MSI has recently announced its new 12-inch widescreen S262 YA edition ultra-portable laptops, available in three different chassis colors.

Moving away from the cold and impersonal notebooks designs and colors commonly found today, the S262 YA edition will provide an invigorating and fresh way to compute. Coming in a number of lively and vivid colors (Aegean Sea Blue, Fresh Grass Green, and Marguerite Rose Pink); users will stand out from the crowd and express their own individual flair, the press release says.

However not just distinctive design, it also packs in great functionality. Equipped with Intel® Core 2 Duo processor, wireless functionality, 3-in-1 card reader, IEEE1394 connecting interface and a Multi-DVD burner, the S262 YA! Edition is ready to integrate into your life at work or play. With these colors to choose from, Aegean Sea Blue and Marguerite Rose Pink, the MSI S262 YA Edition notebook lets you define who you are and your unique personal flair.

Measuring in at 30 cm in length and 24cm in width, along with a weight of 2 kg (including battery), S262 YA Edition is very portable.

Moreover, ACV technology also gives you the most detailed and intricate images, resulting in high saturation and high definition quality for a luxurious visual sensation that’s easy on the eyes. Even after long periods in front of the S262 YA Edition, your eyes won’t feel uncomfortable.

Get on the Internet wirelessly anytime with 802.11a/b/g wireless networking standards. Also benefit from Bluetooth wireless transmission capabilities, to create a high quality digital living space around you. Surf the Internet, chat with friends or search for interesting information, all without limitations.

To deliver truly high performance computing power, the S262 YA Edition uses the Intel® Core 2 Duo platform. Additionally S262 YA Edition is also equipped with a 3-in-1 card reader, IEEE1394 connecting interface and a Muti-DVD burner. So, you can easy to edit or save high-quality photos/video as desktop PC.

The Lenovo Y300 is a 13-inch widescreen thin-and-light system with slot-in optical drive and discrete Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card. Though it integrates a Webcam above the display like many other contemporary portables, it has one cool feature which uses the camera in a novel way. Forget about biometric fingerprint scanning. The Lenovo Y300 allows one to login just by looking into the Webcam. By taking the distance between the eyes and nose, as well as several high points in one’s facial features, the system can recognize authorized users and automatically logs in. Barring serious facial reconstruction, gaining a few pounds will not affect its accuracy.

The portable weighs 2.2kg, which is comparable with other 13-inch laptops like the MacBook. As a nod to its multimedia focus, a unique Lenovo Shuttle interface, which allows easy access to music and video files, with discrete playback controls makes it as easy to listen to your tunes as well as peek at your movies.

While it’s nowhere near as light and compact as a MacBook Air, the Y300/310 is nonetheless quite trim for a 13″ notebook. Made entirely of tacky plastic, the Y300/310 looks and feels like a toy. It’s many chrome buttons and those huge orange mulitimedia buttons hack right back to the 1960s and 70s. Sony VAIO this Lenovo is certainly NOT!

Despite it’s aesthetics the Y300/310 is still very well assembled together. You won’t find any panels that squeak or give way when pressed. The slot-in DVD writer does away the traditional CD trays and would probably last a bit longer. Don’t expect it to survive a fall though as the Y300/310 would quite possibly shatter like glass! There’s no rollcage like the Thinkpads do and the lack of water spillways means you’ll have to be extra cautious when drinking liquids around the notebook.

Qosmio F20 decides to go the other direction. The F20 is a muscle machine with dimensions that closely resemble your DVD player. It’s a definite heavy weight at 7.27lbs. Needless to say, the “mobility” of the laptop is its greatest setback – it’s not exactly a machine that you could dub as discreet after all – but considering that it’s intended as a desktop substitute, it does its job rather well.

The built-in Harmon/Kardon speakers produce phenomenal audio quality and works well with explosive action flicks and high-adrenalin games. The notebook’s TV tuner card makes it possible for you to plug in your cable connection and watch your favorite television programs. The multimedia control panel even comes with a record button.

