We presented the manufacturers of these two no-nonsense notebooks with a bevy of durability tests that we wanted to try, and while Panasonic's representatives were game for just about anything we suggested (even coming back with a few more brutal things to try), our Durabook contacts were understandably a little less eager.

ENGADGET: Durable faceoff and torture test: Panasonic's Toughbook 30 vs. GammaTech's Durabook D15RP

Last October, for example, the company unveiled a new line of thin MacBook Air notebooks that have no disk drives.

WSJ: Apple Takes Wraps Off Mac App Store

No sooner are these sales finished than all the notebooks and pencils are cleared away and replaced by Halloween costumes, candy and other festive items, and Christmas merchandise fills up the aisles soon afterward.

FORBES: Whatever Happened to Just Trick or Treat?

Today, Compaq Computer (nyse: CPQ - news - people) confirmed that it has no current plans to use Crusoe in its own lightweight notebooks.

FORBES: Transmeta Defies Bad News

The Securities and Exchange Commission in no way exposed Peter Earle as a whistleblower, and our use of his notebooks in an investigative deposition was neither "inadvertent" nor a "breach" or "gaffe" ( "Source's Cover Blown by SEC, " Page One, April 25).

WSJ: SEC Did Not Blow Source's Cover

The cardboard box from which the Jayalalitha-lookalike was doling out soft drink cans, dripped stickily onto my notebooks and elicited a quick apology -- repeated in the same vein when informing me that no, there were no bottles of potable water in lieu of the fizzy stuff.

CNN: From Our Correspondent: On a Magical Hill