Dell’s Studio 15 laptop is a decent and budget-minded system, but if you’re looking to get one that stands out a bit, you might want to check out the company’s new Special Edition model, which adds a “Black Vapor” paint job and a 1440 x 900 LED-backlit display.

You can get it with your choice of Pentium Dual Core or Core 2 Duo processors, up to 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics. The price is going to be a bit higher than the non-Special Edition models though, at $799, $849, and $949 for the standard configurations.

Discrete graphics cards in notebooks make more than playing games possible. This is why you see discrete graphics cards on notebooks that are not meant for gaming. A discrete GPU on a notebook also allows the decoding of HD video on the GPU freeing the CPU up so the entire system runs faster.

AMD has announced at CeBIT that it has the world’s first 40nm GPUs that are in its Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and 4830 lines. The GPUs support DirectX 10.1 games and offer HD multimedia capability. AMD says the GPUs are also optimized for long battery life.

Gateway has a full line of notebooks that come in all sizes. The company is also closely related to Acer, which has the most popular netbook on the market with its Aspire One. Last year Gateway launched a pair of new notebook lines called the MC and MD series. The difference was a scant 0.6-inches in screen size with the MC line using a 16-inch LCD and the MD using a 15.4-inch screen.

The MC and MD machines had the same chassis design and Gateway has launched a new notebook line called the TC series that uses the same chassis design with a smaller 14-inch screen. The notebook is low priced at $649.99. At a low price point, you can’t expect top-of-the-line hardware inside, but the TC should perform decently enough.

Notebooks don’t have to just flip open and be one half keyboard, one half display. Designer Patrick Dotimas developed a concept known as the Asus Stealth, a personal computer that functions as a laptop or a desktop based on its application.

The second half can be removed for a traditional desktop layout, or can fold out like a normal notebook. So it gives you the best of both worlds. It’s a great idea and the timing is right in the marketplace, so we hope to see this one surface as a reality real soon.

The idea behind this human powered laptop recharger is that you could get juice in the outdoors or in areas where you have no AC plugs. It’s called the YoGen MaxT and it can produce 50-60 watts, which is enough to power a notebook.

Those who are on the wimpy side are covered as the device has internal AA batteries that keep the power flowing while you rest your leg. It’s great for say, camping and hiking, when you take your notebook with you. The whole thing folds up for portability, making it convenient.

You know just the other day I was using my notebook and thought to myself what I really wanted was for my notebook to work more like my PDA from 2002. Well, OK so maybe I wasn’t thinking that, PDA’s died out years ago.

That didn’t stop O2Micro from getting a patent for a new PC architecture that allows a PC to be integrated with a PDA architecture. O2Micro says the system would place a secondary screen on a notebook that could be used to access data PDA style.

The ASUS F50 and F70 range of notebooks sport features tailored specifically for users who want both high definition audio visual entertainment and extensive multitasking capabilities. Users looking for large screen entertainment and massive storage will want the Asus F70SL, the world’s first 17.3″ notebook with 16:9 golden aspect ratio for cinematic viewing and dual hard disk drives providing up to 1 TB in storage space.

The Asus F50 and F70 range of notebooks come standard with high definition audio quality and a 16:9 Full High Definition display for high contrast rate, brightness and color saturation. An HDMI port allows users to connect their notebooks to larger external LCD displays or other HDMI-capable devices.

Epson isn’t just about printers, though we tend to associate the name with printers. They make lots of other stuff too. Epson Japan has announced it’s latest Business to Business laptop dubbed the Endeavor NA802.

The 13.3 inch WXGA notebook comes packed with a Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, an nVidia GeForce 9600M GT with 256MB of VRAM, 1GB to 4GB of RAM, and a wide range of 5400 or 7200rpm HDDs or a 128GB (MLC) SSD drive. The new Endeavor NA802 also features a WiFiLink 5300AGN module with Windows Vista or XP Pro OS. No word on pricing or availability.

CES always involves a glut of new laptops, netbooks, and desktop computers being shown off and introduced. The machines introduced usually run the gamut from thin and light machines to gaming behemoths with a price tag that sounds more like the price of a car than a computer.

Lenovo has already announced four new computers that we will see this week at CES. The new machines include one of the thinnest 16-inch laptops around called the Y650, a 15-inch notebook called the Y550 and a 14-inch Y440 notebook. Lenovo has also announced the addition of instant on and facial recognition to its S10 netbook.

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.

It seems like DDR3 RAM hasn’t been around that long in desktop machines and now it is starting to show up in new laptops. DDR3 offers higher operating frequencies promising more performance. However, the drawback is that the latencies on DDR3 are typically much higher than on DDR2 parts negating some of the performance gains.

Kingston has announced that it is now shipping its HyperX DDR3 ultra-low latency SO-DIMM RAM for notebooks. The new RAM operates at 1066MHz and is pre-programmed for high-performance and low latency values. The RAM also has a new metal heat spreader to help reduce heat build-up in the memory.

Notebooks sales are being bolstered significantly by the booming sales of low-cost netbook computers. Many may not have been familiar with the name MSI before its popular Wind netbook hit the market. MSI offers more than netbooks in the US market with a full line of notebook computers as well.

Yesterday MSI announced its latest, affordable ultraportable notebook called the EX300. The machine uses a 13.3-inch widescreen display and offers ATI HD3450 graphics. MSI says the notebook weighs 4.5 pounds with the 8-cell battery.

The computer industry is hurting in the current economic climate globally. Even the largest PC makers like Dell have had a hard time maintaining the levels of profit common before the global economic crisis. One of the ways Dell is luring consumers who are shopping for new notebooks to its doors is with more customization options.

Dell announced today that its Design Studio now has more than 100 different design options for customizing its Studio 15 and Studio 17 notebooks. The Design Studio allows shoppers to choose any of the artwork from the catalog and view the notebook from all angles before they order.

Last year when I was going to CES, I almost lost my laptop. The person working the x-ray machine removed it from my bag when I forgot too, but then didn’t tell me they had done it. I got all the way to my gate and realized it was gone. I was able to get it, but hundreds of thousands of notebooks each year aren’t retrieved when lost at airports.

If you have important data on your computer that you don’t want falling into the wrong hands, or simply don’t want some airport worker using your computer, Lenovo has a new service for you. The service is called Lenovo Constant Secure Remote Disable Feature and allows certain notebooks to be shutdown over a WWAN connection.

When it comes to storing and backing up data on the road a USB hard drive is often the best route to go. The catch is that sensitive data can be easily lost while traveling and if the data you save on the external drive isn’t encrypted anyone who finds it can access your data.

Lenovo has announced a new external hard drive called the ThinkPad USB Portable Secure Hard Drive that is available in 160GB or 320GB capacities. Both of the drives are the same size and are approximately 3″ x 5″ and small enough to fit into a shirt pocket.