Apple is set to unveil a new ultraportable laptop on January 15, according to the army of online pundits dedicated to tracking the iPod maker’s every move.

MacWorld, the company’s annual jamboree, is still two weeks away, but already the web is buzzing with details of expected new products and business partnerships – including a series of deals with Hollywood studios under which Apple will enter the online rental video market, and a rumoured upgrade to the iPhone that would give the device a GPS-type function.

However, the expected launch at the San Francisco-based event of a lightweight, super-thin laptop – a device seemingly pitched between the iPhone and its current MacBook line of computers – is kindling the greatest interest among Apple aficionados.

Suggestions that such a machine, said to be fitted with flash-based memory and an external disk drive, is imminent were stoked last month when digitimes.com, the industry site, revealed that Apple has secured a supply of 13.3-inch LED backlight units, used for ultraportable computer displays, from Taiwan.

Commenting on a proliferation of more detailed reports in recent days, engadget.com , the closely-read blog, said: “While anything is obviously possible, it sure seems like the safe bet is that Apple will unveil some form of ultraportable laptop at MacWorld in a couple of weeks.”

Mac Rumors, another website, said it had received "reliable confirmation" on a number of features of Apple’s forthcoming “sub-notebook” including the omission of an internal optical drive to cut down on size and weight.

“Instead, Apple is said to be offering an external optical drive with the sub-notebook. This detachable external drive would allow customers to read/write from CDs or DVDs as usual, but would allow users to leave this extra bulk at home when on the road,” the site said.

It added that Apple is also expected to announce upgrades to its current line of MacBook and MacBook Pro computers.

The rash of speculation suggests that Apple is fighting a losing battle in its efforts to clamp down on the leaks and speculation that accompany its product launches. Last month it reached a legal settlement with Think Secret, a site it had sued for allegedly leaking industrial secrets.

The addition of a new ultra-portable machine would fit with Apple’s recent thinking. The iPhone, which comes equipped with a fully-fledged web browser, was heralded as much as a miniature computer as a telephone when it was revealed at last year’s MacWorld.

Apple also has close links with Google, which is bidding for a spectrum license in the US that could be used to roll-out a wireless broadband network.

Rival internet players such as Yahoo, meanwhile, believe that more people will soon access the internet through mobile devices than through conventional computers.

The launches of iPod models, and more recently of the iPhone, have garnered the bulk of the media coverage lavished on Apple, but the company’s computer business has also made great strides.

In its latest financial statement, Apple said that it sold a record 2.16 million Macintosh computers in its forth quarter, 34 per cent than for the same period the year before. Of those, sales of laptops rose 37 per cent, contributing to a 67 per cent leap in profits to $904 million (£445 million). The news helped push Apple shares above $200 for the first time.

Recent surveys suggest that the company has since continued to make up ground on the PC.

According to Net Applications, a group that tracks internet use, more than 7 per cent of visits to websites in December came from Apple’s Mac computers, a record high. Computers powered by Microsoft’s Windows operating system still dominated, however, accounting for more than 90 per cent.

The night sky has been a source of fascination for thousands of years and studying it is a surprisingly approachable hobby. Basic “backyard astronomy” can involve merely a pair of good binoculars, but if you are at all serious then a proper telescope is a must.

Be wary of cheap gadget-shop offers. Some may look like telescopes but they are more suited to picking out yachts from the harbourside than relishing Saturn’s rings, and nothing kills an interest in the stars faster than a wobbly telescope with poor optics.

A common misconception is the benefit of high magnification. A good telescope is about collecting light, not merely magnifying it, and this necessitates a large-aperture lens or mirror. Without one, your telescope may magnify an image 400 times but it will be too dim to see.

There are three main categories of telescope: the refractor, the reflector and hybrid designs that mix the two. The refractor is what you probably think of when you hear the world telescope – a tube with a lens at one end that gathers light from the stars, and an eyepiece at the other to magnify it. With a reflector design, light is gathered by a concave mirror at the bottom of the tube and then reflected to a second mirror at the top, which reflects it to an eyepiece.

Hybrid telescopes combine mirrors with lenses to enhance the image and reduce distortion. Within these categories there are many variations, but don’t worry if you don’t know your Dobsonian from your Schmidt-Cassegrain.

Which is best? Reflector models are generally cheaper than refractors and offer the best value for novices. Because they tend to have a wider aperture they provide a brighter image than a similarly priced refractor. On the downside, their more basic design has its limitations. Stars at the edge of the image can often appear distorted, with a comet-like trail known as a coma appearing. Most modern reflectors include “coma correction” technology to reduce this.

