Lifebook T2020 Review

Like most tablet PCs, Fujitsu's LifeBook T2020 caters to business folk. This laptop may shy away from sex appeal in favor of getting the job done, but it's angling to be a useful, lightweight (3.6 pounds), compact (11.7 by 8.6 by 1.3 inches) package. While it doesn't deliver in speed, it sure is ready for the long haul.

The LifeBook T2020 retains virtually all of the physical features of its predecessor, the sober, professional-looking LifeBook T2010. The only thing about the T2020 that screams "2009," however, is its flawless 12.1-inch screen. The 1280-by-800-pixel panel looks exceptional, with much brighter and more-vivid colors than a typical matte laptop screen produces. Graphics, photos, and text are all very sharp and well defined, and the screen maintains its visually appealing contrast and intensity indoors and out.

The included stylus permits very smooth and easy writing on the tablet in most applications, including essential ones such as Microsoft Word and Google Gmail. After it picked up on my specific handwriting (a rather sloppy scrawl), the T2020's transcription app began to recognize even my most illegible words. The only way to activate tablet features of this laptop is with the included stylus--so you don't have to worry about fingerprints and smudges on the screen. And to help you avoid losing it, the stylus fits snugly into a readily accessible compartment on the side of the laptop.

Need more than a touchscreen? Simply rotate the screen, and you can use the full keyboard. The keyboard is flat and plain (and vaguely reminiscent of yesterday's clunky laptop keyboards) with a small, soft touchpoint in the center. If you don't mind doing without a touchpad, fine--but Lenovo, for example, gives users both options in its notebooks (including the ThinkPad T400). Several shortcut keys sit on the most accessible side of screen in tablet mode. The shortcut keys include page up, page down, a secondary function key, a key for screen rotation, and a Ctrl-Alt-Delete combo button for moments when everything goes sideways.

Few tablet PCs offer stellar performance, and the LifeBook T2020 is no exception, struggling to run Windows Vista with its 2GB of RAM and 1.4GHz processor. The result was a score of 65 on our WorldBench 6 test suite, landing this machine toward the back of the ultraportable pack. The limp Intel integrated graphics didn't help this machine regain much ground, either. On the other hand, the LifeBook T2020's battery ran like a champ, holding out for 7 hours, 17 minutes in our power drain tests. So, it may not run quickly, but it'll last long enough for you to get the job done.

The LifeBook T2020 comes with plenty of tablet PC-intensive software, such as Pen Flicks Training--a program that familiarizes users with stylus tricks to increase their efficiency--and a Handwriting Personalization app for speedier and more-accurate transcribing.

Audio from the single scrawny speaker located on the front of the keyboard sounds horrible and tinny. Obviously, this is not a multimedia-minded machine.

The laptop has two USB ports: One is located on the right side of the keyboard, and the other on the back next to the ethernet port. That arrangement should discourage you from trying to connect any external storage device that requires two USB ports. You'll also find a FireWire port, a PC Card slot, and a flash card slot good for Memory Stick and SD Cards. On the inside, 802.11n for Wi-Fi connectivity.

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Samsung X360-34P Review

In recent months, Samsung has been lying low in the U.S. notebook market. But its new X360 is an interesting contender among ultraportable models--sleek enough to take on the Lenovo ThinkPad X300 or even the ThinkPad X200. Though its sex appeal can't match that of the Apple MacBook Air or the HP Voodoo Envy 133, this slim little machine may have enough positives to win you away from Lenovo's competing models--if you have a spare $2500.

That money buys you an ultraportable equipped with a 1.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9400 CPU and 3GB of RAM. Despite its lukewarm configuration, the X360 still managed to eke out an average score of 73 on our WorldBench 6 test suite. But don't buy it if your intent on playing graphics-intensive games. Intel's integrated graphics system limps along in Doom 3 at a lousy 8 frames per second (at 1024 by 786 resolution). Hamsters on treadmills move faster. On the other hand, the X360's 128GB solid-state drive is fairly speedy; it is also largely responsible for the laptop's high price and low weight (only 3.7 pounds, counting the AC adapter).

The battery life of this ultraportable was most impressive, lasting a whopping 7 hours, 36 minutes in our stress tests. Lenovo's X200 still keeps the top spot on the endurance chart, however, at 8 hours, 54 minutes.

