It’s that time of the year again.

Christmas is a time of giving and receiving, and every year at Techgoondu we want world peace and justice. This year I want to add to the list a fairer society, better public transport, and affordable public housing.

And in case those big dreams fall a little short of our lofty naive ideals, well, there’s always geek toys and gizmos that we can console ourselves with. And still keep dreaming big dreams — they are worth fighting for, aren’t they?

In the meantime, here’s what the goondus would like this Christmas:

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Folks looking out for an ultrabook this holiday season has yet another choice on top of the increasingly crowded segment – the Lenovo U300s. Eschewing the wedge-shaped design championed by Apple and ASUS, Lenovo’s take on the ultrabook is a sensible book-shaped machine that has a nice heft and overall feel. We go hands-on! …

Asus and Acer may have been slightly earlier to the game, but the battle for the slimmest, lightest and most powerful laptop is just getting hotter with new arrivals like Toshiba’s new Portege Z830.

Shown to the media in Singapore last week, the latest in the Japanese laptop maker’s thin-and-light Portege line is just 15.9mm thin and weighs a feather-light 1.12kg. On that frame are a 13.3-inch screen and 128GB solid state drive, along with either an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 chip. …

The ultrabook market just got more crowded with ASUS joining the party; the Taiwanese company officially jumped into the fray when it unveiled the super-thin Zenbook laptop here in Singapore on Tuesday.

The Zenbook sports a differentiating design with some remarkable innards while keeping the price relatively reasonable. But will this Windows 7 beauty stand up against its competition? We go hands-on to find out more! …

Gamers and road warriors have some new toys to look forward to this November. Samsung has released their new Series 7 Gamer and Chronos notebooks into Singapore – just in time for the tons of new games coming this Christmas.

The Gamer is loaded with sick specs, beginning with an Intel i7 quad core chip with 8GB of RAM, up to 16GB.  More interestingly, it comes with one of the most powerful graphic cards on the market – the AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5 with DirectX 11 support.

As if that was not enough, Samsung also has added an extra 8GB to the notebook through its ExpressCache system, which effectively acts as an extra 8GB of flash memory on the motherboard, allowing for faster caching that translates into faster startup and application launch speeds. …

Let’s start by getting the price of this state-of-the-art laptop out of way, because S$3,999 is certainly not everyone’s idea of how much a good laptop should cost.

No, not even with the full works – a Core i7 chip, 8GB RAM, a 256GB solid state drive – encased in an incredibly thin and light frame weighing just 1.165kg, plus a separate desktop dock that contains a Blu-ray drive and a handy AMD 6650M graphics card.

Considering how laptops are costing less by the day, I’m not sure how many of the new Vaio Z – which costs twice as much as many albeit lower-powered rivals – will get sold here in Singapore.

But what makes this Sony machine so impressive is that it might just herald a new generation of devices. While the previous Vaio Z was a well-built, fast machine for the business user, the new incarnation is a whole new class of device altogether, in that it is both a PC on the go and on the desk. …

The world’s third largest PC maker Lenovo is doing a big makeover with its brand as it pushes more aggressively into the consumer space.

To achieve this, it is the tech sponsor for Fashion Night Out, a global shopping extravaganza initiative that is in its third year.

Showing off their latest IdeaPad U300s Ultrabooks at the glitzy fashion event, Lenovo hopes to increase their brand awareness amongst consumers.

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The usual sight of folks with trolleys of  flat screen TVs to printers in tow are back this weekend at Suntec City, thanks to the Comex 2011 show.

With bargain basement prices for items such as TVs – a Toshiba 42-incher for going for just S$549 – and laptops bundled with all sorts of freebies, the tech bazaar promises good deals for folks who brave the human jam at the halls in Suntec City.

Here are some hot deals that Techgoondu sussed out yesterday while there for a quick walkthrough: …

You don’t see many impressive laptops every day, but the new Dell Inspiron 13z managed to evoke that very sentiment from us when we saw it last week. Not because it’s particularly good-looking or powerful, but because of the price.

For S$899, you can have a decently stylish-looking 13-inch laptop with an LED HD screen (1366 x 768), 2^nd-generation Intel Core i3 chips, 2GB of RAM, SRS Premium Sound HD and USB 3.0 ports. 320GB of storage space might not be enough for some, but at 7,200 rpm it’s at least guaranteed to be fast.

All in a package that’s under an inch thick and weighs in at 1.76kg.

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Unless you’ve been living in the deep recesses of a Linux terminal somewhere in Antarctica, you would know that Apple has released the newest version of their operating system, OS X Lion, ahead of schedule. But it’s not Lion in which I’m interested.

Along with new software comes new hardware, and Apple has upgraded the MacBook Air to become more powerful than before. They’ll be phasing out the iconic white MacBook a little down the road. For all intents and purposes, the MacBook Air is now Apple’s most consumer-ish offering. …