ComputerDumb.com

Posts Tagged ‘notebook’

With the Folio 13, HP arrives both a bit late and a bit heavy to the ultrabook party.

While the Folio looks quite svelte, it is technically over the weight limit Intel has set for ultrabooks. The official limit is 3.1 lbs, and the Folio tips the scales at 3.3 lbs, so it’s a stretch to use that term as a descriptive. It’s hardly back-breaking, but compared to featherweight machines like the 2.4-pound Toshiba Portege Z835, it’s absolutely huge.

Apart from heft, you’ll find its feature set to be typical of ultrabooks: 1.6GHz Core i5, 4GB … [Read More...]

Will this new class of slim, trim, relatively affordable portables be the Next Big Thing?

You’d have to actively be avoiding the tech media over the past several months not to have heard about Ultrabooks. Their coming has garnered a boatload of buzz, fueled in no small part by Intel’s $300 million fund to get hardware and software makers behind the cause.

Ultrabooks are Intel’s answer to the spread of ARM-based tablets—a way to capture the hearts and minds of the masses with an x86-based portable device (of the Intel persuasion, natch). To that end, Ultrabooks are required to meet … [Read More...]

Are Ultrabooks tablet killers? We pose that very question on the cover of this month’s print issue. The debate rages on, but Lenovo is looking to skirt the issue with a newly unveiled offering. Rather than going the Eee Pad Transformer/Slider route and sticking a keyboard on a tablet, Lenovo instead got all bendy and twisty with the IdeaPad YOGA, a touchscreen Ultrabook with a 360 degree hinge on its lid. That little design tweak lets you use the YOGA as a tablet or a notebook. Heck, you can even give it a V-shape, stand it on its end and … [Read More...]

You won’t find too many people beating down virtual or brick and mortar doors to get their hands on an Acer Iconia Tab. The demand just isn’t there, not when there are sexier, slimmer, more capable, and less expensive alternatives available (some of which are a combination of more than one of those), and the Iconia Tab line hasn’t sold particularly well as a result. Be that as it may, Acer isn’t waving the white flag.

Amid rumors that Acer would withdraw from the tablet PC and smartphone markets, company founder Stan Shih set the record straight by explaining this … [Read More...]

Microsoft Hardware is announcing today the Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000. This is like the “little brother” to the Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 – but without the separate number pad. The Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000 is a full-size keyboard and is light-weight with a very slim design. It features the approved design by Microsoft’s resident Ergonomist Dr. Dan Odell. Specifically, the design has a 6-degree curve that allows the keys to stay in a contiguous arc for a more natural wrist posture.

This keyboard is perfect for new ultra-portable PCs like the ASUS ZENBOOK. I’ve been using the ASUS ZENBOOK … [Read More...]

Stylish, screaming fast, and slim

Samsung is kind of a big deal. In addition to manufacturing everything from tablets to televisions to turbines, the Korean giant is one of the world’s largest producers of DRAM and NAND flash memory, and it has long provided SSDs to OEMs and systems integrators. Samsung entered the retail SSD market in late 2010, with its 470 Series SSD delivering performance on par with the first-gen SandForce drives that owned the top end of the market. It’s now late 2011, and the goalposts have shifted. Samsung’s Series 830 drive boasts a slimmer look, a refreshed … [Read More...]

A glasses-free 3D laptop

We have a term for technology like Toshiba’s Qosmio F755 laptop. It’s “demo cool.” It wows you in a demo, but after some serious testing, you’re not quite sure you’d want to use it day in and day out. Though we’re impressed by the technical achievement of Toshiba’s glasses-free 3D technology, it’s just not developed enough to earn our recommendation.

Unlike most stereoscopic 3D displays, which require you to wear a pair of 3D glasses, Toshiba’s lenticular display creates a stereoscopic 3D illusion with the naked eye. That illusion did impress us. Watching a 3D Blu-ray … [Read More...]

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...]

The Portégé puts the third accent on battery life

There was a time when Toshiba’s line of Portégé business ultraportables was the epitome of sleek utility, particularly in the days of the R500 and R600. Samsung stole some of that show when it released the Series 9 (reviewed here)—the closest a PC has come to a MacBook Air to date. But while the Portégé R830, much like the R700 before it, won’t win any design contests, it offers many useful amenities in a very-portable package.

Costing exactly the same as the Series 9, the 13.3-inch R830 trumps that fancy lad … [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...]

It’s not as if Maximum PC readers need any more convincing that the whole ‘post PC era’ theory is a bunch of hogwash, but just in case there remains any lingering doubt, Intel just reported yet another record quarter, for the sixth time in a row, as a matter of fact. Intel set new records for microprocessor units shipped, EPS, earnings, and revenue, which the chip maker reports was up 28 percent year-over-year.

“Intel delivered record-setting results again in Q3, surpassing $14 billion in revenue for the first time, driven largely by double-digit unit growth in notebook PCs,” said Paul … [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...]

Inventing excuses after losing, dying, or in general just playing like crap is a time-honored tradition among gamers. We’ve heard them all — teammates who don’t pull their own weight, cheaters, tons of lag, screen glare, and worst of all, faulty or unresponsive controllers.

So here’s the bad news: Razer’s Onza TE will make covering up your ineptitude with hardware-based justifications even less tenable. But don’t panic. The good news is you might not have to make as many.

At just $10 more than Microsoft’s standard-issue wired controllers (and the same price as the wireless versions), the Onza TE is … [Read More...]

Someone tell the boss we need an in-house masseur. Maingear’s Titan 17 is the third supersize notebook we’ve reviewed in the past few months, and our backs are paying the price. We’re so beaten down by these behemoths that the sight of the enormous power brick alone makes us cringe in terror. The graphics performance of this SLI powerhouse, however, makes all the hardship worth it.

The philosophy behind the Titan 17 is simple. Take a complete high-end desktop PC and cram it into a notebook form factor. Price and weight and size aren’t the limiting factors—all that counts, in … [Read More...]

Last year I wrote about Sony’s amazing VAIO Z. It was the PC I used for several months as my main work laptop and the one that was in my bag when my son was born last June. I defined the Z as “luxury computing”; it was fast, light, beautifully designed and sported features that no other laptop on the market had. To this day I rank it as one of the best PC’s I’ve ever used.

Now Sony is redefining luxury with the new version of the VAIO Z, which goes on pre-sale starting today. It’s a .66” thin, … [Read More...]

This is the next in the series of “PC Snapshots” – short 2-3 minute overview of PCs that Ryan and I think are awesome. If there’s a PC that you’d like to see us cover, hit me on Twitter, send me mail, or leave a comment. We’ll try to get to it ASAP!

Today’s PC is the ASUS U36, which I reviewed on the blog a few months back.  It’s a great little PC; lightweight (around 3.5lbs), thin (19mm at its thinnest point), and fast (Intel Core i5, 500GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU).  And it gets around 8 … [Read More...]

Last week I got my hands on a brand new ASUS VX7 Lamborghini gaming laptop.  It’s a beautiful PC, as I noted in my unboxing photo gallery blog, so I wanted to devote this piece to the PC’s performance, which looks to be seriously impressive. 

What’s inside

My VX7 is loaded with a second-generation Intel Core i7-2630 processor, 8GB of memory, a brand-new NVIDIA GTX 460M graphics card, and 1.5TB of storage spread across 2 drives.  It’s a beast of a PC and on paper, one of the most impressive I’ve seen to date, and is on par power-wise with … [Read More...]