When someone asks you to name computer manufacturers, the obvious names pop into your mind: Dell, Gateway, Apple and so on. But within the last couple years, something curious has happened. Computer manufacturers who previously were nameless and fameless are suddenly front and center.

Take Acer for example. The last year has seen an explosion in the popularity of netbook computers, and Acer’s Apsire One line of $270 netbooks are all the rage. Previously, no one has heard of MSI, but now everyone and their mother is hacking their $300 Wind to run OS X. Same with Asus and their EEE PC line.

Some companies ready to break onto the scene are more familiar for their other products. At the Nokia World conference in Germany last week, Nokia announced their Booklet 3G, a sleek, 2 cm thin aluminum netbook, signifying that the company who previously made their mark on the electronics world by manufacturing phones is now trying to expand themselves back onto the PC market after selling that division more than fifteen years ago.

The Booklet 3G is powered by the same Intel Atom processor in the MSI Wind and Acer One lines, but whereas those netbooks are only wi-fi capable, the Booklet 3G will come built in with a 3G/HSPA antenna, giving the netbook data network access wherever cell reception is available, along with the assisted GPS found in mobile phones. The netbook will also have a 10.1-inch HD-ready screen and HDMI port, something typically reserved for higher-end laptops and desktop, and certainly not something offered on current netbooks.

Nokia is truly in a unique position too introduce a computer as ground breaking as the Booklet 3G is. Of course, a netbook this exciting is also rather wallet-breaking as well. While only European pricing has been announced so far, the Booklet 3G will sell for 575 euros, which comes to about 820 dollars. However, netbooks often come subsidized if they have a data antenna. No subsidies have been announced yet, but they would have to be hefty to be anywhere near the sub-$300 prices on other netbooks.

It’s also yet to seen whether or not the subsidized notebook market will even prove to be profitable. Many carriers in the US are offering netbooks for as low as $50 with a 2-year data contract. Considering how much iPhone users complain about being locked into their contracts though, the carriers will probably face some stiff resistance.

Curiously and notably absent form the netbook market though is Apple. Apple even poked fun at the concept of a netbook yesterday at their keynote, showing an image of someone failing to shove a Dell Mini into his back pocket. Apple continues to claim that people don’t want an underpowered netbook; they want fast and they want powerful. Of course this is belied by the fact Apple continues to offer their white plastic MacBook for sale, and that their “mobile computing platform” of the iPhone and iPod touch has half the processing power of current netbooks.

More over, an article Wired ran last month argued that we’re in the middle of the “good enough” revolution, stating that “the low end has never been riding higher.” An interesting point to consider.

In any case, netbooks are here to stay. It’ll be interesting to seem some the innovations that trickle down towards the end user from higher end computers. An always on data connection, A-GPS, and HDMI connectivity are a great start. What’s next?

We’ve all had one of those days. Your phone is incessantly beeping in your ear, wasting what precious little power it has left to tell you that it, in fact, has no power. Your charger is nowhere to be found. Your friend offers her charger to you. Your hopes are smashed when her charger does not fit your phone. You miss the phone call from Ed McMahon “" rest in peace “" telling you that you’ve won a million dollars. Your lift is ruined (see picture).

OK, so that’s slightly dramatized, but we’ve all felt the sting of needing an inexplicably different cell phone charger for every phone we’ve owned. Why are they different, you ask? Just because. However, change is afoot “" at least in Europe “" where cell phone manufactures have agreed to all use micro-USB as the standard for charging and data transfer on their phones.

At the behest of the European Commission of the EU, manufacturers ranging from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Apple, Motorola, and many others have all agreed to an industry-wide standardization. These companies control 90% of the phone market in Europe, so this is nothing to scoff at. The EU hopes that this will reduce the amount of waste thrown into landfills (though we feel like one charger every couple of years is a whole lot less than say, the one or two water bottles we throw away every week, but every little bit counts).

The universal chargers will initially be bundled with the phones, but eventually phones will not come with a charger at all, in the hopes that consumers will be reusing them. The price of the chargers is yet to be determined.

While this is only Europe-wide at the moment, the hope is that the world will follow suit, for both convenience and the environment’s sake.

Wireless carriers consistently rank low in customer satisfaction rankings. One only need troll the pages of sites like Consumerist to understand why. Expensive, spotty service couples with poor customer service makes for quite a set of disgruntled customers.

One of my big beefs with carriers (or even phone makers-I’m looking at you Apple) are carriers that cripple their phones because they’re worried that missing income could erode their bottom lines. Early on, Verizon crippled the RAZR so that uploaded mp3′s couldn’t be used as ringtones, forcing people to purchase expensive twenty second clips of songs that they already purchased for $0.99 from iTunes. Even still, most Verizon phones do not allow personalized mp3 ringtones, and customers must purchase them. On the flip side, Cingular customers, who have access to many of the same phones, are free to use their phones as they see fit.

Of course, this lead the grassroots efforts that lead to consumers hacking their phones. Apple routinely blocks apps from the App store that they find threatening. Such was the case with Podcaster which Apple blocked for “duplicating functionality.” Nevermind the clock apps, and calculator apps, and stock watching apps, and … Need I really continue? On a similar vein, AT&T forced Apple to remove NetShare because tethering your iPhone as a modem violated their contract. Of course, solutions to both of these missing apps are available to users who jailbreak their phones, leaving AT&T and Apple without any income.

While AT&T has allowed VoIP apps to run on iPhones, they have to restrict data to Wi-Fi networks only, eliminating the possibility of using data networks for free minutes. However, not all carriers are so generous. Nokia wants to bundle Skype on their upcoming flagship device, the N97 in Europe. Clearly, this would make the phone quite attractive to consumers already strapped for cash. However, O2 and Orange have refused to even stock the device unless Nokia strips the software out.

Businesses need to stop treating their customers like shoddy criminals and realize that it’s our nature to try and save money any way we can. If the technology exists, why can’t we use it? Carriers should realize that by allowing the software with a small surchange would sell more phones, bringing in more customers and more money. What about that situation isn’t attractive? Could this be why the US and Europe have some of the most underdeveloped wireless networks when compared to Asian countries?

Change may be scary, but it’s time for carriers to embrace new technologies and move forward. People are paying good money for devices-they’re going to want to use them to their fullest extent.

Unwired View is reporting photos and details of Nokia’s five megapixel N82 imaging phone.

An official announcement is expected from Nokia on Friday, but some good-looking details and photos have been leaked:

• Quad band GSM, UMTS and HSDPA connectivity
• 5 mpx camera with Carl Zeiss lens
• Autofocus, up to 20 x digital zoom. Real Xenon flash
• 30 fps VGA video capture
• Secondary CIF camera
• 2.4″QVGA 240—320, 16M colors screen
• Built-in GPS
• FM Radio
• TV-Out
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0
• 100 MB built-in memory
• Micro SD memory card slot
• Dimensions: 112 x 50.2 x 17.3 mm
• Weight: 120 g
• Talk time: GSM: 280min, WCDMA: 180min (Target)
• Standby time: GSM: 270hrs WCDMA: 250hrs (Target)