MacBook Air

Whoa. We were wondering what would happen when the performance freaks at Voodoo teamed up with HP, and the first notebook to come out of this acquisition is a surprise. No, it’s not a gaming rig. It’s one of the sleekest and most innovative ultraporables we’ve seen. The Envy 133 (starting at $2,099) rocks an instant-on mode that lets you surf the Web and make Skype calls without booting into Windows (called Voodoo IOS) and a slick power brick that doubles as a wireless access point. Intrigued yet?

Voodoo was kind enough to let us steal a pre-production sample for a little hands-on time, and although the Envy 133 was not benchmarkable, we wanted to walk you through everything that makes this dream machine stand out. Stay tuned for a full review.

Updated: Don’t miss our unboxing of the Voodoo Envy 133 here and hands-on with the Voodoo IOS, Instant-On OS here.

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If you’re an Apple-head who’s been patiently waiting for DisplayLink (a technology designed to connect multiple monitors easily) to come to the Mac platform, rest easy, as your time as come.

Today, DisplayLink released its first beta driver designed to bring DisplayLink-powered USB devices to Intel-based Macs. So what does this mean? Now MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air users can link up to 4 monitors, which is a technological godsend for hard-core multitaskers.

Right now the DisplayLink beta drivers don’t support 2D acceleration (window movements will be slower than on their XP and Vista counterparts) or 3D acceleration (iPhoto slideshows and Keynote presentations will not function properly), but here’s hoping that those issues are ironed out soon. If that hasn’t taken the starch out of your noodle, and you’re still interested in downloading the drivers, you can get them here.