Gateway announced its newest line of notebooks: the NV Series. The NV Series has a sleek, ergonomic design and includes models for budget-conscious students and families, to systems packed with the latest technology for video editing and casual gaming, including…

- Intel Core i3 and Core i5 processors as well as AMD Athlon and AMD Turion processors.

- Up to 4GB of DDR3 memory that is upgradeable to 8GB.

- The notebooks also feature media card readers that accept popular media cards (Secure Digital, Multimedia Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro and xD) as well as large-capacity hard drives ranging from 320GB to 640GB of capacity, enabling customers to easily and quickly access, download, store and share their digital media content.

- The MyBackup function gives consumers a way to quickly and easily back-up all important files to another location such as a USB drive, external hard disk drive, or another hard drive partition.

Since all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, the NV line is sure to include plenty of entertainment capabilities, such as…

- High Definition Ultrabright LCD widescreen 16:9 display. The NV5 15.6-inch display models boast a 1366×768 resolution, and the Gateway NV7 1600×900 resolution; great for HD movies and video.

- Blu-ray players for top-of-the-line movie-viewing (select models), as well as DVD and CD recording

- An integrated HD webcam with 1280×1025 resolution

- ATI Mobility Radeon HD graphics for PC gaming

- Seamless social networking capabilities, like the integrated “social networking” button which allows customers to access their social networks, including Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, with a single touch of a button.

The Gateway NV Series will be available in a variety of configurations with the MSRP starting at $529.99. The first model to be available will be the Gateway NV59C09u, with additional models in the line becoming available in the coming weeks.

Model Number: Gateway NV59C09u; MSRP: $799.99

• Intel Core i3-330M Processor (2.13GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache) 2

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

• 15.6″ HD Widescreen Ultrabright TFT LCD Display

• Mobile Intel HM55 Express Chipset

• 4096MB DDR3 Dual-Channel 1066MHz Memory Packaging and Documentation

• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD

• 320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

• 4X Blu-ray Disc/DVD-Super Multi double-layer drive

• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi CERTIFIED

• 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 port)

• High-Def Webcam (1280 x 1024)

• Two Stereo Speakers

• Multi-in-1 Digital Media Card Reader

• One HDMI port and three USB 2.0 Ports

• Multi-Gesture Touchpad

• Dedicated Numeric Keypad 3

• 6-cell Li-Ion (4400 mAh) Battery; up to 4.5-hours of battery life(2)

• Notebook weight: 5.72 lbs

• Two Year Warranty

Let’s not lie to ourselves Everyone knows that one of the coolest parts about Transformers was their ability to not only kick butt in their normal form but also to still be stylish once they morphed into cars.  In perhaps some kind of bid to do the same, Lenovo has just announced its’ innovative new device just ahead of CES. At first glance, the device looks like another run-of-the-mill laptop, but don’t be deceived, it is nothing you’ve seen before

Instead, the IdeaPad Hybrid is an 11.6” laptop running on an Intel Core 2 Duo U4100 processor, and – believe it or not – a detachable slate tablet running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM CPU. Yes, you heard that right. If you feel like going stylish with a slate tablet instead of lugging around a fairly powerful laptop with (gasp) a keyboard, Lenovo has left the choice up to you. As a laptop, the IdeaPad still has all of the standard features intact such as built in Wi-Fi, VGA, HDMI, Ethernet, three USB ports, and a 4-in-1 reader. As a tablet, the device still sports a pair of stereo speakers, a microphone, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. When it comes to battery life, the Lenovo IdeaPad can operate for up to 8 hours on a single charge and as a laptop, up to 6. As for memory, the main body will house a 128GB SSD and the slate tablet will don 16GB of flash.

Now if they could only make the display 3D capable, they might just have Apple’s rumored iSlate scrambling. Expect to hear some buzz about this as the 2010 Consumer Electronic Show begins today. For some great information on other great laptops check our online Editing Laptop Buyers’ Guide.

Today is the day you can get Microsoft Windows 7 in stores and via download. We’ve been playing with the release candidate around here for a few months, and we really dig it. It’s still bloated compared to, say, the very svelte (but now woefully outdated) Windows 2000, but is significantly faster than Windows Vista. It plays nicely with all of the video editing applications we’ve thrown at it, but we’re not too surprised by that.

I’ve been boning up on the installation notes to see exactly how I want to do this for the laptops at my home. I have come to the conclusion that I want to do custom installations to wipe out the previous Vista installations; but I have been making backups carefully to make sure that I’m not going to lose anything major. I think if I have a good disk image for each computer, I should be golden. Hopefully.

Things I’m looking forward to:

• Support for even more GPU features.
• Smoother, prettier fonts.
• Quicker than Windows Vista for pretty much everything.
• Less-painful networking.
• 64-bit computing on my computer (which shipped with 32-bit Vista; hence, why I’ve been reading about the custom install…)
• New taskbar that is vaguely reminiscent of Mac OS X dock–significantly reduces clutter