Notebooks, Netbooks: Up For A Game Of Follow The Leader?

The Hewlett-Packard 4510 series is the latest round of business notebooks. Pricing on the 4510s starts at $529 and works its way up depending on specifications and screen size. One of the notable changes HP has made with the 4510s is to revamp the keyboard with a raised, or Chiclet, keyboard, which the company says will provide fewer places for crumbs or dust to accumulate.

Lenovo also recently revamped its business class of notebooks with the intention of capturing business in the SMB market. The new Lenovo G530 starts at around $400. The aim of the No. 4 computer manufacturer in the world is to provide a notebook at a reasonable price for smaller businesses.

The notebook market is already crowded, and it seems that whenever one vendor makes a move in the space, another vendor makes that very same move. Starting late last year, netbooks were a hot ticket on the market, so each vendor put one out—throw a dart at a list of vendors and it's likely that the one that gets hit will have a netbook.

More recently, design and wallet-busting prices have become normal, even in the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression. Apple launched the MacBook Air—granted, the notebook was on the market before the economy hit its free fall—but that didn't stop the launch of the Dell Adamo earlier this year.

Even Acer is jumping into the luxury laptop market with a Gateway-branded notebook. The Gateway ID Series was designed by Pininfarina, an Italian car designer.