I, for one, worried that Lenovo might let the ThinkPad line slip in its legendary ruggedness. Looks like such fears were unfounded. Looking at the internals of the upcoming  T61p, it would seem that Lenovo’s making the things even more robust. Specs are decent: Santa Rosa, nVidia Quadro FX 570M, and ultra-wideband. Pricing is as expected, at around $1,800 and up.

Or, of course, that’s just the point: home theatre PCs (HTPCs) aren’t supposed to look like PCs, they’re supposed to look like the typical A/V components. In this respect, at least, Alienware has hit a home run (except for the out-of-place alien head, but what are they supposed to do? That’s their logo!). The specs are a curious choice, from the AMD Athlon X2 4600+ (why no Core 2 Duo?) and relatively low-end nVidia 7600 GS (why no ATI/AMD card with its enhanced AVIVO capabilities?), resulting in lower-than-expected performance results. And, the price is up there: $3,199. There are some other faults, but overall, this looks like a decent HTPC if you just gotta have one NOW.

Alienware displays yet another product to its innovative, and slightly creepy looking, computer retail line. This time it’s the Area 51 m9750 Notebook. The screen is 17" and includes Intel Core 2 Duo mobile processors and dual 512MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX graphics cards with NVIDIA SLI technology.

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Today, Toshiba rolls out their latest Dynabook, the Santa Rosa-based Satellite WXW. At 8.6-pounds and more than 2-inches thick, this 17.1-incher has 256MB of DirectX 10-capable GeForce 8700M GT graphics, the new top-of-the-line 8M-series GPU from NVIDIA. The display touts a 1,680 x 1,050 pixel resolution with a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300, ±R dual-layer DVD burner and loads of in-and-outs — even HDMI for a quick digital-out to your new flat panel television. Available starting today in Japan with 1GB DDR2 / 120GB disk configurations starting at Â¥219,800 or about $1,805.

HTPC-manufacturer Moneual has a slew of sweet and colorful PCs with a $695 base pricetag. Choose from pink, black, white, green, blue or orange cases. [I'll take one of each!] But there is more than just beauty here.

They feature liquid-cooled 64-bit dual-core Athlon 4400+ processors, integrated NVIDIA 6100 graphics, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a vertically-mounted dual-layer DVD burner.

Also listed in the specs is a:
1 x Floopy Port supports up to 2.88MB

Floopy? Is this something new?

Read on for Tech Specs…

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