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Posts Tagged ‘display’

After watching Captain Picard solving all those Victorian murder mysteries on the Enterprise’s holodeck, we have to say that staring at a basic, flat-panel monitor is sooooo 20th century. Wasn’t the future of television watching supposed to be way cooler than this by now? Yeah, it was, but don’t worry; those spiffy high-tech displays have only been delayed, not scrapped entirely. A veritable army of hard-working engineers have been laboring day and night to bring flexible phones, holograms you can feel, physical 3D interfaces, and touchscreen, well, everything to your living room, car and workplace sometime soon.  And hey, we’ve … [Read More...]

With Windows 8, Microsoft is reimagining the most basic premises of personal computers. CEO Steve Ballmer recognizes the drastic changes coming in Windows 8, even calling the platform one of the biggest risks taken by the industry giant. The UI changes and fundamental paradigm shifts that Windows 8 brings to the table are making a lot of power users eager to give the platform a trial run, even in its current state as a Developer Preview.

If you want to take the plunge and give Windows 8 a try, there are some things you should know ahead of time. First, … [Read More...]

Toshiba’s recently announced Portégé Z830 Series Ultrabooks are now available starting $799.99 at Best Buy and on ToshibaDirect.com, starting at $829.99. Back in September, Toshiba revealed the Portégé Z830 Series, which is their first PC in the category of stylish and thin PCs called Ultrabooks introduced by Intel. The Portégé Z830 Series is powered by Intel’s second-generation Core processors, weighs less than 2.5 pounds, has a 0.63-inch profile and a full-size LED backlit and spill-resistant keyboard!

For more on Toshiba’s Portégé Z830 Series, click here to visit their website.

This article was written by Windows Experience (Source)

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To call HP’s 2560p an “ultraportable” is pushing it. It has a slightly smaller footprint than the Toshiba R830, with a screen size of 12.5 inches, but it’s heavier by more than a pound. With its power brick, you’re looking at more than five pounds, including a battery that protrudes a full inch from the back of the notebook’s body. This is no dainty package.

Of course, it feels like a machine that can take its licks. HP likes to point out that the notebook is designed and tested to meet Mil-Spec standards for drops, temperature shock, and altitude changes, … [Read More...]

Fast, frantic, fun…forgettable?

Before Rage was released there were a lot of unanswered questions floating around. Could Id make another genre-defining shooter? Would the six-plus years of development and the much-touted Id Tech 5 engine yield a sufficiently impressive result? While these are certainly appropriate questions for both reviewers and gamers to be curious about, we found ourselves haunted by another, seemingly trivial, question: What does the title Rage mean? Only after playing completely through could we truly understand.

Rage pulls off an impressive feat: It manages to have a lot of personality despite having minimal character. While you may … [Read More...]

At long last, a router to get excited about

It’s easy to become jaded when you review as much cutting-edge hardware as we do. We try not to be curmudgeons, but we do get grumpy when next-gen hardware fails to make a leap in performance—or worse, when it falls behind the gear it’s intended to supplant. So we’re happy to report that benchmarking Netgear’s new WNDR4500 left us grinning from ear to ear. This is the fastest router we’ve ever tested, and it’s packed with new features.

Netgear continues to brand its wireless routers with two different model numbers. The … [Read More...]

It really is the Sony Way. Take a product that’s been around for a while, soup it up, throw in every possible feature imaginable, and make it smaller and lighter than everyone else’s machine.

Then double the price.

Such is the state of Sony’s entry into the suddenly white-hot ultrabook space, a market experiencing a full-scale pile-on as a half dozen competitors all attempt to outdo the nearly three-year-old Apple MacBook Air.

If anyone’s going to best Apple at its own game, it’s probably going to be Sony, and for one reason: If you’re looking at sheer specs, Sony has … [Read More...]

Microsoft Hardware is launching a new digital art project today called The Art of Touch. The campaign is inspired by Microsoft’s Touch Mouse family of mice. And it’s pretty cool.

By visiting the website, people can sign-in to create a piece of digital art on a canvas with a series of tools which include 3 types of brushes (ribbon, smoke or streak), and 5 different effects (like starbursts, trees, ribbons and splats). The artwork can be created using a click, swipe, or flick of a mouse!

Once a person has created a piece of artwork (people can create multiple pieces … [Read More...]

