That’s where the UMPC comes in: It’s slim form factor, light weight and low voltage processor make it ideal for those who need a thin and light road warrior.

While not all UMPCs have a long 3+ hour battery life, manufacturers are certainly getting there this year with Intel’s new Atom Processors which promise lower power consumption at the same clock cycles.

Scroll down to see 14 of the hottest UMPC models under 10 inches!

1. Asus Eee PC 900 (Available):
   
   The Eee PC 900 is a larger screen version of the Eee PC 701. It is available in stores as of now. It runs Windows XP Home or Linux and features a 900Mhz Celeron-M Processor, 8.9″ Display at 1024×600, 1GB RAM, 12GB SSD (Solid State Hard-Drive), 802.11g WLAN, 1.3MP Webcam and a 37Watt/hour battery. It weighs 940grams and has dimensions of 225 x 165 x 35 mm.
2. Medion Akoya (Expected):
   
   The Medion looks similar in design to the MSI Wind, however little else besides its specifications are known. It features a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom Processor, 8.9″ 1024×600 display, 80GB hard drive, 802.11b/g and option Bluetooth 2.0. It weighs 1.2kilograms and has a built-in webcam.
3. MSI Wind U100 (Upcoming):
   
   Not much is known about the MSI Wind, but its rumored to a Windows XP UMPC that will cost between 450 and 1000USD. An official MSI press release indicates a Summer 2008 availability. It’s features are a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom Processor, 1GB RAM, Intel GMA 950 Graphics, an 8″ or 10″ display at 1024×600, 80GB Hard disk, 802.11b/g and a built-in camera. The unit may also come with an optional bluetooth module. It weighs 1.2kilograms and has dimensions of 260 x 180 x 31 mm.
4. Everex Cloudbook Max (Upcoming):
   
   The Cloudbook Max is a Windows Vista UMPC that was announced at CTIA in April 2008 and will be part of the Sprint Xohm product range in the US. The Cloudbook will utilise the latest VX800 integrated chipset that supports DirectX 9 graphics and hardware decoding of common video formats. It’s specs are: 1.6Ghz VIA C7-M Processor, VIA Chrome 9 Graphics, 2GB RAM, 8.9″ display at 1024×600, 80GB Harddisk, 802.11b/g, bluetooth and possibly WiMax. The unit may also feature integrated GPS and front as well as rear cameras. The Cloudbook weighs 1kilogram and has dimensions of 240 x 175 x 27 mm.
5. HP 2133 MiniNote (Available):
   
   The HP Mininote comes with Windows Vista Business or Linux pre-installed. Specs include: A VIA C7-M 1.2Ghz Processor, a VIA Chrome 9 Graphics Chipset, an 8.9″ display at 1280×768, 2GB of RAM, a 120GB Hard Drive, 56Watt/hour Battery and a built-in webcam. The device weighs 1.2kilograms and has dimensions of 256 x 165 x 33 mm.
6. HTC Shift X9500
   
   It has a 800MHz processor, a 30GB hard drive, a 7″ touchscreen display, which slides and tilts unveiling a full QWERTY keyboard. It has USB, Bluetooth, WiFi and Quad-band GSM/GPRS . The HTC Shift comes with Windows Vista Business pre-installed at a resolution of 800×480. The dimensions are 207 x 129 x 25 mm and it weighs 800 grams.
7. Kohjinsha SR8 (Released):
   
   The Kohjinsha SR8 is the first UMPC with a built-in DVD-RW Drive. It is available for around 750-800USD and comes with Windows Vista Home Edition. Specs include an 800 Mhz Intel A110 Processor, 7″ display at 1024×600, Touchscreen, 1GB RAM, 60GB Hard Disk, Built-in Webcam, 802.11b/g and an Internal DVD-RW. It weighs 1.1kilograms and has dimensions of 233 x 177 x 33 mm.
8. Fujitsu U1010 (Released):
   
