Laptop Phone Update Reviews 2012

Mito 855 - Mobile Flip with QWERTY keyboard

2011-09-19T01:56:00.000-07:00

Mito presents a new variant of phones with flip design also called clamshell that comes with a QWERTY keyboard, Mito 855.

Mobile out these local vendors leads to consumer womankind, supported by or clamshell flip design that looks slim, graceful and beautiful. But when held because it feels so sturdy casing material Mito 855 is made of strong metal.

Mito 855 uses a large enough screen, 2.7 inches, which makes us feel comfortable when seeing the menu in it. While the QWERTY keypad to operate provided that the navigation is supported by 4 (four) directions. It is indeed quite interesting considering the design of this kind are rare on the market

Mito 855Sama like most mobile phone output of local vendors, Mito 855 has dual network support on GSM + GSM, and is also equipped with dual camera. One is located at the front of the casing, and another located on the inside just above the QWERTY keys. Both Mito 855 camera has VGA resolution (640x480) pixels and dual-camera presence is nothing to support video chat using UMVCHAT applications.

Another advantage of the Mito 855 is the Voice Guide feature in which the menus and features of this phone may be mentioned by the voice in the Indonesian language so that you can go into the menu of this phone without having to look at the screen.

The other side of the big speaker sound in addition to this phone is also presented, with the adoption of 3D sound technology. Innovation try speakers out of the current trends and try to produce a different sound for a mobile phone. Through 3D sound, Mobile Mito 855 is capable of producing sound clearer and more alive.
While the standard multimedia features such as MP3/MP4, FM radio voice recording to (have to use a headset) is also still present in this 855 Mito. Even for transfer songs, videos or photos though, because it has provided Mito 855 Bluetooth A2DP connection.

Mito 855 sale price can be quite cheap and affordable, with prices Rp.799.000 we can have a flip phone with elegant Design. Mito 855 specifications:

Network: Dual on GSM + GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
LCD: 2.7 inch QVGA display Colors
Ringtones: Polyphonic, MIDI, MP3
Camera: VGA Dual Camera (Front & Inside)
Connection: Bluetooth A2DP, GPRS class 12, USB
Memory: Dual MicroSD (up to 4GB)
Features: FM radio, MP3 / MP4 player, UMVideochat, Facebook, Twitter, 3D sound, Voice Guide / SMS
Dimension: 105 x 55 x 16mm
Battery: 800 mAh Li ion

IMO G98, mobile air gaming Angry Birds

2011-09-19T01:41:00.000-07:00

Mobile touch screen is currently very popular especially in supporting the market with low prices, as many local vendors who have been offered, call it like Nexian Tap NX-G868, Mito 833, IMO the G11 and others, this time IMO issued a touch screen mobile phone that is IMO the G98.

IMO the G98 comes with a display similar to the HTC-Wildfire S. By relying on resistive touch screen measuring 3.2 inches, which is reinforced with some key conventional access. Noted there are 3 buttons provided at the bottom of the screen IMO G98, namely the call, access the menu and call end buttons.
G98Fitur the G98 IMO IMO not much different from known local phone like technology support dual SIM cards and dual on GSM, dual camera (1.3MP and VGA) and a few others. But there is something interesting that is the material the casing is made of metal material that seemed sturdy and solid.

For the entertainment media is similar to the IMO IMO G98 G11 which has been provided MP3/MP4 player, FM radio and analog TV tuner. But there are things that really distinguish the G11 IMO where the feature games and entertainment has been provided Angry phenomenal game birds, the application of Tom Cat (Cats who can imitate the human voice) and Kirt Puff application.
In addition, G98 IMO has also supported with the Bluetooth connection (A2DP), microSD slot, the Opera Mini browser, Java, GPRS as well as social networking.
The following specifications G98 IMO:

Network: Quadband GSM (900/1800 MHz) & Dual
Chipset: MST8535N
Screen: 3.2 inch, TFT Color HQVGA (240x320 pixels)
Data transfer: GPRS class 12
Camera: Dual camera1.3MP (1024 × 768 pixels) & VGA, video chat, video recorder
Audio jack: 3.5 mm
External Memory: microSD up to 16GB
Messaging: SMS, MMS
Connectivity: Bluetooth with A2DP, data cable
Browser: WAP, Opera Mini
Games: Angry Birds; Applications: Tom Cat, Puff Skirt
Other Features: Polyphonic (MP3), MP3/MP4 player, TV Tuner Analog, FM radio, Java, Facebook, calendar, calculator, alarm, speakerphone
Games: Angry Birds; Applications: Tom Cat, Puff Skirt; speakerphone
Battery: Lithium ion 1200 mAh

ZTE MF 30, HSDPA WiFi router modem from ZTE

2011-09-19T01:39:00.000-07:00

One more modem router has been launched at the same time ZTE Corporation, a global telecommunications equipment manufacturer, ZTE MF namely 30, Modem router at the same time that its size is equivalent public phone on the market, weighing approximately 80 grams making it easy to take take it.

Huawei EC5805 is similar to that operating in CDMA networks, ZTE MF 30 operates on GSM networks can serve as a central hot spot in addition to a modem, ZTE MF 30 speeds can reach 7.2 Mbps using High Speed Downlink technology Package Access (HSDPA).

Interestingly This modem can be used for 100 hours non-stop, of course, when the battery is discharged, recharging can be done when worn, without the need to turn off the modem, and just needed two hours the battery is full again

ZTE ZTE MF 30 MF 30 is designed to be used up to five people simultaneously, within a radius of 50 meters. Compatibility is quite broad, as long as these devices have Wi-Fi access, ranging from laptops, iPad, iPhone, Android, PSP, Blackberry, and others.

ZTE MF 30 is sold at a retail price of Rp 999,000, - in Wellcomm Shop outlet, and at this time, took Telkomsel Flash vendors as partners bundling.

Here are the features of the ZTE MF 30:

WCDMA / HSDPA 2100/1900/850 (900) MHz
GSM / GPRS / EDGE 850/900/1800/1900MHz
5.76Mbit / s HSUPA, 7.2Mbit / s HSDPA
WiFi Standard: 802.11b / g
internal Antenna
indication LED (battery, signal, WIFI, network)
Micro SD cards up to 32G
Dimensions: 98.5mm * 54mm * 13.9mm
Weight: 80g
Compatible OS: Windows 2000, XP, Windows 7, Vista, Mac OS, Linux.

IMO W909, comes with the ability to Analog TV Projector

2011-09-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

IMO as a local mobile phone vendors are including active-issued mobile phones coupled with the latest innovations and technologies that arguably rare locally owned another phone, call it G98 IMO, mobile air-gaming Angry Birds or IMO G11 touch screen mobile phone with Analog TV and much more. This time IMO IMO issued a cell phone W909 touch screen mobile phone with Analog TV technology projectors.
IMO the W909 using WQVGA touch screen measuring 3.2 inches with a pretty nice design and trendy with Kick Stand comes on the back that serves as a regulator of the position of the projector when showing TV or video to a screen measuring 42 inches maximum.
IMO W909 For other features, the W909 IMO not much different from a local mobile phone output in general, as in multimedia W909 IMO has been given the ability to play MP4/MP3 and FM radio, and IMO the W909 has the support dual camera, Micro SD slot and audio jacks 3.5mm.
To surf, IMO W909 OperaMini already provides access via GPRS channels plus WIFI connection. Not to forget social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter, MSN, Yahoo Massenger well as additional applications Calendar, Calculator also been found on the W909 IMO.
Price IMO W909 arguably quite expensive sold at the official price of Rp. 1.15 million. But this is deemed worthy enough to remember Projectors Analog TV features a quite remarkable for a cell phone.
IMO W909 Specifications:

Network: Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), Dual
Dimensions: 113x58x14mm
Screen: 3.2 inch WQVGA TFT touchscreen
Data transfer: GPRS
Camera: Dual camera, video recorder
Internal memory: 1GB + 512Mb NOR
External Memory: microSD up to 16 GB
Messaging: SMS, MMS
Connectivity: WiFi, Bluetooth, data cable, 3.5mm audio jack
Browser: WAP, Opera Mini
Battery: Lithium ion 1200 mAh (BL-4D Nokia)
Other Features: Polyphonic (MP3), Analog TV, MP3/MP4 player, FM radio, Sound recorder, Java, Facebook, Twitter, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Phonebook 1000 entries, calendar, calculator, alarm, speakerphone, games

Razer Blade: hands-on with 17 inches of gaming greatness

2011-08-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

Something big's been brewing over in Carlsbad, and the time has finally come for it to be revealed to the world: the Razer Blade. The onyx aluminum beaut before you is the culmination of over three years of work by a stealth team of engineers -- many of them absorbed from the former OQO team. Despite being only 0.88 inches thick (thinner than another 17-incher we know...), the svelte number still packs a punch with a 2.8GHz Core i7-2640M CPU and GeForce GT 555M graphics replete with 2GB of GDDR5 video memory. All that graphical horsepower will splay your exploits on a 17.3-inch LED 1920 x 1080 full HD panel with an HD webcam nestled above. Rounding out the package is 8GB of RAM, three USB ports (one of the 3.0 persuasion), HDMI-out and a 60Wh integrated battery. And it could all be yours for $2,799 when it debuts in Q4 of this year.

That's dandy, but we're more stoked on the 480 x 800 LCD trackpad just to the right of the backlit keyboard. It works either as a multitouch-enabled input device or as an additional display for in-game info when the urge to slay demons with an external mouse strikes. North of that hotness lie ten fully customizable buttons, both in appearance (courtesy of a separate LCD) and in function. The keys and trackpad are running a custom Switchblade UI -- inspired by the company's oh so sexy Switchblade concept that we saw at CES. And just like the concept, Razer's used a custom lighting panel to ensure you can see those keys clearly from an angle -- people don't look straight down at their keyboards, after all. Follow on past the break for more impressions, video and PR.

Read Full Story at Engadget

BLACKBERRY PLAYBOOK TO GET BBM AND NATIVE EMAIL

2011-08-26T01:28:00.000-07:00

The BlackBerry Playbook is a decent tablet and it is selling reasonably well. The company has shipped more than half a million units since its launch.

The PlayBook launched without the key BlackBerry features such as the Messenger and native email app a couple of months ago. The absence of the two key features in the tablet had both surprised and disappointed BlackBerry enthusiasts. But now

MEET X10 AIRPAD: THE SUB $200 ANDROID TABLET

2011-08-26T00:08:00.000-07:00

A relatively unknown company called X10 has launched a tablet which according to the maker is the best you can buy for under $200.

The X10 Airpad has a 1.2GHz Rockchip processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB of internal storage, WiFi 802.11b/g and a 4000mAh battery. There is a 2 megapixel camera on the rear side. The tablet's 7 inch capacitive touchscreen display has a resolution of 480×800 pixels. Other

Acer unveils TravelMate 8481T laptop for the all-business crowd

2011-08-25T18:47:00.000-07:00

Globetrotting financiers have a new companion to slot into their briefcases, now that Acer has taken the wraps off its TravelMate Timeline 8481T notebook. Powered by an Intel Core i5 processor and weighing in at 3.7 pounds, this little guy boasts a 14-inch, 1366 x 768 LCD that's been engineered to fit within a 13-inch footprint, thanks to a frameless, bezel-trimming design. The latest addition to the TravelMate 8481 family also boasts 4GB of DDR3 memory (or 8GB, if you upgrade) and a 320GB SATA hard drive, along with the usual collection of WiFi, Bluetooth and USB 3.0 capabilities -- all packed within a slim, 0.87-inch thick frame. The laptop is expected to start shipping in "early September" for $1,000, but you can find more details in the full PR that's sitting after the break.

Motorola rolling out 4G LTE upgrade for select Xoom users?

2011-08-25T18:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a while coming, but it looks like some Motorola Xoom users will finally be receiving 4G LTE support, in the very near future. According to a customer service e-mail obtained by Droid Life, the manufacturer has already begun sending out instructions on how to receive the upgrade, as part of an apparent gradual rollout. To make the jump, select consumers, businesses and government clients will have to first back up their Android-based tablets, before shipping them off to Motorola in a pre-paid FedEx box. Once that's taken care of, they'll have to twiddle their thumbs for three business days before receiving their newly refreshed devices, dripping in Verizon's LTE goodness. No word yet on when the rest of the Xoom community can expect similar treatment, but hit up the source link to read the full e-mail for yourself.

HTC PUCCINI / JETSTREAM SPOTTED IN THE WILD

2011-08-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

More details about the HTC Puccini, the tablet that will sell as HTC JetStream on AT&T's network, have emerged.

As we have already heard, it will have a 1.5GHz dual core Qualcomm processor, a 1280 x 800 pixels display and Android Honeycomb operating system. The Jetstream / Puccini, by the way, is HTC's first Honeycomb tablet. It will also support AT&T's new LTE network.

The tablet will also

MALATA TO LAUNCH SEVERAL NETBOOKS AND TABLETS

2011-08-25T01:08:00.000-07:00

Malata is a Chinese PC maker that introduced some really interesting mini-computer designs in the last few years. The company doesn't usually sell its laptops and tablets in the US, but that doesn't make them any less interesting either.

The folks at Notebook Italia have come across a product map for the upcoming netbooks, tablets and other computers from Malata. Here is a lowdown.

Netbooks

Acer Aspire One 521 and 721 full review

2011-08-24T22:53:00.000-07:00

On the surface Acer's 10.1-inch Aspire One 521 and 11.6-inch Aspire One 721 appear to be fairly run-of-the-mill netbooks -- or ultraportables for those that are morally opposed to calling a laptop with a 11.6-inch display a netbook. They're rather small machines, measure just about an inch thick, and ring up at under $430. But there's a lot more than meets the eye with this Aspire One duo – instead of Intel Atom or ULV processors, both are powered by a new AMD 1.7GHz Athlon II Neo K125 processor and promise 1080p playback thanks to ATI Radeon HD 4225 graphics. We've certainly been pumped about these two systems since their French debut, but fear of AMD's usually poor battery life and scorching temperatures have been holding us back from all-out excitement. Do we have nothing to fear but fear itself? We've spent the last few days with these two systems, and will reveal all in our full review after the break.

Look and feel

The Aspire One 521 and 721 clearly share the same design heritage, but they're obviously very different, as shown in the picture above. For one, the 11.6-inch 721 is obviously longer than the 10.1-inch 521, yet both are still exceedingly portable and only measure 1.1-inches at their thickest point. The 721 weighs in at 3.1 pounds, while the smaller 521 is a slightly lighter 2.8 pounds. However, the clearest differentiator between the two is their lids. The 521's glossy mocha cover has a Tetris-like pattern which is adorned with a large silver Aspire One logo. We've picked on this design decision a bit in previous posts, but we're happy to reiterate our dislike. A bit of branding here or there has never bothered us much, but do we need someone across the coffee shop seeing a large logo on our laptop? Nope, and it just seems tacky. We much prefer the small Acer logo on the 721's matte mesh lid, which will be available in red, navy and black.

In terms of the build quality, the two systems are made entirely made of plastic, and we noticed the bottom screen was coming loose on both machines. We find this to be the case with most budget Acers -- they aren't the most durable systems, but for the price they're decently made. The 521 and 721 have the same allocation of ports – an HDMI, VGA, and a single USB port live on the left edge, while an additional two USB jacks, Ethernet and headphone and microphone sockets are positioned on the right. Both also have 3-in-1 card readers. The bottom of the machine provides easy access to both the RAM and hard drive compartments, so you shouldn't have a problem swapping them out if that's your thing.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

The 521 and 721 have the same chiclet keyboards that Acer's been using on its recent netbooks and laptops, albeit the 521's is narrower. While the rounded keys are well-spaced and have a slight gap between them, overall we just find them to be too flat. We got used to typing on the very level panel, but the plastic keys still don't really mold to your fingers. Both systems have rather small touchpads that are flush with the metal-like palmrest. They're fine for navigating, but the multitouch gestures are very off -- two finger scrolling barely worked in Firefox and IE. We like the dedicated right and left mouse buttons, though the ones on the 721 are incredibly stiff.

