• 17.3-inch 1080p (1920×1080) display with LED backlighting
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel Core i7-740QM processor (1.73GHz/2.93GHz Turbo Mode, 6MB L3 cache)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M with 1.5GB GDDR5 Memory
• 8GB DDR3-1066 RAM (4x2GB)
• Two 500GB 7200RPM hard drives (Seagate Momentus 7200.4/ST9500420AS) (Non-RAID)
• Atheros AR9285 802.11n Wireless LAN adapter
• Built-in Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
• Blu-ray reader/8X DVD Super Multi drive
• Two-year limited warranty (one year on battery pack) with one year of accidental damage protection
• 8-cell battery pack (14.8V, 5200mAh, 75Wh)
• Weight: 8.79 pounds
• Dimensions: 16.3″ (W) x 12.6″ (D) x 1.8″ (H)
• MSRP: $1,745

G73JW is 100% DX11 compliant – offering all the benefits of the latest graphics standard. It has a beautiful 17.3-inch 16:9 display with a resolution of 1920×1080. Support for 3DTV Play from NVIDIA allows you to project HD images via HDMI 1.4 onto a compatible 3DTV.

A great thing of G73JW is the storage. Two 500GB 7200 RPM hard drives are offered for 1TB of total storage. This is essential for avid gamers that have many games installed at one time. It also supports three USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, Ethernet, VGA and HDMI-out, and a SDHC-card reader.

The EON17 has the following specifications:

• 17.3 Full HD Widescreen, 16.9, 1920 x 1080
• Up to Intel Core i7 980X Desktop Processors
• Up to Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M Video Cards in SLI
• Up to 24GB of Triple Channel DDR3 Memory
• Up to Three Hard Drives
• Full Size Keyboard with Numeric Key Pad
• HDMI In and Out; Optical Digital Out, and 7.1 HD Audio
• Touch Sensitive Multi-Gesture Pad and Instant Access Buttons

The Origin EON 17 features a 17.3 inch Full HD wide screen display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and it is capable of displaying Full HD video in 1080p. From the latest Blu-Ray movies to multifunctional presentations your ORIGIN PC will deliver a Grade-A visual experience. Therefore, the EON 17 definitely has the crystal clarity. 2GB’s of GDDR5 video ram, NVidia’s PhysX and CUDA technology completes the excellence of EON 17.

The Origin team also comes with their special offer. Collaborating with Killer Paint, the best in custom airbrush artistry, the Origin team brings you the best in personal design for your perfect PC. The Origin team will work with you to quote out anything you want airbrushed onto your custom EON laptop. Costumers will be able to do this just by sending their desired design. Moreover, if color doesn’t do it for you, the team will replace the ORIGIN logo with your personalized imagery or logo on the outside of your EON17.

Design

The MSI GT660 series was designed in partnership with Dynaudio to create a gaming notebook chassis that also offers a “true-to-life sound experience.” The speaker housing structures, speaker circuits and overall position of the stereo speakers and subwoofer were designed to combine the extreme performance of a gaming notebook with the rich audio performance of a premium multimedia notebook.

Despite the heavy use of plastics, the exterior surfaces of the GT660R are covered in a scratch-resistant coating to improve durability. The screen lid itself is also covered in “MSI Color Film Print Technology” which is essentially in multi-layer printed image imbedded into the plastic. In this case you can see a faint honeycomb pattern in the lid similar to the texture used on the palm rests when you open the notebook.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Chiclet-style keyboard on the GT660R offers a reasonably enjoyable typing experience and is also fine for hours of gameplay. Individual keys are a little mushy and the center of the keyboard flexes inward under heavy typing pressure, but the individual key action still delivers acceptable feedback when pressed. The typical gaming keys of W,A,S,D feature special red paint to help you quickly identify where your fingers need to be during a game (just in case you didn’t already know). Each key is flat with a nice matte texture and a little extra spacing to prevent typos. A backlit keyboard would have been far more useful than lights next to the touchpad or under the edges of the palm rests.

The touchpad itself offers a quality interface with a lightly textured surface and excellent responsiveness. The touchpad itself feels just the right size for the notebook: any smaller and it would have been too small and any larger would have made this notebook even bigger than it already is. The touchpad drivers provide excellent accuracy and minimal lag with a range of options. The touchpad buttons are hidden under a single “rocker bar” and have a shallow press with audible “click” when pressed.

Performance

Starting with an Intel Core i7-740QM processor running at 1.73GHz and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 285M with 1GB of GDDR3 dedicated memory, this system easily ranks among the best gaming notebooks you can buy for less than $2,000. As impressive as that might sound, MSI wasn’t going to stop there.

The GT660 series features a complete system overclocking feature called TDE+ which overclocks the CPU and the GPU simultaneously at the touch of a button. MSI claims this “Turbo mode” provides a “16% performance boost” but our own lab testing shows the exact percentage of improvement varies greatly depending on a variety of factors.

Since this is intended to serve as a gaming machine, it’s important to point out that different games will react differently to the CPU+GPU overclocking feature on this notebook. In most cases, such as when we tested Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Shattered Horizon and Resident Evil 5, there was an obvious increase in the frame rates while gaming at the native screen resolution with detail settings maxed out. The bottom line is that the overclocking feature offers some added value for serious gamers but it isn’t a magic bullet for all your gaming needs.