   The U1010 has a heavy touchscreen aimed at stylus users which inadvertently gave this UMPC the title of the world’s smallest convertible tablet PC. It comes with an 800Mhz Intel A110 Processor, Windows Vista Business, 5.6″ display at 1024×600, touchscreen, 1GB RAM, 40GB Hard Disk, 802.11b/g, Webcam and Fingerprint Reader. It has a tiny 19Watt/Hour battery, and weighs a miniscule 580grams. It’s dimensions are 171 x 133 x 32 mm.
9. Packard Bell EasyNote XS (Released):
   
   Packard Bell claims that their Windows XP based EasyNote is actually a laptop running a UMPC Chipset. But certainly, its 7″ display and sub 1kilogram weight brings it solidly into the UMPC category. The EasyNote XS is an 800USD UMPC with the following features: 1.2Ghz VIA C7-M Processor, 1GB of RAM, 7″ display at 800×480, 30GB 1.8″ hard drive, 802.11b only, memory card reader and inbuilt vga webcam. Battery life is rated at 3 hours.
10. Clevo TN70M (Expected):
    
    The Clevo TN70M is available to OEMs only. However, this cutting edge UMPC is running on an Intel Atom Processor coupled with a 4-cell battery that is 25% bigger than most UMPC batteries. The more efficient processor and larger battery gives it an estimated runtime of 7 hours. Its specs are: 1.6Ghz Intel Atom Processor, Intel Poulsbo graphics, 7″ touchscreen display at 1024×600, 37 Watt/Hour battery, 802.11b/g, bluetooth 2.0 and optional 3G WLAN. The unit weighs 990grams and has dimensions of 228 x 170 x 33 mm.
11. VyePC S18PB (Released):
    
    The VyePC is a Windows XP Pro UMPC made by Kohjinsha. Compared with its cousin the Kohjinsha SR8, the VyePC comes with a less powerful (less power hungry) AMD Geode Processor. The advantage of this is an improved battery life of over 4 hours, however it also means that its slower overall as well. The VyePC S18PB comes with a 550Mhz AMD Geode LX 800 Processor, 7″ touchscreen display at 800×480, 1GB of RAM, 120GB Hard disk, 802.11b/g and bluetooth 2.0. It weighs in at 950grams and has dimensions of 218 x 163 x 25 mm.
12. ECS G10L (Expected):
    
    The ECS G10L is an Intel Atom based Mini-Note with 3G HSDPA connectivity by Clove Technology. It is thinner and has a larger screen as compared with the Eee PC 900. It’s spec include an 1.6Ghz Intel Atom Processor, 1GB of RAM, 8.9″ or 10.2″ screen at a rumored resolution of 1280, 802.11b/g and a built-in webcam. It is expected but release date is still unconfirmed.
13. Airis Kira (Released):
    
    The Airis Kira is currently only available in France and Spain, it comes with a 1Ghz VIA C7-M Processor, Windows XP Home, 7″ 800×480 display, 1GB RAM, 40GB hard disk, 53Watt/hour battery and 802.11b/g WLAN. It weighs 1.089kilograms and has dimensions of 244 x 172 x 29 mm.
14. Pioneer Dreambook Light IL1 (Available)
    
    Update: This UMPC by Pioneer Computers in Australia features a 7″ TFT LCD display at 800×480, a Via 1Ghz processor, and 1GB of RAM. You can choose between up to 8GB of NAND solid state memory, or up to a 80GB 1.8″ hard disk. The battery life reportedly lasts up to 8 hours. You can choose between Windows Vista, or any of 8 versions of Linux. It’s dimensions are 244 x 172 x 28.5 mm and it weighs 1.1kilograms.

Source: http://thehottestgadgets.com/

The interface of BatteryBar is user friendly, the app shows the percentage bar in green, yellow, or red, depending on how much battery power is remaining. The bar displays the time left on your battery in Hours:Minutes

When charging, the percentage bar reflects blue color to indicate charging, and the estimated time to full charge is shown. The bar turns black and shows “On A/C” when fully charged.

BatteryBar captures detailed information about your laptop battery like max capacity (mW), current capacity (mW), charge rate (mW), discharge rate (mW), and more.

With Pro version which comes at USD 7.50 you can receive Low battery and critical battery notifications and audio alerts and can customize 20 settings, including changing the font, low battery warning levels, and more.

