It's 0.11 inches (2.79mm) thick at its thinnest part, and they whipped out the hard drives and are putting apps in it. The new MacBook Air unveiled by Steve Jobs last night is slim.

We found five things that are also 0.11 inches thick for the sake of helpful comparision.

We're liking on this classy case by Samsung for their new bit of kit the SF310 notebook.

The monochrome SF310 notebook looks a bit like Victorian wallpaper thanks to a creative makeover by Lily Allen and her new boutique shop - Lucy in Disguise. The shop rocks the same kind of cute retro style as the British singer.

Clearly aimed at the high spending, design-conscious Christmas market - the notebook will be on sale in Lucy in Diguise's Covent Garden store from early November

And on the inside? Well Samsung say:

"the SF310 has 6.5 hours of battery life and includes an express charging mode which fully charges the battery in just 2 - 3 hours. With Samsung's proprietary Fast Start technology, the notebook is ready to use in seconds and if your phone handset or camera runs low on power when you're out and about, the convenient USB Sleep & Charge feature enables you to charge them without even turning the notebook on."

To give a bit more detail, the 13-inch SF310 was announced earlier this month at IFA, has an Intel i5 2.65ghz chip, an LCD screen and it's all special and curvy.

The SF310 costs £799 without the design on Samsung here and is available from now..

I don't think I was the only one who was surprised to see that high street fashion brand Next released a tablet computer this morning.

A new line of jeans, that I might have forseen, an Android tablet... no.

Sad to say, it looks rather like a cheap, Android version of the iPad, like the Chinese A-Pad in fact. I didn't really expect it to be sporting this season's latest trends, but it would be nice you know if it were a bit spruced up. A bit fashionable.

We knocked up a list of five Fashion brands that we'd love to release tablet computers and imagined what it would be like if they did.... taking a few liberties with the case design...

In a surprising move, high street fashion brand Next have decided to launch an own-brand tablet computer based on the Android platform....

It's a 10.1" resistive touchscreen which will cost a reasonable £180. You'd expect them to do something fancy with the design what with them being a clothing brand and all, but it seems to be a fairly straightforward rectangular black iPad look-alike.

We imagine they won't be making it themselves but aren't too sure why the fashion sellers have gone for this product... The promo pictures suggest you can use it to browse the Next Online store, so maybe they just see it as a another store front for their products...

Specs below:

• 10" WXGA LCD touchscreen display
• Google android operating system
• 8GB storage + cardreader
• Arm 11 processor
• WiFi, 2 x USB ports, microphone and headphone socket
• Operates in portrait and landscape

Available for £180 from now on the Next website

See pictures below...

A Linux-based software that lets you use one computer to control ten separate ones has been in "overwhelming demand" from schools in Asia and South America according the makers Userful.

The computer system called Userful Multiseat Linux lets anyone provide desktop computers at a fraction of traditional costs, which opens up computers to places with less money to spend.

Userful say their software "has garnered an overwhelming demand in Latin America and Asia, despite not being commercially available until Q4 2010". Because they require less electricity to run than standard workstations they are cheaper to maintain and less money is required for the hardware of which there is less, and for the software - which is open source Linux.

How it works:
So, instead of buying 10 computers - mulitseat technology means you only need to buy one, then get 10 monitors each with its own mouse, keyboard and applications but, with the initial computer providing the software and processing power to control all 10 screens. The cost is a loss of processing power, but for internet browsing and simple applications it is adequate.

These computers are cheaper to run as well as cheaper to buy: on average, Userful's education customers report saving 60% in up-front costs, and 80% in annual power savings as compared to their previous PC-per-station solutions.

They are selling computers in the developed world too based on their green credentials - costing less electricity.

See more about them on Userful.com

Tech gurus have been promising us the Internet of Everything for a while - saying that the toaster will get hooked up to the wifi, that you'll be able to control the CD player from your phone and that you'll be able to geograpically locate your cat on Google Maps from a chip embedded in its collar.

Well it all sounds amazing, but so far it hasn't really happened. But chip-makers Qualcomm are about to bring that interconnected world much much closer. Used to making high-speed chips for mobile phones, they've branched off into making simple plug-and-play chips that can pick up information from an object and send it off into the internet. They've just created a series of them - little standalone chips that pick up info from sensors and can radio that data off to the internet.

By the end of 2010, these chips will be certified, and by the beginning of 2011 any manufacturer will be able to buy the chips from Qualcomm, embed them in their device - whether it be a kettle or a pet collar - and get their gadget on the internet.

