Mobile Computing: Portable Printers and Scanners

Notebooks & Accessories

News: HP for the Holidays

Hewlett-Packard recently announced its fall lineup of computers, including five new Pavilion notebooks. At the top of the line are two new Ze5000 portables with Pentium 4 processors. The $1699 Ze5155 includes a 15-inch display, a 1.8-GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. Costing $300 more, the Ze5185 features a 2.4-GHz Pentium 4 processor and a 60GB hard drive. Each notebook includes a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and comes with a $100 mail-in rebate.

News: Burning DVDs on the Go

The rewritable DVD craze has been slow coming to notebooks. But that scenario's changing, thanks to Sony and Toshiba. Sony is releasing three notebooks featuring DVD-RW drives and Sony's Click to DVD software for burning video and data files onto recordable DVDs. The Mobile Pentium 4-M-based portables begin at $1799 for a base configuration of the new NV200 series. Sony's also selling an external DVD-RW drive (about $600) for users of its older VAIO models. Meanwhile, Toshiba recently announced plans to sell DVD-RW drives for notebooks and desktops. Pricing wasn't available.

Tip: Looking for Long-Lasting Notebooks?

I've noticed that the notebooks with the longest-lasting batteries are often among the Value choices in PCWorld.com's monthly Top 15 Notebooks rankings. (The rankings are divided between Power and Value models.) Case in point: All the Power notebooks in the November 2002 chart have battery life rated "average." In the Value section, however, the Dell Latitude C610's battery longevity was rated "very good" and the Compaq Evo N600C ranked "good." Could it be that the Power models, as their names imply, have more robust processors and features that slurp battery juice more quickly?