Download [BatteryBar]

Source: http://www.aboutonlinetips.com/

Today I bring you the history of laptops: based on one defining factor…weight.

Today I bring you the history of laptops: based on one defining factor weight. You may call it poundage, heaviness, kilograms, lbs, etc, but it still harkens back to one important ideal, how much physical mass you have to carry in order to garner that super human processing power. I have chosen a variety of laptops from 1984 2008 leading up to one that some might say is the most modern, and prettiest pieces of laptop tech to hit the market in years: the shiny miniscule Macbook Air.

1990: Macintosh Portable (15.8 Lbs)

The Macintosh Portable was apples first attempt at creating a portable PC with Macintosh desktop capabilities. The Mac Portable weighed 15.8 pounds, due to the large lead-acid batteries used to power the unit and its features are nothing spectacular either. The Portable had a 16 Mhz CPU and 1 Mb of Ram, which was expandable up to 9 Mb. The Apple “luggable” was quite costly with a price of $6,500, however the luxury of a full travel keyboard, and battery life was up to 12 hours doesn’t give credence to exorbitant cost. The Mac Portable had a standard 1.44 MB floppy disk drive, but these added features still resulted in disappointing sale numbers for the unit.

1996: IBM Thinkpad 560 (4 Lbs)

Some feel the Thinkpad 560 led the way for a variety of modern day laptops with its 12 inch screen and full-size keyboard. It was a pioneering 4lbs and was only 1.2 inches think. It sported a sizeable 8MB of Ram, which was impressive for the time. The 560 had 810 MB of memory and a 1.44 MB external floppy hard drive. The small battery used to reduced weight had a fatal flaw in the design and only allowed for roughly 2 hours of battery during standard computing, however the features it supported were truly innovative with an attachable CD drive and integrated microphone.

2002: Compaq Evo N800c (6.6 Lbs)

The Compaq Evo N800c has a large 15.1 LCD screen and was thought of as the perfect portable for students in its debuting year. Its features include: 256 MB DDR SDRAM, 60 GB Hard Drive, and two 2.0 USB ports. The unit’s design showed how thin and light a powerful laptop could be and the High-end graphics provided a dazzling display of new technology. The mediocre weight of 6.6 pounds enabled easy transportation. The Evo Notebook N800c provides up to 4 hours of battery life using the standard 8-cell Lithium-Ion battery in “normal” conditions. The Evo N800c was reasonably priced and sold very well to the members of the realm of academia.

2008: Macbook Air (3.0 Lbs)

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. Apple describes it as the “world’s thinnest notebook”. The thin and lightweight Macbook Air is not as ground-breaking as the light bulb, but at least it’s really attractive. The Air sports a variety of fresh features running the gamut from the 13.3-inch, widescreen LED backlit display, with 1280 x 800 screen resolution to the Intel Core 2 Duo chip. The Air weighs in at 3.0 pounds and is 0.76 inches at its thickest point. The Macbook Air doesn’t offer much in the way of novel technology, in fact it may have taken a step back as it only feature one USB port, roughly 3 hours of battery during average computing and 2GB of RAM. The fit form factor will set you back a pretty penny in the form of $1,799 and sales have been going well thus far, but only time will tell.

Source: http://laptoplogic.com

Essential Utilities

Everyone loves getting something for nothing, but how often do you actually get something useful and of value without putting a penny forward? Sure, that free cup of coffee might be vital for your daily caffeine fix, but was it really worth purchasing the previous nine cups for the free offer? Case in point, there is a lot of really good software out there which can give your laptop a much needed performance boost or help you be more productive at your desk, but are the little shareware annoyances or expensive cost of some programs really worth it in the long run?

Maybe it is, but with Freeware you never have to worry about paying for a product that may or many not perform to your standards or have to click through dozens of Buy Now’ messages. The road to the perfect Freeware program is rocky however. With Ad-ware infections at an all time high, users stand to do more damage to their computers than good by downloading utilities and other programs from non-legitimate websites, and even worse, those programs might not even do what you need them to do. As a result, many lists of excellent Freeware utilities have been published across numerous magazines and websites. The only problem with many of these guides is that the programs recommended do one very specific task or promise to deliver exceptional usability but ultimately leave the user feeling jilted once they try it out.