Battery Life

Let’s be perfectly honest: No one buys a high-performance gaming notebook and expects it to deliver great battery life. Between the high-performance CPU, the high performance graphics, the dual storage drives and the giant cooling fans, there is simply a ton of hardware to keep running on a battery. In the “balanced” power mode with 75% screen brightness, the MSI GT660 lasted for two hours and 31 minutes of non-stop use while surfing the Internet and using a word processor. This is pretty pathetic for a general use laptop, but since many gaming laptops deliver less than one hour of battery life we can’t complain too much. You can also extend the battery life by dropping the screen brightness to the lowest useful setting.

Conclusion

The MSI GT660R is an impressive-looking gaming notebook with solid performance, great speakers and the ability to easily overclock the CPU and GPU at the touch of a button. The variety of ports including USB 3.0, the ability to upgrade to 12GB of RAM and the super-fast 1TB of storage make this an attractive choice for gamers looking for a strong system for $1,700 or less.

The weak battery and the thick and heavy chassis are par for the course when it comes to large gaming notebooks, but some consumers might not like the glossy plastics and the fact that the screen resolution is just 1366×768.

Design

Aesthetically, there’s a lot going on with the GT660. Almost too much. Unlike the GT725 and GT627, which lacked the audacious flair of most gaming notebooks, it seems like MSI pulled together as many cool-looking elements as they could while still keeping the GT660 below two grand. So it’s got some funky cuts along the edges and a glossy, beveled lid complete with glowing MSI logo.

Under the hood you start to notice how busy the GT600 looks. There’s a mix of matte and glossy–though the latter dominates–and the piano black of the display bezel and top of the deck fades into a glossy slate color, which then turns into a textured honeycomb pattern on the palm rest surrounding the touchpad.

Two speakers ringed in red sit on the left and right of the upper deck, and between them is a control deck outlined in red and chrome with touch-sensitive LEDs. Though MSI claims this element evokes a Knight Rider aesthetic, it reminded us more of Aquaman’s underwear. A light tap activates each function, including enabling or disabling Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or the Windows key, and switching between power modes. There’s even a button users can program to launch an oft-used app. A shield-shaped power button sits in the center. Though we found this strip very useful, it picked up fingerprints.

Keyboard & Touchpad

Open up the lid and you’d be greeted with an extended keyboard that includes an alpha-numeric keypad on the right side. It’s a nice addition but if you’re a regular laptop-user, the orientation is confusing that you always tend to hit the wrong keys when typing. One needs some time to get used to the extra keys and learn to familiarize where the Enter button is. The chiclet-type keys are appropriately sized with special color labels on the gaming keys (asdw) and the arrow keys. And while it’s glossy black on the outside, it’s rough and textured in the inside — the palm rest has this honeycomb finish and the trackpad feels like sand-paper and is somewhat flushed to the left. The left and right click buttons are not separated but shaped accordingly to differentiate the two.

The touchpad is pretty big–3.2 x 1.9 inches–but it could be even larger if the designers had used more of the available space. The slightly rough touch surface and mouse button has a thick chrome outline that flows down into a chevron shape. Under the single mouse button are status indicators for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Battery, Sleep, and the hard drive are appreciated. Plus, our fingers kept naturally gravitating to the bottom edge of the notebook where the mouse buttons usually sit. On this system they’re higher, which took some getting used to.

Display

The 16-inch display is bright and crisp with a maximum resolution of 1366×768 pixels (I was actually expecting it could be higher, somewhere in the 1600×1200 range, because of the large real estate). The glossy display is also prone to glare in the outdoors and against bright light sources.

Ports and Webcam

MSI was certainly generous with the ports on the GT660. On the left you get two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, a memory card slot, and an Express Card slot. The Blu-ray drive takes up most of the right edge, leaving room for the other USB port, headphone, mic, audio in and audio out ports. Finally, the eSATA, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet and power ports sit in the center of the notebook’s back edge. The webcam on the GT660 is a surprisingly high-end unit that can capture video in HD: 1280 x 720, 30 fps. Video quality at this size isn’t stunning, but once we adjusted the settings (brightness, hue, saturation, etc.) the resulting images were decent.

Performance

MSI Exclusive TDE+ technology: MSI’s GT660 gaming notebook  is the world’s first NB computer to come with TDE+ technology to enhance both processor and display performance. With MSI’s own TDE+ (Turbo Drive Engine+ technology), you can increase processor, memory, and display chip performance instantly with one touch of the luminescent Turbo hotkey above the keyboard. The power boost gives you crisp response even with resource-hungry graphics applications and more importantly, when you’re slaying orcs or battling baddies on the other side of the galaxy.

Advanced nVIDIA GeForce GTX 285M discrete graphics card: The MSI GT660 gaming laptop comes equipped with nVIDIA’s most advanced GeForce GTX 285M discrete graphics card with 128 3D stream processor and 1GB GDDR3 of display memory and nVIDIA® CUDA™ technology to truly unleash the machine’s image and graphics processing potential, allowing the GT660 to execute such high load tasks as conferencing and ripping with ease. The GeForce GTX 285M discrete graphics card also supports nVIDIA® PhysX™ Technology, introducing you to a whole new world of extreme playing, courtesy of super dynamic and realistic graphics.

