Canon laptops spring forward.

Canon kicked off its spring collection with an array of multimedia notebooks equipped with four-speed and six-speed CD drives.

But the company will find itself battling against Toshiba and IBM as both giants are set to unleash their own notebook offerings on the world.

The Canon Innova Book machines will come equipped with 100MHz and 133MHz Pentium processors, SVGA screens up to 12.1in, sound blaster audio and built-in microphone and speakers.

And memory is important to Canon as well. The entry-level machine will have 8Mb, while the high-end 620CDT will come with 16Mb and a 1Gb drive.

Software bundled with the products will include Windows 95, Sidekick, Compuserve, AOL and other communications offerings.