Though at the time of this writing it was unclear whether the Lenovo IdeaPad S9 netbook would make it to the United States in '09—so far, Europe-only—we thought it was cool enough to warrant a mention in Objects of Desire. (C'mon Lenovo, U.S. geeks want this too!)

Weighing just 2.43 pounds and only about an inch thick, the black Lenovo S9 is one of the best designed of the recent wave of ultra-thin/ultra-light PC-based laptops we've seen. (Ok, it's no MacBook Air but then what is?)

The S9 is powered by an Intel Atom 1.60 GHz processor and features 512 mb DDR2 RAM, a 4 gb SSD (Solid State Drive) and a 4-in-1 card reader, which is a nice surprise though there's no CompactFlash slot. The S9 comes preloaded with the Linpus Linux lite operating system.

For a screen, the S9 uses a 8.9-inch WSVGA LED Panel TFT display with a resolution of up to 1024 x 600. Other features include Bluetooth; 802.11 b/g wireless LAN; and a built-in, 0.3MP webcam. Not exactly the sort of laptop you'd want to try to run Photoshop on but not bad for a computer this small.

Cost: $339 (U.S. price, estimated) Further information: www.lenovo.com