Netbooks
These things are so badass... it may not be obvious why, until you realize how freaking small they are:
And cheap. Yes, it's cat sized and it'll run Vista and WoW for $300. Things like this have been around for quite some time, but what's new is that they are now actually affordable. They're certainly not competitive with a bigger, more expensive notebook or, god forbid, a PC, but they're great for internet, document work, watching media, and the like. They've got all the standards - wireless, USB, SD card ports, etc. People have been referring to them as 'Netbooks', an obscure old term given new meaning.
There's basically two worthwhile models out there right now, the Eee PC by Asus, and the Aspire One by Acer. There's only a couple versions of the Aspire One; basically, one comes with Linux, and one comes with XP and has more ram and a 120GB hard drive instead of a solid state 8GB drive. They run on a 1.6ghz Intel "Atom" chip with 512-1GB of ram. The cheaper 110 model'll run you $330, and the 150 is $350. Theoretically you can get it in white, black, pink, dark blue, and golden brown, but supply is limited and it's hard to get the color you want. They only have 3 hours or less of battery life unless you spring for the bigger battery, which is gonna be like another $70-$100. It's probably worth it, though. One more issue is that the keyboards on the Asus models, their competitors, are really cramped, and the Aspire is supposedly much more comfortable to actually use. This is a huge factor for me. Colors:
Then there's the Eee PC. Asus basically started this whole super-cheap Netbook trend. They've got a 7" model, a 9" model, and a 10" model. I'm not sure if they're making the 7" anymore, but you can still find them new for something like $250-$300. You can vary around the options with these, more or less storage (2/4/8GB) and ram(512/1GB). There's an old 9" model, too(12/20GB). You'll be lucky to find one of these for $350, though, they tend to be more like $450. Both the old 7" and the old 9" come with some cheap 900mhz Intel chip, although apparently it works pretty well. The Eee battery is apparently a little bigger than the Aspire One's, more like 4 hours than 3.
They just came out with some newer models, too - a new 9" and a 10". Both of these have the Atom, the same chip that the Acer Aspire One has. These new ones have a big 6 hour battery and the 10" has a lot more storage, 40GB solid state or 80GB hard drive, and 2GB of ram instead of the 1GB most other Eee's have (the 700 comes with 512 standard). Problem is, the new 9" and the 10" come from $550 to $700. For me this high price along with the larger size pretty much completely erases the whole appeal of these tiny, super-cheap netbooks. The Asus line in general is quite colorful, too, btw.
There's a Dell Inspiron model, the 910, coming out soon, too (supposedly... it keeps getting delayed) for something like $300 that'll be very competitive with these.
Just in case you were wondering, you can buy more ram for these guys if you want to, too, although the Acer is a gigantic pain in the ass to take apart.
Acer as a company doesn't have that great of a reputation, but it comes with a 1yr parts/labor warranty, and although the Aspire One just came out it seems to be working well for people. Asus' netbooks have been out for quite some time with basically no real problems. Dell is obviously respected, so their model should be good if it ever comes out, although by that time Asus and Acer will probably have a response. There are about a dozen other companies making these, but most of them aren't really worth mentioning (maybe the MSI Wind).
One more thing I want to mention is that normal hard drives have a lot of moving parts inside. Shaking them all around as you carry a laptop from place to place is terribly bad for them. They've made some good leaps, but it's still a big point of failure in laptops, and while if your screen or ram fails it doesn't really matter (you can get it replaced), when your hard drive fails you can really get screwed. This has happened with every laptop I've owned. The cheaper netbooks I mentioned here that don't have hard drives avoid this whole mess and I really like that.
Besides, who needs 120GB of storage on a laptop? Sure, it's useful for games that take up 10-20GB all on their own, but with a machine like this that's not really the point. I'm happy not to have games like that on one of my computers... that just takes away one more temptation. (and even if you need lots of space, spring the $20 for a 32GB SD card, they've got big ones now)