The 521 has a typical 10.1-inch, 1024x600 resolution netbook display, but given its ability to handle 720p content we wish it had a higher 1366x768 resolution like the 11.6-inch 721. Obviously, the 721's 11.6 inch screen is roomier; we preferred using it over the 521 to write this review as we could keep multiple windows open on the screen. Both LCDs had decent horizontal view angles, but the vertical angles were pretty shoddy. The small machines have two speakers underneath the front edge – they aren't going to fill a large room, but they'll do when it comes to watching a movie or listening to some tunes while working.

Performance, graphics and battery life

We know, this is part of the review you've been waiting for – the part where we answer if AMD has made improvements in battery life, graphics, and heat, and if they can start to really compete with Intel in the small laptop space. Well, the answer isn't that cut and dry, but we're happy with what we've seen. On the performance side of things, the 1.7GHz Athlon II Neo processor scored right in between Intel Atom and Intel ULV CPUs on benchmarks, which in our opinion is a perfect place to be. We'll let the benchmarks below speak for themselves, but in everyday performance we found the systems to be relatively snappy – especially after we uninstalled the McAfee Internet Suite. Both the 521 and 721 kept up with our everyday chores, which included simultaneously writing in Microsoft Word 2007, surfing the web in Firefox, chatting in Digsby, and checking our Twitter feeds in Tweetdeck. When we threw in a 720p video into the mix, we noticed it took a few more seconds to open the file, but it played back flawlessly.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Acer Aspire One 721 (AMD Athlon II Neo K125)	1814	1235	3:30
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e (AMD Athlon Neo)	1511	1060	3:27
ASUS UL50Vf (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	3724	827 / 3438	6:10
Alienware M11x (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2689	654 / 5593	4:30

	PCMark05	3DMark06	Battery Life
Acer Aspire One 521 (AMD Athlon II Neo K125)	2286	1481	4:02
Dell Mini 10 (Intel Atom N450)	1264	132	5:58
ASUS Eee PC 1005PE (Intel Atom N450)	1431	157	8:10
Toshiba Mini NB305 (Intel Atom N450)	1272	156	6:30

And graphics is exactly where the single core AMD Athlon II Neo / ATI Radeon HD 4225 combo beats any Atom-based netbook, and even rivals NVIDIA Ion based systems. (Note: we haven't reviewed the $484 Eee PC 1201PN which is the only Ion 2 system on the market). The 521 and 721 didn't shrug at playing local 720p and 1080p files – they even played them smoothly when outputted to a 40-inch HDTV via HDMI. They also handled 720p YouTube videos like champs; though going up to the 1080p setting caused stuttering. On the gaming front, the machines aren't going to rip through any first person shooters, but they managed an admirable 28fps in World of Warcraft. That's really not too shabby, and NVIDIA's Ion systems are no longer the only netbooks on the market that can claim superior graphics performance. And there's no doubt that ATI's Radeon HD 4225 graphics is a better choice than Broadcom's Crystal HD decoder -- the ATI graphics didn't force us to choose a specific browser or program for playing back high-def video as Broadcom's chip did on the Dell Mini 10.

So, that battery life... AMD has definitely made strides in that arena, though we'd still like to see more when it comes to endurance. When we reviewed the Lenovo ThinkPad X100e with a 1.6Ghz AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 and very large 63Wh battery, the system didn't run for longer than four hours on our video rundown battery test, which loops the same standard def video at 65 percent screen brightness. Both the 521 and 721 with only 48Wh batteries got over three hours on that same test – the 521 ran for four hours and two minutes and the 721 for 3.5. In everyday use we saw each get about a half an hour to 45 minutes more runtime. Sure, we wish these two got above five hours for comfortable NY to LA plane rides and without a doubt Intel Atom netbooks with the same batteries would last longer on a charge, but with the added performance you get from the 521 and 721 it's a sacrifice we assume some will be willing to make. (Note: we've asked Acer about extended battery options, and we will update this review when we get an answer back.) We also saw improvement in terms of heat – both systems did get slightly warm on the left side near the fan, but when we kept them on our lap it wasn't bothersome and didn't burn through our jeans like the X100e.

A quick note on configurations -- while both have the same processor and graphics, there are some slight spec differences. The $349.99 version of the 521 comes with Windows 7 Starter, a 250GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. The $429.99 721, on the other hand, has 2GB of RAM and runs Windows 7 Home Premium.

Acer continues to load these puppies up with quite a bit of software. There's both Norton Antivirus and McAfee preloaded along with a Netflix and eBay shortcuts on the desktop. Removing most of this junk noticeably sped up performance.

Wrap-up

We had a hunch AMD was sitting on some good stuff given the number of laptop makers that have been picking up their new chips, but, as they say, seeing is believing. These two laptops aren't perfect and their battery life is disappointing, but for their price we are impressed. At $349 the Aspire One 521 is one of the most powerful 10-inch netbooks on the market now, and though it may not last as long on a charge as Atom-powered one, it's miles ahead in terms of managing Flash and HD video. No, we're not the biggest fans of the huge logo on its lid, but its price and performance are sure to win over someone looking for a 10-incher.

Though, if we had to choose we'd go with the 721 -- for $80 more than the 521 you get more than just a secondary machine with its wider screen and keyboard. Of course, if you consistently demand more than four hours of battery life you'll want to go with an Intel ULV laptop, but most of them cost north of $700. And well, that's exactly what AMD's going for -- Acer now has two incredibly affordable and portable laptops that pack more performance than most netbooks and budget ultraportables on the market.
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Source: Engadget

SONY TABLET S CAN LAUNCH NEXT MONTH

2011-08-24T04:45:00.000-07:00

Sony has been talking about two new Android tablets for a while. The Sony S1 tablet has a 9.4 inch display while the S2 tablet has a pair of 5.5 inch displays. It looks like those were code names. Engadget reports that the Sony S1 tablet will be called Tablet S and it is due out in the first half of September.

The Sony Tablet S has a 9.4 inch, 1280 x 768 pixels display. It runs Google Android

LENOVO THINKPAD TABLET UP FOR ORDER FOR $499 AND UP

2011-08-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

Lenovo has started taking orders for its ThinkPad tablet running Android 3.1 Honeycomb operating system. The base configuration with 16GB of storage runs $499. The 32GB version is priced at $569. The top-of-the-line model with 64GB of storage will set you back $669.

The Lenovo ThinkPad tablet has a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixels multitouch display, 1GB of RAM and a NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core

SHARP LAUNCHES ANOTHER 7 INCH TABLET IN JAPAN

2011-08-24T02:29:00.000-07:00

Sharp has launched yet another 7 inch tablet in Japan. The new Sharp RW-T107 runs Google Android 2.3. It has official access to Google Android Market and comes standard with a 5400mAh battery that will reportedly get up to 8 hours of run time.

The most interesting thing about the RW-T107 is that it comes with an NFC (Near Field Communications) chip which you can use to transfer information over

Acer TimelineX AS5830TG-6402 Full review

2011-08-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

When Acer unveiled its first Timeline laptops in 2009, these slim numbers felt like a revelation. Imagine: thin notebooks rated to last hours and hours on a charge and priced well under a grand! Fast-forward two years and that proposition seems a bit quaint, doesn't it? Pretty much every PC maker has been working on slimming down their wares and extending battery life with -- shall we say? -- mixed results. Still, Acer has kept on keeping, and its latest TimelineX laptops carry the torch as thin, long-lasting and inexpensive. As always, the company released Timelines in assorted screen sizes, ranging from 13.3 to 15.6 inches. We took a look at the 15-incher, the $800 AS5830, which promises to last up to nine hours unplugged and also packs a discrete graphics card – a feature many of its competitors have been skipping. But are impressive battery life and a relatively trim physique enough to make this notebook stand out in a crowded field of inexpensive, good-enough laptops? Let's see.

Look and feel

When it comes to laptops, there are only so many screen sizes to choose from, which means the AS5830 is just about the umpteenth notebook we've seen with a 15.6-inch display. And yet, it manages to stand out among the pile of test laptops currently sitting on our desk. Mostly, that's a function of its elongated, flattened shape. At 14.88 inches across, it's as wide as the 15.6-inch HP Pavilion dv6, though it looks more expansive. Part of the reason for that is that the TimelineX is all about clean lines and sharp corners, whereas the dv6 and others use rounded-off edges to create the illusion that they're saving space.

In fact, the laptop comes dangerously close to being boxy, except for one important thing: it's thin. All told, the AS5830 measures just an inch thick at its skinniest point, swelling to 1.23 inches at its chunkiest. That compares with the dv6, whose profile narrows from 1.39 inches to 1.23. At 5.6 pounds, it's about on par with the 5.54-pound Dell XPS 15z about a fifth of a pound lighter than the dv6, to name just one example. Trust us when we say you can feel the difference.

As far as looks go, this is one of the more aggressively industrial laptops we've seen in a long time, and based on the comments y'all left when it was first announced, we have a feeling shoppers are either going to love it or hate it. Available in black and a "cobalt" blue that looks more like navy, the entire Timeline family has aluminum lids and keyboard decks, though the bottom side is decidedly plastic. Both the palm rest and the display feel sturdy, and we're sure that aluminum casing is part of the reason this system feels relatively light in the hands.

It's underneath the lid that the system starts to reveal its macho side. Hold on tight, kids, because there's a lot going on here. First you've got a black chiclet keyboard sitting atop a layer of matte, gray aluminum. That silvery color stretches above the keyboard, and extends in between the keys, but it suddenly stops short, bumping up against a navy blue (or black) palm rest. And we mean it when we say "bump up against" -- the keys panel sits on a lower plane than either the speaker strip or palm rest, so that when you lift the lid you'll see ridges flanking the top and bottom of the keyboard.

We're not done yet. You'll also notice some conspicuous Dolby Home Theater branding on the speaker, a prominent TimelineX logo in the upper right-hand corner of the palm rest and an arrow painted on the touchpad to show where you can use two fingers to scroll. There are also two LED lights above the keyboard, along with a PowerSmart button for optimizing battery settings while unplugged (more on that later). On the bottom side, the six-cell battery creates a bulge interrupting the flat, thin profile. Throw in some stickers and you've got a design that's just a little too busy.

The good news is that the AS5830 comes well-stocked with ports, including three USB 2.0 sockets (and one of the 3.0 persuasion), HDMI- and VGA-out, an Ethernet jack, Kensington lock slot, 5-in-1 memory card reader and headphone and mic ports. That one inch-thick chassis also leaves room for a DVD burner. The one thing you'll want to keep in mind is that the three USB 2.0 ports sit next to each other in a row on the right side, so you might want to use a cable-extending dongle in case having three peripherals plugged in at once proves too crowded a setup.

As for the 1.3 megapixel webcam, we were pleasantly surprised by the warm, but well-lit image quality. Our images weren't the sharpest -- hair tends to look like a smudge of pixels -- but the camera does pick up on some details, such as chapped lips and wrinkled clothes.

Keyboard and trackpad

It's funny: the AS5830's keyboard surprised us where we expected to be disappointed, and let us down where we didn't envision any problems. Starting with the good news, this is one sturdy panel -- more rigid, perhaps, than you'd expect on a budget system. Even as we pounded out emails and news posts we didn't feel any bend or flex in the 'board and in fact, we settled in so nicely that we ended up typing much of this review on it. The keys themselves have a faintly textured finish -- a reassuring kind of tactility. We should warn you that they make a tinny, high-pitched clack, a springy, occasionally distracting sound.

Ultimately, though, the keyboard is odd not because of its sound effects, but because of its uneven proportions. On the one hand, you've got a full number pad -- something many 15-inchers don't offer. The keyboard's expansive, and like we said, there's plenty of room on that long chassis to squeeze in lots of keys. And yet, as a way of making it all fit, Acer shrunk some of the most important buttons, such as Ctrl, Tab, Caps Lock and the left Shift key. We might have resigned ourselves to this kind of corner-cutting if this were a netbook, but on a mainstream laptop we'd expect all of the keys to be full-sized. Not that that impeded our accuracy; it just meant having to pause ever-so slightly whenever we wanted to pull off a keyboard shortcut, as our fingers often missed the buttons if we went too fast.

Another reason we so got comfy with the AS5830, we think, is that the trackpad and touch buttons just work. The pad is small enough that you might assume it doesn't support multi-touch gestures. In fact, it does, and they work beautifully. Pinching and zooming is especially smooth, which is a shame, since there isn't quite enough room to stretch those digits out. Two-fingered scrolling works, too, though you'll have to train yourself to apply a little extra pressure and keep your fingers in the well-marked scrolling zone. Couple this no-drama trackpad with some simple, tactile buttons and you're golden. Sure, the buttons are a tad narrow for most fingers and they, too, make a clacky sound, but they're easy to press -- not too mushy, and definitely not too stiff. The AS5830 isn't what we'd call pretty, but it at least gets the trackpad and buttons right -- a feat when all too many stylish laptops drop the ball.

Display and sound

We've been around the block and reviewed enough laptops over the years to know that even among reflective displays, the AS5830's 15.6-inch (1366 x 768) panel is particularly shiny. Have a gander at the gallery above and decide for yourselves, but in our humble opinion, the screen looks cheaper than what you'd find on other systems. As you might expect, that glare translates to uneven viewing angles. On the one hand, we were pleasantly surprised at how much we could see when watching from way off on the side. And yet, if you push the lid forward even slightly, the screen becomes too washed out to really enjoy it. This was true whether we rested the laptop on a table or on our legs. Suffice it to say, fiddling with the display until you stumble on the right angle gets old fast.

As for that Dolby speaker strip, the audio quality is slightly richer than what you'd get out of a garden-variety laptop, but even on bass-heavy songs you can still hear some tinny sounds creeping in, especially at higher volumes.

Performance

For $799.99, the AS5830TG-6402 comes armed with a 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M processor, 6GB of RAM, a 640GB 5,400RPM hard drive and a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M graphics card with Optimus and 1GB of DDR3 video memory. Not bad, considering an HP Pavilion dv6 with the same processor and integrated Intel graphics rings in at $770, making the Timeline's 520M card a tempting alternative. As a budget machine, this is aimed at folks interested in email, web browsing and Netflix streaming, and based on our hands-on testing, it's more than up to the task. Like we said, we wrote a sizable chunk of this review on the AS5830TG, all while jumping back and forth between tabs, gabbing away on GChat, loading PDFs in the browser, reading various news sites and Googling an untold number of things. The machine also booted in 43 seconds, which is fast for a Windows machine of any size.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Acer TimelineX AS5830TG-6402 (2.3GHz Core i5-2410M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M)	6,475	5,330	6:25
Dell XPS M15z (2.7GHz Core i7-2620M, NVIDIA GeForce GT525M)	8,023	7,317	3:41 (Optimus disabled) / 4:26 (Optimus enabled)
HP Pavilion dv6t (2.3GHz Core i5-2410M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	6,563	5,818	2:42
2011 HP Envy 14 (2.3GHz Core i5-2410M, Intel HD Graphics 3000 / AMD Radeon HD 6630M)	6,735	7,214	3:55
Notes: the higher the score the better. For 3DMark06, the first number reflects score with GPU off, the second with it on.

Battery Life

Since Acer first launched the Timeline series back in 2009, the outfit's been talking up the line's stellar battery life. The AS5830 doesn't disappoint -- it offers pretty long runtime for a laptop this size. All told, the six-cell battery lasted six hours and 25 minutes in our standard rundown, which involves playing the same movie on repeat with WiFi on and the display brightness fixed at 65 percent. That's almost four hours longer than the Sandy Bridge-powered 2011 HP Pavilion dv6t, which gave out just two hours and forty-two minutes into the test. It also bests the Dell XPS M15z, another thin 15-incher, which lasted four hours and 26 minutes with Optimus disabled (otherwise, it craps out 45 minutes sooner). So the AS5830 stacks up nicely.

