Gateway, a recent subsidiary of Acer, felt they had done so well with the the colorful notebooks that they had released last fall that today they are announcing some more colors for the M-Series and T-Series lineup of PC notebooks. The M Series has the larger display of the two with 15.4-inches and previously came in Garnet Red and Pacific Blue. Today Gateway adds Merlot and Silver to the colors along with a design called Arctic Bloom.

The T-Series has a 14.1-inch display and will be limited to two additional colors getting the new turquoise Arctic Bloom design along with Silver. Gateway uses what they call an InFuse process to get the notebooks to show a high-gloss, stylish metallic finish and add some personality to your portable PC.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has announced they are launching OLPC America and will be offering Nicholas Negroponte’s “$100 laptop” to needy students here in the United States. Negroponte stated the reasoning for launching the laptops, which were originally intended for children in developing nations, in the U.S. is party due to building “critical mass” and getting some more momentum and production volume going. He also said the goal was to proved education for U.S. children, communication with kids in other countries. “To have the United Sates be the only country that’s not in the OLPC agenda would be kind of ridiculous,” Negroponte said.

The OLPC has been in the news quite a bit over this past year. The original goal was to provide a $100 laptop for children in poor, developing countries, helping their education, communication and understanding of current technologies. The program has met a number of “bumps” along the way, mostly with the production numbers. In order to obtain a $100 price tag Negroponte needed to have large orders of the XO laptop, targeting the governments of many developing countries. To date the orders from these countries have been limited and have kept the price well above the $100 mark. The OLPC has also be working with partners such as Microsoft with rumors of a dual-boot system that would be able to run Windows which has not yet come to fruition. They also had partnered with Intel on development of the XO, in which Intel has recently withdrawn.

If you were on Alienware’s newsletter list you might have gotten notice last night that the company has quietly made the new m15x gaming notebooks available for order. The new Area-51′s come have a few configurations in the lineup with the tow higher-end ones available now for $2099 and $2699.

The m15x is a 15.4-inch widescreen notebook with the Intel Core 2 Extreme processor and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800m GTX. You can get up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, dual HDD and high-def video and audio. They also feature Command Center and a Stealth Mode power management. There is also a $1499 model that is listed on the site but not available for order quite yet. As NotebookReview points out, the $2100 model looks to be a pretty decent deal with the Core 2 Duo processor, quality graphics card, fast HDD and 2GB of memory.

A product announcement has surfaced which doesn’t look related to CES – how interesting. This is from a company called Electrovaya and it is unveilng the Scribbler SC4000. It’s a new Windows Tablet PC which comes Windows Vista pre-installed.

The Electrovaya Scribbler SC4000 is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and sports a 12.1-inch press sensitive touchscreen. It is powered by a Lithium Ion battery, weighs around 3.3 pounds and measures less than 1 inch thick.

The Aspire 7720-6844 notebook includes amazing system performance and responsiveness. Features via Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processor technology, a 250 GB hard disk drive and an integrated Super-Multi drive. Comes with Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium operating system and has an eight-cell lithium ion battery for hours of reliable computing power.

The Aspire 7720-6844 notebook PC sports a nice glossy 17-inch widescreen display with CrystalBrite technology for a superior contrast ratio and intense color features. For added high-definition enjoyment, it’s equipped with Dolby Home Theater, for surround sound. You also get video conference functionality via an integrated Acer Crystal Eye webcam.

Hewlett Packard is showing off at CES this week several new consumer focused laptops as it reveals its 2008 product line up. One of these is the HP Pavilion HDX series Entertainment Notebook PC, priced at around $2,000 or so, depending upon configuration.

The HP Pavilion HDX series Entertainment Notebook PC offers 512 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS video graphics and the latest Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo processor technologies. You can outfit this laptop with Blu-ray and HD DVD playback and enjoy HD video on the notebook’s 20.1-inch diagonal WUXGA XHD Ultra Brightview display.

Fujitsu has unveiled at CES one sexy looking ultra portable notebook PC for the on the go ground. The new Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 is set to price at around $1,700.

The Fujitsu LifeBook P8010 sports a 12.1-inch LED widescreen display housed in a glossy black cover. Under the hood you’ll find a typical Intel Core 2 Duo processor, dual layer multi-format DVD-RW and integrated Intel PRO/Wireless Network Connection wireless LAN with dual diversity antennas. The P8010 is small, with overall dimensions of 11.2 inches x 8.26 inches x 1.37 inches.

MSI is showcasing a number of new and recently released laptops at the Consumer Electronics Show. One of the most colorful in our opinion is the new MSI PR200 YA Edition series.

The MSI PR200 YA Edition series is available in four skin color choices. It sports a 12.1-inch display and is equipped with fingerprint reader technology for advanced security. It’s also HDMI ready and runs off of a Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

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.”

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.

Acer America today added a new notebook PC to its lineup which focuses on the needs of business professionals. The Acer Extensa 4620 prices at around $700 starting.

The Acer Extensa 4620 is available in two configurations and sports a 14.1-inch monitor. It includes Microsoft Windows XP Professional (Windows Vista capable), Intel Centrino Duo or Pentium Dual-Core Processor technology, a hard disk drive of up to 120 GB and an integrated Super-Multi drive, depending upon the configuration.

NEC introduced recently some very secure laptops designed to meet the security needs of small and medium sized businesses. The Versa M370, P570 and S970 should all be available now.

NEC’s new laptops go triple play for security protection – a hardware based security chip, encrypting disk drive and client management software. Specific security technologies include a Seagate 2.5-inch, 5400-rpm hard drive with native government-grade AES encryption and software which focuses on multi-factor authentication, data protection and ID/password management.

Alliance or Horde? That’s the question Dell and Bizzard Entertainment are asking you to consider as you choose which new World of Warcraft themed gaming laptop you want. The new Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition notebook PC has a starting price of around $4,500.

The XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition notebook PC seems to be fully geared towards the World of Warcraft diehards. You can pick from one of two laptops emblazoned with the Alliance or Horde logos in addition to other WoW artwork. The computers in this line can be outfitted with an pptional over-clockable Intel Extreme Edition Core 2 Duo processor, up to 3.4GHz as well as NVIDIA SLI graphics power and 512MB of dedicated video RAM with DirectX 10 support. The M1730′s monitor is 17-inches of high definition viewing fun.

MSI, which not too long ago came out with what it called a “turbo” overclocked gaming laptop, is back in laptop news again today with a new notebook dressed up for a night out on the town. The MSI PR200 Crystal Laptop looks to be available now.

The MSI PR200 Crystal Laptop sports a a 120 crystal-studded rim adorning the lid and a “pearl white” sheen body color, designed to capture what MSI calls “luxury and elegance.” On-board tech features include an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 12.1-inch display, 160GB SATA hard drive and HDMI output. It also offers built-in Bluetooth and 802.11 wireless technology.