The X360 measures 12.2 by 9.1 by 1.3 inches, so a lot gets crammed into a fairly tight space. In fact it shares a lot in common with its big brother, the X460, despite having a smaller screen and lacking an optical drive. The 13.3-inch backlit LED on the X360 is amazingly bright. Good and colorful, without oversaturation, Samsung's new notebook is easy on the eyes. In fact, the screen makes for easy viewing under just about any lighting conditions, including direct sunlight. And the 1280-by-800-pixel resolution is perfectly reasonable for an ultraportable notebook.

Like Apple and Sony, Samsung opts for a cutout keyboard, on which the keys pop out through holes in the case. This arrangement gives the keys a more solid feel and creates good spacing between them. The result is comfortable, solid tactile feedback on every key press. Though the keys aren't especially textured, they don't feel flimsy.

You won't find superfluous multimedia shortcut keys on the X360. Instead, the laptop handles each special task through a combination of the 'Function' button and one of the F keys. (That's the only way to toggle the number lock and caps lock.) The only dedicated buttons are a shortcut to the Samsung MagicDoctor (a quick-fix finder for PC problems) and a speed-boost shortcut key (a toggle between basic power-saving settings and full speed). The mousepad is pleasantly sensitive, and the two buttons are well-spaced and solid to the touch.

The case is expertly built and ready for travel. Like the screen on its inner surface, the two-toned metallic lid stands out. The X360 squeezes a lot of ports into the case as well: VGA and HDMI for video, an ethernet jack, a modem, 802.11n Wi-Fi , Bluetooth., three USB ports around the sides, a five-in-one flash card reader, a PC Express card slot, and headphone and mic jacks. Throw in the 1.3-megapixel Webcam and the fingerprint reader, and you have a fairly robust package.

The sound is surprisingly big--strong enough to fill a small room and annoy cubemates. There's no proper subwoofer, but the mids and highs work well, and the volume reaches a high enough level that headphones aren't your only listening option.

People who loathe bloatware will appreciate that the X360 comes without much preinstalled software. It's not completely barren, however. Our test unit came with Samsung's one-step diagnostic and system recovery software, a quick troubleshooter for analyzing installation problems and getting you back to a factory-fresh state. You can also quickly reinstall important Windows files while keeping your data intact. The other programs on board consist of a speed-stepping shortcut that lets you quickly toggle between battery-saving and power modes, as well as the OmniPass security software, made to work in tandem with the built-in biometrics.

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Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Review

Equipped with the new Centrino 2 processor, Lenovo's ThinkPad X200 looks a mild-mannered ultraportable, and yet it can leap tall workloads in a single bound. Its battery life is phenomenal, and the keyboard is huge. In short, this is a much better notebook than the ThinkPad X61, which it replaces, and a surefire winner for on-the-run execs.

Because it bears a lower model number, you might imagine that this a less-powerful version of the ThinkPad X300, but the X200 actually has a more recent processor. The X300 has a 13.3-inch display, however, while the X200 has a 12.1-inch screen. Ah, but what you'll see when you fire this baby up!

At just under 3 pounds with its lightest battery installed, the X200 weighs a few ounces less than the ThinkPad X61, despite offering the same 12.1-inch wide screen and a bigger keyboard. The bright little screen has an easy-to-read 1280-by-800-pixel resolution, making it quite comfortable for work on the go. And the built-in Webcam keeps you in visual touch with your colleagues.

The redesigned keyboard is as big as the ones that members of Lenovo's ThinkPad T series carry, and it has all the same amenities: spill resistance, dedicated page up and page down keys, and the all-important ThinkVantage button. The ThinkVantage application suite offers one-touch access to the onboard user manual as well as to recovery, security, and other crucial utilities. A fingerprint reader rounds out the package. What's missing: a touchpad. Many ThinkPads offer both a touchpad and aneaserhead as pointing devices, but not the X200.

The review unit Lenovo sent us came with 2GB of RAM and a 2.4-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, and it notched a WorldBench 6 score of 88, putting it only 14 points behind the fastest laptop we've tested to date. As you might expect, the X200's integrated video graphics can handle only simple games. But the X200's battery life soars. Lenovo has expanded its battery line to three choices, topped by the powerful nine-cell model that our X200 carried. Though this battery extends the back of the notebook by about half an inch and brought our unit's weight to 3.7 pounds (not including power adapter), the payoff was almost nine hours of juice on a single charge.