No kettle company would have had the resources to develop a chip like this from scratch, so Qualcomm's offerings really opens up the internet of things to all manufacturers.

Initial ideas for use include in cameras - journalists wanting to send video or pictures directly to a newsroom from a camera would be able to do so from a device enabled with one of these chips.
Tracking devices are another big possibility, in hire cars, in prisoner tags, in pet collars...

The Qualcomm rep said manufacturers would be able to get a device onto the shelves within four months of purchasing the chips.

Expect an explosion of devices like this from April 2011...

So. It's 10.30pm, you just need to send one email and guess what, the home wifi is jumping: "The page you requested cannot be displayed".

You switch everything off and on including the fridge but it still won't log you onto gmail long enough to send a bloody email. What to do? Thwack the wall with a chair leg? Spend half an hour on the phone to a polite but bored call centre worker who essentially tells you to switch it off and on again. Or swap internet provider and buy a new router.

Well, I always resolve to do the latter, but rarely get round to it providing it's working at least temporarily by the next morning.

There are multiple things that can go wrong with home wireless networks. And in any given situation it could be any of them.

Signs that it's likely to be the Router that's the problem:
1) Plug the lead directly into your computer to check if the internet is being piped into the home correctly. If it works fine, the network provider is not the problem.

2) Does your computer pick up other wifi networks okay, in the office etc? If so, it's the not the wifi connector on your laptop that's the problem .

3) If the signal works in the same room as the router. It could be that the connection speed you are paying for is too weak or the router just doesn't have enough muscle to cover the full house.

If it's not working at all, it's time to tackle buying a new router.

What to Look For when Buying a Router
These are the basics
1) Know your internet connection speed and what type of connection it is. Is the internet coming through a Dial-up, ASDL connection or a cable connection?
Hunker down and look at where the internet connection comes into your house. Dial-up connections straightforwardly use the phone line, they are quite slow, but cheap. You can't use the phone line while the internet is connected. Broadband connections are much faster and usually come over one of two types of connection: ASDL which splits the phone line in two and lets voice and internet data travel through it; and cable - this is one of the fastest connections, but only available where the network companies have cables running through the streets, usually in cities.
Make sure the router you chose matches the connection you have.

2) Go for a decent brand name. There are six big names: Netgear, Belkin, Linksy, D-Link, Buffalo and Cisco. They all have a range of differently powered and featured devices. Computer companies Asus and Apple also make wireless routers. Sometimes network providers: aol, Virgin will offer their own branded ones to customers too.

3) More expensive routers won't necessarily give you faster internet. Beyond a certain point, more expensive routers don't necessarily give you faster internet, they just start giving you more features, like parental controls for blocking certain sites or Traffic Prioritizing. Often not that necessary.

4) Coverage: details of the coverage the router provides are usually given in the specs on the product page. Just remember that
The average range for wireless coverage is 180 feet (55m) max indoors and 1,500 feet (457m) max in an open space. Check which one is being referenced. If your home walls are

5) Single Band v Double Band.
Okay, let's talk about bands. Simple routers - good for average home use, are often single band and transmit wireless data at 2.4Ghz. Dual band routers can transmit data at either 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz. If you want to do more intensive back-forth stuff like gaming or file sharing, go for the dual band ones which cost a little more. The 5Ghz channel will allow better for the intensive throughfare. The dual band router can be better too if you have a mixture of old and new laptops and devices connecting to the network.

Helpful links:
What is a Router? on About.com

NB: Routers and ReRouters are the same thing.

If you think the world is full of enough people making bad jokes, then you may not be delighted to hear that Scottish scientists have just invented a computer (and website) that makes bad jokes too.

The Joking Computer software is programmed to make jokes and then it gradually learns to make better jokes using feedback from visitors. More than can be said for my dad anyway.

Using a large dictionary of language and some simple rules, The Joking Computer has the capacity to build millions of different jokes though all of them follow the same format: "All the jokes are question-answer puns, like those you get in Christmas crackers." explains Dr Judith Masthoff, one of the scientists at Aberdeen who developed the joke-maker: "The software allows you to see how the joke-making process works. Or you can choose roughly what sort of joke you want, and have the computer build a new one."

The Joking Computer was dreamed up to help kids with cereberal palsy improve their language skills.

I have to say, I do worry that coming up with jokes like that may in fact hinder rather than help these kids in social interaction.. But still, some insight into jokes is better than no insight into jokes, and of course the site as a whole is a useful resource in learning which jokes aren't funny and why things are or aren't humourous. And let's face it, it's always nice when someone makes the effort to crack a joke. Even when that joke is:

Q: why is a curious visual image different from a shining battle ? A: one is a funny sight , the other is a sunny fight .

