Dell's Vostro 1015, the rare business laptop that brings a halfway elegant design to the boardroom table, is now available. The base model of the 15.6" laptop costs $429 but only comes with a 2.2GHz Celeron 900 processor, so you will likely want to make the jump to the $629 model which sports a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo T6670. You know, to ensure that Excel performs snappily. Or at least for making sure you can snappily Alt-Tab back to Excel when the boss strolls by. The $629 price tag also gets you 3GB of RAM, a 320 GB HD and Windows 7 Professional. To check out more details on the Dell Vostro 1015, head over to Dell.

The Samsung Omnia II is now available at Verizon for $200. Though the Omnia II sports a pretty 3.7" touch screen, that beauty is only skin-deep; John thought just about everything else was a hot mess. The phone runs WinMo 6.5 mucked up with Samsung's 3D-Cube TouchWiz 2.0 UI and is the first phone to feature Swype input technology, which may or may not save you some time when you're texting all your friends to tell them that your new phone sucks. The Omnia II packs a 5-megapixel camera, an 8 GB HD, and supports both social networking widgets and Microsoft Office Mobile. To be the first person to submit an expense report via Swype, head to Verizon.

The Nokia N900 Maemo which, Nokia will have you know, is mobile computer and not a smartphone, is now available. For $570 you can fetch an unlocked N900 with a 600 MHz processor, a 32 GB hard drive, a 5-megapixel camera capable of capturing 800 x 400 video, and all the other expected bells and whistles. The N900 has a slide-out hardware keyboard for all your texting—err, mobile computing—needs, supports playback of a wide range of both audio and video file formats and offers VoIP integration. All of this is packed into Nokia's Debian-based Maemo OS which the company's announcement boasted as offering "computer-grade performance in a compact size". Ooh and ahh at the impressive N900 and its correspondingly grandiose website here.

The Cinemin Swivel Pico Projector by WowWee, a $300 pocket-size projector designed for use with other pocket-size devices, is now yours for the having. The Cinemin swivels on a 90-degree hinge for versatile projection without a tripod, which is sweet like cinnamon but only offers 480 x 320 resolution, which is like the minimum of cinema, thus Cinemin. That might not be what they had in mind with the name but I'm sticking to it. You can get your hands on the little guy over at Amazon.

They're also legitimately attractive pieces of hardware, rare for kit that's supposed to be "affordable." And, wait, WowWee makes stuff besides robots now?

From Toys to Technologies: WowWee Expands and Diversifies Product Line in 2009
Advancements include micro projectors for iPods, a transforming spy-cam, and robots that beatbox

HONG KONG – January 6, 2009 – WowWee, an Optimal Group company (NASDAQ:OPMR), announced its newest line of innovations scheduled for release in 2009, in advance of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, January 8-11. Consumers can expect to see items from four lines, including WowWee Technologies™, which now includes a new category of iPod compatible multimedia pico projectors powered by Texas Instruments' DLP® Technology. The other key lines, focusing on cutting-edge entertainment robotics, plush, and flight, are WowWee Robotics™, WowWee Alive™, and WowWee FlyTech™. Highlights include:

WowWee Technologies
Taking projection out of boardrooms and movie theaters and into the palm of your hand is WowWee's Cinemin™ suite of ultra-portable multimedia micro projectors, powered by Texas Instruments' DLP Technology for ultra clear picture quality. Utilizing the same technology commonly found in high-definition TVs, classroom projectors and large-scale cinema houses, the Cinemin projectors have been designed to work with popular mobile devices, such as Apple's iPod and iPhone. With WowWee's Cinemin™ suite of projectors, a café becomes a boardroom, a camping tent becomes a theater, and Grandma's curtains become a life-size digital picture frame. The line features three products: The Cinemin Swivel™ pico projector, an affordable lightweight micro projector that is roughly the size of a candy bar and features an impressive 3-hour battery life for movie watching, full volume control, and a unique adjustable 90-degree hinge for ceiling projection. The Cinemin Stick™ pico projector is a compact micro projector with internal memory and an expandable SD card memory slot that puts your favorite web videos, digicam snapshots, ambient animations, and more on display. The Cinemin Station™ pico projector is an alarm clock-sized convenient media center and iPod docking station for big pictures with big audio.

WowWee's 2009 product line is being shown for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show in the Kids@Play TechZone, Booth #72205, Sands Expo & Convention Center.

For more information, please visit the Company's web site at www.wowwee.com.