Like we said, Acer has some built-in technology (dubbed PowerSmart) designed to optimize battery life. Really, it's just a launch key above the keyboard that allows you to switch to Acer's power management settings. It's not that much different than if Acer added its own profile to the list in Power Options; now, it's just easier for low-tech types to enable it. Because the technology's meant to extend longevity, you can only use it when the system is unplugged. When you do press that button, it'll glow blue to let you know it's working, and you'll also see a graphic of a battery and earth-friendly leaf briefly flash on-screen. As for the power management profile, it'll knock the brightness down to 30 percent, which was a tad too dim for us, even in a brightly lit office.

Configurations

If you know anything about Acer, you know the company isn't big on letting customers build their systems to order. With Gateway PCs, too, the outfit would rather announce several configs with enough variation to cover a few price points. In case you were hoping to spend even less, Acer is also selling the $599.99 AS5830T-6862, which forgoes that USB 3.0 port and steps down to integrated Intel graphics.

And, of course, it's worth repeating that the TimelineX spans several screen sizes, with two 13-inch models in the US fetching $649.99 and $779.99, respectively, and a lone 14-incher that costs $699.99. Rather than delve into those other weight classes here, we'll just go ahead and drop the product page down in the "More Coverage" area.

The competition

Make no mistake: 15-inch laptops remain hugely popular, as they represent the perfect combination of portability and usability for lots of folks. It doesn't hurt that they tend to be cheaper than their 12-, 13-, and 17-inch counterparts. The point is you'll have no shortage of options if a mainstream laptop is what you're after. Here are some biggies to look out for.

Starting with Dell, you could go for the Inspiron 15 ($449.99 and up) or the slimmed-down Insprion R (starting at $599.99), but neither is offered with discrete graphics. And though you can get the Inspiron R with the same Core i5 CPU found in this here TimelineX, the base plain-Jane Inspiron only ships with a Core i3-380M. Instead, Dell's most likely competitor to the Timeline is the XPS 15z, a 0.97-thin laptop that starts at $799.99 (the same price as our AS5830) with a GeForce GT 525M graphics card, 4GB of RAM, the same Core i5 CPU and a 500GB 7,200RPM hard drive. What's more, it's configurable with add-ons that include a Blu-ray player and 1080p display. The downside, if you'll recall, is that the battery life is shorter and, well, it looks suspiciously like a several generations-old MacBook Pro, which might not be your cup of tea.

From top to bottom: the Gateway NV55, HP Pavilion dv6 and the Acer TimelineX AS5830.

Not to be outdone, HP also has multiple contenders. Starting at the lower end, there's the Pavilion g6s, which starts at $599.99 with a Core i3 processor, 6GB of RAM and a 640GB 5,400RPM hard drive, though if you wanted to bring it on par with the TimelineX you could upgrade to the same Core i5 processor for $75 and get AMD Radeon HD 6470M graphics with either 512MB or 1GB of video memory -- $50 and $100 upgrades, respectively. Here, too, Acer has some competition in the "bang for your buck" department.

Oddly, if you move up HP's lineup to the Pavilion dv6t, you'll find that the playing field levels a good deal. The base $749.99 configuration is pretty darn comparable to our AS5830 unit, with the same processor and hard drive size and speed, though it trades discrete graphics for 6GB of RAM and integrated Intel graphics. Once you upgraded to that 6470M card with 512MB of RAM, you'd be paying what you would for this Timeline. You'd be left with more memory, but the dv6t we've been testing dishes up shorter battery life, so that's something to consider.

Then there's Toshiba, which is undercutting everyone with the $529 Satellite L750D. This 15-incher has a quad-core AMD Fusion A6 APU, a 640GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM -- not to mention, of course, the discrete-class AMD graphics built onto the same die as the processor. We can't speak for its performance and battery life, though we're optimistic about its graphics capability, and suspect students and other folks on a budget will look twice.

You know who's not offering a bargain, though? Sony. The company's 15-inch C series laptop that starts at $729.99 has wholly lesser specs than the TimelineX, including a Core i3 CPU, a 320GB hard drive and integrated Intel graphics. As for Apple, we're not going to dwell on any comparisons with the MacBook Pro, since the 15-inch MBP starts at $1,799 with a quad-core Core i7 processor, switchable graphics and 1GB of video memory, putting it in a completely different budget category. Something tells us prospective MBP buyers won't be considering the 15-inch TimelineX, and vice versa.

Software

Like other laptop makers, Acer went and bundled a mix of its own software tools as well as some third-party apps. You'll see the usual suspects on there - namely, Microsoft Office 2010 McAfee security software. But the list runs longer, and also includes bloatware such as Norton Online Backup, an eBay shortcut, Times Reader, Nook for PC and Windows Live Essentials.

As for Acer's own apps, the roster includes Acer Backup Manager, USB Charge Manager, Registration, screensaver and Updater. The company also bundled clear.fi, a tool it loads onto lots of Acer machines (and, lately, tablets) that allows the user to wirelessly stream media between devices.

Wrap-up

We can't promise whether you'll love or loathe the TimelineX series' industrial, color-blocked design, but we'll say this much: this mid-range 15-inch laptop grew on us. We're finicky about our laptops (aren't we all?), and yet we quickly grew comfy with it nonetheless. It might not be the prettiest notebook on the shelf at Best Buy, but the sturdy keyboard and reliable trackpad alone make this a sensible choice -- and that's not even delving into the longer-than-average battery life. It's also thinner and lighter than competing models, making it that much easier to schlep around campus (or, you know, from room to room).

Still, with the exception of that impressive battery life, the AS5830 is a forgettable machine, with both its performance and design skewing middle-of-the-road. To give just one example, for just a hundred bucks more you could get the HP Envy 14, one of the most stunning notebooks we've seen, with the same processor and 6GB of RAM, along with switchable graphics and a full gigabyte of video memory. And that's not even mentioning the tempting machines that cost the same as the AS5830 or less. Put differently, you can't go wrong with it; we just suspect you can do better.

Source: Engadget

SAMSUNG TO LAUNCH N102 NETBOOK WITH ATOM N435 PROCESSOR AND WINDOWS 7

2011-08-23T02:54:00.000-07:00

Samsung is planning to launch a new budget-friendly 10 inch netbook with a low power Atom processor. The new Samsung N102 has a 1.33GHz Intel Atom N435 processor and Windows 7 Starter edition operating system.

The Samsung N102 is essentially a Windows version of the MeeGo Linux-based Samsung N100 but it will be pricier because of the Windows licencing fee involved. Aside from the 1.33GHz

SONY Vaio VPCF217HG

2011-08-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

Overview

VAIO F Series delivers a Full HD 3D experience in a notebook PC. Enjoy 3D Blu-ray Discs and 3D photos or convert any HD video from 2D to 3D. The 240 fps high frame rate LCD puts a bright and crisp image on its 16-inch screen. “Noiseless design” lets you immerse yourself in the content being viewed.

Detail Specifications

Platform Notebook PC
Processor Type Intel Core i7

AXIOO Neon HNM.7.047

2011-08-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

Overview

Neon Series feature high-quality PC technology at price points for every budget, offering the power and convenience of mobile computing at a great value. Engineered to deliver solid performance, these notebooks can handle today's most popular applications. Whether you're a first-time mobile user or you're on a tight budget, Neon Series are the way to go mobile.

Detail Specifications

SAMSUNG SERIES 7 NP700G7A-S02 GAMING LAPTOP OVERVIEW

2011-08-22T02:29:00.000-07:00

Samsung has launched its first ever gaming laptop. The Samsung Series 7 NP700G7A-S02 has a 17.3 inch full HD glossy display. It is powered by an Intel Core i7 2630QM quad-core processor. Other specifications include AMD Radeon HD 6970M discrete graphics with 2GB of video RAM, up to 16GB of RAM, dual 750GB hard drive and Blu-ray combo drive.

The Samsung Series 7 NP700G7A-S02 also has a backlit

TOSHIBA QOSMIO F755-3D290 GLASSES FREE 3D LAPTOP NOW SHIPPING

2011-08-22T01:58:00.000-07:00

The Toshiba Qosmio F755-3D290, the first ever glasses-free 3D laptop on the market, is now available for purchase.

The Qosmio F755-3D290 has a 15.6 inch full HD display with double parallax image technology which allows the laptop to create the 3D effect without the help of 3D glasses. Interestingly the laptop can run both 2D and 3D content on its screen at the same time. It can also convert 2D

GATEWAY LAUNCHES BUDGET FRIENDLY NV77H05U AND NV75S02U NOTEBOOKS

2011-08-22T01:22:00.000-07:00

Gateway has added two new 17.3 inch notebooks to its NV series. The new Gateway NV77H05u and NV75S02u are both affordable and belong to the desktop replacement category. While the NV77H05u has an Intel Core i3-2310M processor, HD 3000 integrated graphics, 6GB of RAM and red chassis, the NV75S02u has a quad-core AMD A8-3500M Llano APU with Radeon HD 6620G. The latter also has 4GB of RAM, a 640GB

Sony VAIO EC Series review (VPCEC25FX/WI)

2011-08-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

Sony's always had a knack for making some of the best multimedia laptops around, and the VAIO EC Series is all about continuing the trend. The desk-dominating 17.3-inch laptop is a monster of a machine, and has the internal guns to match – it's got a Core i3 processor, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics card, 4GB of RAM, 500GB of storage and a Blu-ray drive. For $949.99, there are definitely more affordable desktop replacements on the market, but can Sony's usual superior manufacturing build, design and multimedia prowess elevate it above the others? Hit that 'read more' link to find out in our full review.
Look and feel

Like any 17.3-inch desktop replacement, the 7.3-pound VAIO EC Series is large and in charge. No really, we don't care how strong you think you are, the 16.1 x 10.8 x 1.3-inch laptop is best carried in two hands. Though, this really isn't the sort of system we'd recommend moving around in the first place... unless it's from the desk to the couch and back to the desk. There was no fitting it in a 16-inch laptop case or even in our large backpack.

Sony has kept things pretty simple with the design of the EC Series. There's no longer a glossy lid like previous VAIO desktop replacements -- instead there's a very classic brushed silver cover (it's also available in black) that's adorned with a mirrored VAIO logo. Under the lid, things are kept just as minimalistic – the entire deck is covered in white plastic, and the palm rest is shiny with a slight speckle to it. There's an Assist, Web and VAIO button, but unfortunately – or fortunately depending how you feel about them – there's no multimedia buttons on the deck. All media controls are along the function row on the keyboard.

Surrounding the machine are pretty much all the ports you could ever dream of – there are three USB jacks, an eSATA/USB combo, VGA, HDMI, microphone, headphone and an Ethernet socket. There's also an ExpressCard/34 slot on the left side along with a MagicGate and SD card readers on the front. The right edge is home to the EC's 4x Blu-ray drive.

Keyboard, touchpad, screen and speakers

The VAIO EC has a full-sized chiclet keyboard with a dedicated number pad to the right. While the rounded, plastic keys are nicely spaced, they are fairly clicky and they make a slightly distracting sound. However, Sony is selling colored rubber skins to protect the keyboard from dust and debris, or in our case spilled coffee and Tostito crumbs. Sony sent a few along with our review unit and we have to say we love the feel of the soft silicone rubber – the hot pink and blue colors are a little much, but it does add something to the rather sterile design. It you purchase the EC on Sony's site they're offering the skins for free for the time being -- they're typically a whopping $20.

The VAIO EC's touchpad is positioned left of center and directly beneath the space bar rather than smack in the middle of the deck. Honestly, we don't know why this sort of thing has been happening on larger systems, but we did get used to the positioning after some use. The braille-like touchpad does support multitouch gestures, but oddly didn't respond to two finger scrolling – the left side of the pad does function as a scroll strip, however. The right and left mouse buttons are a bit mushy, but comfortable.

The heart and soul of the system is its ultra wide 1,600 x 900-resolution, 17.3-inch display. Since we spent much of our time sitting in front of a 13- or 15-inch laptop, the wider screen made a huge difference when keeping multiple windows open at the same time. We actually wrote this entire review with Microsoft Word on one side and Firefox on another. The quality of the screen is also impressive – it's glossy, but not too much so. Watching No Country for Old Men on Blu-ray was a pretty stunning experience with colors appearing bright and crisp, however we would have obviously preferred a true HD display for watching 1080p content. We have few complaints about the horizontal viewing angles of the screen as we were able to comfortably watch an episode of Mad Men with a friend; vertical angles on the other hand were a letdown.

Flat out (pun intended), the speakers above the keyboard deck are, well... flat. For a multimedia machine, the dual speakers don't provide anywhere near the quality of those on the HP Envy 15 or Pavilion dm4, both of which are smaller systems. They're loud enough, but we just expected to hear a fuller sound when listening to tunes and watching videos.

Performance, graphics and battery life

The Sony VAIO EC's Core i3 processor and 4GB of RAM put up quite the performance showing. We want to note here that our review unit had a 2.13GHz Core i3-330M CPU -- retail units will have a faster 2.26GHz Core i3-350M processor. We will update this review when Sony sends us the final configuration.

Either way, the Core i3 processor in our system scored higher than some Core i5-powered machines on the benchmarks, and in everyday use it was very snappy. We never saw any slow down when running multiple applications, including TweetDeck, Microsoft Word, Google Chrome, Skype, Trillian and GIMP. When we started up Corel WinDVD BD to watch a Blu-ray disc it took a number of seconds for the movie to load, but overall system performance didn't slow when playing. Obviously, Core i7 laptops will best the EC on benchmarks and in real-world use, but this system's Core i3 CPU is nothing to shrug at.

That impressive performance is met by some equally nimble graphics thanks to the EC's ATI Mobility Radeon HD5470 graphics card and 512MB of VRAM. The card aided in outputting some stunning Blu-ray and YouTube 1080p videos to a 40-inch TV. Gaming-wise, the HD5470 took to the task of running our WoW gnome around the forest at 33fps and Batman through Arkham Asylum at 20fps.

	PCMark Vantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Sony VAIO EC (2.13GHz Core i3, Radeon 5470)	5308	4094	2:33
Gateway NV5933u (2.13GHz Core i3, GMA HD)	4784	1725	2:35
Toshiba Satellite E205 (2.2GHz Core i5, GMA HD)	5187	1920	3:30
Acer Aspire 5738PG (2.55GHz Core 2 Duo, Radeon 4570)	4049	3098	N/A

Like any desktop replacement, the EC doesn't get more than three hours of battery life. On our video rundown test, which loops the same standard def video at 65 percent brightness, the EC ran for two hours and 33 minutes. That's not good by any measure, but honestly we don't anticipate many leaving home with this machine anyway.

Software

Like most PC vendors, Sony loads up the VAIO EC with a good amount of software, but the company has gotten better about it and does offer its "Fresh Start" clean install with Windows 7 Professional. Our unit came with Windows 7 Home Premium and the resulting extra software, but we were actually very happy to see Google Chrome installed and it saved us the step of having to download another browser. (If you haven't been able to tell from our laptop reviews, we're not exactly IE lovers). Additionally, the system comes with Sony's Media Gallery, which organizes all local multimedia into different panes and a timeline view. It's a fairly slick looking piece of software, but there's nothing here that Microsoft Photo Gallery or Windows Media Player couldn't do for ya.

Wrap-up

We can't pinpoint anything that's inherently wrong with the Sony VAIO EC – actually, we like it quite a bit -- though we think the design is a bit plain and the speakers are a bit weak. More than that, we can't help but look at the better Core i3 and Blu-ray deals to be had. For instance, the $800 Gateway NV79C35u has the same Core i3 processor and Blu-ray drive as the EC, though it doesn't have discrete graphics. There's also the Core i7-powered Dell Studio 17 with a Blu-ray drive and ATI graphics for $949 at Best Buy. So, what's our conclusion? The EC is a great performing desktop replacement for the family room or for someone looking for a work and play machine that's bound to stay in one place, but just be prepared to pay slightly more than the competition for that silver logo and colorful keyboard you're peering at above.

