A second overheating scare has hit notebooks with Sony-made batteries.

Sony announced today it is supporting a voluntary recall of 100,000 Dell, HP and Toshiba notebooks around the world. The models in question all feature Sony's 2.15Ah Lithium Ion battery. Ironically, Sony's own brand of notebook, the Vaio, is unaffected in the latest scare.

Recently, NBR road-tested Dell's $799 Inspiron Mini 9. This Lilliputian laptop's compact size amazed, but in the end it was just fractionally too small to allow touch-typing.

Enter Dell's Inspiron Mini 12, announced today and available worldwide from mid-November.

Mac-heads rejoice: the rumours are all true. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled his company’s much-anticipated new MacBook line today, consisting of 13-inch and 15-inch models up to $NZ800 cheaper than their predecessors. Features include:

• No more cheesy plastic trim. A new “unibody” design that sees each of the notebooks cast from a single piece of aluminium. As well looking sleek, Jobs says the unibody makes the MacBooks thinner, tougher, and greener to manufacture.

Lenovo has refreshed its “X” series of ultramobile Thinkpads with the standard X200, built with speedy specs; the X200s, a spiffier, superlight version of the X200, and a touch-screen take called the X200 Tablet – the first ever Tablet with a screen that swings both ways.

ThinkPad X200

Dell’s entry into the fast-growing ultramobile laptop market is set to hit New Zealand. From this Wednesday, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 will ship for $NZ799 with an 8.9-inch (1024x600) screen, 1.6GHz version of Intel’s new Atom processor, 1GB of memory, 11.g and Bluetooth wireless, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a 4GB solid state hard drive.