There will always be better utilities out there, thats the nature of software, but with this series of guides I intend to present the best all-around programs for laptop users in some very specific areas. In this edition you will read about utilities that help improve, tweak, test, and display vital information about the basic hardware in your machine. Many of the utilities that follow are essential to keep your laptop running in tip-top shape. I know this because I use almost all of them. They’re the programs that I consider to be the most effective, easiest to use, and contain the most features in their given category. I did a lot of scouring and searching to find them, but they’ve been the best choices for me and my machine. I hope that you will feel the similarly and maybe take a few new tools away from this guide.

Note: This guide is designed for laptops based on Intel processors. Check back in a later edition of this guide that is tailored for AMD based laptops.

Best Overall System Utility

Notebook Hardware Control

All my system’s vitals at my fingertips

When it comes to tweaking and monitoring normal system operations, Notebook Hardware Control blows all other freeware utilities out of the water. Not only can you keep tabs on the performance and temperature of all your essential hardware (CPU, Hard Drive, GPU, and Battery) but Notebook Hardware Control allows you to overclock and underclock any of those to your heart’s content, which you of course use at your own risk. Not satisfied with the stamina Microsoft’s performance profiles provides? Leave NHC to manage it. You can even manage the acoustic properties of your hard drive through S.M.A.R.T (provided you use a hard drive with this technology). Add in handy system tray icons that provide information at a glance, a good looking interface, and an unbeatable price and you have one of the most useful and powerful utilities out there for Intel laptop owners.

System Information Tools

AIDA32

So many options, so little time

Any mechanic worth his salt will tell you that it takes a good understanding of all the essential components under the hood of a car to keep the engine running efficiently, and when a problem arises, the more you know the easier the problem is to diagnose. For users who want to know the essentials of the components running under the hood of their laptop AIDA32 is an indispensable and free tool. AIDA32 presented me with more information about my system than I knew what to do with. I was able to look up mostly anything, from the supported resolutions of my LCD screen to the hardware address of my ethernet adapter and even the codec ID of my laptop’s audio chip.

My RAM’s serial number and other semi-useful information

AIDA32 also lets you look into the software side of things. You can view what programs run on startup, DirectX information, information about Windows, and even a list of every program currently installed. That last one sounds kind of standard, buy AIDA32 gives you a comprehensive list of literally everything installed currently right down to the different versions of one program you might have on your hard drive. For the geek who wants to know everything about their system, AIDA32 is for you.

Hard Drive Performance

Defragmentation: O&O Defrag 2000 Free

Someone really needs to defragment their system

Many of us know that Microsoft’s Disk Defragmenter is kind of a joke. A good deal of their standard system tools could stand some improvement (which will be the subject of a later edition of this guide series), but thankfully for the user the Freeware community has your back. Even though you have to purchase many of the systems tools they make, O&O Software offers a completely free version of their award-winning disk defragmentation software.

Detailed volume information for my C:\ Drive

O&O Defrag 2000 harkens back to the old Microsoft defrag software where disk clusters were represented by blocks, not by lines that form some kind of abstract art like in the more recent version. The reason I chose this utility over many of the others out there wasn’t just because of the software’s ease of use and quick execution, but because the program provides a very detailed summary of what happened during the operation which can help you diagnose other problems if they exist. Never lose that hidden extra space again with O&O Defrag 2000 Freeware Edition.

Drive Cleaner: CCleaner

CCleaner offers plenty of places to check for junk files

Defraging your hard drive will only take you so far in terms of freeing up extra space. When every megabyte counts, Crap Cleaner, more acceptably known as CCleaner, will find every last bit of useless data and purge it. CCeaner offers an extensive list of space wasters to select during a system scan. Not only can you manage the waste that Windows tends to produce, but this utility will also help you wade through the junk other programs can generate as well. A registry cleaner is also provided as well as tools that let you manage your installed programs and determine what gets loaded when you start up your machine. All in all, CCleaner is a very effective utility that helped me free up around 170MB of space, most of which was cached images and cookies from IE, deleted 154 old registry entries, and let me remove software that Windows couldn’t even uninstall. CCleaner is a must for users who want to keep their system free of cobwebs as well as those who like easy to use software at very little cost.