Battery

Autonomy is not really the highlight of the GT660. The laptop took 1 hour 46 minutes during our endurance test, despite its new battery cells 9800 mAh. Finally, its size, 16 inches, and weighing 3.46 kg really does not help to nomadism. We therefore speak more portable, but it is the case for all of these machines, apart from some exceptions including Alienware M11x.

Design
While other brands have reinvented themselves several times over, Fujitsu’s business-oriented LifeBook notebooks look more or less the same as they did a few years ago. Underneath the matte black lid, which has Fujitu’s logo printed in understated gray font, the laptop features a lighter interior, including a white, pillowy keyboard and silvery palm rest (the bezel and area above the keyboard are still black, lending the interior a colorblocked effect). The palm rest is slightly bumpy, which makes the notebook look rugged, although this feature is purely cosmetic. The touchpad has a smaller circular one next to it, which we’ll elaborate on later.

More than anything, what makes the S760 look dated are the half dozen buttons above the keyboard (not to mention five LED lights and two discreet speakers). These buttons are meant to unlock the computer before the OS boots (you can choose one of up to 800,000 combinations). The idea is that these buttons aren’t connected to the keyboard, something hackers can track with keyloggers. The idea is a neat one, although aesthetically we still wish that space above the keyboard were blank.

Keyboard
Its spill resistant keyboard is a pleasure to use, and the quirky ScrollWheel is a ‘take it or leave it’ feature which you can simply ignore if it does not feel right to you. It may, though prove a useful ice-breaker in some client meetings. And you might not want to use the Web camera software in view of clients, unless you have preconfigured it to remove some of the more consumer-focussed elements.

Ports
Connectivity is good comprising VGA and HDMI video out ports, three USB 2.0 ports, and an ExpressCard/54 slot for add-in cards. An optional docking port replicator (£91 ex. VAT) provides a second mains adapter, four USB ports, an eSata port, printer and serial ports, VGA and DVI video outputs, and an Ethernet port.

Graphics & Battery Life

We wouldn’t have expected gaming to be one of this 13-inch business notebook’s strengths, but its discrete Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics card and 512MB video memory make it an excellent work-and-play machine. It notched a score of 3,787 on 3DMark06, whereas the average score for an ultraportable notebook is 1,068. Meanwhile, it ran World of Warcraft at an impressive 129 fps at 1024 x 768 resolution and a slower, but still playable 49 fps at 1366 x 768 resolution. Even in Far Cry 2, a more graphically demanding game, the S760 managed an acceptable 33 fps at 1068 x 768 resolution (slowing to 11 fps at 1366 x 768).

Although its fast hard drive, strong gaming performance, and bright display make the S760 a versatile notebook, battery life is its Achilles heel. The six-cell battery lasted just 3:06 on the LAPTOP battery test, whereas the average ultraportable lasts 5:30. The HP EliteBook 2540p and the Lenovo ThinkPad X201s have even better endurance; they lasted 6:54 and 8:31, respectively. You would get more endurance out of this system if you opted for integrated graphics instead or the modular bay battery, but the latter adds another $138 to an already expensive notebook.

Performance
Performance

By most metrics, the S760 offers better than average performance, but we have to wonder if the slight performance boost is worth the price you have to pay. Squeezed into this small machine is a 2.4-GHz Intel Core i5-520M processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 320GB, 7,200-rpm hard drive (as a business machine, it runs 32-bit Windows 7 Professional). Thanks to all these components, it blew away the category average (3,243) in the Windows benchmark PCMark Vantage with a score of 5,890. Still, we saw even higher scores from lower priced systems, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X201s ($1,659; 6,106) and the HP EliteBook 2540p ($1,624; 6,002).

The S760’s 7,200-rpm hard drive booted in a reasonable 1:10, and transferred a 4.97GB mixed media folder at a rate of 27.2 MBps, which is slightly faster than the category average (25.3 MBps), not to mention other business-friendly ultraportables, such as the X201s (18.8 MBps), the 2540p (18.2 MBps), and the $899 Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 (23.5 MBps).

We had no problem carrying out our usual routine on the S760. We didn’t even notice Norton Internet Security running a full system scan in the background while we streamed music from Slacker and then played clips from Hulu at full screen. At no point did we notice any hiccups in the music or video playback. The notebook was also able to transcode a 114MB MP4 file to AVI in 57 seconds, whereas the average ultraportable takes 2:07.

Design
Honey, they shrunk the Alienware! That’s the reaction we had when we first laid eyes on the Alienware M11x. This thin-and-light notebook looks like the company’s M15x spent too much time in the dryer. Like its larger brethren, it features a prominent Alienware logo on the lid whose eyes glow when the system is turned on. Our system came with a gray finish (called Lunar Shadow); consumers can choose Cosmic Black as well. Also like the larger Alienwares, the front edge of the M11x has an angled design reminiscent of the newer Chevy Camaros. The deck is a matte black plastic, which doesn’t pick up fingerprints, but the glossy black screen bezel shows every little mark.

Of course, the standout feature of any Alienware is its innovative lighting. Two areas on either corner of the front edge, which have a honeycomb pattern, are backlit, as is the keyboard and Alienware logo beneath the screen. As with other Alienware systems, the colors of the lights are customizable; this doesn’t add anything to performance, but it makes for a visually exciting laptop.