Source: Engadget

SONY Vaio VPCSA25GG

2011-08-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

Overview

VAIO S Series is the perfectly balanced mobile PC. It’s thin, light, and highly mobile, with long battery life that helps you go further and get more done. Every feature is designed for mobility. VAIO S Series is power in motion — see where it can take you.
Detail Specifications

Platform Notebook PC
Processor Type Intel Core i7 Processor
Processor Onboard Intel® Core™ i7-

Acer TimelineX 4820T review

2011-08-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

Pulling the 14-inch Acer TimelineX 4820T from its box, one thing went through our mind: this could be the perfect thin and light laptop. The $717 system is about an inch thick, weighs only 4.7 pounds, and still has an onboard DVD drive. And unlike the past Acer Timelines and their sissy ULV processors, it has a standard voltage Core i3-350M CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. Oh, and it promises over seven hours of battery life. Sound like the perfect no-compromise ultrathin laptop to you too, right? Well, even after our unboxing, the TimelineX 4820T did live up to many of our expectations, but disappointed in some unfortunate others. We'll explain it all in our full review after the break.

Look and feel

Unofficially, the X at the end of the new Timeline series stands for "extreme," but we're going to pretend it stands for extra polished. The system's professional look is still very much intact, but Acer's added a bit of pizzazz here and there: there's now a silver trim around the touchpad and the black brushed aluminum cover gives it a classic look. Even better, the 4820T has very little gloss as the palmrest is covered in a silverish metal as well, though the screen bezel and trim around the keyboard still gets the unfortunate black glossy-plastic treatment.

The 4820T's 0.9 to 1.1-inch thick body is the biggest design coup, though. It's just an incredibly thin and light 14-inch laptop, and the battery doesn't bulge at all like some other ultraportables out there. For comparisons sake, it's thinner and ligher than the smaller-screened 13-inch ASUS U30Jc and ThinkPad Edge 13. Shoving the 4.7-pounder into a larger shoulder bag was no issue – we actually didn't mind dragging it to and from the office. Despite the thin dimensions, the machine still has room for a DVD player and three USB ports on its right edge. We're not sure why Acer had to line up all the USB ports so close to each other -- it makes it hard to simultaneously plug in multiple devices. An extra USB jack, HDMI, Ethernet, VGA, and mic and headphone sockets dwell on the left side, while its 5-in-1 card reader lives on the front lip.

We've said this in the last couple of Acer reviews, but there's no harm in repeating our disclaimer on the build quality. The make isn't superb, though in this case it's what you'd expect for the price. There are parts of the 4820T – notably the flexy keyboard and plastic hinge reinforcements -- that don't have us convinced the machine will age well, but sometimes these are the sorts of laptops that end up lasting longer than you ever thought. Obviously, you take a chance with any machine.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

Acer's been using the same chiclet keyboard on all of its laptops these days, and it would be perfectly fine with just a few tweaks. The rounded keys have a nice amount of bounce, but they're just too flat. We wish they had some sort of curve to them and that they melded to your fingers more over time. The real kicker, however, is that the panel on the TimelineX 4820T was ridden with flex – just pressing one finger on the "G" key caused the entire thing to bend. And because of this, there was a slight squeaking sound when we typed this review. It's not good, but for what's worth we did type at a fairly fast clip and without too many typos.

The touchpad on the 4820T is quite generous in size. It supports multitouch gestures, though we turned off the pinch-to-zoom function since it would mistakenly zoom in on webpages when that's the last thing we wanted to do. The scroll strip on the right edge of it was responsive, however. The single mouse button didn't give us any issues, though we'd like to take a knife and chop it into two dedicated buttons. The dual speakers above the keyboard are decent for personal listening, and we could hear a YouTube clip over our TV in the background. Yet, they aren't as loud or full as those on the HP Pavilion dm4.

As members of the matte screen lovers guild (seriously, we'd join if this existed), we think the 4820T would've been perfect with a non-glossy version of its 14-inch, 1366 x 768 display, but everyone seems set on these glossy, reflective screens. Like we've been seeing on recent Acer laptops, the screen's bright, but viewing angles were quite bad. Horizontal angles weren't terrible for sharing the screen with another, but tilting the screen back when watching a gripping video of Lindsay Lohan's sentencing caused her face to darken and her tears to be indiscernible.

Performance and battery life

As one would expect, the TimelineX 4820T's standard voltage Core i3 processor beats all of the ULV laptops we've reviewed in the past few months. The 2.26GHz Core i3-350M processor along with 4GB of RAM was certainly fast enough for our everyday routine, too – we simultaneously ran Chrome, Microsoft Word 2007, Tweetdeck and Trillian with no lag, and even adding DVD playback to the mix didn't slow things down. It's not as fast as the Sony VAIO Z with its Core i5 processor and GeForce GT 330M graphics, but the Z's at least double the price. Cramming a standard voltage CPU into a thinner chassis does have its downsides, and those lie mostly in heat. For the most part, the 4820T did stay relatively cool, but programs that were CPU intensive, including Firefox Beta 4, caused the left palmrest and touchpad to get extremely toasty.

Though the TimelineX is available with a discrete ATI Radeon GPU, our review unit had Intel's integrated HD graphics. The integrated option was fine for watching YouTube HD videos and a local 1080p Green Hornet trailer, but it's not going to appease heavy gamers. For those that need the extra graphics muscle, the $799 4820TG-5637 with Core i3 and ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics may be the worth the extra cash.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Acer TimelineX 4820T (Intel Core i3-350M)	4926	1724	5:04
Dell Vostro V13 (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2687	556	2:39
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 (Core 2 Duo SU7300)	N/A	905	5:12
ASUS U30Jc (Core i3-350M, NVIDIA)	4841	1739/3686	4:10
ASUS UL50Vf (Core 2 Duo SU7300)	3724	827/3438	6:10

Onto the million dollar question: how does Acer's use of a standard voltage CPU affect the battery life of this very portable laptop? Not much, by any measure. The 4820T's 66Wh six-cell battery lasted five hours and four minutes on our video rundown test, which loops the same video at 65 percent brightness. That's actually longer than the ULV-powered Dell Vostro V13 and just around the same time as the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13. In everyday usage with brightness set at 75 percent we squeezed about five and a half hours out of the system – that should be good enough to last the bus ride from New York to Boston.

Just like the Aspire One 521 and 721, Acer's loaded up the TimelineX with a bit of software. The desktop comes cluttered with Netflix, Acer games, Norton and McAfee antivirus shortcuts.

Wrap-up

Is the Acer TimelineX 4820T the perfect ultrathin laptop? Well, it's surely a step in the right direction, but ultimately what holds this back is the same stuff that holds most Acers back, and that's really its substandard build quality. In the case of the 4820T, it's especially apparent in its flexy keyboard and poor LCD. However, there's no doubt that it's in a class much on its own (the Toshiba Protégé R700/R705 falls into the same one, but we're still waiting to review it), and for $717 the 4820T fills the niche for those looking for mainstream laptop power in a thin and light chassis. And, well, that alone may just be perfection for some.

Source: Engadget

Dell Inspiron M101z review

2011-08-21T05:20:00.000-07:00

We've been having a hard time figuring out what to call the recent influx of 11.6-inch laptops -- you know, the ones which are slightly larger and more expensive than netbooks, yet pack more than double the graphics and performance power. But regardless of what we call them – we're thinking notbooks -- the new category certainly has been building steam by the day, and we can't help but think Dell's new Inspiron M101z could be our favorite yet. Yes, unfortunately, our review unit was adorned in that bright pink color above that's most likely causing your eyes to tear, but don't let its sissy exterior fool you -- it's powered by AMD's new dual-core Athlon Neo II processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB 7,200rpm hard drive. Yep, she's a heartbreaker on paper, but hit the break to find out if the $579 M101z is in fact a worthy companion.

Look and feel

For whatever reason, Dell sent us the "Promise Pink" version of the M101z. While it's nice that some of the proceeds of the particular model go to the Susan Komen Foundation for breast cancer research, the almost florescent color and matching swirly pink pattern that finds its way onto the palmrest just wasn't our thing. We tried to call Molly Ringwald and pawn it off on her, but we just couldn't get in touch. We could make pink laptop jokes all day, but more importantly, in usual Dell fashion it's available in three other colors: black, red and blue.

The wedge-like or doorstop chassis design of the M101z is very similar to that of the new Inspiron 14R and the Mini 10. It's thicker than most laptops, but that's because Dell has integrated the battery into the design so it doesn't bulge from the back. It's an interesting move, but it does result in making the rear of the system measure 1.5 inches thick; the 11.6-inch Acer Aspire 721 and Lenovo IdeaPad U160 are .4 inches thinner. Still, at 3.4 pounds it's not too large of a burden, and it was easy enough to pop into a purse (that's where a pink laptop belongs, right?). One of the first things we did notice about the M101z was its solid build quality. While it's made of plastic, it feels noticeably stronger and more durable than the aforementioned Acer Aspire 721. Surrounding the machine are three USB ports, an SD card reader, HDMI, Ethernet, VGA, microphone and headphone jacks. There's a port for a TV tuner, but Dell actually tells us the unit won't be sold with this option.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

In the past we've knocked Dell's keyboard and touchpad designs, but the M101z changes that tradition. Like every other laptop manufacturer, Dell shifted over to a chiclet style keyboard, and the rounded, black matte keys provided a very comfortable home for our fingers. There's no flex to the panel and the deck was incredibly roomy for a machine of this size.

We're thinking of treating the Dell employee responsible for the touchpad on the M101z to a steak dinner since it doesn't have the very uncomfortable and flaky integrated mouse button setup like the Mini 10. The smooth, silver pad is flush with the palmrest, but the material isn't too slippery and navigating was a pleasant experience. The right and left mouse buttons are ever so mushy, but still comfortable. Also, two-finger scrolling was extremely responsive in Firefox, but pinch-to-zoom was disabled out of the box -- we can't say we were all that tempted to enable it.

Dell's placed the 11.6-inch display on top of the keyboard, and claims the hinge design brings the screen "closer to you." It's nice to have the screen propped up a bit, but it means not being able to tilt the screen beyond a 120 degree angle. The glossy, 1,366 x 768-resolution screen itself is bright, and vertical viewing angles were decent when sharing the screen with a friend. On the other hand, horizontal angles weren't as good, and standing back from the screen caused a bit of color distortion. Firing up La Roux's "Bulletproof" in iTunes had us surprisingly impressed with the two speakers located on the bottom of the laptop. We could hear the song from across a large room with volume at 50 percent. Dell said it had made some enhancements to the audio, so whatever the company did, it paid off.

Performance and battery life

For the first time in a long time Dell's using AMD parts, and the performance is impressive. Though Dell will offer a $449 version of the M101z with a single-core AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, we were sent the higher-end $579 model that boasts a dual-core Athlon II K325 CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB 7,200rpm hard drive. Sure, for $579 you can get faster and larger mainstream laptops, but the M101z is a fast little laptop. The dual-core processor obviously bested the single core version on the benchmarks, but it also felt snappier in everyday use. It kept up with our heavy Firefox use, writing in Microsoft Word, and chatting in Digsby. It also managed to stream a 1080p video amidst that all -- even after days of rest, no Atom processor can attempt such a feat.

The lovely 1080p video playback also has ATI's Mobility Radeon 4225 graphics to thank. The integrated solution not only performs better than the Lenovo IdeaPad U160's Core i7 / Intel GMA 950 graphics, but also tops some with NVIDIA's last generation Ion platform. Along with those loud speakers, watching Katie Perry and Snoop's "California Gurls" music video was eye-pleasing. It played just as well when we hooked up the laptop to a 40-inch HDTV via HDMI. Even when streaming that HD YouTube video, the chassis remained relatively cool – the left fan was working pretty hard, but at no point did our lap get overly hot.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Dell Inspiron M101z (Athlon II Neo K325)	2572	1311	3:35
Acer Aspire One 721 (Athlon II Neo K125)	1814	1235	3:30
Lenovo IdeaPad U160 (Core i7 ULV)	3863	1175	3:10
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e (AMD Athlon Neo)	1511	1060	3:27
ASUS UL50Vf (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	3724	827 / 3438	6:10
Alienware M11x (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2689	654 / 5593	4:30

While AMD's improved the thermals, we still can't say we're thrilled with the battery life of the new platform. The 56Wh six-cell battery lasted for 3 hours and 35 minutes on our video rundown test, which loops the same standard definition movie with brightness adjusted to 65 percent. In normal usage – surfing the web and listening to music – we got close to four hours and 15 minutes of endurance. That's longer than Lenovo's Core i7-powered U160 and in line with what we saw from the Aspire One 721, but it's still not great for any ultraportable laptop. We're still waiting on a mobile platform that provides an all around great blend of graphics, performance and endurance.

The M101z boots a completely barren Windows 7 Home Premium desktop. However, a few seconds later it loads Dell's dock loads with shortcuts to Internet Explorer and other preloaded Microsoft and third-party applications. Other than that, the preloaded software is really limited to Skype, Cozio and Syncables.

Wrap-up

It took us a while to look beyond the M101z's pink shell, but when we did we came to really like the little guy. Er, girl. Of all the 11.6-inch machines we've reviewed lately, it provides the best combination of build quality, performance and graphics capabilities for the price. (We should note, a similarly configured HP Pavilion dm1 costs about $100 less, but we haven't reviewed it yet). Sure, it's a bit thicker than the others (and we still can't help but be disappointed by AMD's power-thirsty platforms), but if you can deal with only four or so hours of juice, then the M101z won't disappoint those looking for a... well, we still don't know what to call the category.

Source: Engadget

HP TOUCHPAD NOW AVAILABLE FOR AS LITTLE AS $99

2011-08-21T03:26:00.000-07:00

HP launched the TouchPad tablet a couple of months ago with a starting price of $499. Today it is available for as little as $99.

Now that HP has decided to exit the webOS hardware space, the company is trying to sell of its existing tablet stock. Surprisingly, HP is selling them of at prices far below the cost. The 16GB model is now available for $99. The 32GB model is available for $149.

3G-ENABLED EEE PAD TRANSFORMER COMING SOON

2011-08-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is one of the best selling 10 inch Android tablets on the market, thanks to its low price tag and impressive features. Asus also offers an optional keyboard dock with the tablet which will add a full QWERTY keyboard with its own battery and a touchpad to the tablet. And now word is that a 3G-enabled version of the Transformer is coming.

A listing for the tablet

ASUS UPGRADES EEE PC 1215B WITH AMD E-450 PROCESSOR

2011-08-21T01:48:00.000-07:00

The Asus Eee PC 1215B has got a spec-bump. The company will soon start offering the notebook with a 1.65GHz AMD E-450 processor. The 12.1 inch notebook currently ships with either a 1.6GHz AMD E-350 or a lower AMD C-30 / C-50 processor.

The Eee PC 1215B has a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixels display. Other specifications include a 0.3 megapixel webcam, 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, HDMI, WiFi 802.11b/g/n,

AXIOO Neon CLW.5.620

2011-08-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

SONY Vaio VPCCB16FG

2011-08-19T19:54:00.000-07:00

Overview

VAIO C Series is a notebook PC that brightens up your life with premium design featuring a juicy looking finish. The high-resolution 15.5 inch screen, 640 GB HDD and high performance GPU with 1GB VRAM provide ample power for everyday use. Count on VAIO C Series to let you shine.