File Visualization: WinDirStat

Not the most attractive mosaic, but WinDirStat is helping me determine what I should uninstall

To truly be able to effectively manage your hard drive a user has to know what programs and directories are taking up the most room. All to often I’ve found myself wanting to install a program that takes up more space than I have to offer on my hard drive. File visualization tools, such as WinDirStat, help locate directories which contain the largest files on the drive which can help me make a decision as to what I should uninstall to free up space. Many programs in this category simply scan your hard drive and give you a list in descending order of which files are in what directories and how much room they take up on the disk. I like WinDirStat because it not only gives me this list but it also categorizes files by extension and generates a graphic that can sometimes be more helpful than just a list of files and numbers.

LCD Utilites

Dead Pixels: Dead Pixel Tester 2.0

DPT’s pixel exerciser (the red box) helps fix dead pixels

This is normally overlooked by most utilities guides. As laptop users we are forced to use flat but sometimes finicky Liquid Crystal Displays. This technology, while it has made laptops viable, has become one of the biggest problems out of the box with our machines. Combine the possibility of getting a laptop with a dead pixel or two with the fact that some companies require a certain amount of pixels (sometimes as many as eight) to be dead before the computer is eligible for a replacement and you have a good reason to stay away from notebooks altogether.

There is a solution however! While it is a very hit or miss, these dead pixels can sometimes be exercised’ out of your LCD. By quickly flashing patterns or frantically shifting between red, green, and blue some dead pixels can be cured. But how do I know if I have a dead pixel? The aptly named Dead Pixel Tester can help you out. You can choose from a variety of patterns to display in order to uncover a tricky pixel and if you find something you can use the pixel exerciser to hopefully pop it out. In most cases you’d need to download two separate utilities for this, but DPT is an all in one and therefore wins my praise.

Monitor Tweaking: Powerstrip

Setting up an application profile with Powerstrip

This program break a little bit with my definition of freeware’, but I’m willing to let it slide because of a lack of annoying pop-ups and reminders to register. The only thing Powerstrip asks you to do is wait a little while before the program fully loads. As far as I know, Powerstrip is the only program of its kind that does what it does. I stumbled upon this utility when I was looking for a way to manually set my old CRT monitor’s refresh rate because certain games would cause it to flicker for no good reason. Powerstrip essentially gives you complete control over your computer’s display.

With the ability to set up different profiles for certain applications you can configure Photoshop, for example, to use a certain color scheme, have the computer overclock your video card, and use some special tweaks such as turning off your screen-saver or enabling OpenGL multi-monitor support. Under the Display Profiles option you can tweak every aspect of your resolution, refresh rate, and color depth as well as set up custom resolution profiles and timing for specific applications. With Color Profiles you can adjust your monitor’s luster as well as adjust the levels of red, green, and blue as well as experiment with different gamma levels. Finally, Performance Profiles will allow you to overclock your laptop’s graphics chip as well as change options in the Windows registry and with OpenGL that may help with performance and compatibility. I highly recommend using Powerstrip in regard to any aspect of your computer’s display.

RAM

RAM Cleaner: AMS Fast Defrag 2

AMS sports a quick and easy interface

Are you a power user? Do you keep dozens of programs open across four virtual desktops and play Battlefield 2 on top of that? Do you laugh in the face of Adobe Premier or Final Cut Pro? If so, you probably run over a gigabyte of RAM and you use a defrager for it. Like a disk defragmenter, a RAM defragmenter keeps your computer and tasks running smoothly. Especially at higher capacities, defragmenting RAM is a good idea. The process is a little different from what a similar program would do to your hard disk. Essentially, AMS Fast Defrag 2 will look in your RAM, find a big unused chunk, and place it so that new programs will occupy that larger space.

Long term performance gains are minimal, but an increase in speed will be noticed during more CPU and RAM intensive tasks. I decided to choose AMS Fast Defrag 2 because of its ease of use and other helpful features. AMS tells you everything thats going on inside your RAM including what how much is being taken up, tasks are running, and even some useful Windows tweaks that will let you squeeze every last bit of performance out of your machine. The Memory Guardian feature is also quite useful, allowing you to set when your computer should automatically defragment its RAM.

