Gadgets etc

They’re sleek, blazingly fast and extremely portable. The newest offerings from computer makers Apple and Casio blend the latest technology with great industrial design, resulting in some of the sexiest portables ever made.

Titanium V 2.0

Apple’s Titanium G4 laptop is considered by many to be the bleeding edge of style and technology, more so now that it has been speed-bumped and tweaked with better features. Encased in commercially pure titanium and only an inch in thickness and 5.3 pounds heavy, the new G4 laptop sports an improved 667 MHz G4 chip that makes it possibly the fastest laptop in the market in terms of raw computing power.

A true multimedia machine for road warriors, the Titanium also boasts of a large 15.2 inch mega wide screen which is now powered by a 16 MB ATI Radeon mobility chip. Also included are a DVD-ROM player, USB and FireWire connectivity ports, infrared capability, a modem and a built-in Ethernet adaptor. A special internal DVD-ROM/CD Burner can also be ordered as an option. Storage on the Titanium starts at 20GB up to 48GB that is very useful for editing videos on the go. As for the RAM, standard is 256MB that can be maxxed out to one Gigabyte .

iBook plus

The Titanium G4’s smaller brother, the popular iBook consumer portable, has also received an upgrade. The ice-white portable now has a new 600MHz G3 processor as well as an updated 100MHz system bus that should make the already fast machine even faster and up to the task of running the more demanding applications.

iBook also comes with 15GB and 20GB hard drives as well as numerous CD media options, including a DVD-ROM/CD Burner combo. Despite faster processors, Apple claims these notebooks can still run five hours on a single charge on their batteries, which makes them excellent portables for the educational and consumer markets.

Small wonder

Casio recently released a sub portable that packs a punch in terms of power as well as economy. The MPC-206E Cassiopea FIVA runs on the 600 Mhz Crusoe processor designed specifically for small PCs. The FIVA can run for nine hours on a battery charge which makes it a wonder of economy and a real option for people on the road all the time.

The FIVA is as tiny as a piece of short bond paper and almost as light at under two pounds. This marvel also runs a full version of Windows Me and not just the Windows CE used for super-small computers. With a 20GB hard drive and 128MB stock RAM in a small but powerful package, the FIVA is a serious contender as a sub portable of choice for busy globe-trotting executives.

With such compelling choices, it is no wonder that many users are considering portable PCs over their desktop machines.