Asus

You see them on tables in coffee shops, under the arms of college students and on the laps of travelers waiting for a flight. Called "netbooks" or "mini-notebooks," these small, lightweight and relatively affordable computers are one of the hottest tech toys of the year.

Popularized by Asus Eee PCs, which start at $269, netbooks are designed for basic tasks -- Web surfing, e-mail and word processing. That's just fine for some folks.

As Brian Pelowski shopped for a new computer for his wife, who's working on her doctorate in developmental psychology, he wanted a machine that was lightweight and low-priced. So he opted for a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook instead of a higher-end laptop. "She walks to school and can stick this in her big sidebag without it taking up a lot of room or killing her shoulder," Pelowski explains. "We also didn't want to spend a ton of money."

Dell has rolled out a new mini-notebook PC in Japan that is slated to launch globally next month at a retail price of under $600.

Tipping the scales at 2.72 lbs and measuring just 0.92 inches thick, the Inspiron Mini 12 integrates Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) radios, 1GB of RAM, a 12.1-inch WXGA display, a built-in Webcam, and a 60GB or 80GB hard disk drive. In addition to Windows Vista Home Basic, users can elect to run Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux.

Computer makers are betting consumers want a product that's more than a smart phone but less than a full-featured laptop. Lenovo, the Chinese company with worldwide headquarters in Morrisville, N.C., is the latest to enter the burgeoning market for netbooks -- also known as Internet PCs. This month, Lenovo announced plans for a 1-inch-thick IdeaPad netbook with a 10-inch screen. Starting price: $399.

AMD's Puma is coming onto the stage. The new laptop platform from Advanced Micro Devices, with AMD's dual-core Turion X2 Ultra mobile processor, a seven-series chip set, and ATI Radeon HD 3000 series graphics, was to be unveiled Wednesday at the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan.