Acer is launching a new 8.9 inch notebook, the Aspire One. It’s based on the Intel Atom processor, and comes at a stunningly low price of $400.

You’ll get 512MB of main memory, and an 8GB solid state drive. Screen’s decent with a 8.9″ display with a resolution of 1024-by-600 pixels and an LED backlight.

The laptop’s packed with features like a built-in web camera, 95% full size keyboard, touchpad, 802.11b/g wireless module, Ethernet LAN port, three USB ports, a VGA output, 5-in-1 media card reader, and SD card slot.

There will also be a second release for $620 release with 1GB of RAM and 80GB of hard drive storage.

Here’s a rousing speech on the “One Laptop Per Child” project given at the MIT Media Lab this May. It provides an update on the project — and a really good quote on what one tiny machine can do to change lives.

“We are not delivering computers. We are delivering a time machine. A time machine that is so enormously transformational that everything after that is changed. Changed for ever. Imagine this. A hut in an African village. An old man and an old woman cooking their dinner by firewood . At a small table a young boy about 11 years of age is tapping into a computer looking at the key board in the half light of a flickering kerosene lamp. He has escaped his hut. His mind is elsewhere, connected to the global internet community. He is doing his homework together with 7 other kids in similar huts 1 km away. The huts are connected to the children. The children are the nodes and the village community is brought together by their laptops.”

On our wishlist: optimus maximus keyboards for laptops. Yes, it’s expensive, but a lot of laptop aficionados wouldn’t mind paying extra money for the functions. Each key image can be customed, language layout can be switched, and secondary symbols appear automatically after you press the shift key.

My wife’s biggest complaint about men’s gadgets is that…they look like men’s gadgets. For her, performance needs to have the style factor, and chrome just won’t cut it. Then I found this list of best laptop bags for women. Yes, there’s the girly pink — even a few wit flowers on them — but there are also sleek, classic designs for execs. Some of them can be worn like a backpack, good for women on the go.

Check out these funky mouses and Skype phones that look like racecars. Not only do they look cool, they’re organically designed, and have an integrated mic and speaker. Available in cherry red and silver.