Acer is deploying up to 65,000 notebooks with the Queensland Department of Education and Training (DET) after the company won a tender in round three of the national secondary school computer fund.

The number of public Wi-Fi hotspots is exploding around the world, with analysts predicting that the 1.3 million currently available will leap to 5.8 million in the next four years. China Mobile alone plans to deploy a million hotspots and Japan’s KDDI plans to grow its 10,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to 100,000 within just six months.

Intel has formally launched in Australia its Ultrabook concept for super-thin laptop computers and has announced that Dick Smith will be the first company to offer the Intel Anti-Theft service that relies on hardware-level security features to enable a stolen or lost Ultrabook to be disabled.

The iPad and media tablets generally are gaining increasing popularity with western European consumers at the expense of conventional laptops, with the latest consumer purchasing statistics showing a distinct and drastic decrease in interest in laptops compared to the usual ownership trends.

Many young Australians between the age of 18 to 25, and their counterparts in the US and the UK, share their passwords while less than half password protect their mobile devices, according to a study by security firm AVG.

Citrix has released a new version of its XenDesktop that it says extends the benefits of desktop virtualisation to millions of enterprise laptop users with the addition of two new technologies – XenClient and XenVault.

With a musical anthem and a video presentation of what Toshiba called "world firsts" launched its 25th Anniversary of laptops with its largest ever single release of new models. But the big surprise was that they will be releasing an all new slate later this year.

Apple has given its MacBook Pro notebooks faster CPUs and graphics chips, while lowering the price of the highest-end models.

Adelaide-based national ISP, Internode, has launched in Australia MiFi, a portable device the size of a pack of cards that combines a 3G broadband modem with a wireless access point, and which the company says combines a 3G router and an 802.11 b/g WiFi access point that can fit in your shirt pocket.

A new hard drive from Seagate is just 7mm high. It's also relatively cheap.