What do you get when you put a MacBook Air, a Mac keyboard and a Magic Trackpad together into the one package? Something like The MacBook Air Project above. Bart Reardon decided that he would try and fit his perfectly good MacBook Air under a Mac keyboard and Magic Trackpad just for the sake of a modding project, and the results are looking good.

As it happens, the MacBook Air’s motherboard is slim and small enough to fit right under the combination of Mac accessories and combined with the other components of the ultraportable and a hell of a lot of tape you get the perfect-sized keyboard PC. Thanks to the slimness of the Air, the new modded Apple keyboard computer is apparently still quite ergonomic and comfortable to use, despite this tilt and height.

While the mod still has a long way to go, such as replacing the tape with a more permanent solution and fixing the wireless connectivity interference, Bart sees that the device “will be used much beyond internet/email….maybe as an AppleTV replacement.” This is entirely possible thanks to the better-than-netbook specs that the Air boasts such as the 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

Good luck to Bart for the completion of his mod – it certainly looks set to beat official market products such as the Asus EeeKeyboard in terms of power and battery life. You can follow his project via his blog or his Twitter if you want to see the Air-keyboard-mod to completion.

Shipping out in June is the new Fermi mobile iteration of the powerful Nvidia desktop graphics cards – the Nvidia GeForce GTX 480M. The new mobile GPU comes loaded with 352 CUDA cores, a 256-bit memory bus running up to 2 GB of GDDR5 memory at 1,200 MHz, and the graphics core runs at 425 MHz (around half the speed of the desktop GTX 480). Despite the low clockspeeds, the graphics card manages to pump out 897 gigaFLOPS from inside your laptop.

Alongside the release of this new chip are some new laptops from Eurocom. We’re seeing the Eurocom D900F Panther Mobile Workstation getting an upgrade to a single GTX 480M with 2GB of memory as well as the X8100 Leopard which is getting either GTX 480M SLI or HD 5870 CrossFireX in its 18.4″ display-packing body. The Eurocom Panther 2.0 should be getting a release in August and it’ll come packed with an Intel Core i7 processor up to 3.33 GHz, up to 24 GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 4 TB of storage over 4 drives, a 17.3″ 1080p display and the option of the new GTX 480M in SLI.

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Apple, just a month after the refresh of their Macbook Pro line-up, have released a new 2010 model of their cheaper Macbooks encased in polycarbonate unibody white. The new Macbook comes close to the 13″ Macbook Pro in terms of specifications, with the CPU being bumped to a new Core 2 Duo @ 2.4 GHz, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB hard drive, DVD SuperDrive and new Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics also seen on the 13″ Pro. The battery in the new Macbook is said to last around 10 hours, with the design of the laptop staying the same as the late 2009 model.

The new model Apple Macbook is now available for your consuming from the Apple Store. Prices in the United States stay at US$999, which puts the 13″ Macbook at a better purchase than the US$1,199 13″ Macbook Pro if you go just by solid specifications. This revelation brings us to think: will Apple be refreshing their Macbook Air, the only Mac laptop not to have received a 2010 refresh, any time soon?

Toshiba, according to the latest rumours, has a new thin and light 13″ laptop in the works. Whilst the machine’s thinness is not yet known, the laptop is expected to weigh around 1kg with a solid state drive on the inside. The ultraportable is also said to be utilising full powered Intel processors thanks to a new form of mobile CPU cooling known as “Blaze Mountain.”

Specs for the machine are rumoured to include a selection of Intel processors ranging from a 2.26 GHz Core i3 to a 2.66 GHz Core i7, 4GB of RAM (maybe more in higher end models), up to a 500 GB HDD or 512 GB SSD, a 13-inch 16:9 display presumable at 1366×768 resolution. There’s also talk of a USB 3.0 dock and a Super Charging ion Battery (SCiB) that can charge up to 90% in just 10 minutes with a 10 year battery lifespan.

A launch for the Toshiba laptop is expected sometime this summer (winter for the Southern Hemisphere people) with an unknown but probably expensive price tag. Is this mystery laptop reminding anyone of the Dell Adamo XPS?

You might have read about the recent refresh to Apple’s Macbook Pro line-up. Well, as it turns out, while PC Authority were reviewing the latest model in the range they managed to make the Core i7 CPU in the 17″ model reach 100°C – which is quite frankly ridiculous. The laptop’s chassis was so hot it could easily burn you and causing health issues if you just happened to be running CineBench on your laptop at the time.

