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Call it the week of Splashtop (see our Splashtop FAQ). Earlier this week we got some alone time with the Voodoo Envy’s IOS environment powered by Splashtop. Today, an ASUS representative stopped by our offices with the Eee Box and we got some more alone time with a pre-Windows Splashtop based enviornment - ASUS’ ExpressGate.

Though the Voodoo and ASUS Splashtop interfaces have been customized, they work in the same way.

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Before sending our pre-production Voodoo Envy back to its home, we just had to play around with its unique power brick, which Voodoo calls an Aura PowerConnect. The square AC adapter is heavy and might be a bit chunky, but its hidden powers redeem its larger than average size. The brick doubles as the Voodoo Envy’s very own portable 802.11b/g wireless access point.

Voodoo fears that you may only have a wired connection in certain situations, so you can plug an Ethernet cable into the RJ45 jack on the PowerConnect then watch the Voodoo logo light up as the AC adapter starts broadcasting a wireless signal. A point-to-point Wi-Fi connection is established between the brick and the Envy, which does not have an Ethernet port of its own .

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The Voodoo Envy 133 has a lot of striking features. Its got a more than elegant design, its power brick doubles as a wireless connection point and its got facial recognition software. Oh and its 3.4-pounds and thinner than Calista Flockhart. But what makes our mouths water is that it isthe first laptop to land in our hands with Splashtop’s instant-on mode (see our Splashtop FAQ).

Voodoo calls its Splashtop instant-on environment the Voodoo IOS and instead of having to wait until Vista boots up - in what can be more than a minute on some laptops - the Envy 133 launches users into an environment where they can surf the Web within 15 seconds (verified by our hands-on experience).

We have a lengthy video below of our experience booting up into IOS on a preproduction Envy 133 and a tour of all its Splashtop applications. When you first boot up the system, it will launch a main page with the Voodoo logo on a black background in 5 seconds.

This start page has seven buttons on its bottom dock, including a shutdown, launch Windows, browser, music player, photo viewer, Pidgin chat and Skype shortcuts. You have to click on one of those buttons to enter the real IOS environment. In our testing, when we clicked on the browser button, it took an additional 10 seconds to launch the complete IOS mode and the FireFox browser.

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Today, Lenovo announced the release of its new small business-friendly SL series. The SL300, SL400, and SL500 come in 13, 14.1, and 15.4-inch screen sizes and provide some new, stylish tweaks to the traditional Thinkpad aesthetic.

So what’s different?

• A glossy black lid
• Slanted edges
• Different, cooler placement of indicator lights
• A red “terminator eye” light in the Thinkpad logo on the back of the lid.

Beyond the slick new look is a package of features designed for professionals who need mobility, power, value, and entertainment in the same system. The SLs are the first Thinkpads available with glossy screens and Blu-ray drives so mobile workers can use them to watch movies or even play games when they’re not powering through spreadsheets and presentations.

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Earlier tonight, at the Highbar on the roof of the Hilton in midtown Manhattan, we got our hands on one of the svelter models in Sony’s new lineup, the VAIO Z series. Sporting a 13-inch widescreen display and weighing 3.3 pounds, this is a very attractive ultraportable, and part of a number of new models of Centrino 2 notebooks that Sony is releasing. After the jump, take a look at our video and initial impressions of this stylish ultraportable. And stay tuned for our full review.

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We are pretty excited to get our hands on the first laptops that have an instant-on mode powered by Splashtop. With the touch of a button, the notebook will boot a Linux-based OS within seconds from which one will be able to quickly get on the Web to check e-mail, visit favorite Web sites, and chat with friends. For more information check out our Splashtop FAQ.

We expect the Voodoo Envy 133 with its Voodoo IOS, an environment powered by Splashtop, to make it into our offices soon. But we have no word as to when we will actually get a peek at ASUS’ ExpressGate notebooks, including the M70T, M5Vr, M50V, F8Vr, and F8Va. ASUS has promised systems that have the instant-on feature in Q3 of 2008.

To tide those eager ExpressGate fans over, I was able to grab this video of the instant-on operating system last month while in Taiwan at ASUS’ TekTrend conference.

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Verizon Wireless has had a pretty spotty track record with touchscreen phones. The LG Voyager is a solid messaging and multimedia device, but it’s pretty bulky. And the Samsung Glyde is just a mess, with a touchscreen that often requires multiple presses to get anything done. Enter LG’s Dare ($199), which is basically the LG Vu for Verizon customers. But instead of focusing on mobile TV like the Vu, the Dare goes its own way with a sharper 3-MP camera, funky menus with drag-and-drop customizability, and GPS via VZ Navigator (a feature the Vu lacks). You also get fast EV-DO Rev. A data, a first for Verizon’s touch lineup.

I had the pleasure of going hands-on with this slim (0.5 inches thick) and relatively light (3.8 ounces vs. the Vu’s 3.2 ounces) touchscreen phone, and was pleasantly surprised by the fluid and speedy interface. While a few touches didn’t respond on the large 3-inch 400 x 240-pixel haptic display, I really liked using the Dare’s UI. In other words, it’s not Verizon’s.

Read on for the rest of my first impressions and our full video if you… dare.  Sorry. I had to.

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Earlier today I brought you an early hands-on with the Garmin Nuvifone. But where pictures may be worth a thousand words, videos are worth more. Here’s our video of the Garmin Nuvifone in action, so you can make your own judgements on the user-interface.

My fearless booth tour guide did the voiceover, and the background is loud, but you can still make out a bunch of the features as he lays them out for you.
The Nuvifone is due out in the fourth quarter of this year, but pricing and carrier information is not yet known.

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After unboxing the Eee PC 901, I finally sat down with it and put it through the paces. Granted the Windows XP OS is in Chinese, but I was still able to get a good feel for the performance of the Intel Atom powered netbook. Check out the video hands-on and read through my mini-review to find out what I think of the system and if I think it can rival the MSI Wind.

Updated: Read our full review of the Eee PC 901.

Impressive Hardware Redesign

I never had any complaints about the original design of the ASUS Eee PC, but I gladly welcome the redesign. The matte coating on the lid has been replaced with one that has a glossy shine to it. It actually doesn’t seem to be getting too smeared in finger prints, but it has already gotten a small scratch. I am pretty pissed about that since I have been keeping it in the included felt case at most times. (The case isn’t that swim suit lycra anymore).

I am impressed with the new circular, silver hinge. The system has also been rebranded; you won’t find any ASUS logos just the Eee script logo on the right hand corner of the lid and under the screen.

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I stopped by the VIA booth at Computex today to see its menagerie of mini-notebooks. I had seen the newest version of the CloudBook Max behind glass at CTIA in April, but I was finally able to play around with the second-generation Everex mini-notebook this morning. So does it remove the bad taste in my mouth left by the original CloudBook? On the whole, yes.

As for hardware, the system feels a lot more sturdy. With a larger 8.9-inch footprint, the system gives you more real estate on the screen and keyboard. However, the trackpad is still extremely small. It is definitely smaller than on the Eee PC 701, but larger than the original’s finger-size pad located above the keyboard. I do not miss that odd thing.

The CloudBook Max on display was running Windows XP, which sure beats the gOS that was originally preloaded on the system. I have no complaints about the sizing of the windows on the 8.9-inch display; looks like they adjusted the OS for the system this time around!

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