Sometimes, you just want to toss your computer in your bag and go. But with many laptops, you’ve got a computer that’s too large to really toss in a bag without that bag being specially designed for its carrying. What if you want to toss it in a purse or a backpack? You need a much smaller, more versatile computer. A computer like the Fujitsu FPCM21341 LifeBook U810 Mini-Notebook PC.

The LifeBook U810 is tiny, about the size of a paperback, making it one of the most portable computers around. It has a small 5.6-inch screen that can be flipped around and used as a touchscreen, allowing you to ignore the little keyboard altogether if you’re just doing some thing like surfing the web. It has a thumb nub for a mouse, one that’s positioned so you can hold the computer with two hands and use the mouse with each thumb. It’s certainly a unique little computer, one that takes some getting used to. But if you want portability, it doesn’t get much more portable than this.

Are you still stuck staring into a 17-inch tube monitor every day? One that’s blasting your face with radiation and can barely get its resolution up high enough to let you read the text on your screen? Come on. It’s time to get with the program and upgrade to a beautiful, high-resolution LCD monitor.

This Gateway FHD2400 24-inch Widescreen HD LCD Monitor would certainly be an excellent upgrade. With a 1920 x 1200 native resolution, it’ll not only allow you to read the tiniest of text, but it’ll also play video in full high definition without breaking a sweat. It’s nice and bright, and it has a refresh rate that’ll ensure that nothing gets blurry when things start moving around quickly. Its 24 inch size will also allow you to view more windows simultaneously, increasing your productivity. Or at least that’s what you can tell your boss to get him to pick this thing up for you.

Small laptops are great for the frequent traveler or for anyone who just likes having their computer on them when they’re out and about. You don’t want to lug around something that’ll weigh you down, but today’s cellphones with web access just are no match for the functionality of a full computer.

One of the best smaller computers out there is the HP FE912UA Pavilion TX2510US Entertainment 12.1” Touch-screen Notebook PC. It’s totally versatile, with a 12.1-inch screen that you can swivel around and fold back on the keyboard, using it as a touchscreen. That’ll allow you to surf the web on it as a tablet without using a keyboard, easily rotating the keyboard out again when you need to type something. In addition, it has 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and a DVD drive for watching movies and burning DVDs. It’s a great, fully-functioning laptop, just shrunk down and blessed with an innovative touchscreen. What more are you looking for?

When it comes to external hard drives for your computer, there are few names that are more trusted than Lacie. Lacie’s been making external hard drives for years, and they’ve got it down to a science. They make reliable, fast, high capacity drives that also look downright great when sitting on your desk.

If you’re in the market for a new external drive for additional storage or for backup purposes, you can’t go wrong with the LaCie Ethernet mini 500GB Hard Drive. Its gigantic 500GB capacity should be more than enough space for all your music, videos, and other data, and it’s perfect for backing up your entire system hard drive. You can also plug it into your home network and share your data with all the computers in your home, making it a central storage for music that anyone can access. It’s the perfect all-around external hard drive, one that gives you everything you’re looking for.

When it comes to laptops these days, thin is in. The Macbook Air broke new ground in this department, busting on the scene as the world’s thinnest laptop. That title didn’t last too long, however, as now boutique PC maker Voodoo has unveiled its Envy 133, a laptop that’s even thinner than Apple’s flagship.

The Voodoo Envy 133 is a mere 0.7-inches thick and weighs just 3.3 pounds, making it one of the most portable laptops around. It’s got a 13.3 inch screen, which is relatively generous for a portable laptop, and it’s based on Intel Centrino processing technology. Unlike the Macbook Air, it has 2 USB ports and an HDMI port, but like it it doesn’t have an internal disc drive at all. Instead, it comes with an external DVD drive that plugs in via USB when you need to load something or watch a movie. All this portability won’t come cheap, however, with the price starting at a not-so-thin $2,100 when it’s released later this year.

