Hewlett-Packard today announced its new ProBook series of 14-, 15.6- and 17.3-in. laptops intended to merge business functionality, stylish design cues and a (hopefully) low price tag.

HP has announced their new ProBook business laptop line. The laptops feature an LED-backlit screen (14", 15", or 17") and a choice of red or black (excuse me, "glossy merlot" or "noir"). More interestingly, though, they also feature the option of SuSe Linux pre-installed for $50 to $100 less than Vista.

One of the nagging problems for Linux is that the most popular laptops are still codesigned by Microsoft and its OEMs. It's not for nothing that laptops come with stickers on the bottom that say, “Windows Vista—Business OEM Software” or whatever. These are not white boxes. You can get Linux running on them, but the hermit crab approach isn't the swiftest route to market leadership.

So I have had on my desk for about week now a sweet little ASUS laptop containing one of the new Splashtop motherboards. Don’t know what Splashtop is? Well Splashtop is a motherboard that contains, in the onboard memory, a special version of Linux (based on Small Linux - formerly tinyX) that runs right after the bios.

Quicklook is no doubt one of the coolest features about Mac OS X. It's very useful, saves a lot of time and is pretty cool to use and see. Now, thanks to Gloobus, Ubuntu can have the same sleekness Quicklook offers.

In what I think is the biggest victory for Linux so far, DeviceVM’s Splashtop Linux desktop will ship across the entire P5Q range of motherboards, with more to follow by the end of the year.

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) first started, they had an incredibly innovative idea: create cheap laptops for children in developing countries. Unfortunately, the program hit to major stumbling blocks: First, the laptop they came out with cost twice as much as had been planned. Second, everyone else started making cheap laptops, too.

The One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project is in the final steps to finally ship the first laptops to poor children living in poor countries.

As One Laptop Per Child prepares to ship its highly anticipated XO laptops in two weeks, it is developing a "supercharger," a mass battery recharger that will draw power from cows and yo-yos to help the laptops run longer. (Australian Joel Stanley is working on the charger system for the XO-1 laptop, read his story here).