Worldwide computer manufacturer ASUS was showcasing last week a new laptop which more on the rugged side in terms of durability. It is known as the ASUS B51 and no pricing or availability information is known of as yet.

The ASUS B51 sports a lightweight magnesium alloy chassis which is buffered by rubber bumpers along its edges. The B51’s hard drive is “floated on a sponge protection system.”

SimTech Systems, developers of the MindMapper creativity and personal productivity software, have taken MindMapper portable. It is know available as the MindMapper 2008 USB Edition, priced at around $150.

The MindMapper 2008 USB Edition comes in the form of software installed on a 4GB USB flash drive. It automatically starts up when you plug in the drive, eliminating the need to install the software on your PC.

The concept behind all-in-one PCs is interesting to me. You cram everything a PC needs inside the LCD case and save space on the floor and make things more attractive overall. The downside of an all-in-one design is that they tend to offer less performance than can be had on traditional computers and they tend to cost more than similar standard computers.

Today Averatec announced its first all-in-one computer and it is simply called the Averatec All-In-One. The computer has a 22-inch display and inside the display case is crammed 2GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, built-in HDTV tuner and more. The computer is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 CPU and uses a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 8400 for graphics.

For many students around the country summer vacation has just started. The cold, hard reality of it is that back to school is just around the corner. To help make back to school a bit more tolerable Gateway is announcing new desktop and notebook computers.

Gateway is offering multiple new models of desktop and notebook systems that will retail from $549.99 to $1149.99. The three lines of Gateway notebooks; the P-Series, M-Series, and T-series are all offering new configurations. One new configuration in the M-series is the M-6848 featuring a Core 2 Duo T5750, 4GB of RAM and more for $799.99.

Toshiba this week announced it had updated select models of its Satellite laptops with new processor technology and other features. These models include the Satellite P300, Satellite A300, Satellite M300 and Satellite U400.

These updated Toshiba Satellite laptops feature Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo processor technology in addition to other enhancements such as “sleep-and-charge” USB ports and face recognition. You can get the full details via a Toshiba press release after the jump.

AMD is going all high-def with a new PC graphics card attached to the ATI brand. It is called the ATI All-In-Wonder HD and you’ll find the price of it set around $200.

The ATI All-In-Wonder HD combines Radeon graphics and Wonder HD tuner technology into one PCI Express 2.0 card. Key features of this new card include HDTV DVR functionality, unified video decoder technology and Windows Vista certification.

Panasonic is rolling out a new rugged UMPC which is the first to integrate Intel’s Atom low power processor. It is called the Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1 and you’ll find it pricing around $2,500.

The Panasonic Toughbook CF-U1 is, like other PCs of its type, designed to be used in the field under a variety of harsh conditions. It sports the aforementioned Intel Atom processor, Windows Vista, a 5.6-inch WSVGA sunlight viewable touchscreen and a 16GB solid state removable drive which can be upgraded to 32GB.

Ahh, USB flash drives, how small can you go? Imation is jumping into the tiny is better USB drive category with its new Imation Atom Flash Drive, priced between around $18 to $100, depending upon storage capacity.

The Imation Atom Flash Drive is tiny, measuring less that 1.5-inches long and .5-inches wide. Weight is around less than an ounce. Storage options on this small drive include 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB.

There are lots of uses for projectors from home entertainment to business and class room use. Different projectors have different uses and prices can go from the low $600 range up to tens of thousands of dollars.

NEC has announced a pair of reasonably price projectors aimed at the business and education installation markets. The projectors are the NP905 and NP901W with 3000 lumens and 2000 lumens respectively of brightness. Both projectors also use Windows Network Projector functionality from Windows Vista.

Toshiba said with pride today it is launching the world’s first laptop with a 128GB solid state drive. It is called the Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V and you’ll find it pricing around $3,000.

The Toshiba Portégé R500-S5007V, besides sporting a 128GB solid state drive, also comes equipped with a DVD SuperMulti drive. These two small form factor build-ins allow this laptop to be 0.77-inches thin and around 2.4 pounds. The R500-s5007V’s screen is a 12.1-inch backlit widescreen with transreflective LED.

Creative is out today with word of the availability of a new sound card which is very gamer focused. It is called the Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series and it will price, long name included, for around $150.

The Creative PCI Express Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional sound card is the “official” sound card of the Championship Gaming Series. Beyond that, you’ll find this card pretty ready to smoke your PC audio gaming experience with its PCI Express optimization, hardware-driven 3D positional audio and EAX 5.0 effects.

German manufacturer Singulum, has some new luxury notebooks with cases made of high quality wood. The sort of high-end wood that you would normally find on violins. They’re available with ivory and 24 carat solid gold keyboards. The whole Richie Rich luxury design is nice sure, but they also have some advanced tech specs like a core 2 duo processor, Windows Vista, Ehternet, DVD recordable (dual layer) with a 15.4inch screen.

It’s all hand made from one block of wood, and every piece is apparently processed with a special production tool, making each notebook unique. I don’t know. I think the violin probably looks better in this particular wood. But if you have money to blow and really need to show off, you don’t care what I think, so go ahead and buy your tacky overpriced notebook.

Asus has debuted what it is calling the world’s smallest PC equipped with a built-in independent graphics card. It is called the Asus Mini PC Nova Lite PX24 and there is no pricing or availability information as of yet.

The Asus Mini PC Nova Lite PX24 measures 242- x 184- x 51mm and weighs around 1.5kg. It runs Windows Vista and is capable of 1080p output via HDMI and its built-in ATI RV620 display card. Processing power is handled by an Intel Celeron 220 and this mini computer has 2GB of on-board RAM.

Some strange things are happening on this planet. Are we being visited by a superior intelligence? How can one possibly explain the mysterious images that have appeared recently? First there was the Firefox logo spotted in deep space. Then things started to hit closer to home. This ominous design appeared out of nowhere recently. Now we have the latest message pictured above. What does it all mean? My theory is that it’s an intelligence test sent by beings who are far superior to us.

Think about it. All intelligent creatures love Space Invaders, just as any intelligent creature would use Firefox over IE. I think we are safe as long as some drunk idiot in a field doesn’t send them a response by way of a Windows Vista logo. If that happens, we can kiss our gadget-lovin behinds goodbye.

SSDs promise to give computer users faster data access, faster boot times, better power consumption and more. The catch is that to get all the benefits of a SSD you have to be willing to spend lots more money compared to a traditional HDD and give up significantly on storage space.

Super Talent has a new video of a demonstration it did to show exactly how well its SSD is able to stand up to vibration. One of the MasterDrive 120GB SSDs that retails for about $670 was strapped to a paint shaker and shook around like crazy.