Samsung's M55 laptop has already been tricked out with Blu-ray and HD DVD players, but the company doesn't seem to have run out of HD goodies just yet, now adding an HD DVD burner to its lineup of portable high def offerings. Apart from that notable addition, the laptop also comes loaded with a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor in place of the earlier model's T2500, along with 2GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, a GeForce 7600 graphics card with 256MB of VRAM and, of course, that same big 1920x1200 17-inch display. As you can no doubt guess, all that largess comes at quite a cost, with the laptop setting you back the local equivalent of $3,200. Competing for those HD dollars is Toshiba's recently announced HD DVD burner-equipped Qosmio G30 laptop, which PC World reports went on sale in Japan over the weekend, demanding an equally pricey $3,085.

Read - Akihabara News, Samsung M55
Read - PC World, Toshiba Qosmio G30

If you've been looking for a laptop big enough to hide behind then check this, the Samsung M55. Yeah, we've seen it before, only this time it comes packing Blu-ray not HD DVD. Otherwise, it's still the same ol' 17-inch laptop with 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution, up to 120GB of disk and 2GB memory, 256MB of GeForce Go 7600 graphics, Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and HDMI out for sharing the HD love with your XXL flat panel at home. Only this time, it's Blu-ray discs you'll be spinning to the bemusement of Toshiba. Yeah, "into the blue" Sammy... yuk yuk, we get it.

Like Acer,and fellow "strong" Blu-ray supporter LG, Samsung is showing the hi-def crowd how to mix it up by opening their Blu-ray love affair to the HD DVD camp. Here we have their M55 -- formerly billed as the "world's thinnest and lightest 17-inch widescreen" at 30.5 ~ 34.4-mm thick and 2.99-kg -- only now packing some swank HD DVD action along with an apparent pixel increase to 1920x1200. Just to run down the rest of the specs on this: you get a glossy 17-inch display, 256MB GeForce 7600 Go graphics, up to 120GB of SATA disk, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, a wide range of in and outs including HDMI and S/PDIF, and suite of SRS audio features all powered by an Intel T2500 Core Duo proc. No drop date but they should pull about €3,000/$3,810 -- yeah, we know. And yes, gentle readers, there is a woman in that photo, now please try to comment on the laptop, mkay? We don't want to get rough, see.