IFA's coming up soon, and that means Fujitsu Siemens will officially unveil the Amilo Mini. Yeah, you've already heard about some preliminary specifications and witnessed the unit itself on video, but did you know about the interchangeable lids? In a ploy a siphon away even more cash from netbook buyers, the firm is very, very intelligently looking to offer at least a couple of accessories to distinguish your unit from everyone else's. It makes sense, really -- cute little notebooks deserve cute little trinkets to jazz them up. Pure brilliance, we say. See the lids on video after the break.

Fujitsu-Siemens's Amilo 3000 laptops have always been decidedly stylish in their two-tone duds, and now the company's polishing them up a bit with new Centrino 2-based guts. First out the gate is the 15.4-inch Amilo Pi 3540, which features the new platform and NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS graphics driving a display Fujitsu-Siemens claims is dramatically better than the industry standard. There's also a spill-proof keyboard, silent mode, and a 15-in-1 card reader. Europe only at the moment, should be out in August starting at £699 ($1,392).

It looks like Fujitsu Siemens have broken cover on the next member to get in on the netbook party. That's right -- the company is launching a cheap, micro-sized laptop in the coming months... just like everyone else. According to reports, the 8.9-inch device will clock in around €300 or €400 (about $470 to $630), and will likely sport some version of Windows (we're thinking XP, as is the case with the vast majority of these). The laptop will be part of the Amilo line, but little else is known about it at this point.

[Via Lilliputing]

An external graphics card that's actually nearing release? Be still our hearts! Fujitsu Siemens' recently leaked external unit, which will be based on ATI XGP technology, is actually really, really close to hitting retail -- according to a piece over at Fudzilla, anyway. Slated to be titled Lasso, the RV670-based device should be more than enough to handle basic tasks, but unfortunately, benchmarks were off limits. On the upside, digital photography was not, so head on down to the read link for a few more snaps.

We've been hearing about ATI's external graphics schemes for years, but apparently XGP is finally ready to go. The platform houses an external graphics card -- ATI-branded, of course -- which connects to your laptop via a proprietary 4.0Gbps PCIe 2.0 connector. The new tech is being initially launched with AMD's new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800, which can work in a multi-GPU CrossFireX configuration with your laptop's internal graphics card. The first out of the gate with the tech is Fujitsu's AMILO Sa 3650, which packages a Mobility Radeon HD 3870 cardbut there's still no word pricing or exactly when or where this all is shipping. XGP also supports some extra USB 2.0 ports, Blu-ray decoding, and outputs over HDMI with integrated audio and DVI, powering up to four displays.

Don't just sit there clone, Fujitsu-Siemens just announced it's new Amilo 3000 series. The 16- and 18.4-inch widescreen (16:9) Laptops include options for Wireless USB, spill-proof keyboards, Blu-ray, and NVIDIA or ATI Hybrid Graphics for on-the-fly switching between discrete and UMA graphics when you need extra 3D power or extra battery life. They've also tossed in a palm-sized AMILO Graphic Booster; an external graphics adapter like ASUS' ASUS ROG XG Station which Fujitsu Siemens claims provides your laptop up to 470% more GPU power. Matching accessories too, tough guy, all pictured in the gallery below.

[Via Pocket-lint]

We already saw the Amilo Xi 2550 from Fujitsu-Siemens, but if you thought that was the only mobile Penryn-based lappie you'd see prior to January 6th, you've got another a few more things coming. Spotted over at Notebook Italia, we've got five new Acer Aspires (2920, 4920, 5920, 7720 and 9920), a pair of new Acer Travelmates (6492 and 6592G), a couple of Fujitsu-Siemens (the aforementioned Amilo Pi Amilo Xi 2550 and the 2428) and four new Sony VAIOs (FZ31, SZ71, CR31 and AR61) -- all of which will be housing that Penryn goodness when they launch. As you can imagine, there's far too many specs between the 13 new machines to cover in this space, but feel free to tag the links below for all the details on each.

Read - Fujitsu-Siemens
Read - Acer Aspires
Read - Acer Travelmates
Read - Sony VAIOs

Rumor has it that mobile variants of Penryn will officially hit on January 6th, but Fujitsu-Siemens isn't having any of that embargo nonsense -- it's already gone and shown off the 12.1-inch LOOX R, and now we've got the 17-inch Amilo Xi 2550. Unlike the LOOX R, this bad boy is confirmed to be running a 45nm 2.5 GHz T9300 Core 2 Duo, as well as Radeon HD2700 graphics, 2GB of RAM, 2 RAID 0 / 1 250GB drives, 1GB of flash turbo memory, and a dual-layer burner / Blu-ray player. No word on ship date, but we're seeing prices of €1644 ($2415) get thrown around.

In an upmarket move, Fujitsu-Siemens just loosed this, their AMILO Si 2636 laptop onto the cafe-posing elite. Besides sporting an interesting orb of a touchpad, it's configurable with a 2.2GHz T7500 Core 2 Duo processor, up to 4GB DDR2 memory, and 250GB of 5400rpm SATA disk. The new 13.3-inch, 1,280 x 800 (WXGA) laptop features Intel GMA X3100 graphics, HDMI-out, an integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam, 4-in-1 card reader, slot loading 8x dual-layer DVD burner, and battery capable of up to 5-hours. They even combine one of the 3x USB ports with eSATA for attaching a bit of high-performance external disk action. It weighs in at 2.3-kg (5-pounds) and 36.6 ~ 37.4-mm thick. We're still waiting for pricing and availability to be announced.

[Thanks, Joe]

Fujitsu Siemens loves to court the business set, but deep within that suited exterior is a heart for the consumer, as shown by this mildly interesting pair of AMILO Xi laptops. The AMILO Xi 2428 runs a 15.4-inch screen and weighs 6.6 pounds, while big brother Xi 2528 goes for 17-inches and a painful 8.8 pounds. Specs are fairly similar between the two: Core 2 Duo procs up to T7700, room for 2GB of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS graphics with 256MB of RAM, integrated webcam, and a full complement of ports like HDMI, S-Video, FireWire, ExpressCard, S/PDIF and a 5-in-1 card reader. The main difference between the pair is that the 2428 maxes out with a 250 gigger, while the 2528 can hold a pair of drives. The laptops will retail between £699 and £1449 ($1,404 and $2,909 US -- it's laptop prices like that which remind us why we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave), and will hit shelves sometime before the holidays.