Isa Saudi Gazette There is a general idea that computers are getting smaller and smaller, but the truth is that not everyone wants a 10-inch screen. For day to day business use, the 14-inch display appears to be the smallest sensible size – unless of course you have Superman's X-ray vision. Lenovo has just previewed its next-generation business Ultrabook – the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This laptop is thin, light and powerful. It's made with a carbon fiber roll cage – the same material used in advanced airplanes. This keeps the Ultrabook's weight under three pounds. Other premium features include 3G connectivity for anywhere, anytime access, Lenovo RapidCharge for a near-full battery charge in 30 minutes and Intel vPro technology for manageability. A backlit keyboard, super-bright high definition display and Dolby Home Theater surround sound complete the package. The X1 will ship later this summer with 4GB of RAM as standard, upgradeable to 8GB, and an SSD drive. Whereas a 14-inch laptop screen is a good size for business mobility, serious gamers still want a larger display. To its Series 7 laptops, Samsung has introduced the Series 7 Gamer. Designed with feedback from passionate PC gamers in mind, the Series 7 Gamer features a 17.3-inch full HD LCD display, 16GB of memory, a 1.5 terabyte 7200RPM hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce graphics and an Intel Core i7 processor. A great extra is a unique dial that allows users to easily transition between four modes for ideal usage performance. For instance, the mode-changing dial can switch off components in order to save power and have a quieter experience for classroom use. When the product is in gaming mode, it optimizes the graphics and sound, turning on a pulsating light in the speakers and highlighting the gaming keys in red. Samsung is not alone in thinking that bigger is better for gaming. Dell's Alienware is promoting its M14x as “the most powerful 14-inch laptop in the universe,” for the gamer who requires a balance between mobility and performance. But for the gamer whose priority is performance above all else, there's Alienware's flagship M18x. This 18-inch monster of a machine is for the gamer who wants an immersive experience in total comfort – and to occasionally take that experience on the road. The Alienware M18x, is equipped with technology capable of matching high-performance gaming desktops. The M18x delivers up to 200w of mobile graphics power when configured with the optional dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M graphics and up to 4GB of GDDR5 graphics memory. A configuration featuring dual AMD Radeon HD 7970m with CrossFire and support for a triple solid state drive option — 768GB SSD — will be available in the coming weeks. While the discussion today has been about extremely high performance laptops, it is great to see movement at the other end of the spectrum. Getting basic laptops into the hands of children can go a long way to increasing the digital literacy of populations everywhere. Even in a difficult economy, the government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard has committed $11.7 million to fund expansion of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) program to indigenous communities throughout Australia. This will enable the delivery of more than 50,000 XO laptops along with associated training, software development, and support for teachers, primary school children and their communities. Also, the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has fully funded the initial distribution of 5,000 OLPC XO laptops to primary school children in Cameroon. The project will initially span 51 schools in six regions and planning is underway to extend the deployment across the entire country. The Cameroon project represents the first time that the IDB has financed an OLPC deployment. This deployment establishes Cameroon as OLPC's hub in francophone West Africa. A team from Cameroon's Ministry of Education has provided training assistance to an OLPC project in Mali. Other countries in the region are expected to launch XO deployments in 2012. __