I'm laughing but not for the right reasons.

After the joke you can rate it, and deconstruct where it all went wrong..

Anyway, it's a good site to while away some time, potentially help children learn what good jokes are and who knows, find a gem that you can casually drop into your own conversation to make your friends rofl. NB, it won't be the one below.

Dell's iPad killer is here... Try saying that with a straight face. But yes, the Android powered 5 inch Dell Streak is indeed available to buy in O2 stores nationwide.

The touchscreen computer, which is capable of phone calls, and looks suspiciously like a mobile phone, comes sporting 16GB of storage, and a micro-SD slot expanding its potential storage to a whopping 32GB, which is a lot, for a phone -- not so much for a computer.

It's got all the usual bells and whistles you'd expect from a phone, oops, sorry tablet computer, WiFi, 3g, a 5 megapixel camera, and front facing VGA camera for video chatting, something certain competitors couldn't stretch to.

Being a massively lame geek the thing I'm most excited about is the 1 GHz Snapdragon processor and 512 RAM, which should make the Android 1.6 OS snappier than a croc with PMT.

O2 are offering the Dell conncotion for £25 a month on a data only deal, and £35 for voice and data. If you're looking to buy one outright it'll set you back £399.

While the iPad is grabbing eyes and headlines, Apple have just beefed up one of their core offerings by releasing a new family of MacBook Pros. And these are available in the UK.

What are the updates then?
Key updates only come on the 15" and 17" models. Here's the low down:

- Faster chips: the 15" and 17" Airs will get new more powerful dual-core chips, the Intel i5 and i7, which should boost peformance by up to 50% on programmes like Final Cut Pro. The difference is a 10% improvement when running basic programmes.
Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors also feature Turbo Boost which kicks in during processor-intensive applications like Final Cut Pro, and dynamically increases the speed of one or both cores, taking a 2.66GHz MacBook Pro all the way up to 3.33GHz.
The 13" has an Intel Core Duo processor.

- Better NVIDIA graphics cards: the new 15- and 17-inch MacBooks come with a an NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor -- the fastest graphics card ever in a Mac notebook. It's more powerful and more energy efficient than previous generation. These Macs automatically switch graphics cards according to what you're using. Giving you better battery life or better graphics depending on what you're using. The 13" MacBook Pro stays on Nvidia's 320M graphics processor.

- Battery life No drastic leaps here, but it seems slightly improved. Hitting about 8-9 hours on the higher specced 15" and 17", it's 10 hours for the 13" Pro.

Cost?
The cheapest one you can get is the 13" with the 2.4GHz Intel Core Duo chip and a 250 gb hard drive - £999.
To get the benefit of the updates without breaking the bank: get the 15" with an i5 processor and standard storage - £1,649.00
And to go top of the range: get the 17" Macbook with a i5 processor which will set you back £1,899.00.

see all on apple.com/uk

So, an announcement today confirmed the Apple iPad will hit shelves stateside in late April though Brits will have to wait an extra month to get their hands on Apple's holy tablet. But with Steve Jobs' supposedly netbook killing iPad going down about as well as a cool pint of concrete, it would seem that little laptops are here to stay.

One of the criticisms leveled at Apple's tablet offering is that it seems so sternly geared toward media consumption while offering little in the way of production -- an area the netbook copes admirably.

The well-worn cliche of a professional type throwing open their netbook in a coffee franchise and bashing out a blog post, pitch proposal or even a freakin' pie chart isn't something I see changing any time soon.

And what with Apple's infamous and bizarre Atlantic exchange rate mechanism set to land a reasonable mid-spec iPad with 3G somewhere between £450-£600, a lot of people will still be buying netbooks for at least a few years to come.

With that in mind I've compiled a neat little list of the top 10 netbooks currently available.

Click on the image to start the gallery

Well, we said that phones might be dead, but we didn't reckon on fashion laptops disappearing, and my they haven't.

HP teamed up with designer Vivienne Tam to release the Digital Clutch, their second collaboration with the designer in two years. The result is a stylish HP 210 mini featuring a case design by Tam. She has drawn on the same inspirations for the computer as for her Spring collection - butterflies (as you may have guessed). HP tell us it is "inspired by the classic Chinese love story, "Butterfly Lovers," a beautiful tale of freedom, romance and inspiration."

The sunset orange of the butterfly wings contrasts with the pearly grey of the case making for a very beautiful calm scene. Smoothly incorporated into New York fashion week, models on Tam's show walked down the catwalk with the clutches in their hands.