Measuring 11.3 x 9.2 x 1.3 inches and weighing 4.4 pounds, the M11x is considerably bulkier and heavier than a traditional thin-and-light, or, more significantly, an ultraportable with a ULV processor, which is more likely to have an 11-inch screen. The Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T, for example, is a full inch narrower and weighs more than a pound less.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen
No chiclet keyboard here — instead there’s a relatively flat backlit unit with a tweaked layout designed for gaming. We’d be totally remiss if we didn’t spend some more time talking about the crazy AlienFX LED lighting effects — you can set the keyboard backlight, Alienware logo, power button, speakers, and even status indicators to be nearly any color you want, have them fade between two colors, or just blink incessantly. It’s totally unnecessary, and incredibly fun — we spent 30 minutes tricking out our tester in an Elvis-inspired hot pink-and-blue motif before settling into more aggressive red and orange scheme. Sure, it’s old news to anyone who’s bought a larger Alienware machine, but it’s fairly wild to see such a feature in a laptop that starts at $799.

We could have lived without the dedicated menu key and a smaller right Shift if that had meant a larger arrow layout, but overall the keyboard is quite nice, and you can certainly pull off WASD when it’s time to game. The trackpad is similarly nice: no mulititouch here, but we’ve always like textured touchpads, and tracking was nice and accurate. We just wish the buttons were a bit bigger — we found ourselves clicking dead plastic at the lip of the machine quite often.

We’ve been harping on crappy displays in cheaper laptops for a while now, but the M11x is the rare low-end machine in a company’s lineup that doesn’t compromise on the LCD. The 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 LED-backlit display is bright, sharp and has terrific horizontal viewing angles. The vertical viewing angle is a little narrower, but it’s easy to find the sweet spot — kudos to Alienware for using a good panel here instead of trying to lower the price with a substandard display. We just wish it wasn’t so, so glossy.

Ports and Webcam
For such a small system, the M11x has a lot of connectivity options. On the right edge are two USB ports, two headphone jacks, and a microphone jack. The left side, though, has an additional USB port, FireWire, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Rounding it off is a SIM Card slot and a 3-in-1 memory card reader.

In a Skype video call, the M11x’s 1.3-megapixel webcam accurately recorded video and audio; a caller said that colors looked accurate, and there was very little motion blur. Alienware’s Aliensense facial recognition software works well, too. When you first log into the computer, the webcam records your mug; each successive time you log in, it learns your facial features; by the second day of our using the M11x, it recognized our face and logged us into Windows in less than a second.

Performance
It’s important to remember that, thanks to its switchable graphics, the M11x is really two different laptops. When operating with Intel’s integrated graphics, you’re getting decent (though not gamer-friendly) performance and solid battery life. Switch over to the discrete Nvidia, though, and you’re looking at a surprisingly badass rig, albeit one that flames out more than twice as fast.

A note on the graphics switching: Nvidia recently introduced its Optimus technology, which makes jumping from an integrated to a discrete GPU totally seamless and automatic. Curiously, that’s not present in the M11x. It’s not a complicated process here to switch to the Nvidia GPU and back—just press Fn+F6—but the move causes the screen to go black and requires quitting out of certain applications. It’s not a huge burden, but it’s frustrating knowing that a better option is out there. So how does the M11x stack up? I ran two sets of benchmarks, in both integrated and discrete modes.

Both yielded about the same results on GeekBench—not surprising, since it’s a benchmark that focuses on processor and memory capabilities. It’s notable, however, just how much juice the M11x squeezes out of that SU7300 compared to other notebook PCs with the same processor. The where the GeForce GT 335M really makes a statement is, not surprisingly, in gaming capabilities. While the overall scores are mostly comparable, the Gaming subscore jumps from 1780 to 3264 when the Nvidia GPU kicks in. Even more impressively, PCMark Vantage recorded an average FPS of 23.368 on discrete graphics versus just 1.664 FPS with the GT 335M switched off.

In terms of actual game play, I was able to get 130-210 fps playing Portal, though I was mostly at the lower end of that range. Scott’Soapbox did some more expansive real-world gaming testing, and found that the overclocked M11x was more than capable, especially with less intensive games.

Design
For two grand your ultraportable had better look luxurious, and Sony delivers. The silver VAIO Z (also available in Premium Carbon Fiber for $50) is decked out in aluminum and magnesium, which gives the system a premium feel. We especially like the brushed metal deck and the circular hinges (complete with the green glowing power button on the right). The black bezel serves as a nice accent, and we appreciate that surface is matte instead of glossy.

Weighing an even 3 pounds—about 3.2 ounces heavier than most netbooks—and measuring 12.4 x 8.3 x 1.3 inches, the VAIO Z is remarkably light given its features. In fact, we barely felt it in our backpack on the way home from the office. Other design elements include four buttons above the keyboard: Assist (which launches VAIO Care software), a shortcut button, a button for launching the VAIO Media Gallery, and an eject button for the optical drive. On the left side you’ll find a switch for the notebook’s graphics system, which you can toggle between Speed, Stamina, and Auto modes.

