Now that the format war is over, we can expect the market to soon flood with Blu-ray enabled gadgets. Dell is coming out with their first offering: a Blu-ray laptop, the latest in their Inspiron line, and it's going for less than US$ 1000. Details in the full article. *editor p

Taiwanese company BenQ recently showed off the BenQ Joybook S41, their new Santa Rosa notebook. Yeah, the name's kinda funky, but boy, is it a beauty.

According to Akihabaranews.com, aside from running on Intel's fourth-generation Centrino platform, the Joybook S41 also features a 14.1-inch widescreen, up to 2GB RAM and a 160GB hard drive. These are just the bare essentials, and the notebook also offers Wireless a/b/g/n, an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, HDMI output, and an ExpressCard slot.

Price information for the BenQ Joybook S41 has yet to be revealed, but the notebook will reportedly become available sometime this month. Check out the images below for a look at it.

   

As EV-DO technology has become more and more popular over time the variety of solutions available to meet the needs of EV-DO users has become equally diverse. Carriers like Verizon and Sprint are currently in the process of maintaining and, in some cases, upgrading their EV-DO network infrastructure to keep up with the expected demand. The depth of the financial investment in network infrastructure alone demonstrates an iron clad commitment to the future of this technology on the part of the carriers.

The new AirCard 597E from Sierra Wireless is evidence that the next generation of EV-DO (known as Revision A) will be a viable competitor in the future of high speed wireless data services, and the investment will not have been in vain. "Built for notebook computers with ExpressCard expansion slots, the AirCard 597E will be fully compliant with network operator requirements and will offer user-friendly features such as Assisted GPS (aGPS) location based services; a robust, fixed antenna design; and an external antenna jack for flexibility and improved reception in fringe coverage areas or for specialized applications. The AirCard 597E is expected to begin shipping in the first quarter of 2007. ExpressCard models for HSDPA networks are expected to follow later in the year."

Sierra Wireless has been carefully watching the market and has plans to benefit from an overall trend in consumer habits that they expect to peak in 2007. "Notebook installations of ExpressCard slots are expected to move toward critical mass in 2007 - we are timing our ExpressCard products to match market adoption." said Trent Punnett, Senior Vice President, Marketing and Corporate Development for Sierra Wireless.

Since Dell and Apple (along with most all of the other manufacturers of laptops in the world) have moved to the express standard and basically abandoned the older PCMCIA standard, the market for express based network and storage solutions is expected to continue to grow. Eventually, everything will be done without wires, under one universal standard that is expandable, extensible, modular and fully self-sufficient (yeah right!). Until then we are left to choose between the various competing standards available today until we find a winner.

  

Hewlett Packard have laptops that could cater to the needs of a simpleton or to the needs of an imeldific character...well, a practical imeldific (is there such a thing) that is. What I mean is that, whatever your needs are, HP would get you covered. Diversity is the name of the game in the HP camp as they unveil two of their latest innovations which feature AMD's Turion 64 X2 and NVIDIA nForce Go430 chipset with NVIDIA graphics. I am talking about tthe two notebooks that will amp the Pavilion line-- the Pavilion dv6000z and the Pavilion dv9000.

To kick things off, let's start with the more high-end dv9000 (left thumbprint). This one is being paraded as HP's latest 17" notebook which comes fully equipped with AMD's latest mobile platform and NVIDIA's chipset & graphics. This could sort of pass as a gaming laptop since it is blessed with a more capable NVIDIA Go 7600 with 256MB dedicated DDR2 RAM. The G0 7600 could play recent games although you'd have to lengthen your patience as this may produce lower resolutions. The 17" display comes in three choices - WXGA+ (1440x900) BrightView, WXGA+ Ultra BrightView, and WSXGA+ (1680x1050) BrightView.

Your garden variety USP ports are also in there along with multimedia features, and the optional ExpressCard TV Tuner for the TV addicts. Another characteristic that makes this baby stand out is that it has dual hard drives option which could give this baby a 240GB using proper RAID configurations. Weight starts at 7.8lbs and is 1.0" thin. Optional integrated webcam is available. Prices start a bit higher at $1,349 and the dv9000 will be available mid-July.

Too pricy for you? Then maybe you oughta consider the 15.4" Pavilion dv6000z (right). It also houses a competitive NVIDIA nForce Go430 chipset with discrete 256MB Go 7200 graphics, plus you have a choice between an AMD Mobile Sempron or a Turion 64 X2 processors. You can't play recent games with this one, but if gaming ain't your thing, then this may be for you. Prices range from $1000-1300, depending on configuration.

California hardware company FirmTek, LLC, has announced the release of their highly-anticipated SeriTek/2SM2-E ExpressCard Adapter for the MacBook Pro. This device will allow MacBook users to stream live video directly to their disks, and make the lives of videographers much easier, enabling them to perform most of their work in the field. The ExpressCard Adapter also features "hot-swap" compatibility, simplifying the chore of moving drives and arrays from the MacBook to any FirmTek equipped desktop system. While designed for the Apple, the new device is also compatible with ExpressCard equipped Windows machines.

The SeriTek eliminates the data "bottleneck" caused by the inherent limitations of the stock machine, such as the internal drive and USB ports. While this is wonderful for those who need to work with video files, they can be useful for almost anyone whose work requires them to deal with huge amounts of data.

The SeriTek/2SM2-E ExpressCard will retail for around $120. Additional drive trays will be available for about $23.00 each.