During the weekend, I had a chance to use a friend’s ThinkPad, and it felt superbly sturdy and very nice to use, unlike those cheapo laptops from Acer and Compaq. However, the dread thing about ThinkPad is that they’re so bulky and thick and heavy, no wonder everyone is ditching them and taking iPads instead. But now, the ThinkPad is back, and ready for some nice fight.

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Optical disc drives are already getting very outdated as less people uses them. What’s more, a huge number of laptops released these days no longer include them, especially those laptops with weight saving and energy saving in mind. Fujitsu’s latest laptop brilliantly removes the optical disc drive, but have their slot reserved for another new technology instead. This is not an input-based device, but more of an output-based device. The Japanese company has integrated pico projectors into a pair of their laptops.

The 13.3-inch LifeBook S761/C and 12.1-inch P771/C both fill their ODD slots with a small visualizer, and while the specs of its actual output aren’t clear, the two machines have their specs and prices announced already. The S761/C can offer you a Core i5-2520M CPU, a (presumably upgradeable) 1GB of RAM, 160GB of storage, and a 1366 x 768 resolution for a price of ¥219,450 ($2,675). Moving down in size class but up in price, the P771/C matches those specs, but for a squarer 1280 x 800 resolution, and asks for ¥255,150 ($3,110).

Both will be available in Japan in mid-May.

SOURCE via Fujitsu

Surprise, surprise. Toshiba has finally unveiled its upcoming Honeycomb tablet. It’ll be known as the ANT, one with no legs and antenna of course. The tablet will be 10.1-inch and will have a 1280 x 800 multitouch display. It’ll be powered by a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core SoC processor.

The features are quite standard. There’s the now-common 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth connections, and a 6-cell battery that provides up to 7-hour of battery life. Other specs include a 2-megapixel front-facing webcam, a 5MP rear camera with autofocus, stereo speakers, a GPS receiver, an accelerometer and a compass.

The 8GB Toshiba ANT-100 is said to retail for $450, while the 16GB Toshiba ANT-102 retails for $500. The 32GB Toshiba ANT-104 has a $580 price tag. Now, can you still choose among all the Honeycomb tablets?

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Alienware, their hardware has always been amazing, but their notebook has never been very charming to me. They cater towards gamers and enthusiasts, and that means powerful laptops, but this will sacrifice the weight of the laptop. Also, the looks aren’t very appealing to me. They look rather bulky instead of fluidity cues.

Now that Sandy Bridge processors have gone full swing, Alienware has geared up and fused their gaming laptops with the latest and greatest from Intel. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s massive. How massive? Talk about an 18-inch laptop! My god, how can you hog around with such a huge ass laptop?

It turns out the M18x has a massive 18.4-inch 1920 x 1080 Full HD display, an Intel Core i7 Extreme chip overclocked to a frag-tastic 4GHz. No joke, that’s the ‘Extreme’ edition processor right in your laptop.

But that’s not all. You also get achoice of AMD CrossFireX or NVIDIA SLI graphics, up to 32GB of DDR3 RAM, a 3D-capable HDMI 1.4 port, WirelessHD for those obsessed with tidiness, and up to five macro-programmable keys wrapped in an otherworldly anodized aluminium shell. There’s no need for a Razer keyboard anymore.

Well, Dell hasn’t announced exactly when it’s going to be available, but rest assure that it’ll cost a bomb.

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Not an unusual encounter, Asus and Lamborghini have yet again teamed up for yet another new round of bloody expensive laptops with very odd shapes and some raw powers ready to tear Crysis 2. The raging bull has supplied design touches to various Asus laptops over the past few years, and this marks the seventh generation of car/computer collaboration. Yes, it’s been seven generations. Called the VX7 and inspired by the latest Aventador from Italy, this Asus laptop features leather-lined palm-rests, a Lamborghini logo atop the clamshell lid and a set of Lambo-inspired taillights out back. And that’s just the looks.

Available in Orange or Carbon Fiber, the VX7 utilizes a 2.0-GHz Intel Core i7-2630QM quad-core processor, and boasts 16GB of RAM. Yes, they don’t care if you need it. And the chip that’s going to drive your Crysis 2 adventure is this magnificent GeForce GTX 460M graphics card with 3GB of dedicated memory, and there’s a Blu-Ray combo drive and a massive 1.5-TB of storage thanks to a dual hard-drive setup. There’s more, a 2.0 megapixel webcam, an 8-in-1 card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, one USB 3.0 port, two speakers, a HDMI output, and an 8-cell battery.

