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Posts Tagged ‘screen’

Two days ago, Google started mixing Google+ connections with general search results. Pics, photos, shared links, posts, authored articles – if someone in your Circles shared something related to what you’re looking for, it shows up in your search results. Google calls it “Search Plus Your World;” I call it annoying. When the first page of results is dominated by “Personal Results,” that’s a problem. And to make it worse, Google doesn’t exactly make it easy to turn the “feature” off for good.

The “Hide Personal Results” button on the search page is a temporary solution but the problem rears … [Read More...]

Motorola’s Droid Xyboard a slick, well-performing tablet that’s easy on the eyes. Too bad it has such a stupid name.

The Android device, which runs on Verizon’s 4G network and is available now in Verizon stores, is actually Motorola’s second shot at the tablet game. The Xyboard is the company’s follow-up to its pricey, not terribly popular Xoom tablet, which was released in February of 2011.

The design has been overhauled to match Motorola’s newest mobile hardware — the tablet has clipped corners like the Droid Razr. The Xyboard comes in both … [Read More...]

Cut yourself a li’l slab o’ Honeycomb

A slew of hardware makers that didn’t start out as online bookstores—including Acer, Samsung, and Toshiba—debuted 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablets just in time for Amazon’s Kindle Fire to steal their thunder. The apparent goal: to discover if anyone is actually interested in 7-inch tablets. Acer’s Iconia Tab A100 serves as our guinea pig for this form factor.

Like most Honeycomb tablets to date, the Iconia A100 is based on Nvidia’s 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor, coupled with GeForce graphics and 1GB RAM. The multitouch LCD retains the 16:9 aspect ratio that other Android … [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...]

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...]

Spotify’s a pretty awesome streaming music service, but the Facebook integration it’s rolled out in the past week has left users with a pretty not-so-awesome taste in their mouths.  Never mind the fact that new users need a Facebook account just to sign up now; even old users woke up the other morning to find their Spotify listening selections blasted on their Facebook feed. Here’s how to disable the feature from either application.

Spotify

Open up the Spotify app, then click on “Edit” > “Preferences”. Right near the top you’ll see a “Facebook” header over a section that reads “Get … [Read More...]

This super-thin display also has a super-thin price

AOC’s e2243Fw made a strong first impression on us: A glossy, piano-black frame houses this remarkably thin, 21.5-inch LCD monitor. In addition to being only 1/2-inch from front to back, it’s also extremely lightweight and flexible—and has a budget price, too. The entry-level price of $150 gets you TN technology and a WLED-backlit screen with a standard 16:9 aspect ratio and 1920×1080 resolution. It doesn’t, however, get you HDMI or DisplayPort.

The six?pound display has a round base holding sensors that, when touched, activate an onscreen display—a neat trick if it weren’t … [Read More...]

LG is not really a name associated with laptops, but that isn’t stopping the Korean company from taking its new LG A530 15-inch gaming laptop on a worldwide tour. Why take it on tour? This device has a high-resolution HD 3D screen, and that just doesn’t come across in pictures. So what can you expect?

The A530 will come with your choice of Core i3, i5, or i7 CPUs. A Nvidia GeForce GT 555 mobile GPU will be pushing pixels around that 3D screen. Buyers can add up to 8GB of RAM if they like. There is even an option … [Read More...]

As an artist, I’ve always wanted some sort of one-to-one input when working in Photoshop or zBrush. I’ve used several of the traditional input tablets, but I’ve never been fully satisfied. I still ended up drawing on paper and scanning the results. It’s just more natural.

Input tablets have been constantly improving in the decades they’ve been around. But the technology remains imperfect. The pressure-sensitive pad sits on the desk, separate from the screen, which takes away some of that natural feel you get from drawing with a pen, especially when trying to add tiny details to your work.

So … [Read More...]

Anyone can buy a PC.  Most of you astute Maximum PC readers can build a PC.  And an elite cadre of you can even build a tricked-out PC with lights, and tubes of fluid flying everywhere, and a beautiful side panel that shows off your system’s tricked-out insides.

But the last thing that you’ll want to see through your pretty plexiglass is a PC that’s covered in dust.  In fact, you don’t want to have a dirty PC regardless of your level of desktop sophistication: It can lead to system overheating, it’s gross, and it only gets worse the longer … [Read More...]

My head started hurting after the first hour of using Mac OS X Lion. Two words: inverted scrolling.

That’s correct — Lion’s default scrolling behavior is to scroll down when you swipe up on your multitouch mouse, and to scroll up when you swipe down, just like you would on an iPad.

This modification in scrolling clearly illustrates Apple’s ambition with Mac OS X Lion, which was to make the Mac operating system more like the mega-popular iOS software powering not just … [Read More...]

It’s clear that HP sees the value in this category. The PC maker’s new TouchSmart is sleek, polished, and is the first all-in-one we’ve ever seen to feature a subwoofer-out jack. HP makes a subtle but valid point here: The truth about these systems is that, regardless of where we set them up—kitchen, living room, garage—we find ourselves frequently using them as music stations, so why not aim for higher audio fidelity? Conveniently, HP has also integrated Monster’s (and Dr. Dre’s) Beats environment, allowing the TouchSmart 610 to pump out impressive enough sound to make people do a double-take.

HP’s … [Read More...]

The best home theaters are the ones that make you scoff at the very notion of going to an actual theater.

The key ingredient: a pro-grade projector, something that bathes the dark end of your living room in such jaw-dropping color and clarity, you’ll routinely find neighbors at your door holding popcorn and candy.

The M-Vision Cine 230 is among the few projectors to accomplish that without the need for a second mortgage. Digital Vision’s big, homely black box relies on a single chip, so it costs significantly less than most 3-chip models. But you’d never know that from the … [Read More...]

This ultraportable isn’t for sissies

Last month we reviewed Samsung’s Series 9 ultraportable notebook and found that, while it offered an exceedingly svelte and fashionable form factor, there was a performance trade-off to all that stylishness. Lenovo’s 13-inch ThinkPad X1 represents a completely different approach to ultraportability.

We’re not suggesting that the X1 eschews aesthetics. In fact, it takes the ThinkPad’s classic matte-black look-and-feel and jazzes it up with a few cosmetic updates, such as an edge-to-edge glossy screen, an island keyboard, blue-LED keyboard backlighting, and angled edges. But still, the overall motif is no-nonsense. There’s no mistaking that this … [Read More...]

Is it possible to convert a standard home office into a surround sound home theater with minimal fuss?

I have an average-size spare bedroom that mostly functions as a home office and gaming room, and has been used primarily by me. Given the cramped quarters of San Francisco apartments, I set out to make the room less me-centric and more family-friendly by transforming this home office into a home office theater. The goal was to create a room suitable for three things: normal PC computing, big-screen surround sound movie viewing with no reconfiguration needed, and big-screen gaming. Ancillary goals were … [Read More...]

Pretty impressive—if you don’t like email, apps, or games

For the record, the Maximum PC Lab keeps both feet planted squarely in the present tense. We don’t believe anyone should buy hardware based solely on its future potential. So what then to make of RIM’s nascent and decidedly half-baked Blackberry Playbook? Unless you’re 1) a Blackberry owner, 2) don’t care about apps or games, or 3) a devoted BB fanboy, the answer is: not much.

By the time you read this, it’s possible that the Playbook might be more complete via OS updates. The release version, however, omitts some basic … [Read More...]