Keyboard & Touchpad
The Sony Vaio Z has a backlit chiclet* keyboard design that is very nice. The keys are just a hair smaller than usual (Logitech illuminated, Macbook Pro, Vaio SR) but there is ample room in-between keys, and that reduces my typo rate, when compared to a non-chiclet keyboard. I type at average speed (77 words per minutes, or wpm) and on the Vaio Z, the speed is within that range (74 wpm), so I’m very satisfied. The backlight is great in dark settings, but the light sensor is not all that smart. I think that Sony should push that feature to mid-range ($900+ laptops), this is great and once you have tasted it, it’s hard to go back. The touch of the keys is a little soft/”gummy” and I would have preferred something more “crisp”, but it works. Sony could even make the keyboard just a little smaller if they needed extra room on the side (for speakers?).

It is small, but the trackpad surface is decent and feels better to the touch than most pads. The underlying hardware comes from Synaptics, and this means that you have access to many options in the trackpad driver to configure scroll zones and gestures. Having used a Macbook Pro (with Windows 7) for many months now, it’s (very) hard to get back to a smaller trackpad and “primitive” gestures. I miss the two-finger scrolling too…     *

Display & Ports
The 13.3-inch wide-screen LED display has a 1,600×900-pixel native resolution.That’s what we’d expect in an upscale 13-inch laptop; less-expensive 13-inch systems often have 1,280×800-pixel or 1,366×768-pixel displays. The higher resolution makes it good for 720p video, and gives you plenty of desktop real estate. The Vaio Z116 has a standard set of ports and connections for a 13-inch laptop, although for $2,300, we’d expect a Blu-ray drive. Still, it’s impressive the system manages to fit in an optical drive at all; it’s a feature missing from HP’s 13-inch Envy, Dell’s 13-inch Adamo XPS, and even Toshiba’s T-135.

Webcam and microphone
Fast and seamless online communications are vital in today’s highly competitive world. In order to make things easier for the users, the engineers from Sony have equipped the Vaio Z Series notebook with a 0.3 megapixel (640 x 480 pixels) MOTION EYE camera, as well as a microphone. This way, users can take advantage of those IM clients capable of making video calls in order to set up teleconferences and communicate more easily.

Performance
sonyvaiovpcz114gxs_sh1.jpgThanks to the combination of a 2.4-GHz Intel Core i5 processor, dual solid state drives, and discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 330M graphics, the VAIO Z is the fastest 13-inch ultraportable we’ve tested. It notched a very impressive 9,936 in PCMark Vantage, which is more than triple the category average. The only other system that comes close in this category is the Lenovo ThinkPad X201, which has a 2.53-GHz Intel Core i5 processor but a slower 7,200-rpm hard drive. (We’re in the process of finalizing our review for that system.)

Just as important, the VAIO Z feels fast. This system opened Adobe Reader 9 in under 2 seconds, and most other programs in one second. In fact, we never felt like we were waiting for Windows to catch up with what we were trying to accomplish, which is quite the feat. The VAIO Z booted into Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) faster than most notebooks, taking 50 seconds (versus 61 for other ultraportables). We also noticed that this machine was quicker when installing software than most other notebooks.

So how about those twin solid state drives, one 64GB and the other 128 GB? They’re blazing. When we conducted the LAPTOP Transfer Test, which measures how fast a 4.97GB folder is copied from one folder on the notebook’s hard drive, the VAIO Z blew away the field. Its data rate of 127 MBps is nearly six times faster than the average ultraportable.

• Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26 GHz)
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
• 14.1″ WXGA display (1280 x 800)
• Built-in 1.3 megapixel camera: MOTION EYE
• Intuitive Operation: Touch Sensor
• Touch and Feel: Glowing Luminous LED

Pet the Sony VAIO VGN-CS16G and see it glow! That’s the CS series’ selling point – aside from wowing you with graphics and functionality. So if you have the dough, declare your war against recession and stamp your name on this laptop.

The CS series is sleek, and it’s capable of providing above-average performance whether for gaming, watching a flick, busting your eardrums with rock music, or just doing boring office work. It’s hard to diss a Sony VAIO.

Same old beast
The obvious upside to a VAIO is, of course, its looks. But the VGN-CS16G has more to offer than dashing good looks. For starters, it has a 2.26GHz Intel Core Duo processor, a 250GB hard drive, two gigs of RAM and a 14.1-inch widescreen display powered by an NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GPU.

In simple speak, everything mentioned above translates to more brute power than a fashion-centric user could ever hope to utilize. It’s even good enough for HD videos and games, although don’t expect it to keep up with the gaming Joneses for more than a year or two, tops.

Light it up
What’s new with this latest VAIO incarnation, however, may trump all the techie mumbo jumbo we just spilled. Sony says it wants users to “experience the fun factor” with the VGN-CS16G. What did they mean? Well, the laptop has luminous LEDs underneath, which light up when you stroke the Sony logo behind the screen and when you’re playing music.

The LEDs emit different colors for different purposes. For music in particular, the color depends on how “cheerful” the track is. A novelty? Maybe. Psychedelic? You bet. Whatever the reason, we say it’s time to stand out from the crowd.

Design
As a member of Asus’ “Republic of Gamers” line of gaming laptops, the G51J 3D is predictably flashy looking, with glowing lights lining its sides and what looks to be a claw mark etched into its black-and-navy lid. It’s not too gaudy, but by the same token, it’s not necessarily the sort of machine one would feel comfortable taking out at a serious business meeting.

