ASUS Eee All-in-One Touchscreen PC pre-orders taken

The ASUS Eee All-in-One Touchscreen PC, aka the Eee Monitor, has gone up for pre-order with UK retailer Play.com. First confirmed back in June, with press shots following, the All-in-One

centers on a 15.6-inch touchscreen with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and 160GB 5,400rpm hard-drive doing duty behind the scenes.

Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n, gigabit ethernet, six USB 2.0 ports and microphone/line-in/line-out ports. There’s also a 1.3-megapixel webcam, multi-format memory card reader, and twin 4W speakers. Graphics use an integrated Intel chipset with a shared 128MB of memory, so you’re unlikely to be doing any serious gaming on this particular ASUS.

Running Windows XP Home, pre-orders are being taken now for £399.99 ($686). Release date is given as November 20th 2008, later than the initial September time-frame ASUS originally suggested.

5 Reasons to Choose a Notebook Over a Computer Desktop

Many of us are so used to working on a computer desktop that when it comes time to purchase a new computer, we don't consider other options. Today, computer notebooks - which were once called laptops - offer a number of advantages over a computer desktop. Here are just five reasons why you should take a second look at notebooks.

1. Mobility

You might be used to pulling up a chair to your computer, but it makes much more sense to pull your computer up to your chair. Laptops can certainly be used at your desk, but you also have the option of bringing them to the spot where you're most comfortable. Maybe you'd like to surf the Web in the evening out in the living room or catch up on your favorite blogs before bedtime. Notebooks with wireless connectivity can travel with you throughout your home, so you can check your email or do your Internet shopping anywhere.

Of course, notebooks also make sense for those who are on the go. Students can take laptops to class and to the library, while businesspeople can take them along while traveling. With WiFi so widely available, it even makes sense to have a notebook while on vacation. With the right notebook, it's easy to take photos with your digital camera, upload them, and email them to friends and family before you even get back home. Or you can use it to write a vacation blog and include those pictures from your digital camera.

2. Better Displays

The size and quality of computer notebook displays has improved so dramatically that there's little difference between laptops and a computer desktop. For example, you can get Apple's MacBook with a 13.3-inch LCD widescreen (1280 x 800 pixels), a 15.4-inch LCD widescreen (1440 x 900 pixels) or a 17-inch widescreen (1680 x 1050 pixels). Similarly, the Compaq Presario has a 15.4-inch display.

3. Lighter Weight

Just a few years ago, even the lightest notebook was a pain to lug around. Today, though, laptops are increasingly easy on the back. The MacBook is slightly over an inch thick and the Toshiba Portege weighs in at about four pounds. While that's still heavy compared to come of the new ultralight convertibles (Fujitsu's LifeBook U810 weighs only a pound and half), it's a significant improvement over the old seven-pound laptops.

4. Better Computing and Battery Power

Historically, two drawbacks of notebooks were their limited RAM, limited space on the hard drive, and short battery life. Times have changed, though, and laptops now have as much power under the hood as their computer desktop cousins. The MacBook, for example, has 1GB of memory (configurable up to 4 GB) and a hard drive that's configurable to 250GB. This means that your software will hum right along and you'll be able to zip through programs as quickly and as easily as you do on your desktop. Likewise, batteries in today's notebooks don't heat up and don't conk out.

5. More Features

In older laptops, the computer's size and weight limited the number and types of features available. Today, with smaller processors and other components, there's room to pack more features into notebooks. For example, the MacBook has a DVD player, built-in webcam, built-in wireless capability, two USB ports and a FireWire port, built-in microphone, and audio and digital input/output.

There are so many advantages to owning notebooks that, before you buy your next computer, it's worth your while to take one for a spin

Alienware Intro Area 51 M17X HD Gaming Notebook – Our Most Powerful Notebook Ever, Says Alienware

Alienware have announced what their press release bills as their ‘most powerful notebook ever’ in the form of their new Area 51 M17X Gaming Notebook which not only combines Intel’s Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor with dual Nvidia GeForce 8800M GTX GPU mounted in SLI configuration promising ‘unrivalled mobile DirectX 10 HD gaming’ but also comes with up to 1.5TB of storage capacity thanks to the Area 51 M17X’s 500GB HHD and optional dual 500GB Smart Bay drive configured in a RAID 0 array.

Frank Azor, Executive Vice-President for Alienware’s Product and Marketing Groups, announced the new Area 51 M17X stating; ‘We pride ourselves in designing elite systems for consumers who absolutely refuse to settle for second best, the Area-51 m17x is, by far, the most aggressive, most powerful notebook computer Alienware has ever built”.

Alienware Area 51 M17X HD Gaming Notebook Key Features:

NVIDIA SLI technology with dual NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX graphics cards to produce an unrivaled mobile DirectX 10 gaming experience.
Intel’s 45nm Core 2 Extreme X9000 mobile processors supporting maximum speed and responsiveness during intense battle sequences in users’ favourite games, crisp 3D rendering, flawless music encoding and other high-intensity tasks.
17” Wide Screen WUXGA 1920 x 1200 with Clearview (1200p HDTV resolution support)
Up to 7.1/5.1 Digital High-Definition Audio (8 Channel)
Up to 1TB of hard drive capacity configured in a RAID 0 array for storing massive entertainment collections, plus support for solid state drives and hybrid hard drives.
Smart Bay technology that allows users to swap out their optical drive for an additional 500GB hard drive, bringing the notebook’s storage capacity to 1.5TB.
The Alienware Command Center control panel, home to exclusive programs such as the AlienFX customizable lighting feature and the AlienFusion power management system.
Just made available via Alienware’s online store, pricing of Alienware’s new Area 51 M17X HD Gaming Notebook starts at $2,199 for the cheapest model on offer with a veritable host of options and component upgrades serving to escalate the price to somewhat coma inducing $6,500+.

Best Performance Laptop : Dell XPS M1730

The performance of this machine is simply amazing with the Core 2 Extreme X7900. It is very rare to find such a powerful CPU at a laptop, but Dell seems to know what they are doing here because the results are really good. Remember the standard Core 2 Duo mobile processor has a 35W TDP, but the X7900 got an amazing 44W. IT is also really easy to clock this processor, and you can clock it from 2,8 GHz to amazingly 3,4 GHz with no problems.

When clocked to 3,4 GHz the Dell XPS M1730 got 7868 score points on PCmark 05 and beat laptops like Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX) with over 2000 points. As you see there is no reason at all why Dell XPX M1730 should not be the best performance laptop of 2007 with the amazing processor, Dual Nvidia GeForce 8700M-GT in SLI (256MB each), 2GB DDR and a high quality 17-inch screen.

Toshiba Qosmio

Well I've been looking around for a notebook with a good user rating. I'd like to take a brief moment to discuss the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600. Usually I don't go for the Toshiba brand to much because in my opinion they haven't branded themselves completely. I don't know much about there products basically. After all lack of marketing is the key to loosing sales.

However I came across this notebook and its a pretty good buy. I sent out emails to users in my orders category to see what they actually think about the product, and you know.. It actually isn't that bad.

the most common reaction is "Amazing". It has a sleek design, and Intel Core Duo processor, and weighs about 9.9 ounces.

It comes for the hefty price of $1439.