Kudos, I guess, to Asus, being the first manufacturer to incorporate Nvidia’s Optimus technology into actual products. The Taiwan-based company has announced five laptops (note: I refuse to use the term “notebook” when referring to laptops; I think the name “netbook” is dumb, too, so at least I’m consistent) that range in size from 13.3 inches to 17.3 inches, all of which use Optimus. “What is Optimus?” I’m glad you asked! It switches between the Nvidia GPU and the Intel integrated GPU as the situation warrants. So, using Firefox? Let the Intel handle it. Playing World of Warcraft? Nvidia takes over. It’s not too hard to understand.

Everyone’s all excited about that Freescale gizmo, but it looks like it may have competition. The Lenovo U1 has a similar convertible design, though with a slightly more rounded look. It’s also different in function: when docked, it runs Windows 7 on the dock’s low-power Intel processor, but once detached it uses an ARM CPU to run a lightweight Linux distro.

Not sure how it’s going to handle the segue if you’ve got work in progress and need to dock it, but I’m sure Lenovo has that handled.

This is an interesting development. The latest Vaios leaked out a little while ago, and for the most part they were what one would expect: improved performance, better battery life, that sort of thing. But there’s an interesting feature that wasn’t on the leaked spec list (and isn’t confirmed to be, either): a “quad” SSD composed of four SSD drives working together in RAID 0.

If the chipset and other hardware are designed with something like this in mind, it really could be extremely fast.

Acer’s new 18.4-inch AS8940G-6865 is a desktop replacement. And by “desktop replacement” I mean that you could attach four legs to it and use it as your desk. It’s big, is what I’m trying to say. Don’t actually attach legs to it, but I guess take with you the impression that this is a large laptop. Also, it’s powerful, so keep that in mind as well.

Oh, right, 3D laptops. I almost forgot. If you like 3D so much that you want to have it with you wherever you go, then 3D laptops may or may not soon be all the rage. No need to wait, though, as Acer’s 15.6-inch Aspire 5738DG will be available this week.

Oh my God is that the HP Pavilion dv3, complete with a fancy touchscreen? Oh my God it is! And is that the Engadget watermark? Oh my God it is! Man those guys are crazy!

Deftly dodging the netbook moniker, Toshiba has announced its line of Satellite T100 ultra low voltage machines. They’ll be available on October 22nd with 11.6-inch or 13.3-inch displays and over nine hours of battery life.

Logitech’s got a new lap board doodad on the market called the Portable Lapdesk N315. It’s a $30 accessory with a non-slip grip and slide-out mouse pad.

It’s laptops in space, people! What is there not to like?

A veritable cornucopia of ultra-thin laptops is expected from the likes of Asus, Acer, and MSI in the near future. The computers will use Intel’s forthcoming low and ultra-low voltage Penryn CPUs, the Celeron 743 and the SU2300.

Apparently it’s not okay to send West Virginia’s governor five free laptops. What a world! Governor Joe Manchin’s office got a nice four-pack of Compaq laptops earlier this month, followed a week later by a fifth machine from HP. The only problem was that nobody in his office ordered them or paid for them.