Extra dimensions don’t come cheap. If you’ve dreamed of a Sam Worthington-shaped avatar running through your living room, you know that 3-D projectors — the few that are available — have price tags in the $3,000-and-up range. (You also know that Avatar has yet to see a public 3-D Blu-ray release, but that’s another story.)

Optoma’s HD33 brings 1080p 3-D home for a 2-D price. At $1,500, it costs less than many 3-D-ready TVs, which, incidentally, can’t produce images as large as 300 inches. That’s 25 feet, in case you’re math-challenged. Eat it, local Cineplex!

Actually, don’t shred your concession-stand … [Read More...]

It’s not pretty, but it’s gaming ready

Cybernet has been building all-in-one touch-screen PCs for hospital and medical use for years. Given the ambitious specs of the company’s new iOne-H5—a 2.93GHz Core i7-870, 8GB of memory, and ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5730 GPU—we found ourselves wondering if this long-term expertise would translate into an awesome consumer system.

The truth is that performance is pretty much the only hope Cybernet has of winning over would-be buyers. In a category that emphasizes glossy plastic curves and minimalist bezels, the iOne stands in such stark contrast to systems like HP’s TouchSmart 610 and … [Read More...]

It’s easy to build a gaming machine on a budget if you’re playing at 1650×1080 or 1920×1200, but if you’re rocking 2560×1600, you need a little more oomph

As Maximum PC senior editor Gordon Mah Ung puts it, building a budget gaming rig for a 30-inch panel is the metaphorical equivalent of slapping a Ferrari engine into a crappy Ford car. If you can afford a display that rings up north of $2,000, then why the heck are you trying to cut corners on the system you’re connecting it to?

I can’t answer that one for you. But what I … [Read More...]

Let’s cut to the chase here. If you’re pondering buying the Acer Aspire S3, it’s because you desperately want an Apple MacBook Air but are too freaking cheap to pony up the $1,300 (minimum) for the 13-inch model.

The Aspire S3 is a glorious knock-off of the Air — stripped down to the basics and slashed to just $900. Is a 30 percent price cut a compelling enough reason to buy it over its inspiration? That’s debatable, but it’s at least worth a look.

The tale of the tape tells the story the best: The Acer Aspire S3 is almost … [Read More...]

Looking to get your movie watching on? Turn to Zotac. The company might not be at HP’s level in terms of sales, but when it comes to HTPCs, few companies deliver better small form factor results. The company’s ZBox line has been a go-to brand for video streaming enthusiasts, and now, there’s a new Zotac ZBox available that ditches Intel and AMD in favor of a VIA processor.

The Zotac ZBOX nano VD01 Series – which Zotac says can fit in the palm of your hand – actually sports two VIA processors: both the 1.2 GHz dual-core Nano X2 U4025 … [Read More...]

We don’t bring products into the Lab just to beat them up, so we almost didn’t bite when Genius pitched these speakers. We also try not to prejudge products, but we didn’t have high expectations for this 2.1-channel speaker system: It looks cheesier than a wedge of Vermont cheddar and sells online for less than 50 bucks. We were fully prepared for a craptastic audio experience. Wow, were we ever off base.

Corsair needn’t worry that Genius will bump its exceptionally good SP2500 speakers off our Best of the Best list—the SW-G2.1 1250 isn’t that good—but it is better than … [Read More...]

With the advent of E-readers like the Kindle, the publishing industry has been blown wide open. Before, getting your book in front of somebody meant flying to New York and scaling the granite walls of giant publishing houses. Failing that, you could always go to some shady vanity publishing company, but their primary concern was separating you from your hard-earned money.

The e-book Gerda and Kai displayed on a Motorola Xoom.

Nowadays it’s much easier to get your work into the hands of your eager audience. Whether you’re looking to publish the next great American novel or just want to … [Read More...]

Tomorrow’s shaping up to be a big day for Amazon, assuming all those reports turn out to be true. Word on the Web is that Amazon will officially unveil its first tablet, which TechCrunch says will be called the “Kindle Fire.” Think of it as Amazon’s answer to Barnes & Nobles’ Nook Color, only perhaps a bit more versatile and, according to reports, with the backing of several major magazine publishers. Here’s what we know so far.

According to TechCrunch, Amazon is definitely going to call its tablet the Kindle Fire to help separate the device from the rest of … [Read More...]