At your desk, in your lap and on the town

HOW MOBILE DO YOU WANT TO BE? THERE'S A DIGITAL MAJORDOMO TO SUIT YOU WHEREVER YOU PLAN TO GO

HP MINI 1000 Though it's tiny (10.3 inches by 6.56 inches by 0.99 inches), the Mini 1000 squeezes in a keyboard that's 92 percent standard size. The screen (available in 8.9 and 10.1 inches) is more than ade­quate, and you can get a 60-gigabyte hard drive if you feel the need (the standard configuration is an eight-gigabyte solid-state drive, upgradable to 16). ASUS EEE PC S101 The Eee PC S101 represents the luxury end of the new netbook category. Inside you'll find the same 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor that powers the HP Mini 1000, but the S101 offers more on the outside, like a four-in-one card reader and three USB ports. TOSHIBA PORTEGE R500 This baby's one of the thinnest notebooks ever made (0.77 inches). Even fancy laptops in this class often come with­out an optical drive (we're looking at you, MacBook Air), but this puppy is available with a DVD drive. If you forgo the optical drive, it becomes the lightest 12.1-inch notebook on the market, at a mere 1.72 pounds. SONY VAIO AW The display on this beast is the larg­est in this article, at 18.4 inches, and the VAIO AW comes with game-worthy graphics, a TV tuner and

IN YOUR LAP The amount of technology you need to get serious work done can fit into a surprisingly small space. The three mini laptops on the oppo­site page are perfect for students and business travelers as well as coffee-shop auteurs. Two of the three are so-called netbooks, a new category offering scaled-down processing power, sizes and pricing. They're entirely capable of handling word processing, web browsing and media playback.

AT YOUR DESK Taking a 12-pound laptop on a business trip isn't anyone's idea of fun. So don't. The laptops on this page are big-boned and proud of it. The payoff, of course, is that you get a desktop-computer experience—a big screen, game-worthy graphics, good sound, oodles of memory and speed—in a package that lets you work in the office, play in the living room and watch movies (on Blu-ray, no less) in bed.

a Blu-ray player. An HDMI port allows you to plug it into your home theater, and it has a compact-flash slot for off-loading pics from DSLR cameras. TOSHIBA QOSMIO X3O5 Toshiba's latest Qosmio behemoth has a 17-inch widescreen and weighs nearly nine pounds. The chassis holds four speakers and a subwoofer. Then there's the Intel Core 2 Extreme pro­cessor, backed up with dual NVIDIA graphics cards and one gigabyte of DDR3 graphics memory. PANASONIC TOUGHBOOK F8 Panasonic started making combat-grade computers for the U.S. mili­tary 15 years ago, eventually evolving them into its Toughbook line. This year the company debuted the F8, which takes the weight down to just under four pounds while offering almost all the sturdiness of its predecessors. Dropped on concrete? Fine. Beer in the keyboard? No problem. HP TOUCHSMART TX2 Using the same touch tech­nology found in the iPhone, HP's latest lets you use your fingers for a smooth experience all around and enables all those nifty multitouch gestures iPhone junkies like to show off. And HP has built in a load of customized touch-specific applications to help you make the most of it all.

SAMSUNG Q1EX It's not a laptop and defi­nitely not a phone. We're not sure what to call Samsung's new Q1EX. This 1.4-pound updated Ql can be operated by touch, or you can dock it into its folding case with a truly typeable keyboard. The industry seems to be pushing the phrase mobile Internet device (a.k.a. MID) for gadgets smaller than a laptop but bigger than a cell phone. For now we'll call them awesome. NOKIA N85 The iPhone may be the smart-phone homecoming queen, but for years Nokia has been offering us the cute girl in the library. You know, the one who's actu­ally getting stuff done. Not only is the N85 available unlocked for use with multiple car­riers, it boasts Wi-Fi, a 3G cellular data con­nection and GPS, plus a decent camera that can also record video. Then there's the FM radio for listening on the go and a built-in transmitter for your car radio. APPLE IPHONE 3G It's not perfect, but nothing has done more to popularize the idea of a handheld Internet device. The iPhone is one of the most attractive and easy-to-use gadgets ever made. Apple's App Store is packed with programs. Just be sure to calculate the total cost of ownership under contract. If that works for you, the two of you will be very happy together.

ON THE TOWN How about this for a paradox: The most excit­ing segment of the laptop category involves devices that aren't really laptops at all. Expect to see more of these in years to come as we all get used to computing anytime, anywhere. Fall­ing prices for cell-phone data services and the still-pending arrival of WiMax will push these new machines along. Today only a select few people carry them, but they're easy to spot.