As the holidays inch nearer and nearer, rest assured that the manufacturers are losing their sleep and their minds in order to bring out the latest and greatest gadgets right before people start hitting the buy button.

With multiple companies announcing release dates this October, there are just way too many gadgets to cover around this time of the year. So I am basically going to spare you the torture and give you these digest posts so that you keep up with them without having to go through dozens of PRs each and every single day. Jump over to the other side to see today’s highlights.

HP Envy 13 & 15

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then HP has just paid Apple a huge compliment. So far, only those rogue Chinese companies have blatantly ripped off Apple’s designs and the more mainstream companies have been content with just copying certain parts.

Now HP has decided to completely copy the aesthetics of the MacBook Pro line in the two latest Envy notebooks – Envy 13 and Envy 15. The flat style keyboard, the aluminum surface and even the button-less glass touchpad with gestures – they have all been integrated into the two new HP portables.

The Envy 13 though is more of a MacBook Air copy in its dimensions and weight. The MacBook Air is 0.74 inch whilst the Envy 13 is 0.8 inch. The Envy 13 weighs 3.74 pounds and the MacBook Air weighs 3 pounds.

The screens on the new Envy notebooks are very bright thanks to what HP calls the Radiance technology and they have the same edge-to-edge glass coating and black bezel as the latest MacBooks.

The Envy 13 is a 13inch notebook that runs on a low power Core 2 Duo and has a battery life of 7 hours. HP has an add-on battery pack that attaches magnetically and increases the life to 18 hours. The Envy 15 is the powerhouse of the two and carries a Core i7 processor that packs quite a punch along with ATI Radeon HD 4830 graphics and support for up to 16GB of RAM. Even with all that performance the Envy manages to stay around the 1inch mark in thinness, making for a very impressive notebook.

They are coming to the US on the 18^th of October.

Asus Eee Keyboard

This is another new portable form factor from Asus. It is something that I would like to call the Netkeyboard, which is essentially made for those people who want to take their system with them and plug into available displays whenever possible. What started out as leaked photos, has now culminated into a full announcement with Asus announcing a release date of sometime this October.

The Asus Eee keyboard is actually a full netbook stuffed into a keyboard. Okay so the keyboard is a bit larger than your average keyboard. There is also the small matter of the touchscreen on the keyboard. This device will probably ditch Windows altogether and go for Moblin, a Linux based mobile phone OS. I will leave it to you to imagine the performance of a mobile OS running on a netbook configuration (hint: really fast). There is more – it has all the standard netbook ports, so you won’t miss out plugging your USB drive in when you type on a disembodied keyboard while sitting on a park bench.

LG GW620 Android Phone

The GW620 has been announced as LG’s first ever Android phone. Even though the company announced that it will make several Windows Mobile phones just the other day, this announcement is far more exciting for obvious reasons.

The phone itself is going to be the usual fare, as it seems from the specs. It will feature a 3inch full touchscreen and a slide out QWERTY keypad. The GW620’s Android OS will definitely be a far cry from what the company has been using in its phones all this time. In other words, Android’s usability and depth will finally give good looking LG phones some semblance of proper functionality.

It is slated to be available later this year in ‘select European markets’.

New TomTom XXL 530S, 540S

Two new TomTom XXL line portable navigation devices (PND) have been released that have über large 5inch screens. The 530S and the 540S are both similar the older XXL devices with the due exception of the larger screen. While both have essentially the same hardware, the 540S is more expensive because it has extra features like Advanced Lane Guidance, seven million preloaded points of interest, preloaded maps of Mexico etc. So if you travel a lot and need every bit of info that you can get, you’re better off with the 540S.

They will arrive in the US this October. The 530S will be priced at $279 and the 540S will be priced at $299 post launch.

Nokia Erdos

Nokia has been at it again with their 8800 line of expensive designer phones. This one is called the Erdos. It is really, really shiny and is carved out of a single piece of solid stainless steel. Yes, it reminds me of Apple’s Unibody chassis too.

The screen is a 2.4-inch, 320×240 pixels OLED display and is actually hidden behind a mirror-finished glass so that it only becomes visible when the screen is turned on. No you cannot have a full HTML browser on it. No, you cannot use it under direct sunlight. But that is okay because its target audience does not see much of direct sunlight in any case.

It has 3G/HSPA,WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, autofocus camera with Carl Zeiss lens with dual LED flash and also video recording. The phone runs the tried and tested Symbian S60 OS, which is starting to feel slightly dated now. Details are a bit sketchy at the moment but it looks like it will be a while before it is out. Pre-holiday season is still a possibility though.

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HP Probook 4310s Review: Bulky but Good For Business

The HP Probook 4310s is aimed at the mid range market where people do not want to go all out on a portable but also need to be able to move around with something that does the basic things well. So here we have something that will help the office worker to take the occasional break or the blogger like me to work while away from his workstation from time to time. In being a mid-range offering, it is also compromise between business and average consumer features. On the whole it is not too light a portable, weighing in at about 4.6 pounds. Despite that, it is manageable enough to be carried around inside a standard sized laptop bag.

At about $800, this laptop is just right for those who want a business solution but do not want to go for the high-end ones from Toshiba or Lenovo. Jump over to the other side for the full meat.

Configuration

CPU – 2.1-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6570

RAM – 2GB [up to 8GB)

Hard Drive – 320GB; 7,200rpm, SATA

Optical Drive – DVD /-RW DL, 8X

Display – 13.3, 1366×768

Graphics – Intel GMA 4500MHD, 795MB memory (shared)

Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/draft-n, Bluetooth 2.0

Windows Vista Business

Ports – Ethernet; HDMI; Headphone; Microphone; Modem; VGA, 3 USB Ports, ExpressCard/34; SD memory reader

Warranty and Support – One-year standard/24/7 toll-free phone

Size – 12.8 x 9.0 x 1.1 inches

Weight – 4.4 pounds

Design

The Probook 4310s has a shiny finish on the lid, which is not desirable on a laptop that is meant to be carried around. The problem starts with scratches and fingerprints that accumulate very fast on these surfaces and then it escalates to the dirt that settles on those fingerprints and inside those scratches.

The plastic build might not give you much confidence in the strength of the chassis but it is still strong enough to take daily abuse. The laptop is build thick and is slightly boxy too. Looking at it while closed, you will realize that this is not going to turn any heads any time soon.

The interiors are not all that bad actually. The finish here is dual tone with the shiny keyboard base forming a contrast to the matte satin finish on the palm rest areas and the portion that sits above the keyboard. The shiny keyboard base will get scuffed very soon though.

Screen

The 13.3” screen on the 4310s has a glossy finish, which is good for color reproduction but bad because of the glare that it can produce. It has a native display resolution of 1366×768, which means it has an aspect ratio of 16:9. The viewing angles on this screen are not that good. So if you are in a space crunch where you have to angle the screen at something other than straight to your eyes, you will experience some color washouts. The main problem with the 16:9 aspect ratio is the fact that you get less vertical screen space, which is necessary for viewing long documents. If you are looking for using this mainly for business, this is something that you should keep in mind. However, it is not a very big problem and can be overlooked.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard has flat isolated keys that are becoming really common these days. The keyboard base is glossy but the keys themselves have scratch resistant finish. The keyboard flex is minimum and you won’t notice it unless you are really hammering at it. There is not separate number pad however because the horizontal space is not enough to fit one on this 13inch model. This is something to note for business owners, who might want a full number pad for crunching spreadsheets. One good thing is that the keyboard is spill resistant.

The touch pad has ample space for complex maneuvers and has a rubberized finish to give you a smooth feeling during use. The main concern here is always the tracking and it is quite usable in that regard. The buttons are not your average touchpad buttons because they are actually hinged at the top and depress only towards the bottom. This might take time getting used to.

Sound

The speakers on the 4310s are quite loud and can send the sounds across a small room. However, they suffer from the same inadequacies that other similar speakers suffer from. The high frequencies have a tendency to lose their clarity and the some of the lower frequencies are not reproduced at all because the driver is just too small. But they are usable for the occasional movie and music playback.

Ports and Features

The ports on the Probook 4310s are the things that you would want to carry around. There are 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 VGA and HDMI output each, 1 Ethernet and Modem port each, 1 Kensington lock slot and the usual audio in and out. There is also a 5 in 1 card reader and an ExpressCard/34 slot, which will make a lot of people happy because these slots are getting rarer these days. There are no ports on the back, which is a really good thing for when you are carrying it on your lap or using it in a place where there is not much space behind the laptop.

There is a 2.0-megapixel camera on the 4310s that captures better images than the average webcam. The details on the stills come out really nice and the videos come out looking not too pixilated and comparatively better to look at. However, being a fixed focus webcam, it is really meant to be used while you are sitting up front.

Performance and Battery

The laptop can be made to order when it comes to the configuration. This is the basic configuration we are talking about here that carries an Intel Turion (T300) Core 2 Duo processor (2.1GHz) and 2GB of RAM.

The multitasking is decent here and the usual setup – browser with multiple tabs open, email client, IM client and a word processor – will run smoothly. The performance is actually average when you choose this configuration but this the perfect balance between budget and functionality. There is a Celeron option available but it would not wise to go for that. The integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD is okay for casual gaming but it is not meant for anything close to games like Crysis or BioShock.

You can expect the battery to last about 4 hours on average usage. You also have the option to get a 8-cell battery for extended battery-life.

Conclusion

The main aim here is to provide basic functionality and portability within a budget and the HP Probook 4310s does those things well. One the other hand, if you are looking for something that is a better designed and more powerful, I will suggest you go for Toshiba or Lenovo who are better known for their business portables.

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Apple has confused a lot of people with the naming scheme of their new line of portables. It seems like they are trying to free up the ‘MacBook’ name for something else. In any case, now we have the 3 MacBook Pro notebooks, and the lowest one is a 13-inch model.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro does not have a dedicated graphics solution like the other two models do. But other than that, this package is really hard to beat. In comparison to the older (white) 13-inch model from Apple, this one has more of everything.

It has more memory, more storage, higher graphics power, stronger casing and a really long battery life. Now with a feature list like that and a price of $1199, the all-new 13-inch MacBook Pro is a really tough notebook to beat.

Let’s start with the thing that makes this notebook one of the hardiest ever (without bringing out the carbon fiber that is). The new manufacturing process that Apple showed off during the launch of the first ‘Unibody’ MacBooks has really made a difference.

For those of you who did not follow MacWorld obsessively – the unibody is a new type of casing developed by Apple, where they carve out entire shells of the casing from single blocks of aluminum. So the screen backing, the keyboard area and the bottom trough are all carved out of single pieces of aluminum, making the pieces very strong indeed. This new casing is unmatched by all others in strength and elegance. The only notebooks tougher than this are the hardcore ones like the XFR from Dell.

The Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz processor on the notebook comes with 3MB L2 cache and a 1066MHz Front Side Bus, making this new 13-inch model from Mac a very powerful portable. The ‘P’ here stands for Penryn core, which are the low voltage versions of the Core 2 Duo line. Intel is not known for having easily comprehensible naming schemes, but at least they make great processors. This chip enables this machine to handle just about anything short of 3D rendering tasks. It comes with 2 GB RAM at 1067MHz.

Next, we come to the new battery. Apple has enclosed the battery within the unibody and that caused some resentment amongst the users at the beginning. But the improved battery life makes up for the lack of a user replaceable battery. The new battery is a 52W per hour battery and gives a battery life that is between 8 and 9 hours. Although a 52W rating is usually taken as an equivalent to a 6-cell battery, the longevity of this battery is closer to the extended 9 cell batteries. The battery life is much lower when running Windows on the MacBook, which comes to about 5-6 hours. Apple can make the Apple drivers for Windows more efficient but it makes sense that they might not want to (winks).

Coming to the storage, this is where there is a minor problem that needs addressing. The 5400rpm 160GB SATA HDD that is provided with the notebook does not do a bad job but there are people who need more speed. For them, a 7200rpm drive may be a better option but it will come at the cost of about 15-30 minutes off the total battery life. For an increased speed and with the already long enough battery life, this is a sacrifice that will be deemed ‘worth it’ by most.

Some people will go ahead and install an SSD storage device and this is where they will be facing the problem. (For some unknown reason, the 13-inch MacBook Pro runs on at SATA 150. So when you have an SSD that can easily push past the 150Mbps mark, you will be stuck with SATA 150 speeds. For now, this cannot be changed. No one is sure if this is a hardware limitation or a software glitch but experts have conjectured that it is probably a software issue that can be solved with an upgrade.) This has been solved with an EFI firmware update.

Embedded graphics is usually a bad thing but with Nvidia’s 9400M (256MB shared), that is not true at all. This MacBook Pro can easily handle last generation games at decent settings with minor tweaks to make it perfect. For uncomplicated games, the FPS can easily go north of 50 but for visually richer games, it will likely drop to 25FPS or less. Thus it can be expected that the average FPS would hover between 30 and 40. Most testers have released 3DMarks scores of above 2000, which is really quite good for an embedded system.

The screen has a 1280 x 800 resolution and is a TFT LED backlit screen. The one gripe here for most people is the glossy glass layer over the screen. But thankfully it is bright enough to be workable even in daylight, as long as you have some shade and are not sitting under a direct glare from somewhere. The colors are much richer on this new version, which makes watching movies a pleasurable experience.

The keyboard is backlit and adjusts itself to the ambient light. It is also manually adjustable. This is a really handy feature because you do not want to light up a pitch-dark room with your backlit keyboard, but you do need stronger light in poorly lit areas that are not pitch dark. The keys are a pleasure to use and the experience is only marred by the sharp edge. The touch pad is amazingly accurate and features no button. The whole touch pad is clickable.

The left side of the body has a handy battery gauge (beside the various ports) that displays the battery life by lighting up part or whole of the line of eight LED lights – a very neat touch.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro does not have a FireWire 400 port but has an 800 port instead, much to the distress of musicians. But it has 2 USB 2.0 ports that are faster than FireWire 400 at 480Mbps. There are headphone/speaker out and microphone/line-in ports. These are also optical ports. It comes with Airport Extreme WiFi (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n), iSight webcam, 8x slot-loading SuperDrive, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, Mini Display port and also an SD card reader. It weighs 4.51 pounds and comes with Apple’s brilliant MagSafe power adapter.

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