New Centrino 2 equipped laptops are coming thick and fast. Two of the first to hit the UK will be this pair from Acer. The 15.4in TravelMate 5730 and 17in TravelMate 7730 both get the new chip and all the battery life and other benefits it brings.

The business orientated 5730 comes with up to 2GB of dual-channel DDRII memory and the option of either the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470/HD 3650 or nVidia GeForce 9300M GS to replace the standard integrated graphics. It can also be specced with HSDPA mobile broadband.

PC World has kindly sent us an Advent 4211 for review – we say ‘kindly’ as we gather that these netbooks are in short supply at the moment and we’re sure PC World would much rather sell any boxes it can get its hands on than ferry them to journalists for review. And to make matters worse, we’re not even going to review the Advent 4211.

Why not? Because we’ve already reviewed it in the guise of the Wind U100 – yes, the Advent 4211 is nothing more than a rebadged MSI Wind netbook. Which is where things get interesting…

Is it really ten years since we caressed that first magnesium-clad Vaio PCG-505? Ah, how time flies. But enough of this misty eyed nostalgia, Sony has four new machines for us to cuddle up to - and all powered by Intel's spangly new Centrino 2 processors.

First up is the new Z-series - 13.1in of super-strong "advanced carbon fibre" with up to 1600x900 resolution and the option of a 128MB SSD. Its special party trick is the inclusion of two graphics options - a power hungry NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS chip for when 3D performance is needed and battery sipping Intel Integrated graphics for when you're browsing the web or checking out spreadsheets. By switching mid-task the Z's battery life can be extended to over five hours. Read on for details and pics of the other three.

A couple of weeks back, Tom’s Hardware published an article with the headline "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax : Flash SSDs Don’t Improve Your Notebook Battery Runtime – They Reduce It".

The report’s conclusion, if you couldn’t guess from the headline, is that the new wave of solid-state drives are battery hogs that are simply not as power efficient as the hard disks that they are apparently destined one day to usurp in the notebook storage market.

One of the report’s crossheads asked: "Could Tom’s Hardware be wrong?". The unequivocal answer came: "No, our results are definitely correct."

So it must’ve really pained the Tom’s Hardware team to today admit that, in fact, they were wrong. Read their explanation after the cut.

While the Eee PC 901 is stalling with supply issues, Dell is said to be all set to launch its own Eee rival, the Dell E.

As well as sharing the fifth letter of the alphabet, the E looks to have a very similar spec list to the Asus - but a much lower price. Digitimes reports that $299 will get you a trio of USB ports, an obligatory Intel Atom processor, an 8.9in 1024x600 display and a webcam.

Intel has at last got around to launching its overdue Centrino 2 mobile platform, with a line-up of five Core 2 Duo chips. At the same time, the chip firm has announced that it will introduce a further eight ‘ultra-low voltage’ processors within the next 90 days, along with its first quad-core chips designed specifically for laptops.

And frankly, that’s about as exciting as this particular bit of processor news gets. Not very exciting, is it? But if you fancy a few more brain-aching stats about Intel’s latest wireless mobile wheeze, feel free to click the Read more link below.

Our friends over at the PC World Test Center have determined that the iPhone 3G’s battery life is just 5 hours 38 minutes – but still better than that of the competition.

During tests connecting the iPhone 3G to AT&T’s HSDPA/UMTS network, PC World’s tech guys determined that users of Apple’s 1m-selling handset could natter away for that amount of time before the power cells would flake out.

That compares badly with the original iPhone’s ability to manage 10 hours during similar tests on EDGE carried out by PC World last year. But the surprise news is that, even at a semi over 5 hours, the iPhone 3G’s battery performance is better than the competition. Yep, we said better. Read on after the cut to find out how much better.

The first live images of Blackberry's Thunder have appeared online at Crackberry.com. The pics appear to be a working prototype OS rather than a fished product but clearly show the on-screen keyboard, with its much vaunted Tactile Response.

Crackberry describes it as the whole screen being like one big button that buzzes and pushes in a tiny fraction when pressed. Coupled with a little 'keyboard click' sound, it's meant to give the impression of using a standard keyboard.

Given that it also features multitouch [insert joke about stealing iPhone 3G's thunder here] comparisons are bound to be drawn with Apple's latest creation. There's no release date yet but this little slip might be enough to convince Blackberry users considering the iPhone 3G to hold off.

[Crackberry]

Ending much speculation about sales projections, Apple has announced it's already sold one million new iPhone 3G around the world. The million mark was reached yesterday after just three days.

That's exactly 71 days less than it took to sell a million of the original iPhones. Sales have been boosted by the simultaneous worldwide release, which say iPhone 3G go on sale in 21 countries, rather than just the one.

Seems Taiwan's Digitimes weren't lying when they picked up on the shortage of Intel's new Atom processor. The Register is reporting that a lack of Atoms is now holding up production of the Asus Eee PC 901.

Interestingly, XP versions of the 901 seem to be readily available, while Linux models are all but sold out. Any Microsoft conspiracy theories have been dashed, however - Asus says it makes equal numbers of both versions and the Linux ones sell faster.