Hewlett-Packard has now officially released the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC, 8.9-inch ultraportable laptop. It’s priced at around $500, and the Asus Eee-PC competitor comes packed with a VIA C7-M ULV processor (in 1GHz to 1.6GHz), Chrome 9 integrated graphics, and it supports up to 2GB of DDR2 667MHz main memory. Some other features include a 8.9″ 1280 x 768 LCD display, and up to 160GB of hard drive storage. How about an optional 64GB solid-state drive or 4GB Flash drive, optional web camera, built-in stereo speakers and microphones, Broadcom 802.11a/b/g or b/g wireless module, optional Bluetooth 2.0, a Gigabit Ethernet connection, two USB ports, an ExpressCard slot, Secure Digital (SD) slot, and VGA output.

It also sports a 92% full-sized keyboard, accompanied by a touchpad with scroll zone. The battery provides just over 2 hours of juice with the standard 3-cell battery, and 4 hours with the 6-cell extended life battery.

Sony is launching it’s BDZ series of Blu-ray recorders, with the A70 and high-end T90 that are capable of picking up unprotected HDTV feeds, relying on AVC (H.264) encoding in order to record shows for future viewing on their 320GB and 500GB hard drives. If you like, you can record videos straight to Blu-ray, and it can also convert videos directly to portable formats, which is really handy.

Some other features include both analog and digital TV tuners, Sony’s Room Link, HDMI output, S-Video, and RCA. Both models will ship on April 30th in Japan. The prices start from $1,664 upwards. No info yet on whether we will see these in the US.

The idea of putting notebook computers into the hands of kids around the world to allow them to improve their education is a noble thought. The field was pioneered by the OLPC with its XO Notebook and an early partner with the OLPC was Intel.

Once Intel caught a glimpse of what the market could be for ultra low cost notebooks it entered the fray with its own low cost notebook called the Classmate. Intel announced today that it has the second generation Classmate ready for use around the world.

Buffalo Technology has unveiled a new media streaming device for home networks which lets you playback video in HD. It is called the LinkTheater HD Digital Media Player (LT-H90LAN) and it will cost you around $200.

The LinkTheater HD Digital Media Player (LT-H90LAN) from Buffalo is designed to stream content from a Mac or Windows computer, NAS unit, USB hard drive or DLNA media server to playback on your living room TV or stereo system. It supports a variety of media formats, including Windows Media DRM10 for playback of copy-protected material, and can output at 1080i maximum.

Toshiba thinks it is time to drive the price of 17-inch desktop replacement laptops down as it today unveiled a new model starting at around $750. The series is called the Satellite L350.

The Toshiba Satellite L350 sports a 17.1-inch WXGA+ “TruBrite” LCD display and AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core processors. Possible features, depending upon configuration, might also include ATI Radeon X1250 graphics memory and a DVD SuperMulti drive with Labelflash. Labelflash lets you burn images and labels directly to a special DVD-R disc.

Swann Communications has been putting out security peripherals for about ten years now and on Thursday announced the release of their latest surveillance convenience tool with the USB 2.0 DVR Guardian. This device can connect to a standard notebook computer via USB and allow it to perform as a quad-monitor surveillance system.

The Guardian can not only monitor and display the video from 1-4 cameras, but can also be set to record from the inputs direct to the local hard drive. DVR-like capabilities allow you to set it to record at specific times of the day or for a set duration upon sensing any motion in its view. The software will then let you control and monitor remotely. Combine this with its ability to send out an email when motion is detected and you can catch would-be thieves in the act.

Since I have two young kids I tend to take lots of digital pictures. For the most part the pictures sit around on my memory card until it gets full and I copy them to a folder on my hard drive. Recently I have started getting digital photo frames and actually displaying the digital photos that usually just sit there and do nothing.