Detail Specifications

Platform Notebook PC
Processor Type Intel Core i5 Processor
Processor

ASUS U33Jc-A1 Bamboo series full review

2011-08-19T02:38:00.000-07:00

Pandas, East Asia, wood. Nope, "laptop" hasn't ever been on the list of words we typically associate with "bamboo," but ASUS sure has us willing to tack it on with the introduction of its U Bamboo Series. The company's newest 13-inch U33Jc is covered in one of the most durable and recyclable materials on earth, and its internals are made of equally strong parts. Sure, the laptop looks incredibly traditional, but the $999 machine actually packs an incredible amount of new technology, including a fresh Core i3 processor, NVIDIA Optimus enabled graphics, USB 3.0 and Intel's wireless display technology. It's truly one of the most impressive laptops we've heard about in the last few months, but a few gripes hold it back from being the killer laptop it could be. Intrigued? Bamboozled? Hit the break for our full review.

Look and feel

The U33Jc won't appeal to fans of glossy plastics or aluminum, but those that like the look of dark wood and chrome accents will find the laptop to be rather stunning. Actually, there's something about the smoky brown U33Jc that reminds us of a high end piece of furniture, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. While the smooth feeling dark wood only covers the lid and the palmrest, it seems to give the entire chassis a stronger feel than other ASUS systems we've reviewed.

However, while the rig has a really striking aesthetic, there's no denying that we wish it were slimmer and lighter. The 1.2-inch thick and 4.5-pound chassis is a lot like the ASUS U30Jc in terms of size, but doesn't have an optical drive. Seriously, we actually searched the system a few times for a drive – we just expected it would have one with its thicker base. We will admit, the entire system is quite a chunker compared to the Toshiba Portege R705, which we recently fell pretty hard for. The edges of the U33Jc are filled with two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 socket, an HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, microphone and headphone jack. A five-in-one card reader lives on the right side.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

Like we said before, the U33Jc actually feels like one of the more solid laptops we've reviewed, save for its plastic chiclet keyboard. The matte keys just don't blend well with the rest of the brushed aluminum deck, and in comparison to the rest of the machine, they just feel cheap. Don't get us wrong -- the keys are comfortable and didn't require any adjustment on our part, though they do make a distinct 'clicky' sound. It's also the type of keyboard you'd expect to have a backlight option, but there's no inner glow hiding underneath the panel.

Conversely, the touchpad gets premium treatment, and ASUS has used a special in-mold decoration process along with a new integrated circuit with proper sensor capabilities to cover it in bamboo to match the rest of the palmrest. Sliding a finger over the smooth wood to navigate the desktop was a rather enjoyable experience, and the lovely-feeling texture of the pad makes up for the single mouse button. Oddly, it doesn't support multitouch gestures, but the right side did function as a scroll strip.

The U33Jc's 13.3-inch, 1,366 x 768-resolution display is bright, and streaming a 720p clip of Salt looked crisp. The display itself isn't overly glossy, but the shiny bezel surrounding it makes the glossiness a bit more pronounced. It's no surprise that we were not thrilled with the viewing angles – tilting the screen back made Angelina Jolie's eyes blend in with the rest of her face. At least horizontal viewing angles were better. Like the Eee PC 1015PE and 1018P, the U33Jc has a latch for covering the 2-megapixel webcam – hey, after hearing about those kids in the Lower Merion school district we'd be happy to see all laptops with this small, helpful privacy feature. The speaker strip along the top of the keyboard produced decently loud and full sound when watching some clips and listening to Pandora.

Performance, graphics and battery life

Internally, the U33Jc is a lot like the U30Jc, but instead of a 2.26GHz Intel Core i3-350M, it has a faster 2.4GHz Core i3-370M CPU. The benchmarks clearly show the improvement, but in our everyday use we couldn't really tell the difference between the U33Jc and some of the other Core i3-powered laptops we've reviewed in the last few weeks. The laptop definitely kept up with our day-to-day routine, including simultaneously running Firefox with over 10 tabs open, Microsoft Office, Skype, Trillian, Adobe Reader and TweetDeck. Our review unit came configured with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Those that may want to swap out the RAM or hard drive shouldn't have an issue doing so with the latch on the bottom of the chassis.

The Core i3 processor and integrated graphics is fine for basic HD playback, but the U33Jc's NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU with 1GB of VRAM gives the system some real graphics muscle. Thanks to NVIDIA's Optimus technology, the GPU automatically kicked in when we fired up Batman: Arkham Asylum, and within minutes we were throwing punches at 28fps. Similarly, when we queued up a 1080p clip, the 310M card automatically turned on. While most of the graphics switching is completely automatic, NVIDIA's control panel does allow for manually turning on and off the GPU. NVIDIA's newest Verde driver, which displays the status of the GPU, didn't come preloaded -- we're told it will be compatible with the U33Jc within the next month.

Update: We noticed that the 3DMark06 scores on the U33Jc was lower than that on the U30Jc despite having more VRAM. Both LAPTOP Magazine and PCMag report in its reviews that the GPU on the U33Jc is actually underclocked (from 625 MHz to 606 Mhz) and that ASUS is using slower memory in this version.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
ASUS U33Jc (Core i3-370M, NVIDIA 310M)	5574	1860/3403	5:10
ASUS U30Jc (Core i3-350M, NVIDIA 310M)	4841	1739/3686	4:10
Toshiba Portege R705 (Intel Core i3-350M)	5024	1759	4:25
Acer TimelineX 4820T (Intel Core i3-350M)	4926	1724	5:04
Dell Vostro V13 (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2687	556	2:39
ASUS UL50Vf (Core 2 Duo SU7300)	3724	827/3438	6:10

We happen to like Optimus a lot because it alleviates the need to have to think about turning on and off the GPU, but we also like it for it's battery life benefits. The 310M card remained powered down when we ran our standard definition video rundown test, and in turn the U33Jc's 84Wh eight-cell battery lasted for 5 hours and 10 minutes with brightness set to 65 percent. That's an hour longer than the U30Jc and Toshiba's Portege R705, but not quite as long as ASUS' predicted eight hours. With the GPU on it ran a loop of HD videos for 3.5 hours. Still, both of those numbers are on the extreme end -- when we used the laptop to write this review, listen to music and intermittently watch some YouTube clips, we didn't have to plug in for about six hours. That's some decent runtime for this category.

Wireless Display Technology performance

NVIDIA said it was possible, and the U33Jc is a testament that a laptop with a discrete GPU can be coupled with Intel's WiDi or Wireless Display Technology. However, the GPU must be switched off for the wireless display feature to function, so there was no NVIDIA graphics power when streaming video from the U33Jc to our 40-inch HDTV. Also, don't forget that you've got to have a $99 Netgear Push2TV box to get the whole WiDi thing going. While you still can't stream full 1080p video, the technology is pretty awesome, and we enjoyed watching an episode of Mad Men on the big screen rather than on the 13.3-inch screen. There's still about a three second delay, so it's just not going to cut it for gaming or real productivity.

Software

We can't put this any other way: it sucks that when you boot the U33Jc for the first time you're greeted by a desktop that looks like that. So many ASUS utilities and other miscellaneous software is preloaded on the U33Jc that we don't know where to start. Some of it -- like the shortcut to eBay's website -- is totally useless and should be deleted ASAP, however other things like Kindle for PC and Times Reader may save some the step of having to download the apps at a later date. You can also boot ASUS's ExpressGate Cloud instant-on OS by hitting the button above the keyboard. Like we found on the new Eee PCs, the new interface is attractive, yet seems slower than the previous version.

Wrap-up

The U33Jc may be on the bamboo list now, but it's much more than a bamboo laptop. The wood certainly makes you feel like you're buying a unique device, but the draw of the machine for most will be its superior blend of graphics, performance and battery life. We still have to knock the U33Jc for its lack of an optical drive, the cheap feeling keyboard quality, and it's thicker chassis -- if you're in the market for a really light 13-inch machine we have to recommend Toshiba's $899 Portege R705 -- however, for $999 the ASUS U33Jc is a incredibly strong choice, just like the material that covers it.

Source: Engadget

HTC PUCCINI TABLET COULD BE CALLED JETSTREAM

2011-08-19T01:57:00.000-07:00

We have been hearing about a 10 inch HTC Android tablet called Puccini for a while. Now more details have emerged, including a brand new name. It looks like 'Puccini' was an internal code name. The tablet is more likely to be called HTC JetStream when it becomes available later this year. At least that is what the AT&T version will be called.

The HTC JetStream has a 10 inch display. It will run

DELL STREAK 7 ANDROID TABLET NOW AVAILABLE FOR $300

2011-08-19T01:25:00.000-07:00

The Dell Streak 7 Android tablet has got a huge price drop. You can now pick up the WiFi-only version of the tablet for under $300. The Streak 7 launched earlier this year. Back then it had a price tag of $380.

The Dell Streak 7 has a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor and runs Google Android 2.2 operating system. The 7 inch display has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. While it has

NETBOOK NAVIGATOR NAV7 WINDOWS TABLET TO SHIP IN SEPTEMBER

2011-08-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

The 7 inch Netbook Navigator Nav7 Windows tablet will reportedly go on sale next month. The company has been showing off the machine since March.

The Nav7 has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, up to 2GB of RAM and up to 64GB of storage. Interestingly the tablet has a touchpad and mouse buttons on its back.

The Nav7 weighs about 1.2 pounds. The 7 inch display has a resolution of 1024 x 600

Notebook buying tips

2011-08-18T11:14:00.000-07:00

The following "guide to buying a laptop" takes you through laptop & notebook comparison, part by part, giving in idea what to consider when buying a laptop... I don`t think it`s a full notebool purchase guide, but some tips about what is most important when buying a laptop. If you are buying a laptop, few simple tips and advices how You can save money and what You need when buying a Notebook. So - simple few rules that will allow buy a decent laptop, even if was no qualitative reviews of the available options in your city.

Notebook buying tip 1: Most users don`t need latest CPU - P4 is absolutely enough for most office applications to run. There is a trade-off between the CPU performance, the battery-life and power consumption (heating). More powerfull processors quicker, but need more energy. Investing some more You can buy Notebook with Core Duo - perfect balance between the Notebooks performance and mobility.

Notebook buying tip 2: Battery life is important. Generally the range of battery life available to Notebook is two-four hours. If You buy Notebook with Centrino processor three - four hours are in you pocket!

Notebook buying tip 3: Hard disk in today`s Notebook begins from 40-60GB and surely enough for most notebook users. Probably 80GB should be better for movies and music.

Notebook buying tip 4: If you are going to use your laptop for general purposes these laptops with onboard video card are for you. For graphic application and gaming 128 or 256 MB non-integrated Video Card should be much better.

Notebook buying tip 5: RAM is also important factor for the quality of the laptop. Today`s suggestion is to consider buying a Notebook with minimum 1024 MB RAM.

Notebook buying tip 6: Not worth to buy laptops cheaper than $ 1000, better - $ 1200. Budget models may look fine and work fairly quickly, but the savings is not just all the best impact on reliability. Budget paint, batteries denials, problems with matrix illumination, unreliable contacts - this is not a full list of notebook problems that you may encounter in the first few months.

Lenovo IdeaPad U160 full review

2011-08-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

An 11.6-inch laptop with a Core i7 processor. Does the Lenovo IdeaPad U160 really need more of an introduction than that? Believe it or not, the ultrathin laptop you're peering at above isn't much larger than a 10-inch netbook, but instead of packing underpowered parts (ahem, Atom) its got one of Intel's most powerful ultra-low voltage processors. For $1,149, the U160 is meant for highly mobile power users, but also those with a portable fan and a bag that can fit a few extra laptop batteries. We'll explain it all in our full review after the break.

Look and feel

It's not hard to tell that the U160 is part of Lenovo's IdeaPad consumer lineup by the checkered pattern that sprawls across its non-glossy lid. The cover design isn't entirely off putting in black – in red, it's a bit more obvious – but we can't deny our personal preference for Lenovo's classic looking ThinkPad line. Our real attraction is to the U160's thin and light bod – it measures only .9 inches thick and weighs 3.2 pounds. It was perfect for popping into a shoulder bag for a weekend trip and pulling out on to write an article on a cramped train seat.

In terms of build quality, the U160's plastic chassis feels quite a bit more solid than Acer's 11.6-inch Aspire One 721. However, we noticed on our unit that the keyboard deck was a bit loose – Lenovo tells us it may just be our early production unit. Port-wise, the U160 has two USB jacks, an USB / eSATA connector as well as sockets for HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, microphone and headphone sockets. It also has a four-in-one card reader. Not surprisingly, there's no optical drive onboard.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

Besides the fact that the panel looked like it wasn't placed in properly, we rather like the chiclet keyboard. Similar to the keyboard on the ThinkPad Edge, the squircle shaped matte keys have a curve that makes it feel as if they've molded to your fingertips. They are a bit cramped, however -- it would have been nice to see Lenovo use the entire width of the panel.

On the same vein, the touchpad is quite small. Measuring by 2.4 by 1.5 inches, it's a bit odd that Lenovo also didn't take advantage of more of the horizontal space on the palmrest and widen it a bit. The pad is still smooth, though the two mouse buttons are a slightly mushy. Still, it's much better than being stuck with a stiff single bar like that on the Eee PC 1018P.

We're starting to think Lenovo has as big of an issue picking up decent LCDs as Acer and ASUS. Just like we saw on the IdeaPad S10-3t, the vertical viewing of the 11.6-inch, 1,366 x 768 resolution display was horrific at some angles. For instance, we tilted the screen back when watching a clip of Tosh.0 and we could barely make out any colors or see where his face started and ended. When looking at the screen head on, however, it was sufficiently bright, and the ambient light sensor adjusted the brightness to our liking. The speakers on the bottom were comparable to other laptops of its size – they're loud enough for listening to some tunes on Pandora, but not going to be the life of any party.

Performance and battery life

The U160 is without a doubt the most powerful 11.6-inch laptop we've ever toyed with thanks to its 1.20GHz Intel Core i7-640UM processor and 4GB of RAM (the Alienware M11x comes close, but it was then powered by a Core 2 Duo processor). However, it's nowhere close to being the most powerful Core i7 laptop on the market, and as the benchmarks below show, the U160 falls in between a standard voltage Core i3 laptop and some of the newer AMD Nile-powered ultraportables on the performance scale. Every day use was still snappy and our typical routine – simultaneously running Firefox with over ten tabs open, Tweetdeck, Microsoft Word, Trillian, Skype and iTunes – was no challenge for the little guy.

On the graphics side of things, the rig's Intel GMA HM55 HD was nimble enough to handle both 720p and 1080p video (local and streaming). It also managed to plow through World of Warcraft at a decent 27fps. However, as the 3DMark06 score below shows, the integrated GPU isn't quite as fast as AMD's integrated ATI Radeon HD 4225, which has been coming standard on other 11.6-inch laptops like the Acer Aspire One 721 and HP Pavilion dm1.

The U160 is certainly marketed as a multimedia machine and it can handle HD content, but it's not exactly the coolest machine on the market for those sorts of activities. And yes, we mean that literally. The entire chassis of the laptop – including its keyboard and touchpad – felt like it had been baking in the sun when streaming video. Even when we used the system to write this review and listen to some music, it got tepid and the bottom of the laptop got hot enough that we removed it from our lap to set it on the table.

So, while the i7 processor may not be as powerful as a standard Core i3 CPU, it draws less power and must result in better battery life, right? Not quite. On our video rundown test, which loops the same standard definition video at 65 brightness, the 48Wh battery managed to keep the system afloat for only 3 hours and 10 minutes. A glance at the chart below shows that both the Core i3-powered Acer TimelineX and Toshiba Portege R705 lasted an hour longer than that. Yeah, it's pretty horrendous for a laptop of this size, and even the AMD-powered Aspire One 721 lasted an extra 20 minutes.