Enthusiasts are more likely to opt for a refractor. They are pricier but well suited to looking at planets, though they can create faint fringes of colour around brighter space objects such as stars.

The main tube of a telescope is not the whole story. Many packages include a tripod and one or more eyepieces that provide different degrees of magnification. A stable mount is vital, as even slight movements will be magnified intolerably.

There are two basic types: the simpler altazimuth mount enables a telescope to be moved vertically or horizontally; alternatively, a fancy equatorial mount compensates for slight movements caused by the Earth’s spin to give a steadier view and these sometimes employ a small motor to keep objects squarely in view. This is helpful for astro-photographers who attach an SLR (single-lens reflex) camera or a webcam to their telescope to shoot the heavens.

Attaching a computer-aided positioning system to your mount will help you easily locate the planets and deep-sky objects outside our solar system such as star clusters. The easiest is known as a GoTo system; one is featured on the Celestron scope tested here. This sort of point-and-shoot astronomy is ideal for newcomers.

Generally speaking, bigger telescopes are better, but they are more complex to handle and cumbersome to pack up, especially if you want to flee the light pollution of the city for the weekend.

Research supplied by Astronomy Now magazine

Reviews adapted by Stuart Andrews

Prices include Vat and delivery

JARGON BUSTER

GPS (Global positioning system) Satellite-based technology that enables a gadget to plot its location. More commonly employed by in-car sat navs

GoTo mount Tool that can be added to some conventional telescope mounts to locate stars and planets automatically, using GPS technology

Equatorial mount Telescope mount that compensates for slight movements caused by the Earth’s spin. More advanced than the basic altazimuth style of mount

Reflector Telescope in which light is gathered by a concave mirror at the bottom of the tube and reflected to a second mirror at the top, where it reflects into an eyepiece

Refractor Traditional style of telescope consisting of a tube with a lens at one end to gather light coming from the stars and an eyepiece at the other to magnify it

STARGAZER’S ALLY

Celestron NexStar 6 SE – typically £699, or £679 from www.telescopeplanet.co.uk

Computer-aided controls and solid optics

Newcomers to astronomy can struggle to recognise heavenly objects but this reflector-style scope has a computerised GoTo mount that aims it at a specific constellation if you enter the name or coordinates. A GoTo mount can be fiddly to set up but this one was easy. The views were good, with the great globular cluster in Hercules a fabulous sight. The Celestron struggled with deep-sky objects and its field of view is narrow, which makes it less suited to observing huge star fields. Keen astronomers can be sniffy about GoTo mounts, but this model is a smart companion for a foray into the night sky.

DEEP SPACE OBSERVER

William Optics FLT 132mm refractor – typically £2,899, or £2,799 from www.iankingimaging.com

Serious money, for serious kit

Astronomy buffs will be agog at this potent refractor-style telescope. Its tube felt solidly hewn, the classy paint finish was resilient to knocks, and it comes in a smart aluminium case. The image quality was superb and even deep-space objects such as nebulae looked crisp with great contrast levels. Colour purity was excellent and the star Vega shone like a diamond. The wide field of view proved well suited to capturing sensational photographs. The price does not include a mount or eyepieces, which push it a tad above £3,000, but this still represents good value, given the quality on offer, and the instrument will give years of pleasure.

SUN WORSHIPPER

Coronado PST – typically £429, or £399 from www.telescopehouse.com

Affordable solar specialist

The sun is the most dynamic object in our solar system, but it’s impossible to view through a conventional telescope without expensive add-on filters. The Coronado PST is designed for solar observation, using filters to block out all light except hydrogen emissions given off by the sun. It was easy to aim and focus and you can tune the wavelength of the filters to keep the most interesting solar phenomena visible. You must factor in the cost of a mount (from £80) and an eyepiece (about £70) and you will need another telescope for the rest of the galaxy. Still, this is a relatively inexpensive way to observe the sun.

PLANET WATCHER

Orion Optics OD150L Deluxe Dobsonian – typically £499, or £399 from www.orionoptics.co.uk

Great views of smaller, close-by objects

This specialist scope is optimised for observing the moon and the planets in our own solar system in detail. It is a reflector model and its mirrors are Hilux-coated to improve contrast and reflectivity. The Orion also has a high focal ratio and a narrow field of view, which helped relatively small objects such as a planet fill the viewing frame. It delivered astonishing lunar sights and – in the right conditions – detailed views of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. At well over 3ft tall, it is less portable than some models, but it excels at the job of studying our planetary neighbours.