Kodak introduced a couple new digital picture frames today called the M820 and the M1020. The M820 is an 8-inch frame and the M1020 is a 10-inch frame. Both share the same features including 16:9 aspect ratio, 128 MB of internal memory and built-in speakers to play MP3 tunes. Card readers are built-in that allow direct connecting of CF, SD, MMC, xD, and MS.

Sure SSD drives sound cool in theory with the promise of faster boot times and faster data access while being more shock resistant and dead silent. However, the high price of the typical SSD drive and the small storage space compared to typical normal hard drives makes the SSD pill hard to swallow for most.

Super Talent has announced a new SSD that it claims to be the world’s thinnest SSD drive. Sorry, but I hardly think making the drive thinner will get mortal geeks to pony up the extra loot. Since Super Talent is mostly looking at OEM suppliers for the drive, perhaps it will pop up in the next generation of super thin notebooks similar to the MacBook Air.

Western Digital (WD) today kicked out some new portable USB hard drives which look good and are easy to carry. They are known as the My Passport Elite Portable USB Drives and are available in two sizes: 250 GB (around $170) and 320 GB (around $200).

WD’s My Passport Elite drives connect to a USB port to transfer data back and forth and are also USB-bus powered, so they don’t need their own power supply. They sport a soft-touch finish, weigh less than five ounces and come in multiple colors.

MSI has bumped up the feature set on its GX600 gaming laptop to create a more powerful computing platform. This new laptop is known as the MSI GX600-Enhanced.

The MSI GX600-Enhanced now features Intel 45nm processing technology, 3GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. It also sports the latest NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 3D graphic chipset, Windows Vista Home Premium, and a 15.4-inch WXGA+ display.

A notebook hard drive sporting 320GB isn’t a new capacity and there are larger notebook drives available right now. However, what is interesting about the new 320GB Fujitsu MHZ2 BJ series notebook drive is that it spins at 7200 RPM.

Typically when a notebook hard drive gets into higher capacities it has to slow down to 5400 RPM or even less for some drives. Not so with the new Fujitsu drive, it gets to spin at full speed. Fujitsu says that the drive has an average latency time of 4.17ms and has a read seek time of 10.5ms and a write seek time of 12ms.

Advantech isn’t exactly known for consumer related computers. While we don’t think this new Tablet PC fits the bill either, the recently released Mars-3100S seems to still be pretty cool none the less.

The Advantech Mars-3100S sports a 10.4-inch touchscreen display and is ready to go with Windows XP. It is targeted towards more rugged uses in environments like field and emergency services. It also offers optional built-in WLAN and Bluetooth for wireless connectivity.

Mitsubishi just launched two new Blu-ray recorders set for Japan with the DVR-BZ200 and the DVR-BZ100. The two recorders each house an internal HDD with 500GB and 250GB capacities, respectively.

The part that really makes these Blu-ray records most notable is that they can record HD content onto a regular DVD disc with Blu-ray’s AVCREC specs. You can fit around a couple of hours of Full HD MPEG video onto a standard 4.7GB DVD, and set it to record using the super-cool, included touch screen remote control.

A niche computer maker by the name of Vology is claiming today the mantle of the world’s fastest gaming laptop. While we have yet to verify that, you can at least learn a little more about the Vology Limited Edition Predator X-2 and its $4,600 price tag.

The Vology Limited Edition Predator X-2, according to Vology, is outfitted with “an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz, nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX 512MB DDR3, and 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz.” It includes as well a full size keyboard with personalized hot keys and a 17-inch monitor.

Buffalo Technology has upped the capacity of its MiniStation TurboUSB external hard drives. The new Buffalo Technology 500GB MiniStation TurboUSB is priced at around $330.

The Buffalo Technology 500GB MiniStation TurboUSB is, like most other external hard drives these days, USB 2.0 compliant. It works with both PCs and Macs and reportedly offers up to 30 percent faster data transfer rates than other similar products because of built-in technology. It sports as well a shock resistant design to protect the drive from bumps.