It’s also a bit bulky. Despite its average-sized 15.6-inch screen, it measures 1.6-inches thick and tips the scales at 7.7 pounds. It feels more like a 17-incher than the standard-sized notebook it should have been.

But there’s little else to complain about. The full-sized keyboard with numeric pad is comfortable and quiet, as is the mouse pad, the buttons below which are composed of smooth brushed metal.

Plenty of ports, including four USB, one HDMI, and one E-SATA, ring the edges, and are found in comfortable, non-intrusive locations.

It also comes with some valuable extras, including an excellent laptop backpack branded with the Asus gaming logo, a quality wired Asus gaming mouse, and, of course, those 3D spectacles from Nvidia.

Display

Although it lacks a full HD screen as on the G51J-A1, the 1366 x 768-pixel panel on the G51J 3D still exhibits great colors and definition. Horizontal viewing angles on the 15.6-inch display were excellent—nearly 90 degrees to either side—but the screen washed out a bit when we tilted it too far back or forward.

The Altec Lansing speakers delivered excellent highs when we listened to music streamed from Pandora, but bass-heavy songs (such as Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind”) didn’t have their normal thump, and sounded a bit muddy in the middle. Volume was generally satisfying, but when we really wanted to crank the music, we found that the speakers didn’t produce very loud sound.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The premium look of the G51J 3D extends to the keyboard, where a white backlight gives each key a soft halo that can be raised or lowered through the use of the Fn and F3/F4 keys. Because the layout doesn’t extend to the edges, some keys are undersized, such as the right Shift key and the numbers on the dedicated number pad. Nevertheless, the island-style keys are springy, which made for a solid typing experience.

As the G51J 3D is designed for gamers, there are a number of gaming-specific icons scattered across the keyboard: Arrows highlight the WASD keys (which are typically used for movement), and the 1 and 6 keys are highlighted with white circles, so you can quickly tap whatever number you need to switch weapons. Above the keyboard is a grill that houses Altec Lansing stereo speakers, and buttons that let you cycle through visual modes (Gamma Correction, Normal, Soft, Theater, Vivid), and power settings (Battery Saving, Entertainment, High Performance, Quiet Office). To the right of those are three buttons: Express Gate (ASUS’ brand of the Splashtop instant-on operating system), Power, and TouchPad Enable/Disable.

The nontextured touchpad allowed us to navigate the desktop with ease. The brushed-metal mouse buttons look cool, but felt a little stiff.

Ports
The port selection was simply amazing and it has almost everything you may need. There are four USB Ports, an eSATA Connection, both HDMI and VGA to connect external monitor, FireWire 400, Ethernet and three audio jacks. There is also an Express Card 54 Slot and SD card Reader. What else do we need? A Coffee Cup holder would perhaps be the choice!

Performance

The standard system comes with a Intel Core i7 – 720 QM Processor clocking at 1.6 GHz with 6MB cache and 1333 MHz FSB. There are two 2GB PC3 8500 DDR3 memory modules making up a total of 4GB of RAM. Opening more than 30 tabs in internet browser at the same time with a video being encoded in the background and a music playing, switching between the tabs did not show any sign of lag as expected from the processor that can handle 8 threads at the same time. With its NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M graphics with 1GB GDDR3 memory, decoding a 1080p video was flawless. High end games like Left 4 Dead pumped out very high frame rates ranging more than 60 frames per second. The two 320GB Seagate 7200 rpm hard disks are really fast and loading games from the HDD showed its high performance benefits. The 1.6 GHz processor can be overclocked to 2.8 GHz but it does not significantly improve the performance benefits.
The good: Built-in Nvidia 3D Vision technology; fast Intel Core i7 CPU; decent gaming performance.

The bad: Expensive; 3D gaming is still niche; small screen for a gaming rig.

The bottom line: The Asus G51J-3D is the first laptop to incorporate Nvidia’s 3D vision technology. If you absolutely love the idea of 3D gaming, this proof-of-concept system will work well for a pricey showpiece.

Spec
CPU 1.6-GHz Intel Core i7-720QM
Operating System MS Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
RAM 4GB
RAM Upgradable to 8GB
Hard Drive Size Dual 320GB
Hard Drive Speed 7,200rpm
Display Size 15.6
Native Resolution 1366×768
Blu-ray discs.
Optical Drive DVDRW
Optical Drive Speed 8X
Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M
Video Memory 1GB
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
Bluetooth Bluetooth 2.1 EDR
Mobile Broadband
Ports (excluding USB)
Dual Headphone; eSATA; Ethernet; Firewire 400; HDMI;Hicrophone; VGA
USB Ports 4
Card Slots 6-1 card reader; ExpressCard/54
Warranty/Support Two-year global; one-year accidental;
Size 14.6 x 10.3 x 1.6 inches
Weight    7.3 pounds

Design
The design of the Qosmio X505 is a clear evolution of earlier Qosmio systems–it shares the same high-contrast red/black palette and rounded chassis, although it has less of a clamshell-like feel than previous versions. It’s still positively huge, and weighs more than 10 pounds, even without the power adapter. Despite the laptop’s heft, the back of its lid flexed easily under our fingers–we wouldn’t rest anything too heavy on the closed lid. With its expansive screen and keyboard, large hard drive, and fast processor, this portable qualifies as a desktop replacement. As the moniker suggests, this laptop could take the place of your desktop PC, as it offers most of the features that people look for in a computer. The screen is spacious enough for you to work on it all day without eyestrain, and the keyboard’s roominess rivals that of a desktop’s. It has only one optical drive, but ports aplenty. Even so, this machine is still portable, light enough to unplug from the wall and easily move to another room–or to a meeting across the country on your next business trip.