We can't help but feel torn on Lenovo's decision to power the U160 with an ultra-low voltage Core i7 CPU. While it surely adds a lot of extra horsepower, we're left wondering who actually needs all of that in a smaller laptop, especially when other (cheaper) laptops on the market can handle HD content and basic games just as well, not to mention last longer on a charge and run much cooler.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Lenovo IdeaPad U160	3863	1175	3:10
Acer Aspire One 721	1814	1235	3:30
Toshiba Portege R705 (Core i3-350M)	5024	1759	4:25
Acer TimelineX 4820T (Core i3-350M)	4926	1724	5:04
Dell Vostro V13 (Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2687	556	2:39
ASUS UL50Vf (Core 2 Duo SU7300)	3724	827/3438	6:10

Software

The U160 comes loaded up with some Lenovo utilities, but compared to some of the recent laptops we've reviewed from ASUS, the preloaded software isn't all that bad. We do have to say that Lenovo's "Smile Dock" which can be launched by clicking on that little creepy smile icon on the desktop is one of the least helpful docks we've seen lately – it's full of shortcuts to Lenovo utilities, e-mail, Weatherbug, etc. At least you can search the web directly from the panel.

Wrap-up

After spending the last few days with the IdeaPad U160, we've come to the conclusion that the laptop is only for the few that demand more processing power than some of the other ultraportables on the market, yet are willing to put up with a few annoyances to have it. No matter how you look at it, these days $1,150 is a lot of money to shell out on a smaller machine, especially when other laptops out there that are just as light, run longer on a charge, and cost less -- just take the $799 13-inch Toshiba Portégé 705 or $450 Acer Aspire One 721. Yes, the U160 packs more CPU power, but at the end of the day you'll have to live with the heat and battery drain that it ultimately causes. And frankly, we wouldn't wish that upon anyone.

Source: Engadget

Toshiba Qosmio X775-3DV78 Full Review

2011-08-18T10:17:00.000-07:00

When NVIDIA played its signature GPU number-bump card back in May, it made a point to throw around some big names. Alienware, MSI and ASUS each announced notebooks with the outfit's new GeForce GTX 560M, but one lone machine played coy, listed only as the "new Toshiba gaming laptop." Known today as the Qosmio X775-3DV78, it pairs 1.5GB GDDR5 with the aforementioned GPU, an Intel Core i7-2630QM processor, 1.25TB of storage split between two drives and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. So, can this heavyweight desktop-replacement hold its own in Engadget's review ring? There's only one way to find out.

Look and feel

We're going to just come right out and say it: Toshiba's Qosmio laptops have a long tradition of being hideously ugly. Confident, proud, powerhouses who aren't afraid to be seen in shocking pink flames, or shimmering chameleon paint. Sure, any company capable of cramming an autobot-usb-hub into the form of a laptop deserves the benefit of the doubt, but we won't mince words: the X775 isn't the exception to the rule. That's not to say it isn't trying, as indicated by the blood-shade stain of "extreme" red crowding the edge of the display's hinge and lower back-lid. Pay close attention to this red strip, because it's where all the action is -- under the lid you'll find a touch sensitive media-bar nestled between a pair of aggressive looking speaker grills. All of the standard controls are here: power, WiFi, volume, and even a toggle for the Qosmio's 3D capabilities -- each activated button glowing to match the laptop's red lip. Travel south only a few of short inches, and suddenly we're in dull, drab business land. A boorish gray texture of horizontal lines plow across the rest of the machine's surface, broken only by a single red line atop the awkwardly positioned trackpad (more on that later) and the chicklet keyboard's brooding glow.

At 16.3 x 10.8 x 1.4-inches, this 7.5-pound behemoth is better suited as a desktop-replacement than a portable gaming rig. Those "official" measurements are even a bit conservative: we measured 2.1-inches from the base of the X775's meaty battery to the edge of the laptop's closed lid. Still, the X775 is almost two pounds lighter than Dell's Alienware M17x R3 and (excusing the raised battery) just a hair thinner. The beast thins out near the laptop's front edge, utilizing the thicker sections of the body to house an rewritable Blu-ray drive and a sizable vent, while splitting port space between thinner sections on either side. The left side sports VGA, HDMI, and Ethernet sockets, as well as two USB plugs (2.0 and 3.0). On the right, it has two additional USB 2.0 plugs and a pair of headphone / mic jacks. Finally, the laptop's front lip features a 5-in-1 card reader and a slew of blinking indicator lights for power, HDD activity, and so on.

Keyboard, touchpad, and screen

The laptop's keyboard layout makes few sacrifices in squeezing in the core experience of a desktop sized keyboard, delegating scant few keys to the authority of the secondary function button. Even better, the CTRL and ALT keys are extremely comfortable to toggle from the gamer's WASD position, making accidental "Windows key" quits less frequent. The keyboard's comfortably spaced and smooth keys don't feel the least bit mushy, and are beautifully backlit by a red glow, easily switched on or off or delayed with the help of an Fn shortcut.

The Qosmio's chicklet spacing suited us just fine, but we did find the keyboard's lack of advanced anti-ghosting technology a bit of a let down. Eight simultaneous keypresses is certainly nothing to scoff at, but it's a far cry from the 20-plus that many dedicated gaming keyboards offer -- not to mention that we found more than a couple three-key combinations that simply wouldn't register. Although the few combinations we found won't effect gameplay for the average user, hardcore gamers may want to stick to their external keyboard.

Speaking of extra input devices, an external mouse is a boon to the X775 owner. While the laptop's touchpad performed adequately under ideal conditions, its placement can be a bit of a burden for folks with larger hands. Those who tend to rest their non-mousing hand on the keyboard's home row might obstruct the top-left portion of the trackpad with their palm, rendering it temporarily inoperative. Although the 3.6 x 2-inch pad itself moves the cursor well enough, its buttons feel loose and plasticy. Sure, it does the trick for lazy couch browsing, but we were sure to keep a wireless rodent handy for anything more taxing than checking our email.

Display and sound

The X775's Harman / Kardon stereo speakers (and bottom-dwelling subwoofer) blast rich, clear sound with negligible distortion, even at maximum volume. The laptop's overall audio fidelity won't be a replacement for a proper sound system or headset, but it definitely won't disappoint in a pinch. Of course, the baked-in Dolby Advanced Audio and Waves Maxxaudio 3 enhancements do a lot of the heavy lifting, and the sound falls noticeably more flat without them. While the enhancements definitely improved the sound overall, some of the default settings were problematic, namely an auto-leveling feature that would auto-adjust for sudden loudness in reaction to the rig's "volume level tone" that plays to indicate what the current windows volume level is at. Suffice to say, having the volume go down when we were trying to crank it up quickly became confusing and frustrating. Still, it was only a minor annoyance. All in all, we found the Qosmio's integrated speakers to be among the finest we've heard on a portable machine.

The Qosmio's 17.3-inch 1920 x 1080 full HD display may be a hair smaller than its predecessor's 18-inch panel, but it sure didn't leave us wanting. The LED backlit TFT display bombarded our pupils with bright, vivid colors, producing an image so sharp, even the textured background of Kung-Fu Hustle's FBI warning looked like a work of art. Screen viewing angles almost overreach the play of the laptop's hinge, displaying only a slight loss in contrast from sharper angles. The X775's screen suffered a common laptop fault: it's just a bit too glossy for outdoor use. Not that you were planning to take the beast into the great outdoors, were you? The top edge of the screen sports a dual-webcam to capture your fancy stereoscopic video blog drama, and an embedded IR emitter so you can enjoy your own greatest hits with the rig's included NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses. The IR / glasses combo also works for watching 3D Blu-ray movies and getting some depth out of 3D Vision enabled games.

Performance and battery life

Does the Qosmio X775's Intel Core i7-2630QM processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M GPU make this ugly duckling pretty on the inside? Let's put it this way: we ran simultaneous instances of Fallout 3, Team Fortress 2, and Crysis -- all fully playable and cranked to high or very high -- while running two tab-overloaded web-browsers and watching a high-definition film on Blu-ray. If that's not a thing of beauty, we don't know what is. The 17-inch gaming powerhouse breezed through just about everything we threw at it, stuttering only when we pushed Crysis to its absolute max. Throwing NVIDIA's 3D switch, however, tended to drop framerate by about half. Portal 2's 50fps stepped down to 27, for instance, and Batman: Arkham Asylum's 30fps average became an unplayable 13. Still, with the 3D gimmick switched off, the X775 has some serious stuff to strut, and we were intentionally cranking every game's settings up to 11. With a few reasonable tweaks, there was nary a title we tried that didn't play well with NVIDIA's 3D vision or break the 100fps barrier.

The Qosmio performed just as adequately wrangling our cluttered work desktop: over 30 open tabs across two web browsers, piled atop Photoshop, two open email accounts, various IRC and chat interfaces, and a couple of word processors? Smooth as silk. PCMark Vantage clocked the Qosmio at 7,900, while its graphic benchmarking cousin, 3DMark06, pegged it at 15,169.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Qosmio X775-3DV78 (Corei7-2630QM, GeForce GTX 560M)	7,900	15,169	1:26
HP Envy 17 (Core i7-740QM, ATI Radeon HD 5850)	6,153	10,787	2:10
HP Envy 14 (Core i5-450M, ATI HD Radeon 5650)	6,038	6,899/1,928	3:51
Dell XPS 14 (Core i5-460M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M)	5,796	6,827/1,955	2:58
Dell XPS M15z (Core i7-2620M, GeForce GT525M 2GB)	8,023	7,317	3:41 / 4:26
Sony VAIO Z (Core i5-450M, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M)	9,949	6,193	4:25
ASUS U33Jc (Core i3-370M, NVIDIA GeForce 310M)	5,574	1,860/3,403	5:10

So, a fabulously vivid 17-inch screen and NVIDIA's latest in portable graphics? Sounds great, but here's the rub: you won't get far without the Qosmio's massive 2-pound AC adapter. Big screens and pretty scenes suck down a lot of power, and the X775 burned through Engadget's standard battery test in only an hour and 26 minutes. Fancy a game while you wait for a flight? Cut that down to a mere 35, and that's without 3D Vision. Paired with the laptop's already cumbersome size, its poor battery life does little more than secure the machine's status as a desktop-replacement -- but then again, gaming rigs aren't known for their electric longevity. The Qosmio will still be a hit at your next LAN party, but don't count on it to get you through your next flight -- or even your next layover.

Configuration options

The X775 is available in three pre-built configurations: budget, mid-range and flagship (we've been playing with the high-end X775-3DV8). Our $1,900 review unit sports a Intel Core i7-2360QM processor, Blu-ray burner, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, dual hard drives with a total of 1.25TB of storage and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M graphics with 3D Vision. A nearly identical machine, sans 3D, can be had in the X775-Q727, a $1,450 rig with the same processor and graphics, but with only 6GB RAM and a single terabyte of storage over two drives. Budget-minded folks can save an additional $250 by stepping down to a Core i5-2410M processor, a single 640GB HDD and a DVD-RW drive. The pre-configured options offer a wide enough range to keep you from feeling out-priced, but if you want to actually customize your machine, you'll need to look to the...

The competition

When it comes to high-performance gaming laptops rocking huge screens, impressive graphics, and baked in 3D tech, it turns out your options are pretty limited -- but we found a few. Our favorite X775 alternative happens to be Dell's Alienware M17x R3, which can be customized to both undercut the X775 in price in performance, or outgun it. A similar configuration to Toshiba's toy (including 3D Vision) will set you back just over $2,100. Its worth nothing however, that the Dell's visuals are powered by an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M, not a 560M.

Of course, if you're willing to forgo Blu-ray drive and silly 3D glasses, there are definitely cheaper options. The Core-i7 ASUS G74SX-BBK7 can be had for roundabout $1,200, and sports the same 17.3-inch screen size, the same 8GB of RAM, and the same GeForce GTX 560M graphics as the Qosmio. If you just need to have everything, you could always spring for MSI's GT780R-057US, a hefty 17.3-inch machine also rocking NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560M, a Core i7-2630QM processor, a 1.5TB hard drive, Blu-ray burner and not just eight, but 16GB of DD3 RAM. Minus the X775's 3D gimmick and doubling its RAM, the MSI beast shares the Qosmio's $1,900 price tag, leaving the buyer a choice: extra RAM or extra depth perception?

Wrap-up

By now, you've probably figured out that Toshiba's latest Qosmio is a bit of a Quasimodo -- beautiful on the inside, but covered in enough repulsive blemishes to give pause to the Esmeralda in all of us. Beneath its rough exterior lies an all in one platform tailor made for the very latest in media entertainment: extreme graphics, a full-HD display, Blu-ray rewritable / DVD combo drive, and even NVIDIA 3D Vision baked right in, glasses included. This package just might be enough to shine through the Qosmio's craggy cast if you're willing to overlook the hunch of its atrocious battery life -- not that you'd want to lug the hefty rig very far anyway. Despite its looks, the X775 is no slacker, and you pay for that performance -- although not as much as you could. Toshiba's total-package toy isn't cheap at $1,900, but considering that you could easily pay an extra few Benjamins for an equivalent configuration of Dell's Alienware M17x R3 (with an NVIDIA 3D Vision package), it's not a bad value. Overall, the Qosmio X775-3DV78 is a solid machine, despite its somewhat bland appearance and annoying quirks. And that suits us fine. After all, didn't your mother always tell you that it's what's on the inside that counts?

Source: Engadget

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 Full review

2011-08-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

Sure, the word is that ultraportables – or 11- to 13-inch laptops – aren't selling particularly well, but that hasn't stopped Lenovo. In fact, the company's had a particular obsession with 11.6-inch lappies over the last six months or so, but sadly each has massively disappointed. Adamantly claiming not to be a netbook, there was first the ThinkPad X100e, which we found to be great in terms of design and size, but seriously hurting (literally!) in thermals and endurance. Then there was the IdeaPad U160, which packed Core i7 CPU power, but had a rather dreadful three hours of battery life. But the third time's got to be the charm, right? The ThinkPad Edge 11 has the same chassis as the other Edge laptops, which hold a special place in our heart, but is powered by an ultra-low voltage 1.33GHz Core i3 U380 processor, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. It's not too shabby for its $549 starting price (the AMD-powered version starts at $449), but has Lenovo learned from the past? Is this the 11-inch notbook (our new term for a machine that looks like a netbook, but is way more powerful) to rival the rest? Read on to find out in our full review.

Look and feel

If the ThinkPad X100e and the ThinkPad Edge 13 swapped DNA – we'll let you use your imagination as to how that could happen -- the resulting offspring would look a heck of a lot like the ThinkPad Edge 11. The 1.1-inch thick / 3.3-pound laptop is about the same size and weight as the X100e, but it's got the Edge's glossy lid, silver edges and red LED implanted in the ThinkPad logo. As you'd expect for the under $500 starting price, the machine is still made primarily of plastic, but it's still got the ThinkPad heritage with an overall sturdy feel and metal hinges. Obviously, you've noticed by now that our unit was adorned with a glossy cherry red cover -- if that's not your thing, it'll also be available in a glossy and matte black.

We're still of the mindset that 11.6-inch laptops are an ideal size – the Edge 11 isn't as small or cramped as a 10-inch netbook, but it's still light and slender enough to fit into a small shoulder bag and leaves some extra room on the airline tray table. (Although we still started longing for our larger-screened 13-inch machine after about four hours of use.) We're not thrilled that the Edge 11 has a vertically-protruding battery bump like the x100e, but at least this time it pays off in runtime. Fear not, we'll be coming back to that soon enough, but now we've got to tell you what ports surround this sucker – there are three USB sockets along with combo headphone / mic, VGA, HDMI, and Ethernet jacks.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

At this point, our love for Lenovo's new "keycaped" chiclet keyboards should be quite well known. The black, matte curved keys are just downright glorious and feel as if they've been molded especially for our fingertips. We typed the entirety of this review on the Edge and found the panel to be quite firm and void of any flex or bounce. The keys actually have just the right amount of give. You'll also notice in the gallery that the function buttons have been shrunken down, but have been adorned with icons of associated shortcuts. Additionally, there are two full sized Shift keys, which meant not having to make any adjustments to our usual hand positioning. Clearly, we have very deep feelings for this keyboard.

