ASUS has announced that they will be offering some new luxury computing options this holiday season with a new model in the leather-bound notebook series and a limited pink edition.

The new W6 Leather Collection has a 13.3-inch widescreen and comes with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors. The smaller S6 series, originally released in May, sports an 11.1″ screen and is now available in pink leather to match your pink RAZR.

Both notebooks come in Camel or Brown and are certain to make a fashion statement with the luxury computing set.

Press Release [ASUS]

Apple has just announced the release of it’s new line of Macbooks with the Intel Core 2 Duo Processors, giving the new versions up to 25% faster processing speeds than previous versions. To keep up with the faster processing, the new notebooks will also feature double the memory offering up to 2 GB and more storage than previous models making hard drives of up to 200 GB available for the heavy hauler.

The 64-bit processor architecture of the Intel Core 2 Duo allows it to handle data and process more decisions double time (64 bits versus 32 bits), giving the Macbook more processing power. Apple states that this additional processing speed equates to 6 times the performance over the iBook and 12-inch PowerBook. The Apple web site boasts the performance enhancement with the Core 2 Due by showing examples demonstrating a …

The feather-light LIFEBOOK P1610 Notebook may just be the perfect companion for the weary road-warrior looking to trade in their old clunky, heavy laptop for a newer, lighter model. The P1610 sports an innovative bi-directional hinge, and indoor/outdoor touch screen display making it a versatile, fully featured powerful notebook and an ultra light convertible Tablet PC in one unit.

Ultra light and weighing less than 1kg, the LIFEBOOK P1610 notebook offers the power and convenience of a notebook with the versatility to handle those unique applications that are best suited for a tablet PC. Rotate the 8.9 inch TFT display (1280 x 768) 360° to share your great ideas or flip it over to convert your notebook into a tablet PC and enjoy the full advantages of pen functionality. Other features of the P1610 incude:

The P1610 utilizes the latest Intel Core Solo …

If you are looking for the lightest notebook around, your search can probably end here with the Sony VAIO G. At just under 2 lbs, less than 11 inches wide and only 1 inch thick this thing is pretty small.

Although you are not going to have the fastest notebook on the planet, the feature set is really not too bad and lends the VAIO G to being fairly affordable at around $1800 USD (only available in Japan starting in December). This small laptop from Sony sports a 12.1 inch screen with resolution up to 1024×768 running from a 945GMS Express graphics card. You can get either a Core Solo or Celeron processor at 1.06GHz or 1.2 GHz, 1.5GB of memory and an optional 80GB hard drive.

The VAIO G from Sony supports wireless connectivity through 802.11 a/b/g WiFi and Bluetooth, …

Not long after Seagate announced its disc level security encryption, Hitachi was right behind them unveiling new 2.5 inch notebook drives for 2007 that have greater capacities, require less power due to flash memory utilization, and have encryption security right on the disk.

The encryption, similar to what is being done with disk level encryption by Seagate, happens right on the disk which allows it to be “bound” with a device and helps avoid having data stolen or lost since it encrypted at the disk level and doesn’t need an application to implement it.

Hitachi is also increasing the total drive capacity on their notebook hard drives starting in 2007. The company will be coming out with increased capacities of 200GB and 250GB for the 2.5″ drives. By the end of 2007 Hitachi says they could be looking at creating notebook drives with …

Everex Systems, a maker of PC’s and notebooks, along with Via Technologies, who also has the world’s first carbon free processor, have together unveiled the energy-efficient StepNote NC1500 notebook.

The StepNote NC1500 comes with a 15.4-inch wide-screen display, built-in wireless LAN, a DVD burner, and contains the Via C7-M processor from Via Technologies to provide ultra-low power consumption, advanced security features, and does all this at a performance of 1.5GHz using only 12W peak power.