Keyboard & Touchpad
The backlit keyboard has large, flat-topped keys and was comfortable to use, with the exception of an oddly shortened space bar. It feels as if Toshiba could have used a full-size space bar on the keyboard, if not for the media control panel that sits to the left of the space bar. Taking up roughly the same space as a TV remote control might, it includes touch-sensitive volume, mute, and media transport controls, and a button for launching the system’s “Eco” mode, which is an energy-efficient power setting preset. Those changes include lowering the screen brightness, turning off the backlit keyboard, and underclocking the CPU’s performance. These are all tweaks one could manually dial in using Windows 7′s power menus, but it’s nice to have them all in one place. One note about the touch-control media buttons. Each gives off an unbelievably loud “beep” when touched–including the mute button, which pretty much defeats the purpose of a mute button. The touch pad is oddly small, taking up very little of the available room on the large wrist rest area. One could fairly say that an 18-inch desktop replacement is more likely than not to be controlled via an external mouse, so the touch pad doesn’t need to be a focus, but that does little to explain why the two giant red mouse buttons dwarf the touch pad.

Performance
This laptop, equipped with over 4GB of memory, will run all of your programs quickly (paired with a high-end CPU, that much memory will make things especially speedy). You’ll be able to multitask to your heart’s content, too, so go ahead–you can back up the entire contents of your hard drive to a DVD while watching YouTube videos and experimenting with textures on the 2MB photo of your client’s art gallery in Photoshop. The main drawback is the extra expense: Loading up with more than the standard amount of RAM (2GB, these days) can add hundreds of dollars to a laptop’s price, though it boosts performance by only about 10 percent. Also bear in mind that if you hope to use more than 4GB of RAM effectively, your PC must have a 64-bit installation of Windows.

Design
There are two aspects to the Alienware that make it stand out when you first see it; its physical size and its design. It’s actually quite compact for a notebook with a 17in screen – I guess black really is slimming. The traditional Alienware ribbed effect is present on the notebook lid along with the Alien head and I was delighted to see the squinty eyes light up blue when the notebook is powered on. I know it’s rather shallow to be impressed by such small things but then it’s the little things that make the difference. If you want your machine to stand out from the crowd at Lan party or when friends come over, this will do the trick. It’s not just the look, but the feel too. The new ‘Stealth Black’ finish is well named, not only looking good but having a slightly weird absorbent, slightly oily feel to it. If Alienware claimed that the m9750 was radar resistant, I’d probably believe it. The laptop’s body is large enough to fit a full-size keyboard and separate number pad, along with a generous touchpad. The wrist-rest area may be the largest we’ve ever seen, but it almost pushes the keyboard too far back–there’s a full 5.5 inches from the front edge of the laptop to the bottom of the keyboard. It took a little getting used to, and some users may find it uncomfortable. A Webcam sits above the screen, and a series of touch-sensitive media control and quick-launch buttons reside above the keyboard, but the volume control is shunted off to a small wheel on the left side of the system–we’d much refer a volume control somewhere on the keyboard-tray surface.

Display
The 1,920 x 1,200 resolution is really something, giving plenty of desktop real estate and making this a real contender as a desktop replacement. A possibly downside is that squeezed into a 17in display text at normal sizes can be quite small, so you may have to zoom up at times. But let’s face it, this is a notebook aimed at entertainment, not shopping lists or boring spreadsheets, though it will of course be pretty good for those as well. In pure quality terms the screen is good. It’s averagely bright but perfectly sharp, and its ‘Clearview’ coating gives it a high gloss sheen, effectively boosting colour and contrast. It also boosts reflections too though, and if you’re working in front of it for extended periods in a brightly lit environment, say the TrustedReviews office, then it could prove distracting. If you’re locked into a dark secluded gaming dungeon however, this screen will be right in its element.

Keyboard
As you might expect, beneath the screen you’ll find the keyboard. In an elegant touch I liked the way the area containing the hinges for the screen curve upwards. Beneath this you’ll find shortcut keys for the usual suspects such as your web browser, your mail program and your media player. There’s also a TV button, which makes sense as there’s an integrated TV tuner to make the most of Vista’s built-in Media Center software. Above these there’s a row of blue backlight indicators for wireless, charging, hard disk activity and if the mouse pad is active, as well as scroll and number lock. Of course the power button of the right of this has a cool blue light too.

Ports
On the left hand edge you’ll find an Express card slot – not PC Card, and a memory card reader. You’ll also find one mini Firewire port, a USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet socket and right in the corner a security hook, should you need to keep it locked down. On the opposite side you’ll find one more USB port, and all the audio sockets, headphone and microphone and line outs for front, centre, surround coming from the integrated Intel High Definition Audio chip to give you 7.1 when hooked up to a compatible speaker set. If you prefer to output digitally to an amplifier, there’s an optical port. There’s also an analogue volume wheel, though I found it was a little insensitive requiring far too much scroll to reach the desired level.

