Boston-Power isn’t really a household name at this point, but the company has some very cool battery tech that promises to make the battery in your laptop work for three times as long before you need to get a new battery. The average laptop battery starts to storage capacity in only a year, yet the Boston-Power Sonata battery promises to last for 3 years with full charge capacity.

I mentioned in December 2008 that HP would be the first computer maker to offer the Sonata batteries for sale. At the time, HP didn’t offer any pricing information for the upgraded battery packs.

Netbooks are one of the hottest items in the computer market right now. According to a recent report from Pricegrabber.com one in ten Internet users owns a netbook. Many users have found that a netbook provides the performance they need for normal computing tasks and is cheaper than many normal notebooks.

HP has one of the popular netbooks on the market called the HP Mini 1000. If you are in the market for a HP netbook, this may be the time to buy. The HP Mini 1000 model 1010NR is available at Staples with a coupon for $75 off.

HP intros the new all-in-one PC. The HP DX9000 is actually a business version of the HP TouchSmart IQ506 PC. The computer comes equipped with the HP Power Manager, an energy-savings tool that allows you to manage the energy used by computers, which sets it apart from it’s predecessor.

It also comes with HP Total Care Advisor, a diagnostic tool that may reduce IT requests and CarePack Services and aftermarket warranty.

HP unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show this week a new netbook PC for the on-the-go crowd. It is called the Mini 2140 and it starts pricing around $500.

The Mini 2140 is a 10.1-inch display PC built into a simple aluminum case and starting around 2.6 pounds. It sports a nearly full size QWERTY keyboard, runs off of an Intel Atom processor and has an option available to carry an 80GB solid state drive.

With all of the digital content in the average home today from digital photos to digital home movies shot with a camcorder there is lots of content that users want to watch and enjoy around the home. The catch is that the digital content is often stuck inside of one computer on the network with no easy method of accessing the content from elsewhere.

HP has introduced a pair of new home servers for Mac and PC users. The HP MediaSmart Server will be offered in two models including the ex485 and ex487. HP says that the server will automatically organize files across the network and stream media across the home network and the Internet.

It seems like every time I go to a party or an event where people are taking pictures more and more folks are taking pictures with their mobile phones. The iPhone is one of the most popular devices on the market and as such, many of these mobile phone photos are taken on the iPhone.

HP has announced a new app for the iPhone that is available now on the App Store for free. The app is called HP iPrint Photo and allows users to print images directly from their iPhone to Wi-Fi equipped HP printers.

The battery is one of the key points of improvement technology wise for a range of devices from electric cars to our notebooks and cell phones. As battery technology improves, we can get longer runtime from our gadgets and smaller, more attractive designs as batteries take up less space.

Boston-Power announced its Sonata battery technology a while back that promises to deliver like-new performance for up to three years and recharge much faster than comparable batteries available today. The biggest claim that has notebook user excited about Sonata batteries is that they can recharge to 80% of the full capacity in only 30 minutes.

HP has announced the TouchSmart tx2. The laptop will be able to distinguish between voluntary pinching with two fingers and any accidental input. You can also use the bundled stylus to enter data. The tx2’s 12.1-inch screen is fully multi-touched up, but not in the iPhone/iPod touch way. It uses capacitive touch, which enables more accurate input, also brushes and swipes and two-handed gestures. You can use two hands to crop photos for instance.

Some other features are: integrated digital TV tuner, dual core AMD Turion X2 processor and ATI Radeon 3200 graphics. The screen can be twisted and folded all the way around; converting the standard notebook into a tablet PC. With a digital pen you can make notes and your writing will be converted to editable text. The HP TouchSmart tx2 will be available in January 2009 for about $1,150.

This thing may look like an X-Man accessory or strange sci-fi gun that straps on your arm and sucks your precious lifeforce with every round it fires, but no, as cool as that would be, it’s just something UPS is using so they can get all label-free. It’s HP’s Handheld sp400 All-in-One, which scans barcodes and prints sorting info directly onto boxes with quick-drying ink. No paper labels are required at all. UPS has been testing it out at a shipping center in Orlando, where they reportedly used it on 40,000 boxes with not a single error. Of course there was that one guy they pants in order to tattoo his butt cheeks, but that doesn’t count.

This device alone will make the company much greener. It will replace several larger, less green pieces of equipment like a giant thermal printer, PC, monitor and scanner. According to UPS the company will save 92,456 hours, 1,338 tons of paper and 3,807 tons of carbon emissions a year. That’s pretty big.

The notebook market is booming right now despite the bad economy. Netbooks are one of the hottest sellers in the notebook category thanks to the typically lower selling price. The netbook has come a long way since Asus pioneered the genre with its Eee and today most PC makers have a netbook of their own.

One of the newest netbooks on the market comes from HP. HP announced today that it has added three new netbook models to its Mini 1000 line. The Mini 1000 weighs slightly more than two pounds and is less than one inch thick. Two screen sizes are now available including an 8.9-inch and a 10.2-inch LCD, The screen resolution is 1024 x 600 and uses LED backlighting.

HP has two new smartphones in their iPAQ range: the iPAQ DataMessenger and VoiceMessenger. The first handset runs on Windows Mobile 6.1, has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, 2.8 inch display, Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, Wi-Fi and HSDPA support, quad-band GSM, aGPS, a 3.1MP camera and microSD memory card slot. While the iPAQ VoiceMessenger has a smaller 2.4 inch display and a SureType keyboard. The VoiceMessenger and DataMessenger will cost you €399 and €499. Both will be released in November via Vodafone.

Best Buy, besides doing exclusive tie ins with Toshiba and Klipsch, also is showcasing today a new HP laptop, the dv3510nr. This offering, plus the Toshiba one, are part of the company’s new customer-feedback driven, exclusive Blue Label series of consumer electronics products.

The Blue Label line has Best Buy working with manufacturers to design products which “address the needs” of consumers. The CE retailer learned from its customers about laptops that they want “longer battery life, a thin and lightweight design, an illuminated keyboard, more optimal screen size and superior warranty support.”

HP has two new laptops, the Pavilion dv5t Special Edition and Pavilion dv4t Special Edition. Both have similar specs, there’s the 15.4″ dv5t and 14.1″ dv4t entertainment notebooks, but what stands out is the new finishes for those looking for something different. The fdv5t Special Edition sports a white chassis with what they are calling a “sophisticated leaf design symbolizing rejuvenation and growth”. The dv4t Special Edition comes in a midnight-blue color with an exclusive design that is inspired by waves. The Pavilion dv5t Special Edition and Pavilion DV4t Special Edition will cost you $949 and $1,099.

It seems like everyone is jumping into the gaming peripheral market today. Not so long ago the only two real players in the market were Logitech and Razer. Today Microsoft is back in a big way and a slew of small firms are offering up gamer specific devices.

HP is even getting in on the gaming peripheral market with the introduction of a pair of new gaming mice. HP claims its HDX Laser mouse and Laser Gaming Mouse with VodooDNA are designed for expert gamers. The mice offer adjustable sensitivity through five different levels.

Some say that the days of the familiar computer mouse are numbered and in the future navigation on computers will be done via touch screens or other input methods. Touch sensitive devices are coming in all sorts of electronic products today from PCs to cell phones and more.

HP announced a new line of touch screen PCs called the TouchSmart IQ800 series today. The system uses an all-in-one design with a 25.5-inch screen that allows users to control the system with a finger. The line of computers offers features like integrated Blu-ray players, color changing lighting that shines on the keyboard, and a HP MediaBay for extra storage.