PC Authority had to finish the benchmarks with the laptop on its side (pictured above). Obviously the aluminium unibody shell is not good enough to disperse the heat coming from the powerful Intel Core i7-620M on the inside. Maybe the folks over at Apple need to rethink their heat management for the next refresh of Macbook Pros

Apple has updated their MacBook Pro line-up after a long wait by Apple fans. The 13″ model now packs a 2.4 GHz or 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 250/320/500 GB hard drive options or alternatively a 128/256/512 MB solid state drive, Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics and a battery that boasts a 10 hour life. Apple also claims large battery lives on the 15″ and 17″ models of between 8-9 hours. A unibody enclosure design is also present across the three models.

The 15″ model comes upgraded with an Intel Core i5 processor at 2.4 GHz or 2.53 GHz or a Core i7 at 2.66 GHz. The RAM has also been upgraded to 4GB of DDR3, hard drives come in 320 GB and 500 GB sizes or the above SSD options and the screen comes standard with a 1440×900 resolution upgradeable to 1680×1050. The 17″ MacBook Pro comes with a 2.53 GHz Core i5 or 2.66 GHz Core i7, the same 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB hard drive with solid state options and a 1920×1200 display. Nvidia GT 330M graphics are also present in both the 15″ and 17″ along with GPU switching technology for saved battery life.

Apple’s MacBook Pros are still fairly pricey, starting at US$1,199 for the 13″, US$1,799 for the 15″ and US$2,299 for the 17″. These are just starting prices so once you add higher-end processors and SSDs you could push the price a fair bit higher. Hit the source link if you want more specific details or you want to make a purchase.

Update: As it turns out, Nvidia Optimus GPU switching is not present in these Macbooks, instead an Apple-made approach has been used.

Starting at the beginning of the fall semester in 2010, all first year undergraduate students at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA will receive a 13″ MacBook laptop and an iPad. This is a part of the Griffin Technology Advantage Program, their goal is to provide students with the best in technology and collaborative learning tools. With this technology at the students’ fingertips, they can easily stay in touch with professors, advisers, and classmates, engage in hybrid and fully on-line courses, research any topic at any time, and access a whole host of Seton Hill technology services.

Any concerns about computer failures, computer illiteracy, the issue of compatibility with Windows software, or a lack of decent internet for the students to take advantage of have been thought of and taken care of already.

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If you’re wanting to be an early adopter to WiMAX then you may be wanting to take a look at the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with WiMAX that is coming via Clearwire on April 1 this year. The Mini 10 sports an Intel Atom N450 “Pineview” processor at 1.6 GHz along with a 250 GB hard drive and 1 GB of RAM. It also includes a Broadcom Crystal HD chip that is capable of playing back 1080p flash through Flash Player 10.3 beta and is also capable of playing 1080p .wmv files.

Other features of the netbook include a 10″ 1366 x 768 display, three USB ports, Ethernet, VGA, headphone + microphone jack and an SD card slot – no HDMI though. The Mini 10 is also slightly heavier and thicker than its competition coming in at 1.3 kg heavy and 3.3 cm thick at its thickest point. The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with WiMAX will be available for US$249.99 after an instant rebate, and the WiMAX plan will of course set you back further.

Surely you all remember the 9.9mm thin Dell Adamo XPS, one of the thinnest laptops you can buy – well it appears to have been discontinued by Dell. The Adamo line of laptops will continue but the Adamo has been pulled from the shelves and listed as “discontinued” by places such as Best Buy. Dell however claims that the laptop was a proof of “Dell’s design and engineers capabilities” and said that the ultraportable was more like a “limited edition” model.

Whether the model is a true, but unannounced Limted Edition model, or just been pulled due to faults or lack of purchases is yet to be discovered by inside sources. One thing still remains though – you can no longer order or purchase the Adamo XPS.

MSI is putting on a pretty good deal here with their new C-Series laptops. There are a total of 4 new laptops in the new series -  the 16″ CR600 and 15.6″ CR620-030, CR620-031 and CR620-033 – ranging from US$530 to US$750. All laptops come loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium, and have 16:9 HD displays at 1366×768.

The CR620 models have either a new Core i3 or Core i5 processor from Intel, 4GB of DDR3 memory, come with either a 320GB or 500GB hard drive and the CR620-033 comes with a Blu-ray combo drive – possibly the best deal because it’s only US$699 and comes with an i3 CPU as well. The CR600 has Nvidia GeForce 8200M graphics but unfortunately only carries an Intel Pentium Dual Core as a processor.

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