Behind the butterfly case, it's a nice 10" notebook with all the smooth operation you'd expect of HP packing Windows 7, but only an Intel Atom chip and a not so stunning 5.5hr battery life.

It's a pricey £400 ($599). You could get similarly specced laptops for less of course, but it *is* a nice butterfly isn't it.

See Flickr for some more beauty shots of the notebook.

Vivienne Tam HP Mini, preorder $599 from Amazon

Computer makers Dell are making their offering in the tablet computer market small. Five inches small, it slices the size of its main rivals in half.

Their Mini 5 (aka Streak) faces competition from Apple's iPad and HP's Slate and it looks like it's hoping to outfoot the competition by cutting the size and price. That's what people want according to market research from Dell, quoted in the Wall Street Journal. John Thode Dell's vice president in charge of mobile devices told the WSJ what would make people want to buy a tablet computer:

"It's got to be inexpensive, it's got to be small, it's got to be thin, it's got to have long battery life," Thode says. He compared this middle device as something similar to navigation devices in cars.

According to Zdnet, the Mini 5 should be out in the middle of the year - it will run Android (possibly 1.6, possibly something newer), will have front and back facing cameras, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and wifi and 3G.

Though the set-up sounds really good, and we love the Android OS, the price is rumoured to be about $1000 (£650) I.E. NOT THAT CHEAP. I wish it were a bit more affordable. More info on this as it comes out.

Related: Finally! a pocket that can take the iPad

Anyone hoping to make an internet start-up work should go for the mobile platform first, then do a standard website after, said technocrat and founder of the Geek Squad, Robert Stephens in an interesting interview with sustainablejournalism.org. Mobile is where it's at according to Stephens.

"If I were to advise a company on what to build going forward: don't build a website" he said. "Build a mobile app or interface first, and then build for the larger screens."

Geek Squad is a successful company founded in 94, that fix computers in person, or through 24hr phone and online services: but if he were starting up these days, Stephens said he'd do it differently: "I tell people now if I started the Geek Squad today I wouldn't start a computer repair company. I'd really develop a mobile development company." Stephens reckoned his advice was good for start-ups of any flavour, journalists for example.

The launch of the iPad had given the mobile computer market a huge boost and shown that that format size is not just about making phone calls.

"I don't know how much longer they'll be called phones but that's really the central device. Because most of us are moving and mobile, on the go. So our mobile device will be the one we interact with the most."

And the fact that its only got 3 inches of screen space can actually be a good thing...
"The last thing is that the constraint of the mobile screen is actually really liberating in that when you only have a small set of real estate to design your interface for, you can only put so many buttons. Just think of the Google start page, versus the AOL, the Yahoo startpage. Much cleaner."

Read the full interview on sustainablejournalism.org

The future's bright, the future's wide-screen, touch-sensitive and knows how you're feeling. Well according to netbook-makers ASUS anyway. They unveiled a range of concept products at CES yesterday: which they claim can adjust to your mood and emotions.

The three Waveface products: the Casa (an internet-ennabled TV); the Light (a tablet device); and the Ultra (a wrist-computer) use contextual information to provide you with more relevant information.

As Asus put it: the products "represent ASUS's context-based vision of the digital life; that every element in the users environment even down to the user's own physiology and emotional state can be sources of data to help deliver the right information and services at the right time".

Details are sketchy on exactly how they do it, lots of sensors we imagine, but this range certainly sounds intriguing. And they look cool too. Here's the Ultra:

And the Waveface Casa:

We'll post further if we hear about these becoming commercially available.

See more stories from CES 2010

All the big manufacturers at CES this year are knocking out rivals to Apple's forthcoming Tablet: call them tablets, slates, netbooks or what you will, this is the hot area in hardware.

Lenovo have brought in some heavy-hitting gadgets to this new niche. We already looked at the IdeaPad U1 Hybrid - half-laptop half-tablet, and another of their key products is the cute little Skylight.

It's a smartbook. If you can keep up with all the new names flying around, a smartbook is supposed to be a cross between a smartphone and a netbook. Lenovo say: "Skylight harnesses the best of smartphones and netbooks to create a new mobile consumer device." It's powered by a Snapdragon chipset, used in smartphones like Toshiba's TG01 and Google's new Nexus One, and designed to run rich functions on low power. That's ideal for mobile devices which need to economise on battery use and gives the Skylight a whopping 10 hours of battery life.

The Skylight is little, colourful and cute boasting all day battery life, robust wireless connectivity and a custom interface with live web gadgets (apps). Lenovo have already hooked up with network providers AT&T to link the Skylight up to their 3G mobile broadband network in the US.

