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Posts Tagged ‘netbook’

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...]

A few months ago, a company called BlueStacks announced it would be developing software that allows user to run Android apps on a PC. To everyone’s surprise, BlueStacks has followed through, and the alpha version of the App Player for Windows is available as a free download. This hefty 116MB installer comes with 10 pre-loaded apps and the ability to install more. 

The program runs Android apps in full screen with a series of Android soft keys at the bottom, along with an ‘x’ to close the window. Interestingly, the apps seem to save their state when you exit, so … [Read More...]

Can we build a serviceable rig for just $340? With AMD’s Fusion APU, we’re gonna try

In past months, we’ve shown you how to build rigs for less than $1,000, and we even built a surprisingly speedy $667 PC Value Meal. But what do you do when your budget is half that? Let’s face it, not everyone has half a grand or more to spend on a new computer, and not every build has to be a tricked-out gaming rig. Sometimes you just need a second computer for the family, or an HTPC that doesn’t break the bank. Heck, sometimes … [Read More...]

What netbooks were meant to be

We’re not living so close to the cutting edge here at Maximum PC that we can’t see the utility of a no-frills, budget portable that’s capable of performing all the common day-to-day computing tasks. Whether it serves as a secondary machine for work on-the-go or as a primary PC for a school-age kid, we get it. It’s the same need that netbooks were meant to fulfill, if only they hadn’t fallen short of the mark. What netbooks taught us is that today’s common computing tasks—which include things like gaming and high-def video playback—require more … [Read More...]

With one market research study after the other pointing towards the cannibalization of netbooks and other PCs by the iPad and other media tablets, Intel has a reason to be alarmed. After all, it has yet to gain any traction in the tablet market.

But Intel is trying to turn things around. Even as it makes a play for a foothold in the tablet market with its Oak Trail chips, the company has decided to do something on the PC front too. The chip maker is now counting on a new class of laptops called “Ultrabooks” to turn things around for … [Read More...]

Last night Microsoft Hardware hosted a launch reception at the Greene Space in New York City to unveil the Studio Series: Artist Edition, a brand new collection of Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500’s designed in partnership with artists Kirra Jamison, Matt Moore, Linn Olofsdotter, Mike Perry and Jonny Wan. The new mice are really beautiful by themselves but they look even better when paired with a chic new PC. 

Check out our pairings and other photos from the event:

Linn Olofsdotter’s design with the Sony VAIO P Signature Edition

Matt Moore’s retro-cubist design with the Toshiba NB505 netbook

Jonny Wan’s tribal … [Read More...]

Monday was a beautiful day at MIT – sunny, 70 and the complete opposite of Seattle. Arriving at the college for the Windows Campus Tour, I was excited to spend the day outside learning how students felt about Windows 7 PCs, Xbox 360 and Windows phones. For those of you who don’t know, Windows has spent the past two months showing up at campus all over the country to let students see, feel and experience first-hand great new technology. MIT was the final stop on the tour and it gave us a chance to meet some cool interested students and … [Read More...]

In a season of outages, when internet-based services seem to be having a tough time staying online, the last thing anyone wants to talk about is an upcoming cloud-based operating system. But that is exactly what we are about to do. MPC readers, let us ignore the bone-chilling horrors of the past week that are otherwise likely to linger with many of you for a long time, so that we can concentrate on reports of an upcoming Chrome OS netbook from Samsung called “Alex.” The existence of this netbook came to light through a Chromium bug report.

It is clear … [Read More...]

Don’t worry about the cold and rainy weather sweeping through parts of the country, it’s okay to bust out your open source swimming trunks anyway. Canonical today invites you to dive into Linux with the release of Ubuntu 11.04, otherwise known as Natty Narwhal. This latest Linux distro, which has been in beta form for about the past month, supports laptops, desktops, and netbooks, and supersedes Ubuntu Netbook Edition for all PC netbooks, Canonical says.

“11.04 continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technologies into a high-quality easy-to-use Linux distribution,” Canonical said in a press … [Read More...]

Today we are heading to New Orleans—the land of beignets, street parties and Mom 2.0! If there is anything that I’m more excited about then fresh beignets, it’s the chance to meet the many talented women (and men!) who are participating in this year’s summit. This is our first time at Mom 2.0 and with the event sold out, I’m really looking forward to connecting with attendees to better understand their challenges and to think about the ways Microsoft technology can help them make sure they are marketing themselves and their blogging businesses in the best way possible.

We’ll be … [Read More...]

You know you’re a fabulous blogger. You’ve been around the block and know it’s not just about the words, it’s also about content development, business skills and networking. So of course you’ll be at Mom 2.0 in New Orleans next week. Good, because I can’t wait to meet you there with the rest of the Windows and the Office team. We’ll have a suite at the show where we can answer all of your questions about Microsoft and we’ll some fun contests and prizes (new PC anyone?) to give away to attendees. And seeing as how the show is sold … [Read More...]

As hard as it was to leave 85-and-sunny weather, the team and I are back in Redmond from a really fun PC Showcase in Miami.  The Spa at the Viceroy was beautiful, the crowd was interesting (and interested), and the PCs looked and performed great.   Below are some of my favorite photos from the event – some taken by me, and some taken by our outstanding professional photographer, Gustavo Caballero.

I also shot a video of the event that includes a run through of the venue setup and a look at some of my favorite PCs.  It should be ready … [Read More...]

How do you create what might be the world’s cheapest computer? Easy: You strip it to the absolute bare minimum.

Toshiba’s NB505 netbook isn’t quite as skeletal as that, but it’s awfully close. And at all of $288, asking for much more would probably be a bit greedy.

The specs don’t merit a whole lot of notice: A 1.66-GHz Atom CPU and a paltry 1 GB of RAM ensure performance scrapes rock bottom. Though it couldn’t actually run most of our benchmarks, those that the NB505 did complete were near-record-breaking … on the bottom end, that is. A 250-GB hard … [Read More...]

Tegra 2 makes for a scary-fast smartphone

As far as referendums on nVidia’s new Tegra 2 processor go, Motorola’s and AT&T’s Atrix 4G is a shining success. It throws off beastly performance and also manages to greatly reduce power consumption. However, when viewed as a referendum on the ARM architecture’s potential to scale up and supplant x86 in laptops and desktops—or even run Windows—the outlook isn’t quite as promising.

First the basics. This is the fastest phone we’ve ever seen. In our CPU, GPU, and combined benchmarks, the 1 GHz dual-core Tegra 2 CPU and GeForce ULP GPU core helped … [Read More...]

It’s not very often we get to see commercial products going freeware. Can you imagine this happening to Adobes Photoshop or Microsoft’s Office ? I think not. There are of course hundreds of freeware programs out there that will give you some or most of the same functionality, and now, we can add three more to the Best Freeware list.

And the newcomers are…

WinX DVD Author

Our good old friends over at Digiarity has since last decided to release their DVD authoring software as Freeware. This suite does not only convert any movie to DVD, but also allow … [Read More...]

It’s not very often we get to see commercial products going freeware. Can you imagine this happening to Adobes Photoshop or Microsoft’s Office ? I think not. There are of course hundreds of freeware programs out there that will give you some or most of the same functionality, and now, we can add three more to the Best Freeware list.

And the newcomers are…

WinX DVD Author

Our good old friends over at Digiarity has since last decided to release their DVD authoring software as Freeware. This suite does not only convert any movie to DVD, but also allow … [Read More...]