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Casio is announcing that it has developed a fuel cell for notebook PCs that is the most powerful such unit for its size in the world. The company also says it will be sampling commercial versions next year.

The G30/695LS, Toshiba’s update to its useful Qosmio range, packs a fair punch but lacks an HD DVD drive. OK, we know that high-def PCs are hardly flooding the market, but it does seem a bit shortsighted of Toshiba to expect people to pay ¥300,000 for a “multimedia” notebook with not quite all the “multi” included, especially when Sony will start rolling out Blu-ray-equipped PCs in a matter of weeks.

After a day’s fevered speculation, Sony has bared all with its VAIO type U VGN-UX50 UMPC, which will go on sale May 27 for ¥170,000. Full details and pics after the jump.

Sony will begin selling its first personal computers with Blu-ray Disc drives in Japan in June, the company said Tuesday. Both laptop and desktop computers will be available.

Intel will sell its new generation of 65-nanometer desktop and laptop chips under the brand name Core 2 Duo when it launches them this summer, the company said.

Samsung said Monday that its Q1 Windows-based ultra mobile PC is available online through hardware reseller CDW. The Q1 will retail for US$1,099 in the U.S., slightly higher than the target price named by Microsoft in March.

Last Friday saw everyone’s favorite billionaire, Bill Gates, in Tokyo extolling the virtues of tablet PCs in general and Origami in particular. He didn’t say much about his 2001 prediction that tablets would have taken over by 2006 but he did predict the death of the humble school textbook.

Samsung is planning to put its Q1 ultra-mobile PC on sale worldwide in May, the company said this week.

Just about every PC/laptop maker worth its diodes is busy banging out hardware with terrestrial digi TV tuners, and Hitachi’s no different.

Another day, another HD DVD notebook PC. This one’s the FMV-Biblio NX95S/D from Fujitsu and it will be available along with a stack of other, less-interesting laptops in June, about a month later than Toshiba’s world beater.

Toshiba’s world’s first HD DVD laptop computer has finally been given a launch date, months after we first saw it at CES.

Fujitsu is introducing a new technology that will pump up the density of HDDs.

It’s not just us who think this whole MS Origami/Q1 thing is boring — even Samsung’s official press release shows a fabulously coiffed clotheshorse falling asleep over the back of a car as he tries to feign enthusiasm for the monstrosity. The Origami nonsense ends here.

Meanwhile, over at CeBIT, Toshiba is set to unveil a laptop PC with an HD DVD drive, HDMI interface and lots of lovely copy protection.

This is pretty pointless in a PDA market that is dead and only getting more so. Sharp’s updated Linux-packing Zaurus, the SL-C3200, is just like those of its brethren currently filling the bargain bins, except it has a 6Gb CF hard drive inside instead of the 4Gb one nobody bothered with anyway and will cost about ¥70,000, compared to the ¥45,000 older models are going for.

This is already shaping up to be another tough year for glitch-happy Sony. Following the Bravia snafu, the company now says that the VAIO type S [SZ] is having problems with its BIOS, which sometimes fails to boot after users enter their password. The issue affects the VGN-SZ70B/B, VGN-SZ80PS/SZ80S and VGN-SZ90PS/SZ90S models.

Here’s a laptop that might interest gamers looking for something a little different from the usual brands. Yodobashi Camera, a major electrical gadget retail chain, is going to release its i-Friend laptop for gamers on Feb. 24.

Here’s a first for us at DWT — a laptop from Mitsubishi Electric, a heavyweight arms manufacturer better known in the United States for its rear projection TVs. The newcomer is a pretty sweet, if not Earth-shatteringly wonderful PC range called the apricot AL C.

Let the hype begin! Lenovo is set to release two “special edition” widescreen ThinkPads next week, the Z60t and the Z60m, which are to celebrate the Olympic Winter Games in Turin. This will probably be the first of an avalanche of Olympic materiel from the Chinese company as it begins buttering up to the nation’s regime ahead of the Beijing Games in 2008.