Thinner than many smartphones, it has a high-definition 10 inch screen and comes in glossy lotus blue or earth red.

The Lenovo Skylight smartbook will be available starting in April in the U.S.It will be available in China and in Europe later this year. In the U.S., it will be sold through www.lenovo.com, www.att.com and AT&T retail stores. Pricing will start at $499 at full retail price.

See all stories from CES 2010 here

Half 'tablet' half laptop, Lenovo's new IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a clamshell that you can take the screen off. Yes that's right, the screen is detachable and by itself it functions as a touch-screen tablet, giving the user two computers in one.

Each half has its own processor, operating system and battery that work together as a clamshell laptop or separately when the screen is functioning as a multitouch slate tablet.

Lenovo describe the technology as game-changing: "The IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook is a game-changing technology in the PC industry that lets user switch their PC experience within a single device to match their dynamic lifestyle," said Liu Jun, senior vice president, Idea Product Group, Lenovo.

They claim it fuses the functionality of a notebook with the slate tablet's rich multitouch entertainment and mobile Internet experience.

The device has a 11.6 inch HD LED screen and runs Windows 7 off a powerful ARM processor chip. It's available in scarlet and weighs 1.8 pounds with the keyboard and 1.6 as a tablet.

The laptop base acts as a kind of dock for the tablet - which is meant for mobile use and has a 5hr battery life. Lenovo assures that the transition between the two is seamless.

Cool or what.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U1 hybrid notebook will be available in the US in summer 2010 with an estimated retail price of $999. The product will be available in the UK later in the year.

See all stories from CES 2010 here

Lenovo has released a new Thinkpad laptop aimed at home users. It's called the Edge and it comes in heat-wave red, the first time a Lenovo comes with a choice of colour.

Design is a key feature of the Edge which Lenovo describe as "progressive and strikingly clean". The keyboard has got a contemporary update, all minimalist black, with select models having illuminated keys. They're all spill-proof too. It has a larger and more sensitive touchpad, now multitouch, allowing fingers to pinch, zoom and scroll.

On the inside, the processors in the new Thinkpads come from chip-makers AMD rather than the more common Intel processors and a range of dual-core chips are available for the Edge: the Turion X2 and Athlon X2.

Edge Thinkpads also come with built in high resolution cameras, and preloaded Skype for making internet calls. Lenovo's ThinkVantage Technologies such as the Active Protection System and Rescue and Recovery are built into the laptops as well.

The ThinkPad Edge 13 inch, will be available immediately at approx £450 plus VAT through stores and www.lenovo.com. The 14 and 15 inch versions will be available starting in Spring 2010.

Those students know how to be funny. Apparently this young man was fed up with the clacking sound of other students' laptop keyboards in lectures and decided to protest by bringing in the ultimate clacking machine. A typewriter. Sadly the sound isn't great on this, but I think he was asked to leave for disturbing fellow students. The Irony.

EMBED-Student Brings Typewriter To Class - Watch more free videos

[via thedailywhat]

Laptop makers ViewSonic released a new range of computers today, ViewBooks.

Targeted at users on-the-move, the ViewBooks are thin and light but aim to be powerful, all-purpose computers. More unusually at the portable computer end of the market, the 12.1", 13.3" and 14" ViewBooks and the 13.3" ViewBook Pro run Windows 7. (Many cheaper netbooks operate on XP).

The flagship ViewBook Pro(13.3 inch screen) is available in black or silver. As the company claim... it "takes the ultra slim notebook experience to the next level". With a slim chassis forged from high-tech magnesium alloy, the notebook is 1.7cm thick and weighs only 1.6kg.

That's thin and light compared to say, a 13" MacBook Pro which is 2.41 cm thick and weighs 2.04 kg, despite having a slightly smaller screen. Though it's still 0.7cm thicker than the thinnest notebook on the market, Dell's freakishly skinny Adamo, at 0.99cm.

As for the rest of the range: the tiny ViewBook 120 with its 12.1" screen packs Windows 7 and a dual core chip, and is pretty impressive for something that size. The 120 is available in black and white. It's slightly more expensive than other netbooks that run on slower Atom processors but is reasonable and below the £500 mark at £469.

The ViewBook 120:

The larger versions, the 14" ViewBook 140 and the 13.3" ViewBook 130 ups the graphics and aesthetics on the 120.

ViewBook Pro - £699 / £729 here
ViewBook 140 - £629
ViewBook 130 - £499 / £569 / £649 here (according to the processor and chipset you choose)
ViewBook 120 - £469 here