Like the X100e, the Edge has the signature red ThinkPad TrackPoint in the middle of the keyboard and a smaller touchpad below. We're pointing stick or nub people – call it what you'd like -- but the touchpad is decently sized if that's your thing. Unfortunately, it's not dimpled like most of the other ThinkPads.The multitouch capabilities are finicky, though we got the hang of two-finger scrolling in Internet Explorer 9 after a bit of trial and error.

Sadly, Lenovo didn't take the X100e's matte screen -- instead, the Edge has glossy 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768-resolution display. A 720p Social Network trailer was plenty bright and clear, but, as per usual, tilting the screen back caused Justin Timberlake's face to blend in with the background. Horizontal viewing angles were also narrow, but tolerable when sharing the screen with a friend. Similar to the Edge 13, the top screen bezel is home to a low-light webcam, which displayed our face fairly clearly during a video call in a dark room. And yes, this "feature" never ceases to creep us out. The speaker strip on the front lip of the machine produced decently loud sound, but didn't seem a loud as the speakers on the Dell Inspiron M101z.

Performance, graphics and battery life

The Edge 11's 1.33GHz Core i3 U380 and 2GB of RAM performed just as you'd expect. We had no issues running multiple programs -- including TweetDeck, Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft Word 2010, GIMP -- and throwing a 720p clip into the mix didn't make it gasp for air. How does it compare to other 11.6-inch laptops we've reviewed lately with AMD's new Nile platform? We can't say we felt the difference between the Edge 11 and the dual-core AMD powered Inspiron M101z, though the benchmarks show that the Core i3-powered ThinkPad has a slight "edge."

Graphics-wise the Edge relies on Intel GMA HD graphics, which is fine for playing back 720p or 1080p video, but unsurprisingly not meant for slaying someone looking to play Civilization V. According to the benchmarks, AMD's integrated ATI graphics are still more powerful than Intel's integrated card.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11	2964	1105	4:42
Dell Inspiron M101z (Athlon II Neo K325)	2572	1311	3:35
ASUS Eee PC 1215N	1924	181/2480	5:42
Acer Aspire One 721 (Athlon II Neo K125)	1814	1235	3:30
Lenovo IdeaPad U160 (Core i7 ULV)	3863	1175	3:10
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e (AMD Athlon Neo)	1511	1060	3:27
ASUS UL50Vf (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	3724	827 / 3438	6:10
Alienware M11x (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2689	654 / 5593	4:30

So, how's the battery life on this one? That's what you've been waiting for, right? Undoubtedly, it's better than both the U160 and the X100e. The 63Whr six-cell battery lasted for four hours and 42 minutes on our video rundown test, which loops the same standard definition video at 65 percent brightness and WiFi on. That translated to about five hours and 15 minutes of cord-free computing when just using the system to chat with friends, check Twitter / websites and write this very review in Word. The runtime is actually better than any of the AMD Nile ultraportables we've reviewed, but obviously not as long as most Atom-powered netbooks with similar batteries. Still, it's a major step in the right direction for these sorts of machines. Also, we should mention we saw no heat issues when testing the Edge 11 – the keyboard stayed cool as did the bottom of the system when working with it on our lap in bed.

Wrap-up

See what happens when you stick with it? Yes, the third time is certainly the charm for Lenovo when it comes to its 11.6-inch laptops. The Edge 11 solves all the major issues we had with the X100e – the little thing didn't double as a space heater and lasted for over five hours on a single charge all the while providing the performance we expect. All that, along with the Edge 11's dapper design and loveable keyboard puts it at the top of our 11.6-inch laptop list with the Dell Inspiron M101z -- we just wish the 11 were available on this side of the Atlantic.

Source: Engadget

FUSION GARAGE GRID 10 TABLET UP FOR PRE-ORDER

2011-08-17T23:43:00.000-07:00

Fusion Garage, the company known for building the disastrous JooJoo tablet, is back with another offering. The Fusion Garage Grid 10 tablet is expected to start shipping on September 15th. It is already up for pre-order from the Fusion Garage website and Amazon.com. The WiFi-only model has a starting price of $499. The WiFi + 3G model is priced at $599.

The Fusion Garage Grid 10 has a 10 inch

SONY Vaio VPCCA16FG

2011-08-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

Overview

VAIO C Series is a notebook PC that brightens up your life with premium design featuring a juicy looking finish. The high-resolution 14 inch screen, 500 GB HDD and high performance GPU with 1GB VRAM provide ample power for everyday use. Count on VAIO C Series to let you shine

Detail Specifications

Platform Notebook PC
Processor Type Intel Core i7 Processor
Processor Onboard

Lenovo LePad A1-07 tablet makes Chinese debut in beach-ready attire

2011-08-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

Lenovo's been playing coy with the A1-07, giving us little to go on since we first caught wind of it at the FCC last month. Well, it appears it's time to ditch those Blurrycam photos for some real-deal promo stills, because this mysterious slate quietly made its debut in China earlier this week -- and from the looks of things, it's already got its mind set on a vacation. Along with a smattering of photographs that picture the slab kicking it seaside, the official LePad A1-07 page shows off some familiar looking specs. As we'd previously heard, this LePad sports a 7-inch, 1024 x 600 display and a microSD slot. Unfortunately, our instincts were also right about the A1-07 lacking Honeycomb; this one's running Android 2.3. What's more, it packs a 1GHz TI OMAP3622 processor -- not the OMAP3621 previously reported -- 512MB of RAM, 16GB of storage, front and back-facing cameras, and a micro-USB port. The LePad A1-07 will set our friends in China back ¥2,500 (about $390), but Lenovo's not giving up US details just yet. Perhaps we'll see this 7-incher on the other side of its late summer vacay, but until then, check out its beach body in the gallery below.

HP Pavilion dm1z (with AMD Fusion) review

2011-08-17T08:41:00.000-07:00

It's crazy to think we've been writing about and waiting for AMD's Fusion platform for close to five years now. Believe it or not, it was back in 2006 that the chipmaker first started talking about its "new class of x86 processors" and the idea of an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) -- a chip that would combine a CPU and a fairly powerful ATI GPU onto the same die. The company promised to have the silicon ready in two years' time, but when 2008 rolled around, it was clear that all it was prepared to release was a series of roadmap slides.

Now, don't get us wrong, those charts and graphs made us pretty giddy about the superior graphics and improved battery life that AMD was promising to bring to affordable ultraportables, but then a year later, when AMD still had only PowerPoint slides to show for itself, we started to think "Fusion" was no more than a drunken fantasy.

And it only got worse -- from 2009 to mid-2010 the company continued to talk up its never-before-seen and highly-delayed chips. (Just a read through the Engadget archives from that period pretty much illustrates that we had lost hope and started to think the chips would never see the light of day.) But then in June of 2010 the unthinkable happened -- AMD finally demoed its first Fusion Bobcat cores, and proved, at least from afar, that the soon-to-arrive ultrathin laptop solution would chew through Aliens vs. Predator, support DirectX 11, and use a lot less power than its previous platforms. It seemed almost too good to be true -- AMD looked ready to stick to its timing and deliver the first Fusion Brazos platform by early 2011.
So, what the heck does Fusion and AMD's history of promises about the platform have to do with HP's new Pavilion dm1z? Almost everything. HP's newest 11.6-inch not-quite-a-netbook (or a notbook as we like to call it) is the first Fusion system to hit the market, and with a dual-core 1.6GHz E350 Zacate processor and AMD Radeon HD 6310 GPU on the same chip it promises... well, everything AMD has promised for so long. According to HP and AMD, the system should last for over nine hours on a charge, play full 1080p content, and perhaps more importantly, not fry our laps as some previous AMD Neo-powered systems have done. For $450, it sounds like a true no-sacrifice system, but is it? Has AMD finally delivered an Intel Atom- / ULV-killer and has HP put it in a no-fuss chassis? We've spent the last week putting this system through the paces -- hit the break to find out if it has been worth the wait!

Look and feel

It's not that we didn't like the look of HP's previous glossy white dm1z, we just happen to like the new version a lot better. As you can see in the images above, HP's toned down the design quite a bit, and while the lid still has a trippy "interlink" imprint, the black, rubbery coating hides it fairly well if it isn't your thing. Even better, the soft-to-the-touch covering extends to the bottom of the system to give the entire thing a cohesive look. Overall, we'd say the black and silver gives the system a rather classic aesthetic, but when you lift up the lid, the silver, swoopy screen hinge exudes a more futuristic or mechanical aura. Something about it seems a tiny bit mismatched to us, but regardless, we really like the way the hinge props up the screen. All that said, the dm1z is a solidly built budget system -- the aforementioned soft plastic makes it feel more durable than glossy laptops, but it naturally isn't as tough as a machine like HP's metal-clad Envy 14.
The dm1z isn't as thin and light as your average 2.8-pound 10-inch netbook or even the 2.3-pound, 11.6-inch MacBook Air, but it's still awfully portable. The chassis has a slight wedge shape – it tapers from 0.8 inches in the front to 1.2 inches in the back – and weighs just about 3.5 pounds. It was actually the perfect size for an airplane tray table; with the system fully open we still had room for our Diet Coke and delicious in-flight pretzels. HP's also put the edge space to good use – surrounding the system are three USB sockets, a combo headphone / microphone jack, VGA and HDMI outputs, and an Ethernet port, which is hidden behind a small, cheap-feeling door. There's also a 2-in-1 card reader on the left edge.

Keyboard, touchpad, and screen

Below that interesting-looking screen hinge is HP's familiar chiclet keyboard. Similar to the one on the HP Mini 210, the matte keys have a rubbery feel to them that makes them feel very comfortable under the fingertips, but also causes them to pick up some unattractive fingerprints. We had no problem typing the brunt of this review on the deck, and the keys themselves have just the right amount of bounce. As far as spacing goes, we have no complaints – HP has managed to squeeze in two full size Shift keys (unlike some others!) and continues to use the function row as a shortcut keys.
Unsurprisingly, our major complaint about the system is related to the touchpad with its integrated mouse buttons. The good news is that the ClickPad has been improved, and HP has added a raised line to distinguish where the buttons start. That line absolutely makes navigating easier, but the 3.2 x 2.0-inch pad is still quite cramped, and because it is so closely located to the keyboard, our wrists repeatedly swiped at it and caused the cursor to jump around the screen. Luckily, you can turn off the touchpad by tapping twice on the small LED in the upper left corner. Disabling the pad and hooking up an external mouse solved those problems for us, but we assume most will be able to get by with the small pad -- it will just take a bit of finger and wrist adjustment. We should also note that multitouch gestures worked fairly well – dragging two fingers down the pad took us down this very webpage quite smoothly.
The 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768-resolution display is standard fare for a budget system. It's decently bright and 720p content looked crisp, but the viewing angles were mediocre. Watching the Green Hornet trailer with a friend was no struggle, but when we sat back from the system with the screen at a 30 degree angle, colors were quite distorted. We've come to expect that sort of screen quality from cheaper systems, but we can't say we expected the full and loud sound that came out of the speaker strip along the front edge of the system. Enhanced with Dolby Audio software, the speakers pumped out our new favorite jam (yes, this remixed version of Rihanna's "What's My Name") quite loudly. The sound is actually shockingly good for this class of laptop.

Performance and graphics

Finally, we arrive at the part of the review we've all been waiting for. The part where we tell you how exactly Fusion performs and if it lives up to all the years of hype. So here goes...
We're not ones for putting too much emphasis on synthetic benchmarks but in this case they speak for themselves. On the performance end, the 1.6GHz E350 processor and 3GB of RAM managed to pull in 2,510 on PCMarkVantage – that's 987 more than a dual-core Atom N550 netbook and 999 more than a previous AMD Neo processor (though, only a few more points than a dual-core Neo processor). Anecdotal performance was in line with that as well – the dm1z felt much faster than any Atom netbook and closer to a ULV laptop like the ThinkPad Edge 11. The Windows 7 Home Premium system saw zero lag while simultaneously running Microsoft Word Starter 2010, TweetDeck, Skype, Trillian, and Firefox with 10 tabs open. Throwing a 1080p video into the mix didn't slow the system either. The only time we really did see the system start gasping for air was when we tried to install Batman: Arkham Asylum while running a few other programs in the background. Swapping out the 320GB 7200RPM hard drive for HP's 128GB SSD option would probably speed things up on the install front, but that will cost you an extra $290.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
HP Pavilion dm1z (AMD Zacate E350)	2510	2213	5:02
HP Mini 5103 (dual-core Intel Atom N550)	1523	143	6:16
ASUS Eee PC 1215N (Atom D525 / NVIDIA Ion 2)	1942	181 / 2480	5:42
Acer Aspire One 721 (AMD Neo Neo K125)	1814	1235	3:30
Dell Inspiron M101z (dual-core AMD Neo K325)	2572	1311	3:35
Lenovo ThinkPad X100e (AMD Athlon Neo)	1511	1060	3:27
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 11 (Core i3 ULV)	2964	1105	4:42
Lenovo IdeaPad U160 (Intel Core i7 ULV)	3863	1175	3:10
Alienware M11x (Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300)	2689	654 / 5593	4:30
Notes: the higher the score the better. For 3DMark06, the first number reflects score with GPU off, the second with it on.

But the appeal of Fusion is that the processing power is matched by some really solid graphics muscle. And as you can see from the chart above, AMD's Radeon HD 6310M graphics absolutely wrecks Intel's GMA 3150 netbook and GMA 4500 ULV graphics solutions. It scored a couple hundred points less than some netbooks with NVIDIA Ion 2, but in everyday use, things ran just as smoothly. The dm1z was able to manage playing local and streaming 1080p video even when output to a 42-inch HDTV. And while the platform isn't intended for heavy gaming, it could still hold its own in Gnomeregan. Oh yes, we fired up WoW: Cataclysm and our gnome was briskly jumping around the screen around 28fps with the resolution set at 1024 x 768. For kicks we also installed Batman: Arkham Asylum, but Batman wasn't exactly happily throwing punches at 19fps.
So, what does it all mean? Basically, AMD's Fusion Zacate platform provides much better overall performance than Intel's Atom and AMD's previous Neo processors. In terms of graphics, the dm1z's comparable to an Ion 2-powered netbook, but the fact that it pairs a solid CPU with a discrete-like GPU makes it a much more well-rounded system than some of those Ion 2 or ULV laptops. In other words, when it comes to power and graphics, the Fusion-powered dm1z provides an almost perfect middle ground for those seeking something in between a netbook and a mainstream system.

Battery life and heat

But AMD's never really had much of an issue providing a good balance of performance and graphics -- its weakness has always been in battery life and thermals. Well, that's where we can say AMD has finally made some serious headway with Fusion. The dm1z's 55Whr, six-cell battery lasted five hours and two minutes on our video rundown test, which loops the same standard definition video with WiFi on and brightness set at 65 percent. In regular usage, the dm1z lasted close to six hours and 15 minutes. Yep, it got us through the entire flight from Vegas to NYC and then some. That's just as long as many six-cell netbooks, and two hours longer than most AMD Neo systems we've tested. Of course, that's not as long as HP's predicted nine hours, but to be honest we never really expected it to live up to that claim – HP and most other laptop manufacturers continue to test these laptops with an antiquated test called MobileMark that requires that you turn off WiFi, and who uses a laptop with WiFi off these days? We wish the companies would stop using such misleading claims, but that's a conversation for another time.

Ready for more good news? The dm1z stayed quite cool during our usage. Nope, not once did it feel like it was overheating our reproductive organs like some past AMD-powered Pavilions -- in fact, it stayed at room temperature most of the time. Those pleasant temperatures can be contributed to AMD's platform improvements, but also to HP's CoolSense technology. HP has designed the vents to direct heat away from the body and has bundled the system with its Thermal Assistant software, which lets you control the settings in different scenarios. We did, however, notice that the fan noise got quite loud at times, notably when playing WoW or firing up a Flash video. It's not all that bothersome, but it is absolutely noticeable.

