By now Dell has a full range of netbooks in sizes 9", 10", and oddly a 12" model, of which weâre looking at the smallest 9-incher here.
Lenovo IdeaPad Y530
Lenovo continues its push into the consumer segment - this time with the IdeaPad Y530, a successor to the Y510 with some interesting updates.
SimpleTech Simpledrive 500GB
The Signature Mini series lineup is both Mac and PC compatible and comes in a variety of capacities and colors with titles like blueberry, bubblegum a...
Lenovo IdeaPad S10
Choosing a netbook that suits you often comes down to aesthetics, and by that measure the Lenovo S10 has a lot of things going for it. It's possibly o...
HP HDX 16t
The HP HDX16t is a multimedia powerhouse with enough peripherals to match its style points.
Dell Studio 15
The Dell Studio 15 is cross between the company's XPS and Inspiron series with a dedicated ATI graphics card and several nice, optional add-ons.
Sony Vaio FW
The Sony VAIO FW-270j is a laptop that looks as good as the HD media it plays.
HP EliteBook 6930p
EliteBook is HP's premium business laptop series, which incorporates laptops with 12, 14, and 15-inch screen sizes. The 6930p is HP's 'Balanced Mobili...
Dell Latitude E6400
One of the most popular series of business laptops - Dell Latitude - received a complete makeover with the introduction of the new E series in 2008.
Acer Aspire One
Of all the netbooks released in the last few months, the Acer Aspire One is probably the most popular. It's fitted with more or less the same componen...
Apple MacBook
The latest 13-inch MacBook isn't really a replacement for the classic white MacBook (which is still available). Instead, it's an entirely new laptop i...
Sony VAIO Z
The VAIO Z series is one of Sony's premium ultraportable series, and is priced accordingly. Like most VAIOs it comes with a little extra, such as a hi...
Lenovo ThinkPad X200
A healthy refresh to the previous generation X61 series, the Thinkpad X200 is the business professionals dream for mobile computing.
Fujitsu U810 Ultraportable Tablet
Laptop + Ultra Mobile PC + Tablet = Fujitsu LifeBook U810. Think this mini-sub-tablet Ultra Mobile PC laptop as the Swiss army knife of ultra portable...
It is a little hard to determine what was the first portable or laptop computer, the first portable computers did not look like the book-sized and folding laptops that we are familiar with today, however, they were both portable and lapable, and lead to the development of notebook style laptops. I have outlined several potential firsts below and how each qualifies, many of the off-site links provide good photos of the computers that will let you see the progression in design.
As the personal computer became feasible in the early 1970s, the idea of a portable personal computer followed. In particular, a "personal, portable information manipulator" was imagined by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC in 1968 and described in his 1972 paper as the "Dynabook"
The I.B.M. SCAMP project (Special Computer APL Machine Portable), was demonstrated in 1973. This prototype was based on the PALM processor (Put All Logic In Microcode).
The I.B.M. 5100, the first commercially available portable computer, appeared in September 1975, and was based on the SCAMP prototype.
As 8-bit CPU machines became widely accepted, the number of portables increased rapidly. The Osborne 1 used the Zilog Z80, weighed 23.5 pounds (10.7 kg). It had no battery, only a tiny 5" CRT screen and dual 5¼" single-density floppy drives. In the same year the first laptop-sized portable computer, the Epson HX-20, was announced. The Epson had a LCD screen, a rechargeable battery and a calculator-size printer in a 1.6 kg (4 pounds) chassis. Both Tandy/Radio Shack and HP also produced portable computers of varying designs during this period.
The first laptop using the clamshell design, used today by almost all laptops, appeared in 1982. The $8150 GRiD Compass 1100 was used at NASA and by the military among others. The Gavilan SC, released in 1983, was the first notebook marketed using the term "laptop".
From 1983 onwards:
Several new input techniques were developed and included in laptops: the touchpad (Gavilan SC, 1983), the pointing stick (IBM ThinkPad 700, 1992) and handwriting recognition (Linus Write-Top, 1987).
some CPUs were designed specifically for low power use (including laptops (Intel i386SL, 1990), and were supported by dynamic power management features (Intel SpeedStep and AMD PowerNow!) in some designs.
Displays reached VGA resolution by 1988 (Compaq SLT 286) and 256-color screens by 1993 (PowerBook 165c), progressing quickly to millions of colors and high resolutions.
High-capacity hard drives and optical storage (CD-ROM followed CD-R and CD-RW and eventually by DVD-ROM and the writable varieties) became available in laptops soon after their introduction to the desktops.
Early laptops often had proprietary and incompatible system architectures, operating systems, and bundled applications, making third party hardware and software difficult and sometimes impossible to develop.
Information about what you need to do and know before your attempt to start a home business. Arming yourself with this information will greatly improve your chances for business success.
Laying the Groundwork to Start Your Home Business
starting a business is an everyday dream that not many are fortunate enough to realize in their lifetime. Unfortunately, not everyone is cut out to run their own business. By laying the groundwork you'll avoid wasting your time and pave the way for your future success.
10 Steps Before You Start a Home Business
This step-by-step exercise is intended to get you thinking about what you have to offer and whether your idea will result in a successful home business. Those who complete these steps may decide to go ahead with their idea, choose a different home business or abandon the idea completely.
