3K Computers has announced a new laptop computer the company considers to fit in the UMPC mold. It is priced starting at around $400 and is known as the Longitude 400 Mini Notebook UMPC.

The 3K Longitude 400 weighs under two pounds and sports a seven-inch display. It runs off of a 400 MHz 32-bit single core mobile processor, 512 MB of DDR2 RAM and a 4GB solid state drive for file storage. The operating system is Linux based as well.

Dr. Stuart Parkin and colleagues at IBM have recently published a paper in Science introducing a new type of storage technology dubbed ‘racetrack memory’.

The memory uses something called spintronics which uses the storage of bits generated by the magnetic spin of electrons rather than their charge to identify each as “on” or “off”. This new storage solution offers some advantages over the most popular current options. It’s faster than traditional hard disk drives and has a lower failure rate since there are no moving parts.

When we heard news that Sony and Konami where launching a Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3 in Japan we of course wanted one but new that this was probably one of those cool, Japan-only things that we would never actually see here in the U.S. But, as it turns out Sony is going to be launching this gun metal colored PS3 console in the United States.

Unfortunately it sounds like this release will be a very limited edition in the U.S., so we probably still won’t get our hands on one but at least now there’s a better chance. The MGS4 PS3 along with its matching DualShock 3 controller has a U.S. launch date of June 12 and will come bundled with the game and the standard 80GB PS3.

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.

Dell is putting its own spin on the rugged laptop design as the top tier computer manufacturer today unveiled its first fully ruggedized notebook computer. It is called the Dell Latitude XFR D630 and pricing starts at around $3,900.

The Dell Latitude XFR D630 is designed to meet military standards in areas of extreme temperatures, moisture and altitudes. It has many common components found in Dell’s regular Latitude laptops while also offering “a patent-pending thermal management system” to deliver better graphics performance.

Rugged Tablet PC developer MobileDemand unveiled today its latest Tablet PC designed for harsher environments. It is called the MobileDemand xTablet T8700 and it retails starting at around $3,800.

The MobileDemand xTablet T8700, like other rugged Tablet PCs, is created in mind for professions like construction and delivery. It offers up “military-rated” ruggedness and is capable of supporting Windows Vista. It can reportedly withstand temperatures of -4°F to +122°F, among other things.

When the lights flicker and the circuit breaker is ready to flip, you know someone in the house is gaming on their 3-way NVIDIA SLI enabled PC. You can help keep the power on though by getting them one of these new Corsair HX1000W power supplies, priced at around $280.

Lenovo this week rolled out an extremely thin notebook PC which is described as being lightweight and fully functional. The Lenovo ThinkPad X300 is priced at around $2,800 starting.

Samsung is trying to dispel some concerns consumers are having about using flash-based solid-state drives in their computers, saying they are more reliable that a lot of people think. Sure, having a 64GB SSD in your notebook at first sounds like a pretty good idea. Faster boot times, no moving parts to wear out, but then the price hits you. Adding that SSD can increase the overall price of the computer by as much as $900. Also, in terms of computing, a maximum 100,000 write cycles just doesn’t seem like that much.

Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Samsung, is assuring us that 100,000 write cycles is actually quite a bit. He states that the SSD can write 100,000 times to each and every memory cell, and the drive controller evens out the cells that get written to with “wear leveling”. As an example, Yang says that a 64GB SSD could be fully erased and filled again with data every hour and it would still last years before failing. He also said the failure would then likely come from the controller, not the memory cells. He also expects the price of SSDs to drop around 40 percent each year, making this alternative more affordable.

Larger capacity solid-state drives will be on their way soon from SanDisk. That’s because SanDisk and Toshiba are working together on a new 43-nanometer manufacturing process which will give us SSDs with the same capacity as those of today’s typical 2.5″ hard drives.

Flash memory is the natural replacement for hard drives in ultra-small notebooks like the MacBook Air and Asus Eee PC, because they use less power, generate less heat, and have faster access times than hard drives. The only downside is that as the Gbs go up the cost will get higher.

Business and education technology company Tangent has begun selling through computer manufacturer Asus a mini-notebook computer. It is called the Tangent ePC and pricing starts at around $300.

The Tangent ePC, which looks like it will sport the Asus logo on the cover, comes in a variety of colors and incorporates a seven-inch screen. Dimensions are on the small size, with the four models in this line up measuring 8.86- x 6.3 x 0.79-inches and weighing just over two pounds. These are not laptops designed for heavy business use but rather casual applications like Web browsing and word processing.

HP unveiled today a new energy efficient business focused desktop computer it says is the industry’s first to offer a solid state hard drive. It’s called the HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC and pricing begins at around $1,260.

The HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-slim Desktop PC features a solid state hard drive as part of its configuration options. This drive provides quicker access to data and has no moving parts, eliminating quick wear out. This desktop computer is also designed to meet EPAT Gold environmental requirements.

Puget Systems today announced the release of the Deluge, the companies most aggressive gaming rig to date. The systems can be highly customized but all of these liquid cooled systems feature some of the fastest and most powerful components available, including nVidia’s 780i triple-SLI, overclocked Intel 45nm Penryn processors and OCZ DDR2 heatpipe memory. Optional BigFoot Networks’ KillerNIC and MTron Solid State drives are also available.

Puget’s goal was to create an intense gaming system that did not require gamers to pay through the nose to get own, and the system they’ve come up with looks pretty good. The company is offering three different Deluge-i systems to start from with pricing starting at around $2600 and with options can extend to well over $10k. All can be tailored to your own specs but come standard with the following:

It looks like those MacBook Air rumors were really not too far off. Today Steve Jobs announced the latest addition to the MacBook lineup at MacWorld in San Francisco, touting it as the thinnest notebook in the world. The MacBook Air measures a mere 0.16 inches at its thinnest point, and it only gets as thick as 0.76 inches at the hinged end.

The Air Mac will start shipping in about two weeks with a retail price of $1,799, and comes with the following features:

According to a press release, BiTMICRO will be amazing some people for sure, with their new 2.5-inch solid-state drive with an amazing 832GB of NAND flash. The 3Gb SATA drive is a new addition to their E-Disk Altima line, and uses a technology they are calling multi-level cell (or MLC) memory, which doubles the number of bits stored per memory cell when compared with single-level cell (SLC) NAND. Apparently this increases data density and allows them to keep the price low.

Looks like they will be shipping in the 3rd quarter of 2008. That’s when we should see capacities ranging from 32GB all the way up to 832GB.