Gateway has released its latest range of entertainment notebooks that are known as the NV series, targeting power users who want the latest technologies in notebooks without breaking the bank. While summer’s just kicked in and nobody’s about to head off to school just yet, picking up the Gateway NV series notebook right now isn’t exactly a bad thing at all - after all, just how obsolete can a notebook get within a couple of months.

All that pre-release hype from Alienware we heard last week led up to even more pre-release hype today, with the company unveiling its two new laptops, the Area-51 m15x and m17x. It’s calling the radical PCs “the most powerful notebooks ever created.” There’s still an air of mystery around the two laptops, but we do know that both the 15.4″ Area-51 m15x and the 17″ Area-51 m17x will be using Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme processors at 2.8GHz, and will have enough graphics mojo to play 1080p video and beaucoups games. Pricing and availability still weren’t announced, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, feast your eyes on the pretty pics of these highly capable baubles from the extraterrestrials. [Alienware, via Electronista]

Here is another folding laptop concept and this is very interesting because you might turn into a PDA or a mobile phone. The Flexi PDA is waterproof when folded up and it features some very cool flexible screen technology. This folding laptop concept is perfect for outdoors applications but I’m not sure how it can turn into a mobile phone.

While it is true that the battery is not user-replaceable, isn’t going to charge you an arm and a leg to get it replaced. The cost for a new battery is $129, which includes installation

Samsung has unveiled a new thin-and-light laptop aimed at mobile professionals, claimed by the vendor to be the lightest system available with a 13.3in screen.

Available from September, the Samsung X360 weighs 1.27kg, but is fully featured without any compromise, according to Samsung. It is based on Intel’s Centrino 2 mobile platform with 1GB to 4GB of memory and a choice of 120GB hard drive or Flash SSD storage up to 128GB. Prices have yet to be announced.

Samsung claimed a battery life of up to 10 hours continuous use from the X360’s 6-cell battery pack, while the 13.3in screen supports a resolution of 1280×800 and an LED backlight that delivers about 33 per cent extra brightness over other designs.

Read more from source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2225007/samsung-claims-lightweight

Malware has managed to get off the planet and onto the International Space Station (ISS), NASA confirmed today. And it’s not the first time that a worm or virus has stowed away on a trip into orbit.

The attack code, which space news site SpaceRef.com identified Monday as “W32.Gammima.AG,” infected at least one of the laptops used on the station, an international effort headlined by the U.S. and Russia.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman Kelly Humphries declined to identify the malware, saying only that antivirus software detected a worm on July 25.

Read more from source: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9113654&intsrc=news_ts_head

The tiny South Pacific nation of Niue has become the first nation in the world to issue laptop computers to all its children.

Every primary and secondary school student has been given a rugged little green laptop, which has a wireless connection to the internet. The move is part of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charitable programme, designed to help children’s learning.

The XO computers have been designed by OLPC to be “relatively waterproof and breakproof”.

The OLPC programme stems from research and development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston in the US and has been supported by companies including Google and News Corp, the parent company of Times Online.

Read more from source: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4591000.ece