With so many portable notebooks on the market today, which one would be best suited for your needs? Atane takes a look at a few of the more popular ones on the market right now and just gives a simple overview of what each has to offer.

Featured in this video:
HP Mini 1010NR
MSI Wind 10″ Netbook
Acer Aspire

The iPod Touch has clearly been the hottest version of Apple’s venerable series of portable media players to hit store shelves yet, but there’s been a problem: due to it using flash memory as opposed to a standard hard drive, it’s had to keep its capacity relatively low. 16GB was as big as you could get, while other iPods had capacities many times that. So it became a choice: do you want a smaller, slicker iPod, or a larger, more traditional model?

Well, good news. Now you don’t need to make that difficult choice, as Apple has crammed a 32GB flash drive into its new iPod Touch. So you get all the fun touchscreen action, the Internet connectivity, the media functions, and that beautiful widescreen without having to decide what small percentage of your music collection gets to take a ride on your iPod. Don’t worry: the gigantic 160GB iPod classic is still available for your music hoarders out there, but for those of us with a respectably large but not yet insane music collection who wants to hop on the iPod Touch bandwagon now have one less reason to make the leap.

While portable audio players like the iPod are amazing for toting around your entire music collection in your pocket, they don’t work so well in the car. I mean, not only is driving with headphones in a dangerous thing to do, but I’m pretty sure it’s quite illegal as well, and you don’t want to mess with that.

What’s someone with a big, iPod-bound music collection to do on the open road? Get yourself set up with a Venturi Mini, a little device that acts as a connection between your car’s stereo and your music player or cell phone. It can get music playing on your stereo, so you can leave the headphones safely in your pocket. In addition, it acts as a mobile charger, making sure you don’t run out of juice in the middle of your road trip. It’s a much safer (and much more legal) way to listen to music off your portable audio player in the car than the headphone-related alternative. You want to be safe and legal, don’t you?

Pre-Order here.

As the insane amount of iPod accessories available out there shows, you need more than just a portable music player to get the most out of your mobile audio experience. You need accessories, and lots of ‘em.

So rather than buying your portable music player’s accessories one by one, you might as well make it as easy on you as possible and get them in one shot. This Griffin Technology PowerPlay Pack has everything you need in one convenient package. First, you get the iTrip Auto Universal, which connects your iPod to your car radio wirelessly, letting you listen to your music without any wired adapters or anything of that nature. Next you get the PowerBlock Universal, a charger that’ll let you juice up any USB-powered gadget without requiring its own charger. Then there’s the California Roll, a roll-up carrying case for all your devices and accessories. Lastly there’s a USB to Dock cable that lets you plug in any generation of iPod into a computer. It’s everything you need and nothing you don’t.

With most media being converted to digital formats in order to be made more portable, such as music and movies, it’s only a matter of time before books make a similar leap. Sure, there’s a certain comfort brought by carrying around a real book, but just like the warm-sounding vinyl records before them, they’re bound to become a relic owned only by serious fans. What’ll replace them? Digital books.

Digital books like this Sony PRS-505/LC Blue Digital Book Reader, to be precise. The Sony Reader can carry up to 160 books at a time, letting you choose exactly what you want to dive into on the subway rather than choosing one book and being forced to stick with it. Of course, unlike music, people generally are fine sticking with one book at a time, and books don’t require batteries, so the transition to digital readers might be a bit slower, but trust me: it’ll happen eventually. Your kids will think bookshelves are quaint. Scary but true.