Memory Diagnostic: Memtest86

Memtest86 meticulously goes through every bit in your RAM to find trouble spots
image courtesy of softpedia.com

It’s a sad fact that despite all the money we may put into our computers, parts are still going to get damaged and fail. While certain components can take a beating many other parts tend to have a shorter life. RAM is one of those components, and especially with value memory’, a stick of perfectly good RAM could have some damaged bits. Regardless of when you bought it, scanning your memory for any defects is a good idea. It isn’t necessary to check too often but a scan or two could reveal a problem you didn’t even know you had.

I chose Memtest86 because it is accepted as the industry standard. The utility is also pretty easy to use, even though it runs in DOS,and can test for multiple memory patterns. Memtest86 is actually a very simple program at its core. To test for bad bits on a chip, Memtest86 will go through every sector on the RAM, change each bit from 0 to 1, proceed to the next, and then check to see if the previous bit has stayed the same. If the bit was corrupt it would revert back to its original state instead of changing to 1. Slowdowns occur in shoddy RAM because information has to constantly be reloaded in the memory since certain bits refuse to budge. Thanks to Memtest86 you are able to troubleshoot this type of problem before it becomes a real hassle.

CPU

Monitoring: Throttlewatch

While unplugged, my CPU clocks at 598MHz as noted by ThrottleWatch

Leave it to the freeware community to take a utility as simple as a CPU monitor and turn it into something complex and powerful. Even though Windows has a built-in CPU monitor, part of the Task Manager, most users demand more information and would rather leave process monitoring to a third party appilcation. No longer is it sufficient to just report what percent of my processor is chugging away at tasks. With Throttlewatch I’m not only able to monitor my CPU’s load but I can also check the processor’s voltage, current frequency, temperature, and throttling history. There is a definite benefit for laptop users here because now we can see just what our processors are doing when we unplug our computers. This can help when troubleshooting battery problems or if you just want to figure out if Speedstep is working properly. Throttlewatch can also output a log file in case you want to monitor all these variables while running a benchmark.

Processor Information: CPU-Z

Plenty of info for me to chew on thanks to CPU-Z

Short and sweet. CPU-Z does everything CPUID does, can tell you all the same information, and looks much better. For the user who need to know literally everything about their processor, CPU-Z will give you data ranging from the useful, such as L1 and L2 cache sizes, to the more obscure, such as Brand-ID and Bus Width. CPU-Z also provides you with some vitals about your motherboard, RAM, and Cache and will even let you do a Registers Dump so you can go even more in depth with your processor, RAM, BIOS, PCI headers, and a host of other nuances related to your computer.

Overclocking: RightMark CPU Clock Utility

Why anyone would want to disable SpeedStep is beyond me, but Rightmark CPU Clock Utility will let you

Now, I don’t necessarily recommend overclocking laptops. Cooling on most machines is sufficient at best and temperatures can get pretty dangerous inside our packed plastic boxes, so please don’t hold me responsible if you end up using this utility and bad things start to happen. There also a huge strain put on the battery, so only test this program out with your laptop plugged in.

Overclocking is the practice of running your processor at a higher clock rate than it was initially designed for by increasing the voltage sent to the hardware. Most modern processors are capable of some incredible feats of speed, but these are only possible with expensive cooling setups. Increasing the clock rate of your processor will also shorten its lifespan a good deal, so using overclocking as a longterm solution isn’t advisable. Overclocking in small doses, however, can be useful and may drastically improve the performance of some programs and games. The RightMark CPU Clock Utility helps you apply overclocks in these small doses by managing performance profiles for you computer. By configuring the voltages, multipliers, and throttling presets for the included profiles you can improve your performance at the cost of heat and stability. The program is also useful for underclocking your processor, useful for slowing down the CPU even more during battery mode.

Source: http://laptoplogic.com/

Many bags come in basic black with no particular identity and many are made to appeal to niche users.  If you’re shopping for a student, consider a colorful bag with an attractive pattern, but skip this if the recipient will use it for a business notebook.  There are also bags made specifically for women that look more like purses.  Be sure that you’re not accidentally giving the guy in your life a case made for the fashionista set.

