It’s back-to-school time across much of the country, and many people are out buying the notebooks for the coming school year. I’m sure there are many students headed off to college for the first time, who would like to take a nice gaming notebook with them. The reality is that most decent gaming notebooks cost around $5000, more than most college students can afford.

Gateway announced that it has added a new, affordable gaming notebook to its FX series called the P-7811FX. The cost of a notebook is only $1399.99 at Best Buy, making it very price competitive with basic notebooks on the market. Despite the low price, Gateway packs it full of higher-end features that you wouldn’t expect to see at this price.

Lenovo has always been a brand most associated with business notebook and desktop computers. Lenovo did recently start selling notebook and desktop computers aimed at the consumer market in the US. Despite that, Lenovo is still mostly associated with business users and that market is what it is known for.

Lenovo is looking to capitalize on its business market with the new ThinkPad notebook called the W700. The W700 is a 17-inch widescreen mobile workstation aimed squarely at the business user needing lots of power in a somewhat portable form factor. Lenovo says that its W700 is the first notebook in the industry to deliver a built-in digitizer and color calibrator.

I really like the idea of the small netbook size ultra mobile notebooks. What I don’t like about them is that the cheap ones tend to run Linux. Yeah I know the Linux fans out there say that is a huge upside, but let’s face it for the majority of the computer jocks out there it’s Windows all the way.

Not too long ago 3K Computers announced a new ultra-portable notebook to battle against ASUS and its popular Eee line of netbooks. The first version of the RazorBook 400 3K announced was running on Linux. Today 3K announced a new version of the RazorBook 400 that runs on Windows CE.