We know for some of you the thought of a larger MacBook makes you drool. You might be seeing them quicker then you think. Sources in Taiwan are saying that a 15.4-inch MacBook might be shipping by mid-year. With MacBook sales ever increasing so far in 2007, the sources also say it is most likely to see even more of a boost in sales with the release of the 15.4-inch MacBook. The 15.4-inch MacBook Pros are currently very expensive and relate to a small percentage of the Mac sales. The new laptops are also rumored to be being produced by Quanta, the same computer company who produces MacBook Pros, rather then Asus. — Andrew Dobrow

15.4-inch MacBooks to begin shipping in 2Q, say sources [DigiTimes, via Crave]

Asus has announced its Aquatank graphics card. A new option for cooling an overclocked GeForce 8800GTX card with a water cooling method. The new Aquatank is said to run 12 degrees cooler then a reference thermal module.

The Aquatank clears out warm water from an overclocking 8800GTX, enabling the GeForce graphics to be up to 11 percent faster then when its running hot. Testing showed an increase in performance from 575 MHz to 630 MHz. Quite a jump for a GPU clock.

No pricing or release date have been announced, but the release should please some GeForce hardware fan boys who love working their cards to their maximum power. — Andrew Dobrow

Asus ‘Aquatank’ Cools GeForce 8800GTX [ExtremeTech]

Maybe you caught them during the keynote, maybe you never watched it to begin with. Either way, these new laptops will make heads turn for sure. They were shown during Bill Gate’s opening keynote speech for CES 2007, but just for a quick second while scrolling through the rest of Vista compatible laptops that will be released alongside with the new OS. These brand spankin new Asus Lamborghini laptops look just about as nice as the Asus Ferrari laptops (which have been out for some time now). So really, what do these uber-high-end laptops offer to us?

Based on the latest Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology and Microsoft Windows Vista operation system, the handsome supernote offers brand new capabilities in security, performance, reliability, and manageability for a powerful computing experience.

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ASUS’ newest laptop is being released with enough features to roll with the big dogs. With many laptops manufacturers getting more competitive, maybe ASUS decided to come in strong and show that they could do it. The Z84Jp has everything: Intel Core 2 Duo, up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, SATA hard drive, and NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 graphics card. That’s just what’s under the hood. View whatever you want on the beautiful 17� screen; just think of what can be accomplished with WOW now. Connect all your devices via one of the 4 USB ports or the Firewire port. A few more things that are starting to appear more on laptops that are included in the Z84Jp are Bluetooth, 7-in-1 card reader, and a 2.0 megapixel camera, perfect for all of you who like to webcam or just take pictures of yourself in front of the computer. If you are considering buying a non-Mac laptop, you should probably wait until Vista comes out because there is absolutely no point in wasting a butt-load of money on XP only to use it for 3 weeks; the Z84Jp is set to be released later this month.

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Asus currently takes up 1/3 of the world’s computer motherboard market, and they have been doing that by striving to expand the market themselves. At a press conference on Friday, Asus indicated that they would join forces with intel (not AMD), they even projected that their sales will increase by another 50% in 2007, if they manage to meet their own target, that is, they have to increase the overall sales of the world market by 20%. Crazy eh, one company on one island, a third of all the computer lying around. How are they doing to manage? This all and only has to do with a market an hour of flight away; the Taiwanese company is eyeing the booming internet cafe business in mainland China. Mobile phone subscribers can rise in terms of millions per month, you can imagine how companies can go crazy once they capture the Chinese taste. — Sam Chan

Asus and Intel [Pcpop]

There are a couple of companies with great potentials that never made it to become the big players in the mobile phone industry. Asus is one of them. Just take a look at the Z801, their newest triband GSM phone. Real leather, stainless steel, industrially-strengthened glossy surface are all used to construct this baby. I am sure it will sell, if you stick a SonyEricsson logo on top and flush it with their UI. With dual TFT screens, the Z801 will surely look good in dark. The rest of the functions aren’t shabby either, the camera is a 2 Megapixels CMOS, MP3 ringtones and Bluetooth A2DP profile are all supported. Internal memory is 64MB and you may expand it with microSD cards. The Z801 is over-priced at 530USD in Taiwan today, as a tradition of Asus, don’t expect the Z801 to come out of Taiwan any time soon.

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