Laptops/PCs/Apple

Over the recent years Archos have produced a lot of interesting devices but not until now a notebook, here is their first offering a 10.2 inch Netbook and it of course comes with extras that others do not seem to provide.

Of course the two items are not bulk standard offerings from this clever USB company in Hong Kong. First a keyboard that is compact and more and then a mouse small enough to fit in any pocket but big enough to work with.

Not small and not big this 13.3inch offering from Acer might be just the size for those who need to travel and also need to work in an office. The lid is a dark chocolate brown so may well appeal to the ladies.

My own modem/router started playing up just a couple of weeks ago and a few days before this arrived it gave up working at all, the wireless side had stopped working some months ago and recently I had to reboot it often two or three times a day.

Netbooks continue to hold a fascination for both manufacturers and consumers. Since their introduction by Asus some 20 months ago, these mini laptop devices, running either Windows XP or Linux, have racked up impressive sales figures for various companies – some more impressive than others.

This is the second Blu-ray drive notebook from Asus that I have reviewed recently. Outwardly it seems to have everything you could want providing you have transport to ferry it about as the weight of just over 3kilos might make public transport a chore.

This is the second notebook I have seen recently that has a Blu-ray drive. The drive itself is not that special but it’s the power needed in the notebook to drive it so you can watch the latest movies with the special Dolby sound quality and therefore the speakers provided are.

Apart from a very heavy Dell (purchased second hand) my first 17inch monitor was the then new Flatron brand. It still – touch wood – works on my Windows ME system that still performs, this is of course smaller lighter and has a much larger display area.

Having recently reviewed a number of small and light notebooks this is somewhat of a culture shock. In fact a doubt anyone without personal transport would ever think of it as a notebook more of a desktop replacement.

I first saw this unit last autumn and then one of those black hole moments happened and my review vanished - around the same time as a 2GB SD card without all the photos backed up – but now the panel is with me again.

Around ten days ago (18-05-09) I told you about a method to expand your desktop via a second monitor that offering was from Lindy, here another such unit this time from Kensington who are perhaps better known for Mice.

Technology is making great inroads into all forms of education. Traditional methods of gaining information and storing content are being superseded by the Internet and computers.

While netbooks are the current hot topics, notebooks continue to push boundaries with regards to performance and style.

Want a second monitor/panel but no connection is available then perhaps the solution could be this little unit from Lindy. Assuming you have enough USB ports you can connect up to six adapters to a single PC.

Over the last couple of years I have reviewed quite a number of items from these clever people in Hong Kong. Here I am looking at two of their best, first a three port hub and four socket card reader, second a bilingual speaking calculator.

Two mice from Kensington, first the SlimBlade Media Mouse ideal for those out of office moments. Second the SlimBlade Trackball Mouse that has the box claim ‘finally a mouse that works everywhere’

Another rather nice small PC from Asus marketed under the Eee brand. The main difference that will encourage you to look at this unit is that it has a claimed ‘working day’ of battery life, this is stated to be 9.5 hours. With the average battery life of most notebooks around 3 hours this is huge.

A few weeks ago I told you about Clickfree a painless backup solution, that used its own external hard disk. This option allows you to use any USB drive you might already own it consists of a dongle with the Clickfree software on it.

A lot of notebooks – especially smaller ones – have limited ports, some manufacturers provide expansion docks but at a price. So any universal dock is certainly worth a good look, here one requiring a single USB port from Kensington.

This Netbook sized notebook/tablet PC uses a low power Intel Centrino processor (all other netbooks seem to use the Atom processor that is not really powerful enough for Vista) so what has this HP offering got to get you buying it?

If you have two computers why should you need to double up on peripherals? Here I am looking at a device that allows you to connect two the devices from two adjacent computers and use whatever they may be as if they are tied to one PC.

This seems to be a style that has been touched on by several manufacturers but that so far does not seem to be that popular. You have what looks like quite a thick TFT display and this hides the PC everything else is connected via USB.

As well as the Eee family of netbooks and the like, Asus does have other irons in the fire. There is a video phone product, developed in conjunction with Skype, and the notebook that is the subject of this review to mention but two.

If you use a notebook on the move and at a desk then the latter is often a ‘pain’ as you are almost certainly looking down at the screen. With the addition of a keyboard and a mouse this item can solve the neck pain.

Backups are boring, backups are annoying, backups are a pain the *%$#. However once you have had a hard disc crash and spent ages reinstalling your applications only to realise that the most important thing – your data – is no more then you start to think backups are ESSENTIAL.

This uses the same processor as other Netbooks, it does have decent graphics a good sized hard disc and 2GB or RAM however I am not convinced that it has enough punch to run the memory hungry Vista especially with the Norton software supplied.

This is an interesting piece of kit if like me you have a couple of redundant internal IDE drives lying around. It can also work with SATA drives as well so for less than £20 these can now spring back to a useful life.

I can safely say this is the most powerful Vista notebook that I have reviewed. So should you be requiring speedy graphics you might like to cast your gaze in this direction as the Nvidia Geforce 9650M GT 1GB can help you in your pursuit.

Asus certainly created a stir when the company launched its original mini-notebook that was the flag bearer for the various netbook models that have appeared from a range of manufacturers. Now fashion forms part of the latest Asus product.

Put together an 18-inch display, Blu-ray drive, Intel Core 2 Duo processor packaged inside a Gemstone Blue design and the result will be the Acer Aspire 8920 which is currently residing on my work space.