Compared to its multimedia super powers, the basic design is not as impressive. But the stylish pearl-white chassis and the clean paint finish are not fingerprint magnets, so smudges are minimal.

With its array of connectivity ports, it is a nice touch that Toshiba manages to keep most of them them located at the front and flanks for easy access. The ethernet and input ports are placed at the rear to hide unsightly cables and prevent tangles. The laptop puts its size to good use by incorporating a full-size keyboard, touchpad, a row of dedicated A/V buttons and a rarely seen volume dial. Unlike the slot-in optical drive of its predecessor, a more conventional tray-loading DVD writer is used instead.

As most Toshiba notebooks the quality and workmanship is very good. The chassis consists completely of plastic. Nevertheless we could notice several crunching noises when pressing at the case of our tested laptop. Within the range of the auxiliary keys the plastic tortioned noticeably.
The display proved very stiff torsionally as it measures 16mm at the outside edges. Unfortunately the hinges of the Qosmio F20 permit a slight trembling noise.

The connections are reasonably distributed, the monitor, network and power connections are positioned at left side within the rear range and/or at the back.

Compaq has always been the value segment brand of HP’s product line. The new stylish Compaq Presario CQ45 series shares many similarity (in a good way) with the higher-end HP Pavillion dv4 series but with a smaller price tag. The Compaq CQ45-127TX is based upon Intel’s latest Montevina Centrino 2 platform.

The touch sensitive media buttons (launch media, wifi/bluetooth, mute, increase/decrease volume) has a nice combination of LED colors. E.g. wireless on - blue, wireless off - orange, volume on - white, volume off - orange. The status indicators (power, charging, hard disk activity) uses a nice cool white LED at the lower left corner of the palmrest which is visible even with the lid closed.

As one would expect from a value segment laptop, the Compaq CQ45 is made up of mostly plastic. It is of good quality plastic that is rigid and barely flexes which does give it a fairly durable feel. Overall, the build quality of the laptop is good and at an acceptable weight for a laptop of this class, 2.4kg.

Specifications:
Model: Laptop Screen HP-Compaq PRESARIO CQ45 127TX
Size: 14.1″ WideScreen(12″x7.4″)
Resolution: WXGA(1280X800)
Backlight Type:CCFL 1-Bulb
Backlight Connector:2 Pin
Type:HP-Compaq BrightView (Glossy)
Video Signal Connection: Standard 30-pin
Condition: each one was shipped before test , 100% working .

The A6KT is touted by Asus as a mainstream portable entertainment laptop. What first struck me looking at this laptop was its sweet price to performance ratio. Hovering at just under $1,100 this laptop is a great starting point if you’re looking for something to enjoy not only office work and movies, but even gaming, be it casual or more frequent.

Tehnically, the A6000 is part of the Asus’ business series. However, everything about this particular notebook, starting from its design and configuration and ending with the way it’s presented, seems to indicate it would better be situated in either the Multimedia or the Personal Entertainment Center series.

One of the big selling points, at this price point, has to be the use of the Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card. It isn’t high-end like the 7800, as is aimed at the entry-level market for users who like to play the odd game now and then. Designed to replace the ageing 6600, you’ll find that card supports Turbocache, so as well as coming with 256MB of dedicated memory, when your system needs a performance boost, it can source up to 128MB of additional system memory. As a 16-pixel pipe card you’ll find performance is outstanding for the price.

We used the system for playing Civ IV on and found it handled well. You won’t be able to play anything quick on this notebook but strategy games are fine. The GPU powers the 15.4-inch screen, which comes with the now commonplace Super-TFT coating for stunning image representation. A 1.3-megapixel webcam is built into the panel, positioned above the main display, and comes with a microphone built-in, making web-conferences or simply chatting with family and friends that little bit easier to set up and maintain.