Unless you already have a spare external USB optical drive on hand, you'll have to shell out $219 extra for Lenovo's Ultrabase docking slice to get an internal drive bay. (A Blu-ray optical drive costs even more). On the bright side, the modular bay accepts other devices like a second battery or second hard drive. But the docking slice also offers some nifty new connections, most notably a place to charge yet another battery and a DisplayPort display interface that combines high-def audio and video in a single connector.

Of course, ultraportable ThinkPads have always used the space they save by omitting a built-in optical drive to add lots of laptop features that are missing from same-size competition. The X200 features three USB ports, microphone and headphone ports, a VGA port, and an ethernet connection. You have your choice of a modem jack with a five-in-one memory card slot, or a less expensive configuration offering an SD Card slot but no modem.

The X200 feels tough as nails, thanks to a magnesium alloy lid and bottom. A crash-proof solid-state hard drive up to 64GB is optional (we got a standard 160GB platter-based hard drive, however). For future upgrading the X200's two memory chip slots are located in an easy-to-access bottom compartment, and the hard drive can be removed from the right side of the unit after unscrewing one bottom screw.

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Top 10 Ultraportable Laptops

1. Sony VGN-Z598U/B
CPU: 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo P9500, Display Size (inches): 13.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 256GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3.3Lbs.,

2. Lenovo Thinkpad X200
CPU: 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo P8600, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 160GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 2.95Lbs.,

3. Samsung X360-34P
CPU: 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo U9400, Display Size (inches): 13.3" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 128GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3Lbs.,

4. HP Elitebook 2530P
CPU: 1.86-GHz Core 2 Duo SL9400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 80GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3.8Lbs.,

5. Asus U6V-A1
CPU: 2.26-GHz Core 2 Duo P8400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 320GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3.5Lbs.,

6. Acer Timeline 3810T
CPU: 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo SU9400, Display Size (inches): 13.3" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 500GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3.7Lbs.,

7. Fujitsu Lifebook T2020
CPU: 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo U9400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 160GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3.6Lbs.,

8. Toshiba Portege R600-ST520W
CPU: 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo U9400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 160GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 2.4Lbs.,

9. Lenovo Ideapad U110
CPU: 1.6-GHz Core 2 Duo L7500, Display Size (inches): 11.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 120GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 2.4Lbs.,

10. Toshiba Portege A605-P210
CPU: 1.4-GHz Core 2 Duo U9400, Display Size (inches): 12.1" Display, Wide Screen: Yes, Total HD Size (GB): 320GB Hard Drive, Min. Weight (lbs.): 3.1Lbs.,

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Toshiba NB205-312 Review

Toshiba may be new to netbooks, but the company is no stranger to small. Toshiba's NB205-N310 ($400) jumps into the market and claims a top spot in our rankings. This primo portable not only delivers where it counts with the longest battery life to date, it does so with panache and some great design decisions. In short, Toshiba has come a long way since blazing trails with its Libretto subnotebooks in the 1990s.

I'm going to start this review with the NB205's only real "downer": its pedestrian speed and guts. The guts are a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB 5400-rpm hard drive, which together earned the NB205 a rather standard performance score of 36 in PC WorldBench 6. But that's about the only thing that I'd classify as "average" about the NB205-N310.

Toshiba spokespeople say that the NB205-N310's six-cell battery can last for almost 9 hours. Wrong. In our tests, the NB205 survives a staggering 9 hours, 53 minutes. For a little perspective, that is easily the longest time so far that a netbook has been able to run--and this is with the standard battery on board. That alone catapults this netbook's worth to a top pick on the charts.

A killer keyboard and a touchpad to match are essential for a champion netbook. After all, how useful is a machine if you can't type on it without hurting your hands? Toshiba scores by making the Chiclet-size cutout keys just big enough, and by dropping down a huge touchpad. This is simply the best netbook mouse pad to date. For starters, the surface area of the strike zone is larger than that on many full-size laptops! Next, the beefy mouse buttons camp at the southern edge of the machine--easing hand strain. My physical therapist would approve.

The N310 has good (though occasionally muted) color reproduction and supports a reasonably precise resolution of 1024 by 600 pixels on its glossy 10.1-inch screen. I noticed some dark spots that got washed into a splotch or two--but otherwise, the images looked plenty sharp.