Another company keeping us busy this week is Sony, which is adding five Vaio SZ models and three Vaio F TV notebooks to its stable. For full details about the lovely laptops, read on.

According to one Taiwanese clearinghouse for unsold memory chips (we didn’t know either) the price of devices using flash memory is almost guaranteed to tumble over the coming months.

The reason? Sinful old greed on the part of flash makers across Asia, they say. Read on for the lowdown on why it might be prudent to put off buying that new DAP for a while.

Toshiba unveiled the world’s first HD DVD-equipped notebook at last weekend’s CES. And that’s not the half of it. Our man in Las Vegas, Ramon G. McLeod, sees all good things in the new Qosmio model, and he lets us know all about it.

Ah, those lucky Germans. Not only do they have the World Cup to look forward to this spring, but now comes word of a Germany-only, under-$120 Fujitsu-Siemens notebook that will offer scads of wireless goodies. For the full story of why we feel like humming “Edelweiss” today, check out John Blau’s report.

NEC, bless them, have just announced the VY16E/LV-W, their first dual-core Duo T2300 1.66GHz CPU laptop that’s on sale for ¥289,100.

Toshiba is planning to announce a new notebook PC with a terrestrial digital TV tuner on Jan. 10. No details on the laptop yet, but we’ll keep you posted, and maybe we’ll be lucky and get a preview of the model at CES.

For you all you mouse-preferring, touchpad haters, Toshiba has just come up with what looks to be a really cool idea for the latest and upcoming (on sale Dec. 28 in Japan) Dynabook TX series; a one-touch solution at your fingertips, so to speak.

Many wondered if Apple would be the first to market with a laptop featuring Intel’s new dual-core Yonah CPU but that possibility receded yesterday when NEC announced it was building its Lavie RX LR900 around the chip.

Battery technology is always a hot topic, whether it’s a question of portable music players that fail to meet their advertised play times or cutting-edge fuel cells based on buckyballs or polymer gels.

Looks like the long-awaited (at least by some) Opera browser for Pocket PC is set to appear on the Willcom/Sharp W-Zero3 smartphone.

Hitachi has just rolled out its thin client FLORA Se210 notebook PC with a finger vein recognition sensor, making good on the company’s promise earlier this year that it intends to drive further into the biometrics/security sector with PCs that lack hard drives.

Epson and Disney go way back, so it should come as no surprise to hear that the former is now offering Japanese shoppers the chance to buy laptops emblazoned with Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger et al.

Bandai Networks today (Nov. 25) starts taking orders for a limited-edition Gundam series laptop based on Toshiba’s dynabook Satellite for shipping next March, believe it or not. It’s almost as if the company doesn’t want to sell them, as the edition will be extremely limited, initially at least, to only 500. Prices start at ¥241,500 and go up to ¥264,600 for models with MS Office Personal Edition 2003.

Mouse Computer Japan has put together a couple of decent little laptops called the m-Book GW750MD and the GW760MD.

Our colleagues over at PC World just posted a full review of the long-awaited Satellite M55-S325 consumer notebook from Toshiba.

(Via PC World)

PHS network operator Willcom and Sharp surprised everyone yesterday by announcing their first smartphone and thereby taking aim at a market pretty much devoid of such devices.

(Via Willcom)

Ceramicist yosoh brings us this elegant comment on how many of us tend to spend our mealtimes in front of computers, focusing more on bytes than bites (sorry, but we all know which is more important, right?).

(Via Gizmodo and yosoh)

Busy people, Toshiba — now they tell us they’ve come up with the world’s first laptop with an HD DVD-ROM drive, which is nice if you’re into that whole early adoption thing.

(Via Toshiba)

Two new Loox laptops just arrived from Fujitsu and they’re worth a, er, Loox seeing as how they have had a 20% battery bump to over 11 hours.

(Via PC Watch)

NEC Infrontia is still flogging the dead horse that is ruggedised PDAs with the release of its Pocket@ iEX, a Windows CE 5.0 unit that can be knocked about with impunity.

(Via NEC Japan)