ASUS
W5F White Book: $1,495
www.asus.com

No longer do the top-tier vendors corner the market on sexy notebook designs. ASUS, which already has some experience manufacturing hot whitebooks, just unveiled its latest white-hot ultra-portable called the W5F. It weighs in at three and a half pounds, centers on Intel's Napa platform, and includes more features than any previous ASUS model we've seen. Right off the bat, you have dual-core processing from Intel's Core Duo T2000-series. That should be reason enough for any road warrior to make the leap. Then there's the gorgeous 12.1" WXGA (1366x768) widescreen display, driven by an integrated 945GM 3D engine. Performance receives a healthy boost thanks to a 667 MHz front-side bus and DDR2 memory running at the same speed.

The extras include a built-in 1.3MP camera, a multifunction card reader, and integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless functionality, maintaining your Centrino branding. True high-def audio is part of the package, as well, in addition to 10/100 Mbps Ethernet and a DVD combo drive.

Finally, ASUS packs in plenty of connectivity. You get the usual suspects, of course: USB 2.0, FireWire, S-Video output, RJ11, and RJ45 ports. VGA-out is a nice little feature for delivering presentations with a projector. And a single ExpressCard slot gives customers greater performance in their add-on peripheral expansion options.

Maxtor
OneTouch III 1TB Turbo Edition: $900
www.maxtor.com

The storage scene is getting crowded, and your customers have more choices than ever when it comes to adding capacity to their workstations and servers. That's great, of course. But it can also get confusing. You're the one they look to in separating wheat from chaff. Maxtor's OneTouch III 1TB Turbo Edition is most definitely wheat.

The two-drive enclosure is larger than any other Maxtor has ever offered. It houses a pair of Maxtor's homegrown 500GB drives, each spinning at 7,200 RPM and wielding 16MB of cache. You can configure the chassis to run in RAID 0, striping the two drives together for 1TB of space, or RAID 1, which mirrors the duo to facilitate redundancy. In many cases, it might actually be better to give up 500GB in favor of preserving irreplaceable data.

Maxtor enables three interfaces for connecting to a workstation: USB 2.0 with a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbps, FireWire 400, and FireWire 800. Considering that FireWire 800 can sustain 91 MBps of throughput—twice that of FireWire 400 and three times USB 2.0—you might also want to bundle a 1394b controller card with the Turbo Edition. At that point, you're no longer constrained to using the enclosure as a backup target. It's fast enough for real-time video encoding, DAS storage, or whatever other usage model you envision.

As is the case with most of Maxtor's external drives, a rich software package complements the innovative hardware. EMC's familiar Retrospect Express HD is foremost on the list, along with Maxtor's own System Rollback and DriveLock features. System Rollback reverts an operating system back to a healthy state without losing any current user data, while DriveLock secures physical drives with a password, even if they're transplanted into another PC. Brand new for this release is a synchronization option, as well, able to keep data consistent between two separate systems.

INTEL
Pentium D 930: $316
www.intel.com

Last month, we introduced you to Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955, a flashy flagship begging for attention. However, priced at $1,000, it's a fairly steep upgrade—even more so when you add in the requisite 975X Express platform. The technology propelling Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955 remains very attractive, though. Surely your customers would want to hear about a cheaper variant of the same architecture, right?

Well, here goes: Intel is now selling the very same dual-core Presler design at more affordable prices. The best value right now looks to be the Pentium D 930, a 3.0 GHz model running on an 800 MHz front-side bus. Want to really wow your customer? The Pentium D 930 plays host to no less than 4MB of L2 cache between its two cores. Also be sure to mention the extras: Intel's SpeedStep technology for cooler running, the virus-hampering Execute Disable bit, and EM64T, the 64-bit extensions needed to support configurations with more than 4GB of memory. All models in the 900-series also boast Virtualization Technology, hardware circuitry that allows customers to seamlessly switch between operating systems using software such as VMware Workstation.

Better still, the Pentium D 930 doesn't require a platform upgrade if you're already using 945- or 955-class motherboards. Because they consume less power than the Extreme Edition 955, Intel claims that older motherboards will support any other 900-series Pentium D through a simple BIOS update. And with a price hovering right above $300, there's a strong value proposition, too.

Creative Labs
Zen Vision:M: $329
www.creativelabs.com

When you start selling Viiv-compatible boxes, the customers who buy them might be interested in recording their favorite shows. Or maybe they'll want a central repository for all of their media. In either case, offering the system by itself doesn't play to Viiv's real strengths. The platform is designed to push music and video to other media devices through a seamless interface. So if you aren't offering MP3 players, media center extenders, and cables, believe that customers will pick that stuff up somewhere else.

Rather than lose a sale, why not upsell to Creative Labs' new Zen Vision:M? Available in five different shades, the handheld boasts a 30GB hard drive and a 2.5" LCD screen capable of displaying over 262,000 colors. Remind you of anything? It shouldn't. The Zen Vision:M is compatible with more media types than any iPod. It also receives FM broadcasts and includes a microphone for voice recording. There's no compromise in reselling a similar feature set. Creative's Zen Vision:M is all about upside, and mated to a Viiv-compatible machine, your customer is looking at a great user experience.