Today Dell announced the release of the new Inspiron 1525 notebook which features a smaller design and a number of personalization options in colors, patterns and hardware. The new 15.4″ 1525 notebooks come in an array of 8 stand-out colors like Midnight Blue and Ruby Red, and also can come in 4 different color patterns of Blossom, Chill, Commotion and Street as pictured above.

Not only has Dell dressed up these new notebooks with colors, but they’ve also made them 25 percent smaller, thinner and half a pound lighter than their previous model. After picking out what fancy color and pattern you want on the 1525, you can then choose from hardware options including a 2.0 megapixel webcam and dual microphones built-in above the display, noise isolation headphones, Travel Remote and a high-res widescreen display.

The new Inspiron 1525 …

Lenovo is stepping into the consumer PC market with a pre-CES announcement yesterday about its new line of “Idea” notebook and desktop PCs. These models will consist of a variety of consumer-oriented IdeaPad notebooks and IdeaCentre desktops. You can expect to see some of these models hitting retail outlets in the next few months.

Lenovo seems to be coming out of the gate first with its IdeaPad notebooks. Three models will initially fill in this line up – the 17-inch widescreen IdeaPad Y710, the 15.4-inch widescreen IdeaPad Y510 and the ultraportable 11-inch widescreen ideaPad U110. Features which will be integrated across the line, according to Lenovo, include face recognition for logging into the notebook, enhanced multimedia experiences and a “distinctive look and design.”

Motorola is bringing to CES its usual portfolio of intriguing devices. One of the most intriguing is its new Motorola Mobile TV DH01, a portable media player style device which acts like a DVR for letting you view and record live television on the go.

The Motorola Mobile TV DH01 is a lightweight, pocket sized PMP, according to Motorola. It works off of a non-proprietary system and supports the DVBH broadcasting standard. Sporting a 4.3-inch display, the DH01 lets you view live television where signal reception is possible. DVR functionality allows you to record television to an inserted SD/MMC memory card. Motorola says you can fit 90 minutes of television video on a 256MB card.

Hitachi is upping the stakes in notebook hard drive storage sizes as CES approaches by unveiling today the world’s highest capacity 2.5-inch mobile hard drive. Expect to see the new 500GB Travelstar 5K500 showing up in laptops sometime in February.

The Hitachi Travelstar 5K500, which will also be available in a slightly smaller 400GB model, is the company’s fourth generation mobile drive to use perpendicular magnetic recording technology. In exact storage terms you can fit on the 500GB drive up to 500 hours of digital video, 178 feature length movies, 250 games or 125,000 four-minute songs. These drives will be available with a 3.0Gb/s Serial ATA (SATA) interface and will include vibration protection technology against bumps which might impact system performance.

Brother has a new label-printing product hitting CES this year that packs some impressive features into a small package. This Brother QL-570, designed with the small business in mind, connects to your PC or Mac via USB and has included software to make label printing relatively easy and actually pretty fast.

The software has a few print modes ranging from basically taking a screen shot to highlighting and printing or actually creating high quality labels. It supports up to 300 x 600 dpi resolution and can print out logos or graphics making professional looking labels for your letters, products or anything else you might get label-happy with. The only nice feature about this label printer aside from it’s reasonable $100 price tag is the speed. It can push out simple text-only labels faster than 1 per second at a rate of 68 per minute.

A USB microscope is only one of the cool new science gadgets that Celestron is showcasing at this years CES 2008 conference. The company is also going to be showing off this LCD Digital Microscope (LDM) that’s targeted for everyday science enthusiasts and features a built-in, high-resolution 3.5″ LCD screen to view your various microscopic items.

The LDM has multiple magnification levels including 4x, 10x, and 40x, and a 4x digital zoom giving it the ability to view things up to 1600 times their actual size. With this microscope, squinting through an eyepiece to share with others is just not necessary due to that handy color LCD screen.

At some point you should probably upgrade that ratty old home media room recliner you have to something a little more sleek, modern and comfortable. Salamander Designs is showcasing one such new piece of furniture at CES – the Olivia.

The Olivia, which did not have pricing information available, can be customized in a variety of ways, according to its maker. It sports a seating surface measuring 23.5 inches wide and needs just three inches of clearance behind it to recline. It features both a standard manual recline mechanism, and a powered mechanism controlled by a switch in the arm. A hidden footrest automatically extends as the seat reclines.

Lyngdorf Audio is showcasing at the Consumer Electronics Show two new home theater components for those looking for more edgy gear. This items are the TDA-2300 digital integrated amplifier and D-1 home theater processor.

The Lyngdorf D-1 is a home theater processor which will price at around $17,000. This high end home theater component is a multi-channel unit which is all digital, meaning there are no analog to digital or D/A conversion processes which occur. Its maker says this provides for “an unbroken digital signal path of the very highest quality all the way from the source to the speaker terminals.” It also includes a room correction system to help remove “any room-related distortion and coloration of the sound.”

Celestron is bringing a number of cool new viewing products to CES. One grabbing our eye the most is a new USB microscope which is handheld. It’s called the Handheld Digital Microscope and it prices at around $140.

The Celestron Handheld Digital Microscope connects to a host computer through USB and can be used to view and capture images (snapshots or video) at 20 to 400 times magnification power. It weighs around three ounces and is designed with a digital camera and LED illuminator.

Microvision, a light-scanning technology developer, is bringing to CES to showcase an advanced prototype of “the first handheld, battery-powered, plug-and-play projector based on the company’s single micro-mirror laser scanning display technology.” The company is calling this new pico projector for now the Show.

The Microvision Show is powered by the company’s proprietary “ultra-miniature PicoP display engine.” This technology will, according to Microvision, let you project a widescreen, WVGA (848 X 480 pixels), DVD quality image from the projector in a range anywhere from 12 inches (30 cm) to 100 inches (2.5 m) in size depending upon the projection distance.

The beginning of a new year signals the event most consumer electronics geeks have been waiting for: the Consumer Electronics Show. We’re planning on putting a lot of coverage on this exciting event, including the creation of a category from which you can get the latest news on product announcements. We kick off this category with pre-show announcements – the first of which is a new USB flash drive from SanDisk which will offer automatic online backup of its data.

The SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus, priced at around $60, will offer an online backup service compatible with Windows and free for six months before having you incur a $30 a year charge. The 4GB USB flash drive will, after having new files copied to it, automatically back them up to an online account created by the user. An Internet connection is required of course and if one is not available the drive will wait until it detects a live connection through its host computer before backing up new files.