1. Inability to reach desired sales goals.
If you are not making the kind of sales that you need, your losses multiply as you find it difficult to meet your fixed costs requirements, such as payment for your inventory and overhead..
What to do: While you may not have sold anything before, now is the time to get your chin up and learn those selling techniques. You simply have no choice: don’t sell and you may be forced to close the business.
One strategy you can also use when sales (and profits) are low is to cut prices. This could attract customers, helps cover your costs, and buys time until your business rebounds. A price cut can also boost sales quickly, especially when there is no money for advertising or other promotions.
However, the downside of this strategy is that you may find it difficult to increase your prices back to its original level. Consumers may even peg you into the “cheap” category, thus putting your hard-earned image at risk.
2. Wallet is not big enough.
You gather all the resources you can to start a business you withdrew all your life savings, borrowed money from your parents, even “maxed-out” your credit cards. When you open for business, alas, you find that customers and sales can be pretty elusive. You wait, and wait, and wait, but cash is running out. Without money coming in, you decide to cut your losses and close down the business.
What to do: The first step to addressing the problem is to review how you performed against your business plan. Did you spend beyond your planned expenditures? More often than not, your problem lies in a genuine misguided and unrealistic expectation of finance.
Try to explore other avenues of financing your business, even opening yourself to accept equity financing where you will be required to sell an ownership interest in the business in exchange for capital. Your choices may be to build the business yourself and push it to success, then later sell your interests for a fair profit; or be repeatedly frustrated in attempts at financing a business that cannot achieve its potential because of insufficient capital.
3. Product has no sizzle.
Your success depends on whether you provide products or services with value to your customers. Many small business entrepreneurs fail to effectively communicate to their customers the benefits of their products or services. This is particularly true of many home-based Internet entrepreneurs, who have been misled to believe the myth that “if you build it, they will come.”
What to do:The acceptance of your products will depend on how well you are able to represent your business in the minds of your customers. If you know that you offer good quality products or services with value, the next step should be to get that information across your target market. Generate customer interest in the product through advertising and promotions.
4. Marketing and advertising fails to elicit response
You must develop effective strategies to market your business. But is your marketing plan working, or are they just a waste of time and resources?
Many business owners, in an attempt to save on costs, develop their own marketing campaigns only to fail in their intended purpose of bringing in more business or achieving "top-of-mind-awareness" in the mind of the customer. Their campaigns become ineffective, in the sense that it suffered from unbelievability, an irrelevant message, market saturation, and/or improper niche marketing. They spend time and resources on wrong advertising medium.
What to do: To achieve your marketing and advertising goals, you need to have an effective message, market position, and adequate funding. An advertising message that is "believable and relevant" is the key to promotional success. When you have the right thing to say in your promotion, you will drive sales. And when the right message is also unique, it becomes even more effective.
5. Failure to adapt to changing market conditions
Changing market conditions may include downturn or upswings in the economy, heightened competition, or even common business risks such as Web site business interruption or calamities. It may mean changing neighborhood profiles, where once thriving areas full of walk-in customers are now deserted. When these changes strike, you may find your business ill-prepared to cope and survive.
What to do:Stay abreast of the rapidly changing business environment by reviewing your company’s business strategy. If you determine that your current strategy will not work, overhaul your business focus, if necessary. It is important that you study your customers thoroughly so you can track customer preferences and buying trends. This will help release your company from the economic ups and downs.
Economic system in which goods and services are exchanged for one another or money, on the basis of their perceived worth. Every business requires some form of investment and a sufficient number of customers to whom its output can be sold at profit on a consistent basis.
A business (also called a firm or an enterprise) is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods and/or services to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, most being privately owned and formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business itself. The owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial returns in exchange for work and acceptance of risk. Notable exceptions include cooperative businesses and state-owned enterprises. Socialist systems involve either government agencies, public, or worker ownership of most sizable businesses.
The etymology of "business" relates to the state of being busy either as an individual or society as a whole, doing commercially viable and profitable work. The term "business" has at least three usages, depending on the scope — the singular usage (above) to mean a particular company or corporation, the generalized usage to refer to a particular market sector, such as "the music business" and compound forms such as agribusiness, or the broadest meaning to include all activity by the community of suppliers of goods and services. However, the exact definition of business, like much else in the philosophy of business, is a matter of debate.
Business Studies, the study of the management of individuals to maintain collective productivity in order to accomplish particular creative and productive goals (usually to generate profit), is taught as an academic subject in many schools.
The HP HDX16t is a multimedia powerhouse with enough peripherals to match its style points.
The Dell Studio 15 is cross between the company's XPS and Inspiron series with a dedicated ATI graphics card and several nice, optional add-ons.
The Sony VAIO FW-270j is a laptop that looks as good as the HD media it plays.
The latest 13-inch MacBook isn't really a replacement for the classic white MacBook (which is still available). Instead, it's an entirely new laptop i...
The VAIO Z series is one of Sony's premium ultraportable series, and is priced accordingly. Like most VAIOs it comes with a little extra, such as a hi...
A healthy refresh to the previous generation X61 series, the Thinkpad X200 is the business professionals dream for mobile computing. 
Laptop + Ultra 