According to the two companies, the StepNote NC1500′s utilization of Via’s Enhanced PowerSaver technology along with its TwinTurbo allow the laptop to automatically transition between different power states, providing a 2battery life that can be up to 20 percent longer than other comparable systems. This combined commitment between these two companies was done to provide a more energy-efficient, environmentally friendly notebook. By using less electricity, the NC1500 …

After some time of speculation, Apple announced today that its entire line of MacBook Pro laptops would now include faster Intel Core 2 Duo processors with 4MB of shared L2 cache, as well as double the memory and larger hard drives. Apple states that this increase in processing power will make the Macbook up to 39 percent faster than it’s previous generation 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro and more than 7 times faster than the 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Marketing was quoted saying “We are thrilled that our notebook sales are growing twice as fast as the overall notebook market, and we hope these new MacBook Pro models continue that success”.

The new MacBook Pro’s are coming out in three differnt models:

15-inch model with a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo and 1GB of RAM
15-inch model with a 2.33GHz …

Since I lug my laptop with me pretty much everywhere I go, I like to my portables lightweight and rugged. Weighing in at a nearly imperceptible 2.8lbs, the Snow Leopard by CompAmerica is a great solution for those road warriors like me who need a super-lightweight laptop.

The Snow Leopard features Ultra Low Voltage, Ultra Long Battery Life, Intel Core Solo CPU, Intel Centrino Mobile Technology, 12″ WXGA LCD Active Matrix Display, 4-IN-1 Flash Memory Reader, Built-In Fingerprint Reader, Intel® Pro/Wireless Lan, and Optional Bluetooth.

The case is an ultra light and ultra durable magnesium alloy which will standup on all those bumps along the road.

The Snow Leopard is available now with a starting price of $1399.

Snow Leopard [CompAmerica]

Toshiba has announced the first HD DVD drive that can read and write HD DVD’s, regular DVD’s and CD’s and is a slim design to fit into a notebook computer.The SD-L902A is only 12.7 mm high so that it it fits into the slim space necessary for laptop computers and other devices that conform to the cramped space.

With the increasing demand for HD media and sales of high definition televisions and HD camcorders, the need for the ability to write and edit this type of HD media at home and with a more mobile PC such as a notebook is a natural progression. The new SD-L902A HD DVD drive is going to be demonstrated at the CEATEC conference in Japan the first week of October. If you happen to be there, they are at booth 1A09.

Some specs for the HD DVD …

The sleek Acer Ferrari line of products is about to welcome a newer, faster member to the team. The new Ferrari 1005WTMi is an ultra-compact notebook that features sleek ergonomics, exquisite detailing, and sports the trademark Ferrari colors.

The Ferrari 1005WTMi notebook draws its horsepower from an AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 processor with the ATI XPRESS 1150 Chipset. Some of the other key features include:

12.1″ WXGA high-brightness Acer CrystalBriteâ„¢ TFT LCD
2048MB DDR2 667 MHz RAM Memory
160GB SATA Hard Disc Drive
ATI Radeon® Xpress 1150 integrated 3D graphics, with up to 512 MB of HyperMemory™ (256 MB of dedicated memory, up to 256 MB of shared memory)
External IEEE 1394 bus-powered 8X slot-load DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive
5-in-1 Card Reader
Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi CERTIFIEDâ„¢ Solution
56K ITU V.92 modem with PTT approval, Wake-on-Ring ready
Bluetooth® 2.0+EDR, 1.3MP Acer OrbiCam™, Acer Bluetooth® VoIP phone
Wireless Bluetoothâ„¢ Optical …

Intel’s latest processor for notebooks, the Core 2 Duo which was previously code named “Merom”, has started shipping in with the leading notebook manufacturers including Dell, HP, Gateway and Apple with the MacBook Pro. This new processor promises 20% more processing speed than the previous Core Duo. So, basically this means that the your notebook battery lasts just as long and your legs won’t melt any faster.

The Core 2 Duo processor can achieve such great speeds because it has 2 processing cores that allow it to do multiple tasks simultaneously. This might make things a little tougher for AMD’s Turon.