BEGINNER’S BARGAIN

Sky-Watcher Explorer 130PM – typically £199 or £155 from www.acecameras.co.uk

Ideal starter scope for casual stargazers

Proper astronomy need not cost the earth. This reflector-tube design costs less than £200 and comes with a motorised equatorial mount. It offered excellent views of the moon, surface markings on Mars, plus the rings or moons around Saturn – and even a few deep-sky objects. True, the Explorer 130PM was less efficient at gathering light than pricier models. The eyepieces were unimpressive and the mount less than beefy, but this is acceptable at the price and there’s room to upgrade. As a way to dip a toe into the waters of celestial observation, this is excellent.

GUIDING STAR

Meade mySKY – £299 from www.scopesnskies.com

Clever tool flawed by inconsistency

The mySKY is not a conventional telescope but can still help novices explore the night sky. This pistol-shaped gadget bills itself as a personal planetarium with a 2in screen. Point it at the heavens and it uses GPS to identify what you’re looking at and provide images or information on its screen, along with audio via headphones, and even video clips. When the Meade worked it was fantastic, and its GoTo function can help find specific objects. Unfortunately, it was not always correct and sometimes struggled to secure a GPS signal. It’s hard to recommend as anything other than an expensive, albeit sophisticated, toy.

Many gadgets at CES 2008 promise simple wireless networking of TVs and computers

Holden Frith in Las Vegas

The Consumer Electronics Show opens tomorrow, unleashing a host of high-tech gadgetry on a buying public that has barely recovered from Christmas shopping.

More than 140,000 representatives of the global technology community will descend on Las Vegas over the next four days to hear Bill Gates’ thoughts on the industry he helped to create and to catch a glimpse of the future.

The clearest impression to emerge from a brief preview of the show is that convergence – the holy grail of the technology world, which has long been predicting that telephones, televisions, computers and music players will communicate with each other and eventually merge into the same device – is finally beginning to happen.

Products likely to be coming soon to a living room near you include ultrawide-band wireless technology, which will enable cable-free connections between high-definition TVs, DVD players, games consoles, set-top boxes and video or music files stored on a computer.

This will let people download films or TV programmes directly from the internet and beam them to TV sets anywhere in the home, without needing to lay cables.

“It’s such a simple idea, but it really changes what you expect from your TV,” Bruce Watkins, president of Pulse-Link, which develops high-definition wireless connections, said. “You wouldn’t buy a TV now that isn’t high-definition, and soon I don’t think you’d buy a TV that isn’t able to do this.”

The growing interdependence of technology and the media is confirmed by record numbers of visitors representing entertainment companies, such as Disney and the big American TV networks.

Since the first video recorder was displayed at CES in 1970, Hollywood has tended to regard technology as its enemy, and digital piracy has added to the hostility felt by many in the entertainment industry. But the success of DVD sales and the gaming industry, both of which are now more lucrative than cinema screenings, have encouraged studios to work with technology companies.

There is a stick, too, as well as a carrot – the music industry sustained crippling damage when it failed to adapt to the rise of the internet a decade ago, and now that broadband speeds are getting faster and transferring digital files from a computer to a TV is getting easier, the potential for video piracy on a similarly damaging scale is increasing.

Convergence is likely to be a theme of the opening night keynote speech, traditionally delivered by Bill Gates on the eve of the show. Tonight’s speech will be his last to CES as Microsoft's chairman, and while the contents are closely guarded, analysts who have been briefed in advance have suggested that Mr Gates will strike a reflective note, taking stock of a rapidly changing technological landscape.

One indicator of these changes is that among the company executives, analysts and reporters at CES will be Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda, whose presence at the show underlines the increasing importance of technology to developing countries. He will be joined by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child project, which aims to put a $100 wind-up computer at the heart of educational policy throughout the developing world.

Green technology is another idealistic and ambitious sector attracting increasing attention. This year, organisers have created a ‘TechZone’ dedicated to products and research designed to protect the environment. Devices ranging from power-management tools to a small, bullet-like gizmo that claims to cut a car’s fuel consumption by 20 per cent appeal to the customer’s conscience and wallet.

Despite the presence of potentially world-changing products such as these, CES remains the jamboree of the technology world, where beer-carrying robots find their place among the more serious offerings.

There is, however, one company that will be doing its best to spoil the party. Apple does not take part in the show, holding its own expo in San Francisco next week instead. Last year it upstaged CES by announcing the iPhone to an ecstatic reaction, and although it is not expected to repeat the PR coup, rumours of an imminent ultrathin Macbook laptop have been exciting as much comment among delegates as anything expected in Las Vegas.