2009 Christmas Gadget Countdown - 10. Laptops

This year we were impressed with Dell's Inspiron Z and ultra-thin Latitude Z laptops. Dell notebooks also suddenly appeared in a huge range of colours, causing a major outbreak of “I want a pink one” in many firms across the land.

Acer and Toshiba also launched new multi-touch notebook PCs. Meanwhile, Apple re-engineered the MacBook so that the latest MacBook Pro and Air models left well-heeled Apple fanatics spoilt for choice.

Netbooks, or mini-notebooks, became mainstream in 2009 and have grown in popularity as additional devices for those using only desktop PCs or luggable notebooks for their day-to-day computing. Asus, producer of the original netbook, remains the market-leader but big boys like Dell and Toshiba have brought out some well-spec'd, low priced small screen netbooks too. If you already have a laptop, a mobile phone and an iPod you really ought to get one of these!

On the other hand, if you can wait a little longer you might be able to buy an Apple “MacBook Nano” next year - or whatever Apple decides to call it - if it decides to bring out a sub-laptop version of the MacBook. If they do it'll be a lot more than a very portable computer, possibly the ultimate convergence of computer/web browser, mobile phone and portable media player. Whatever happens, expect personal computing devices to look a lot different next Christmas.