Lenovo is often perceived as a company oriented towards business users, partly due to their IBM history, and partly due to the ThinkPad series. Yet their IdeaPad series devices have been present on the market for some time too, a series oriented to buyers that value capabilities and an attractive price more than the reliability and portability of ThinkPad notebooks. The latest model that’s got into our hands is Y570, a very attractive and powerful notebook replete with new technologies.

After presenting the first EeePC several years ago, ASUS created an entirely new category of notebooks, one that would soon prove to be a massive hit. It’s been almost four years since then, and ASUS still keeps surprising us with models that don’t follow the familiar netbook path, despite the fact that they are pretty much the ones who created that path to begin with. “Unusual” can be achieved in many ways, mostly through hardware or design changes – for instance, we’ve seen a fair share of netbooks designed by famous people in the fashion industry, with SSDs instead of conventional HDDs, stronger graphics chips instead of the ordinary integrated ones and so on. Well, ASUS’ EeePC VX6S is extremely different from both typical netbooks and powerful and expensive ultraportable machines.

Some time ago, we got acquainted with AMD’s new Brazos platform, or more specifically, its strongest incarnation, ASUS’ motherboard with the E-350 APU. The “E” in the APU’s name revealed that we were dealing with the Zacate APU, containing two Bobcat cores, and the stunning performance we witnessed at the time resulted in an Editor’s Choice award as well. In the meantime, ASUS has been working fervently at launching new notebooks based on the same platform. Although the Brazos platform is theoretically aimed at the netbook market, its nature and performance enabled it to be implemented in desktop and notebook computers as well. ASUS’ K53BY is the latest example thereof.

Just as we were beginning to think that the rumours of 13”-display notebooks’ shutdown were true, Lenovo issued the best possible denial, by demonstrating X1, the new, prestigious model. The notebook we’ve tested isn’t the final version, but it’s complete enough for us to be able to estimate how good the final product will be.

We told you everything you needed to know on AMD’s Brazos platform some time ago. Although the first models to appear on the market were in the form of motherboards, we were actually eagerly awaiting for the appearance of netbooks based on this technology. ASUS’ K-series models have already shown that the E-350 chipset can very well cope with large displays, so it shouldn’t come across as too strange that so many manufacturers have opted to make available 15” models based on the Brazos APU. As much as all of this sounds attractive, however, small and powerful machines with a display diagonal of up to 13” are what AMD was focused on during development - and these models are what we’re making a roundup of today.

The absolute torrent of tablet PCs and touch-sensitive smartphones is a clear indicator of which way this industry is going to follow in the near future. After years of research and hard work, this way of user interaction has been brought to perfection, and the fact that more and more manufacturers, but also users, are abandoning the “obsolete” concept of using PCs and phones isn’t to surprise. Notebooks and PCs, however, have yet to embrace this trend.

It’s hard to cater to everyone’s needs at times. A notebook should be light, have a long-lasting battery, have enough CPU power, be firm, and keep an accessible price at all that. Acer’s TravelMate series has reached for this goal several times in the past, and the latest one is done via TravelMate 8481G, the “beta” version of which we were able to get hold of, after its appearance at this year’s Computex.

It was only a matter of time when netbooks were to become a fashion detail. Compact enough to fit inside a handbag, usable enough to cover a solid part of business and office use, they’ve easily attracted the attention of people who care about their image. Whether it’s typical yuppies, people who have to look neat and trendy for the sake of their work, or people who actually have good taste and are willing to display it, the market for these devices is definitely there, and the largest IT companies aren’t the ones to miss the chance to make their models look good and sell even better with this type of audience.

ASUS was one of the first companies to present notebooks based on the long-awaited Sandy Bridge platform at this year’s CES. N-series models are already available worldwide and are an excellent representative of what this platform brings and what can be expected from it. ASUS K53SV is the heir to last year’s well-known model K52. Changes are clearly visible from the moment you’ve unwrapped the notebook, and there are more than just a few around. Suffice to say that we liked K52 and loved K53SV.