Tiny Sony Ultraportable, HD-DVD Laptops, and Here Comes E-Paper

The best from Asia this month also includes new audio players and portable photo printers.

Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Wednesday, June 21, 2006

TOKYO -- Japan is now counting down the days to summer. The rainy season has started--meaning that summer will kick off in a few weeks with a virtual assurance of blue skies and high temperatures for the next several months.

The World Cup also is in progress and brings up memories here of four years ago when Japan cohosted the tournament with South Korea. In Japanese, you write the letter "W" and then the Chinese character for cup. The second of the two characters also makes up the Japanese word "kanpai," which means "cheers." So cheers to this month's coolest gadgets!

Sony Ultraportable PC

When the new ultramobile PCs were being unveiled at the CeBit technology conference in Germany in March, who'd have guessed that Sony had the neat, little UX50 up its sleeves? The diminutive computer is the smallest VAIO computer yet and runs Windows XP. It's about the size of a paperback book and has a touch-screen display and full keyboard. It looks great, but our early tests reveal the keyboard is pretty difficult to use because there's almost no tactile feedback. Similarly, the 4.5-inch wide-screen display is bright and crisp, but everything's so small that you end up squinting at the display. It's on sale now in Japan and will hit the United States in July. It will cost around $1800.

More High-Def Laptops


go here for pix and a good read
http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,126134,00.asp