At the rear you’ll find DVI and VGA connectors and a hybrid TV tuner, giving you either analogue or digital, but not both. There’s an S-Video input to accompany this and audio in for connecting up a set-top box. There’s a final USB port, taking the count up to three and even a modem connector. The power input is right in the centre, which is unusual and kind of cool. One aspect that should be noted is that Alienware has made no pretensions at making this a Santa Rosa machine – there’s no Santa Rosa CPU, no Turbo Memory, no Draft-N wireless.

Performance
As expected, the Alienware Area-51 m9750 and its dual GeForce Go 7950GTX cards pummeled the competition in our F.E.A.R. and Quake 4 tests, offering up 81.1 frames per second in Quake 4, even at a ridiculously high 1,600×1,200 resolution with anti-aliasing turned on. We looked at the low-end Alienware m5790 earlier this year, and that system’s single ATI Radeon x1900 pumped around half the frames in the same Quake 4 test. The twin video cards in SLI mode are clearly the system’s highlight, as the m9750′s Core 2 Duo T7600 CPU performed on par with other recent systems in more mundane benchmarks, such as CNET Lab’s Multitasking, iTunes encoding, and Photoshop CS2 tests (although the Alienware’s 7,200rpm drives helped it power ahead in the Photoshop test).

The (nongaming) performance differences between this and other high-end laptops, such as the HP Pavilion HDX or the Apple MacBook Pro, are small enough to have little real-world effect, and all these systems are near the upper end of currently available hardware–although Intel is currently prepping a Core 2 Extreme mobile processor and Nvidia has a new DirectX 10 GPU, the GeForce 8700M GT, both of which will no doubt be included in Alienware systems later this year.

The Area-51 m9750 ran for a mere one hour and 12 minutes on our DVD battery drain test, a short lifespan, even for a massive desktop replacement system. Of course, powering a 1,920×1,200 display and two GPUs isn’t easy, and we don’t expect laptop gamers to keep their systems unplugged for any length of time.

Spec
Alienware Area-51 m9750
Windows XP Media Center Edition
2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600
2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz
512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX
300GB Seagate 7,200rpm

It ‘clear that a system of this type should have a graphic industry to the occasion. For the occasion, the producer has chosen a video card nVidia GeForce GTS 360M, surely also suitable for use in combination with playful titles of last generation. This solution commands a generous 18.4-inch diagonal display and FullHD resolution 1.920×1.080 pixels.

The budget for the Qosmio X500 is particoalrmente push on other sectors. In fact, this model is able to exploit high-capacity hard disk data storage and has a memory of 6 GB. The audio industry is no less leveraging technology Premium Sound. In addition, the system can be equipped with an optical drive for DVD or a Blu-ray. However, the final configuration leaves some margin of choice for the user who may, therefore, model specifications compared to their needs.

As one might expect, the price is very affordable having regard to the technical configuration in the game. For the Toshiba Qosmio X500 must provide a minimum outlay of about $ 1199. The availability in international markets is expected by the end of the month.

Toshiba also announced the launch of the new Qosmio F60. The thinner signed Toshiba multimedia notebook, designed for those who want a high-performance PCs and advanced features. A device for entertainment, unique and beautifully designed. Qosmio F60 will be available by early 2010 in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Qosmio F60 is often only 29.1 mm and weighs 2.7 kg. For those who like to differentiate, the Qosmio F60 has a unique cover that contrasts with bright red lettering silver. Complete this captivating design an elegant black interior with silver palmrest and speaker blacks.

The Qosmio F60 is really different from other products – not only for its design but also for its performance. It provides all the functionality that users require a PC multimedia screen TruBrite HD 15.6”(39.6 cm) with an LED backlight unit provided by high-performance graphics, Blu-ray rewritable drive that supports content DVD or DVD-SuperMulti (DL) software for Toshiba’s Resolution + upconversion; hybrid TV tuner, analog and digital (DVB-T) and integrated TV formats, which supports the most used web camera HD, and Harman Kardon stereo speakers for improved sound quality.

All Toshiba notebooks are compatible with the criteria set by European Directives WEEE and RoHS to reduce ‘environmental impact due to the limited use of lead, mercury and other harmful substances. In addition, Eco Utility Toshiba reduces energy consumption. The Toshiba Qosmio F60 is ENERGY STAR 5.0 certified.

Processor : AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-60 1.9GHz
Hard Drive : 120GB
Display Screen : 14.1″ WXGA Widescreen Active Matrix TFT Color LCD with CrystalBrite
Graphics Controller : nVIDIA GeForce 9100M G Integrated supporting NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD technology, OpenEXR High Dynamic-Range (HDR) technology, Shader Model 4.0, Microsoft® DirectX® 10.
Chipset : nVIDIA nForce MCP77MH
Wireless : Acer InviLink Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11b/g
LAN : Gigabit Ethernet IEEE 802.3ab
Memory : DDR2 – standard 2GB, max 4GB

The new Aspire 4530 is taking Acer’s design strategy one step further, the updated Gemstone design is the result of today’s design elements combined with the new state of the art technologies. Featuring the new AMD Turion™ 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology, the latest hardware components and Acer’s intuitive Arcade software suite the Aspire 4530 offers maximum home entertainment wherever you are