Know the Styles: Briefcase bags are obviously great for corporate types as they have compartments and pockets for the laptop plus other mobile tech and papers.  Messengers appeal to students because of their casual style and wide, comfortable straps.  Backpacks come in casual and elegant styles great for both students and older users who have to carry their laptop around all day.  Handbag-style totes are favored by women who don’t want to look like they’re carrying a laptop yet want to keep their notebook safe.

Sleeve vs. Bag: Neoprene sleeves are often touted as protective bags, yet they don’t provide enough protection to stand alone.  If you’re buying for someone who already has an adequate case, they’re fine.  Skip the sleeve for someone who needs a bag.

Design: Look for bags with a lot of pockets for better organization and choose zippered closures over Velcro for the main compartments.

For Travel: Frequent flyers are always on the lookout for ways to make the security process smoother.  TSA-friendly bags like the Targus Zip-Thru eliminate the need to put the laptop in a separate bin.  They’re usually on the expensive side, but worth it for power travelers.

Source: http://www.laptopmag.com/

Make notebook batteries last longer

A notebook battery has to handle the OS, hard drive, accessories, cooling system, sound, screen and external devices. It’s a huge load and it can’t go more than 1 or 2 hours. If you wanna stretch it for another extra 30 min or so, you can.

A notebook battery has to handle the OS, hard drive, accessories, cooling system, sound, screen and external devices. It’s a huge load and it can’t go more than 1 or 2 hours. If you wanna stretch it for another extra 30 min or so, you can.

• Set brightness as low as you can tolerate. Most notebooks have a shortcut key to adjust the brightness, which you can easily switch back and forth when you are plugged in.
• Use the touchpad when the notebook is not plugged in. External devices will consume additional power. Don’t leave anything that you do not require, plugged in.

Power schemes

Windows XP users get to create several different power profiles to fully optimize the power for every condition. Just right click on the battery icon at the lower right of the LCD. Set schemes for maximum battery life, watching movies, playing games, etc. For example, this is what your ‘Max Battery’ scheme should have. Know that a notebook performs the fastest and is coolest when plugged in.

You can easily pull off 2 1/2 hours with these 4 settings. Who knows, you may even hit 3.

More power saving techniques

Newer notebooks include a program that is able to adjust CPU clock speeds, so that you can save even more power. For example, you don’t need 3GHz to play Minesweeper or write a Word document. Use it, if it’s available. You can further push your laptop’s battery life.

Just so you should know, 3 common activities that take up a lot of juice are

Remove all unwanted programs from the ‘Add / Remove Programs’ application window in the Control Panel.

Driver

Set Windows Update to automatically check for updates. You can find it in the Security Center applet in the Control Panel. Visit your notebook’s manufacturer and check for updates for your model. Ensuring that your notebook has the latest software and drivers installed guarantees system stability and efficiency.

Upgrade memory

The most obvious performance increase is in the RAM department. Just right click at the ‘My Computer’ icon and check. If your Ram is 256MB double it to 512MB. 512MB is the minimum for any PC or laptop using Windows XP. If it is at 512MB and you still have horrible load times, laggy programs and a lot of disk swapping, push it to 1024MB. This is the most obvious notebook tweak of all. You will feel the significance when the RAM is added.

Cleaning

Burning laps

Notebooks are hottest when unplugged. The reason is because the fans don’t run as often. Even with the fans at full throttle, the underside will still be the hottest side. The solution lies in slipping in a layer of something in between. You can very well find laptop cooling pads in PC accessories shop that are USB powered. They will help, but they also do drain power. The best choice is to grab something nearby like :

Wireless Networking

Newer computers come with in built networking. Get a wireless network adapter if you don’t have on. Some of the great stuff that you can do includes checking out recipes from the kitchen or sip on pina colada by the pool while chatting with buddies on your days off. Wireless gives the laptop a whole new useful perspective.

Video/Audio Output

Newer computers come with in built video-out and audio-out. These 2 jacks can be used to bring home entertainment up a notch. Watch movies on the TV or play music through the stereo system.

Source: http://rangit.com/