You might consider yourself a hardcore gamer, what with your monster PC loaded up with a top of the line graphics card that can run any game you throw at it with the setting cranked to the max. Yeah, that’s all well and good and graphics are important. But what about the sound? Do you have a soundcard that can support surround sound, letting you hear when an enemy is sneaking up behind you? Without that, your rig is woefully underpowered.

The Creative Labs PCI Express Sound Blaster X-FI Titanium Fatality Pro Sound Card is designed with hardcore gamers in mind. It can produce accurate surround sound from a multi-speaker setup or, if you don’t have one of those, through headphones, providing excellent spatial representation of sounds. It’ll work great for games, but it’s also designed for watching movies, turning your computer into a mini home theatre setup with killer surround sound. It’ll help take your digital entertainment to the next level.

While in the PC world most people tend to focus on the very high end, where the ludicrous gaming PCs reside, or the very low end, where basic email and internet machines are found, what most people are looking for is in that sweet spot between those two points. And with components dropping in price over the last few years, what would be a $5,000 powerhouse just a year or two ago can now be had for less than $1,000.

For example, the HP GN553AA Pavilion Elite M9040N Desktop PC has amazing specs, including a top-of-the-line Intel Core 2 Quad processor at 2.4 GHz, 3GB of RAM, and a whopping 640GB of hard drive space. It has a NVIDIA Geforce 8400GS graphics card, and it’s perfectly well equipped to take on nearly every task you can throw at it. It’ll fly as an internet machine, and it can handle more intense tasks such as gaming and photo and video editing with aplomb. It’s a beauty of a machine, sitting right on the crossroads of performance and value. It’s a good place to be.

If you’ve got yourself an HD camcorder and are looking to save your video on discs, there’s no better option out there than Blu-ray. Blu-ray discs can hold a whopping four hours of HD content, which should be plenty for your masterpieces and your home videos. In addition, Blu-ray discs can be used to back up data, storing up to a whopping 50GB per disc. That’s a heck of a lot more than a blank CD or DVD, wouldn’t you say?

In order to burn to these lovely blank Blu-ray discs, you’ll need a Blu-ray drive with recording capabilities. One such drive is the LaCie 301828U d2 External Blu-ray Drive. It’s external, meaning you can easy hook it up to any number of computers rather than having it stuck inside just one for all of time, and it’s an attractive little number to boot. It can burn not only Blu-ray discs, but also blank DVDs and CDs as well, making it quite the versatile drive. It can also play Blu-ray discs, so if you want to watch HD movies on your computer, this is the way to go.

When it comes to opening files up on your computer quickly, the process will only be as fast as your hard drive. While you might think that computer speed really only comes down to how fast your processor is or how much RAM you have, what speed your hard drive is can be just as important. If your computer is lagging a bit in opening or copying files, maybe it’s time to make a hard drive upgrade.

This Western Digital WD3000GLFSRTL 300GB SATA 3.5″ Internal Hard Drive holds a generous 300GB of data and lets you access it quickly with its 10,000 RPM speed. It provides up to a 35% increase in performance over older models, something you’ll notice the first time you try to access a large file or document stored on board. And while sure, cutting out seconds of time when you open a file might not seem like much, over the course of a day it can really add up.

For more info on hard drives, check out our hard drive product guide.

Since most laptops have relatively small hard drives due to their smaller size, many people opt to have an external drive that they can hook up to it to either back up their data or hold large files, such as multimedia files. It works well when you’re home at your desk, but what about when you’re traveling? An external hard drive with its own power cable can add a lot of weight to that laptop bag.

The new Iomega 160GB Media Xporter USB Hard Drive is designed for travel, as it powers itself completely through the USB cable. That means you don’t need to carry around a hefty power brick with it when you travel. It also has a great, stylish case, making it something that you won’t be embarrassed to pull out and hook up at a coffee shop. So don’t settle for an ugly, bulky hard drive that you’ll be likely to leave at home when you travel. Get a hard drive as portable as your computer.