Its configuration looks fairly standard on the surface: three USB ports, an SDHC card reader, a Webcam, one VGA-out, ethernet, and headphone and microphone jacks. But it's put together in a 2.9-pound package and with a sense of style that doesn't look or feel cheap at all.

Toshiba also adds a few extras to the NB205-N310 that are sure to appeal to folks on the go--and even more so to IT departments looking to deploy cheap PCs to a mobile workforce. One notable perk is a pass-through USB port that enables users to charge USB-powered devices while the computer is off. This netbook also provides an internal accelerometer to protect the hard drive in case of falls (much as the HP Mini 2140 does)--and it offers wireless WAN support as an option.

As a quick heads-up, another version of the NB205 is waiting in the wings--the lighter, scrappier NB205-N210. The big differences between these sibling Toshiba netbooks boil down to price (the N210 costs $350, $50 less than the N310), key shape (the N210 has flat, wide keys, as opposed to the N310's cut-out style), and the N310's bluetooth support (the N210 doesn't have it).

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Sony VGN-Z598U/B Review

Everyone talks about the Apple tax - the premium you're paying for an Apple product. The same could technically be said for some of Sony's more uniquely designed notebooks, like the Sony VAIO VGN-Z598U. This ultraportable class starts at $1,499, but our review unit balloons up to the eye-bulgingly-high price tag of $4,450. If money is no object (yeah, as if that's the case these days), then by all means, scoop up this overstuffed, lightweight beauty.

Primary responsibility for the sticker shock goes to a pair of 128GB solid-state drives, which jacked up the original price by roughly two grand. But our test unit also jams a 2.53-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a dedicated nVidia GeForce 9300M GS GPU into its tiny 12.4- by 1.3- by 8.3-inch frame.

The twin SSDs probably contributed to the VGN-Z598U's eye-opening WorldBench 6 score of 107, the highest we've seen from an ultraportable. The next-fastest competitor in this class is the Asus U6V, with a mark of 93. And yet despite its powerful configuration, the VGN-Z598U weighs only about 3.3 pounds (4.2 pounds including the power brick).

In stamina mode, the VGN-Z598U switches from its nVidia GeForce 9300M GS graphics to its integrated Intel GPU), to prolong its battery life. Working with the integrated GPU, the laptop runs for 4 hours, 46 minutes--not bad, but far below the figure of almost 9 hours for the Lenovo ThinkPad X200. And unlike with a certain Mac-flavored machine, you can toggle between modes without either enduring a full system reboot or having to log out first.

The first thing you'll notice upon lifting the lid of this VAIO is its beautifully backlit 13.1-inch wide-screen display. Even in direct sunlight, the LED image at its native 1600-by-900-pixel native resolution is crisp and clear. And the wide-screen design is great for positioning documents side-by-side and for watching movies at a 16:10 aspect ratio. Not coincidentally, the VGN-Z598U also houses an optional Blu-ray drive.

As on other high-end Sony models, the VGN-Z598U incorporates a cutout keyboard, in which the keys pop out through holes in the case. The design creates good key spacing between buttons and promotes solid tactile feedback. The only extra buttons on the keyboard are a large disc-eject button, a couple of programmable shortcut buttons that by default launch a presentation mode and Windows Meeting Space, and a performance toggle for switching between the integrated Intel GPU and the GeForce 9300GS chip. The mouse is suitably large and sensitive, but its two slim mouse buttons (with a fingerprint scanner between them) are like two landing strips for gnats. At least the buttons are firm and well-built.

The laptop's layout is clean and simple, though some of its features are just a tad skimpy. Among the positives are two USB 2.0 ports, a four-pin FireWire jack, and a PC Express card slot. High-end A/V-heads will appreciate the unit's HDMI output, too. Though a Blu-ray drive is a configuration option, the base model comes with a modest VGA port.

Sony's suffers from the same problem Like most ultraportables, the VGN-Z598U has a rather puny sound system consisting of two tiny, tinny speakers and no subwoofer. On the bright side, it does get loud enough to distract cubicle neighbors (sorry, mate!) or fill up a small room. Of course, most of the time you'll want to use headphones anyway.

Preloaded software includes Microsoft Works, a video content exporter, a basic video-editing program, and the VAIO Control Center (which quickly breaks down all of the vital chores you're likely to need instant access to on your computer.

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