Various manufacturers have released a host of light, functional and good-looking laptops; there is the IBM X300, the MacBook Air and the Sony Vaio, to name but a few. The bottom line is that the road warrior, or any user, who wants a full-featured laptop that also looks good, has never had it better.

The just released LG is a surprisingly well-specified laptop in the ultraportable field. Most ultra light, sub-2kg laptops make significant compromises. The LG, at 1.6kg, has few. The first major compromise is obviously the size of the screen. With 10 to 12 Inches being the norm for sub-compacts, the LG has a 13.3 inch screen. The benefit of this is that, at the resolution chosen, which is 1200 x 800, most spreadsheets, documents and web sites are big enough for you to use the laptop all day. The smaller screens of 12 inches and below, which have similar screen resolutions, have very small text, and can result in eye strain after extended use.

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16:9 LCD panels designed for computer use aren’t exactly all that uncommon, but this latest batch announced by LG will likely generate a bit more interest than most, especially given that they’re apparently intended specifically for use in low-cost laptops. According to DigiTimes, LG will first roll out a standard 16:10 aspect ratio, 8.9-inch panel with a resolution of 1024 x 600 in August, which will then be followed by a 16:9, 10.1-inch panel with a 1024 x 576 resolution in October, and finally a 9.4-inch panel of unspecified resolution in April of 2009. Making things even more interesting is that some unspecified “industry sources” say the panels are “expected” to be adopted by Acer and HP for use with their low-cost laptops, and possibly Asustek as well, which will no doubt add plenty of fuel to the next round of Eee PC rumors.

AMD wasn’t exactly all that specific about exactly when its new ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series graphics chips would actually find their way into some laptops when it announced them earlier this year, but it looks like they’re now finally starting to trickle out, with new laptops from Toshiba and ASUS now each receiving a boost from ‘em. For Toshiba’s part, it’s squeezed the lower-end ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 into its 17-inch Satellite P305 and P305D laptops (pictured at right), with other “select” P305 models also getting the more powerful Mobility Radeon HD 3650 model, which boasts 120 stream processors, a 128-bit memory interface, and 512MB or 1GB of VRAM depending on the system. ASUS also opted for the higher-end HD 3650, with it landing in the company’s 15.4-inch M50 Series M50Sa laptop. Needless to say, however, those aren’t the only models in the 3000 series, with the even higher-end Radeon HD 3850 and 3870, and 3850 X2 and 3870 X2 dual-core models, apparently also on track, though there doesn’t seem to be any word on a release for those just yet.