Like any self-respecting machine carrying the Lamborghini badge, this bad boy won’t come cheap – the pre-order asking price is €1,995. Yet again Asus defines ‘overkill’ in an elegant manner. Well, what you pay is what you get.

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It’s been quite some time since I last saw a Dell laptop with AMD processor in it, and now they’re going to debut in a big way. The AMD Fusion had us waiting for quite some time now, and finally it’s ready to go big and stretch into areas that once dominated by low voltage Intel processors.

AMD’s new E-350 processor will be rocking in Dell’s new M102z at 1.6GHz together with a Radeon HD 6310 graphics. There’s also 4GB of RAM, and an 11.6-inch display managing 1366 x 768, which seemed to be a great deal considering it’s sold for only $699. There’s also a slightly lower 1GHz model with a lower graphic spec selling for $599, or a higher end model that comes with a TV tuner and will only cost you $759.

For those nerds that care about Crysis 2, this laptop’s definitely not for you. For those mobile warriors that constantly travel around and needs an overall solid notebook, then do read on. Apple’s 13-inch MacBook Air might only have Core 2 Duo, and Samsung’s 9-Series 13-inch ultra-portable might have the latest Sandy Bridge version Core i7, but MSI is taking quite a different route this time.

Their 13.4-inch ultraportable is getting some new muscles from AMD instead; as their 1366 x 768 resolution display will be brighten up by AMD’s hot-off-of-the-presses Zacate E-350 APU with the help of Radeon HD 6310 graphics. Connectivity wise, there’s HDMI / VGA outputs, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, an internal card reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, gigabit Ethernet, a 1.3 megapixel camera and (nearly) as much DDR3 memory as you can stuff into it. You’ll also get a 320/500/640GB hard drive, a 4- or 8-cell battery and a chassis that weighs 3.08 pounds with the smaller of the two cells.

Operating system though is the usual suspect of Windows 7 (64-bit), but the company’s stopping short of providing a hard price or release date.

SOURCE via Hot Hardware

Finally a good product that might just give Apple’s MacBook Air a run for its money is here. The 13-inch version went for sale few weeks ago, and now the 11-inch version is finally here. There’s good news and bad news though. The good news is that the 11-inch 9-Series Samsung laptop that sports sexy duralumin curves will be yours for only $1,199, but the bad news is that if you bring along your Full-HD movie and porn collection and gazillion of other scandalicious photos, you might need to tug along your portable hard drive, as this little baby only has a 64GB SSD drive in it. Well, the sacrifice of ‘portability’.

SOURCE via Samsung

It appears that some new owners of the brand new 2011 MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt have been facing an annoying issue. It appears that if the laptop is heavily under stress than it’ll randomly crash. Here’s what a user said:

“Received a new 15″ 2.2/6750M MBP last week and have been having some issues with the machine locking up under load.

For example if I boot up a VM using Fusion the temperature will spike up above 90 degrees and the machine will lock up most of the time. The machine appears locked (cannot move the mouse at all and keyboard is unresponsive). I can SSH into the machine still and it still is running however. This is one example but it will freeze under a number of circumstances where the CPU/GPU load is very high (rendering, DJ Software, compiling so far in my travels).”

Thus far speculations are saying that the issue is related to the graphics driver or power management, and it seems the issue is reliably reproducible. Apple is reportedly aware of the issue, but no reliable solution has been provided. They’re probably waiting for Intel’s response.

SOURCE via Mac Rumors

Sony is a partner of Google TV, and it’s no surprise if Sony actually cooks up a Chrome OS notebook, besides a “VAIO Hybrid PC”, whatever that means. The Chrome OS device is reportedly modeled after Google’s own Cr-48 reference design with roughly the same dimensions and keyboard but a slightly smaller 11.6-inch screen, which should resemble their current Y-series VAIO laptops.

The laptop is said to also runs on NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 alongside 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage (yes, SSD is present). Sony’s also shooting for eight hours of battery life, and a weight of just 2.2 pounds, which shouldn’t be a problem to them.

All of that pales in comparison to what Sony’s plotting for this “Hybrid PC,” though. The publication says we’re looking at a thin-and-light Core i7 notebook with an incredible 8 to 16.5 hours of battery life, Intel Thunderbolt and an internal SSD, all of which plugs into a dock of some sort that adds a Blu-ray burner and external graphics (by AMD) for gaming and multimedia.

Of course, all these are speculations at the moment, as the Google Chrome OS is also at a very early stage of testing.

SOURCE via Sony Insider