Software

The first time you boot up the dm1z, you'll notice is that HP's taken some creative freedom with the desktop. Not only does it preload a funky wallpaper of birds on a wire, but it's using a utility called Fences to organize shortcuts into different categories. We're not sure we'd be able to maintain the organization aspect, but we do think it's cool that you can double-click to hide all your desktop icons. Obviously, personal preference will decide if this tool stays or gets the uninstall treatment. Other than that, HP pulls its typical software bundling tricks, which means there seems to be an endless number of Norton and software registration reminder popups, as well as extra browser toolbars. The system also comes preloaded with Skype, Blio's e-reader app, Roxio Movie Store, and a handful of HP's own programs, like MediaSmart and Cloud Drive.

Wrap-up

Is this really happening? After years of waiting has AMD finally done it? Provided a netbook / ultraportable platform that melds really solid performance and graphics with solid battery life? Something that can kick Intel's Atom to the curb, but doesn't require a recharge every two and a half hours? The Pavilion dm1z certainly has all signs pointing to yes – the 11.6-inch system runs for over five hours on a charge while providing full HD playback and great multitasking prowess. Of course, the rest of the market hasn't sat still for systems like the Fusion-powered dm1z, and there are plenty of other good affordable ultraportables out there -- including the $550 Intel ULV-powered ThinkPad Edge 11 and $500 Ion 2-powered ASUS Eee PC 1215N -- but at $450 the dm1z provides the best balance of performance, graphics, and battery life for the price, and to that end, AMD can finally pat itself on the back... even if it did take five years to get here.

Tags: amd, amd bobcat, AMD Fusion, AMD Fusion APU, AmdBobcat, AmdFusion, AmdFusionApu, bobcat, dm1, dm1z, fusion, Fusion APU, FusionApu, hp, HP Pavilion, hp pavilion dm1, HP Pavilion dm1z, HpPavilion, HpPavilionDm1, HpPavilionDm1z, laptop, laptops, pavilion, pavilion dm1, pavilion dm1z, PavilionDm1, PavilionDm1z, review, ultraportable, zacate

7 INCH LENOVO LEPAD TABLET GOES ON SALE IN CHINA

2011-08-17T05:32:00.000-07:00

A new 7 inch Android tablet from Lenovo has gone on sale in China. The new LePad A1-07 has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixels display and runs Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. It is powered by a 1 GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3622 processor. Other specifications include 512MB of RAM, 16GB of storage and front and rear cameras.

The LePad A1-07 also has GPS, a microUSB port, a microSD

LENOVO LAUNCHES THINKPAD EDGE E525 AND E425 BUSINESS LAPTOPS

2011-08-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

Lenovo has made two new additions to its ThinkPad Edge small-to-medium business laptop lineup. The new ThinkPad Edge E525 and E425 both have AMD Fusion A-Series Llano processor and graphics. They also support up to 750GB of hard drive space and up to 8GB of RAM.

It looks like the new laptops are designed for people who do a lot of audio and video conferencing. For instance, they have features

Sony VAIO SB Series Full Review

2011-08-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

We hate to break it to you, dear readers, but we're in the throes of back to school season. In a few short weeks, lots of wide-eyed freshmen will be setting up their dorm rooms and begging off name games during orientation, which means they (and their generous parents) are stocking up on gear now. We've been testing a bunch of budget and mid-range laptops aimed at young folk and pretty much any other mainstream consumer who'd happily forgo some bells and whistles in exchange for a lower price.

So why not start with a review of one of the best? Sony's VAIO SB series is the 13-inch laptop for the kindele who can't afford the VAIO Z, or even the slimmed-down SA series. It offers good specs for the money, a bright, matte display, a solid keyboard, long battery life and a (mostly) well-built design. And while we try not to spoil our reviews, we'll say this: it's one of our favorite mid-range Windows laptops, period. How much do we like the SB? Join us as we count the ways.

LOOK AND FEEL

It can be tough getting all of those VAIO S series notebooks straight, so before we dive in we'll go ahead and set the record straight: this here VAIO SB is the same 13.3-inch VAIO S series laptop Sony brought stateside this spring. It's not -- we repeat, not -- the slightly slimmer, higher-end SA series Sony introduced in May, after the SB laptops were already on sale.

Sony decked out the 0.95-inch thick SB series in a familiar matte magnesium alloy casing that doesn't exactly mask fingerprints, but at least makes them less conspicuous. The lid, also available in white, bubble gum pink and an arresting blue, has an ever-so-slightly textured feel and that same 'ol chrome VAIO logo, emblazoned across the center in large lettering. (Unlike other companies -- ahem, Dell! -- Sony isn't charging a premium for colors that aren't black.) Clearly, Sony hasn't taken any big design risks, and we suspect that's just fine by those customers who already swear by the VAIO brand.

And there are plenty of other ways in which the SB series looks like VAIOs of yesteryear: it's got dedicated switches for turning on WiFi and toggling between "speed" and "stamina" modes; a power button and DC port that glow orange or green depending on whether the laptop is asleep; and dedicated keys for launching the default browser, VAIO Assist, and VAIO Care. And if you've ever seen a VAIO, you know all those buttons and switches are labeled with large, sans serif lettering. We've always been of the mind that this clutters the chassis and can make an otherwise cutting-edge laptop look dated. Judging by Sony's unflinching judgment, though, we gather there are lots of you who don't mind it.

For the most part, the 3.8-pound laptop feels sturdy, though we have to say we were a tad disappointed by the uneven build quality -- something VAIO stalwarts often swear by. Let's start with the good news: the palm rest feels rigid when you hold the 13.04 x 8.84 x 0.95-inch frame one-handed. But, we noticed that even when we set the laptop down lightly, the lid wobbled forward and back -- something we noted on the VAIO Z as well. Once we saw that, we started comparing the display to those belonging to other laptops we happen to have lying around, including an HP Pavilion dv6t, a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 and a year-old MacBook Pro. Indeed, if you apply some finger pressure to the VAIO SB's screen, you'll see it gives way a whole lot more than any of these other models.

As Apple is wont to do, Sony stacked all of the ports and slots on one side, save for a DVD burner and headphone jack on the other -- a potentially crowded, impractical arrangement. Does anyone really want all of their peripherals growing out of the same general area? For what its worth, the group of ports you'll find on the SB's right side is pretty comprehensive, with two USB 2.0 sockets (and one of the 3.0 variety) on board, along with HDMI and VGA output and an Ethernet jack. Moving along, there's also a VGA webcam tucked in the bezel. And for some reason, Sony continues to separate its SD slot from MagicGate -- that is, the one that accepts Sony's own Memory Stick format. An odd choice, we think, but not one that's going to inconvenience you.

Keyboard and Trackpad

As with everything else, Sony hasn't mucked around with its chiclet keyboard. And why should it? The company has long since shifted toward island-style keys, and has had plenty of time to get it right. The backlit panel feels solid, typing is quiet, and Sony also didn't dare shrink essential keys, such as Backspace or either Shift button. The keys themselves also have a soft, matte finish that matches the material used in the chassis and palm rest, a design choice that gives the SB a reassuringly uniform look.

Still, if you're looking for pillowy, tactile keys, you might be disappointed. We said this with the VAIO Z and we'll say it here, too: while the keys aren't uncomfortable to type on (far from it!) they're shallower than most. There's simply less travel with these keys than, say, the MacBook Pro's, though if you're already used to typing on a chiclet keyboard, the learning curve should be gentle.

While playing with the SB, we became keenly aware of how much we've missed touch buttons. We've tested many a laptop with a buttonless trackpad, and more often than not, we've felt underwhelmed by the user experience. Too many instances of the pad mistaking a left click for a right one -- something Synaptics, the leading provider of this technology, says varies depending on the manufacturer. Regardless of who's to blame, it's no fun having a navigation device that doesn't do what you want it to. So -- getting to the point -- the SB's buttons feel tremendous, and provide just the right amount of tactile feedback. They're neither too stiff nor too mushy, and they make a satisfying, low-pitched click.

As for the pad itself, it feels cool and is made of the same magnesium-alloy as the chassis, but using it can be a somewhat exhausting experience; there's a bit too much friction, and you might struggle to make the cursor go where you want it to. We had one vexing episode where the pad simply wouldn't obey us. As we dragged our cursor across the screen, it registered clicks on objects, even when we hadn't pressed one of the touch buttons.

Display and Sound

It might not surprise you that a mid-range $1,000 laptop like this has run-of-the-mill 1366 x 768 resolution. What you might find refreshing, though, is that it comes with a matte, 13.3-inch panel that makes it easy to watch movies from severe side angles or with the lid dipped forward. Believe us when we say that after testing so many laptops with glossy displays, the SB's bright, yet glare-free panel felt like a revelation.

The speakers deliver tinny sound, making even "Rapper's Delight" sound metallic. And although we've more or less resigned ourselves to mediocre audio quality in laptops -- particularly smaller, less expensive ones -- we're pretty sure you can do better, especially with HP loading all of its notebooks up with Beats Audio.

Performance and graphics

Our $999 configuration came with a 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M processor, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB 5400RPM hard drive. That particular CPU, as you might know, can be sped up to 2.9GHz when duty calls. For the money, this configuration also comes with switchable graphics, with an Intel card on the integrated side and an AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 512MB video memory on the discrete. Note that this system does not have NVIDIA's Optimus technology (since there's no NVIDIA card and all), which means although you don't have to restart the system to switch cards, you will have to do it manually and wait a second or two for the change to take.

All told, we had no problem jumping from tab to tab in Chrome, checking email, streaming YouTube videos and chatting with friends, all while downloading and installing programs. The SB also boots in 50 seconds, which is reasonable for a Windows 7 laptop, especially one without an SSD. The fan can get noisy sometimes, though, which is something we complained about when we reviewed the more expensive VAIO Z. For what we'd call mainstream use, it'll do just fine, and we suspect that's all parents buying this for their children really want to hear.

But for those who care about benchmarks, it's worth noting that while the SB's scores are respectable, they're not too hot either. With or without the discrete graphics card enabled, its PCMark Vantage score falls more than 4,000 points behind the new MacBook Air, which doesn't even have a standard voltage processor (it does have an SSD, though). The Air's integrated graphics card also beats the SB's in 3DMark06, although the SB pulls ahead when you enable discrete graphics. Again, the performance is just fine for basic tasks, and if an optical drive is a must-have, then the SB is easily one of our favorite laptops on the market, hands down. But if you can do without physical media, you could get faster performance for a similar price.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
Sony VAIO SB series (2.3GHz Core i5-2410M, Intel HD Graphics 3000 / AMD Radeon HD 6470M)	5,129 (stamina mode) / 5,636 (speed mode)	3,609 (stamina) / 5,128 (speed)	3:39 (speed) / 5:11 (stamina) Extended battery: 9:49 (speed) / 12:21 (stamina)
Early 2011 MacBook Pro with a 2.2GHz Core i7-2720QM CPU and AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics (we reviewed the 15-inch version)	8,041	10,262	Ran a different test
2011 Sony VAIO Z (2.7GHz Core i7-2620M, Intel HD Graphics 3000 / AMD Radeon HD 6650M)	11,808 / 11,855	4,339 / 7,955	4:15 / 8:43
2011 MacBook Air (1.7GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	9,484	4,223	4:12
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 (2.5GHz Core i5-2520M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,787	3,726	3:31 / 6:57
Samsung Series 9 (1.4GHz Core i5-2537M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,582	2,240	4:20
ThinkPad X220 (2.5GHz Core i5-2520M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,635	3,517	7:19
ASUS U36Jc (2.53GHz M460, NVIDIA GeForce 310M)	5,981	2,048 / 3,524	5:30
Toshiba Portege R705 (2.26GHz Core i3-350M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	5,024	1,739 / 3,686	4:25
Notes: the higher the score the better. For 3DMark06, the first number reflects score with GPU off, the second with it on.

Battery Life

Not bad! And we should know: we ran our battery test four times: twice with the sheet battery, twice without, and once each time with the switch flipped to either "Stamina" or "Speed." (For the uninitiated, our battery test involves playing the same movie on repeat with WiFi on and the brightness set to 65 percent.) With just the primary six-cell battery and the system set to "Stamina," we managed five hours and eleven minutes. That time sank to three hours and thirty-nine minutes when we switched to the performance-driven "Speed" mode.

Needless to say, that extended battery works wonders. Set to speed mode, it made it nine hours and forty-nine minutes with four percent juice left at the end. In stamina mode, it lasted twelve hours and twenty-one minutes, again crapping out with four percent charge remaining.

Wireless Display

The SB also supports the second-generation of Intel's Wireless Display technology, which lets you wirelessly mirror your screen on and stream 1080p movies to an HDTV. To do this, you'll need a third-party adapter that connects to your TV or monitor via HDMI. Though some notebooks, particularly Best Buy exclusives, come with a complementary adapter thrown in, the SB requires you to buy it separately. Street prices vary, of course, but Netgear's Push2TV HD, for one, rings in at well under $100 at many retailers.

If you'll recall, when we tested Intel's Wireless Display 2.0 technology with the Toshiba Satelite E305, we found that the adapter was easy to install, and the accompanying WiDi interface is wholly self-explanatory. The 1080p video was also pretty smooth, though you'll want to keep the laptop out of sight while you watch on a bigger screen, as the two will not be out of sync by a second or two.

Configuration options

The configurable version of the SB series starts at $899 under the moniker VPCSB190X. For that price, you'll get a 2.1GHz Core i3-2310M CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB 5400RPM hard drive, DVD burner and Intel integrated graphics coupled with that same AMD Radeon 6470M card and 512MB video memory. This is the only graphics option available.

Ready to upgrade this thing? You can opt for a Core i5-2410M ($80) or an i5-2520M CPU ($130). When it comes to hard drives, you've got two more 5400RPM options -- a 500GB and 750GB -- along with a 500GB 7200RPM number. Other upgrades include a Blu-ray player ($100) or burner ($400), while that sheet battery is on sale for a promotional price of $75 (it regularly costs $150).

And then there's a near-identical VAIO laptop on sale exclusively at Best Buy. This one, dubbed the VPCSC1AFM (see the more coverage link at the bottom of this post), has the same design, for all intents and purposes, along with the same processor, graphics card, memory count, hard drive, Blu-ray player and Intel Wireless Display technology as the SB series laptop we're reviewing today. And, it includes a 4G radio and a WiDi adapter -- something you'll have to purchase as a separate peripheral if you configure yours through Sony. All this for $979.99. Just sayin', friends.

The competition

Sony has come out and said that the SB series is meant to compete directly with the 13-inch MacBook Pro. So let's take the company up on that claim and dig into it, shall we? For starters, the 13-inch MBP starts at $1,199, $300 higher than the entry-level SB series. For the money, you'll get the same 2.3GHz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 1280 x 800 display, integrated Intel graphics, a 320GB 5400RPM hard drive and a non-removable battery that promises up to seven hours of battery life. It also has two USB 2.0 ports, a Thunderbolt socket, FireWire 800, an Ethernet jack, SD card slot and headphone and mic ports, along with a DVD burner. Although we haven't had a chance to test the two laptops' batteries head to head, it's clear that the VAIO SB offers the same (and sometimes better) specs for less money. The MBP also weighs more, at 4.5 pounds. You might still pay more for the MacBook Pro because you prefer Mac OS X (or at least, Macs' industrial design). Just don't fool yourself into thinking you're getting superior innards for those extra Benjamins.

And though the new MacBook Airs weren't around when Sony dreamed up the SB series, it's still worth comparing the two, since the 13-inch Air replaces the 'ol white plastic MacBook as Apple's entry-level 13-inch laptop. To recap, the 13-inch Air starts at $1,299 with an ultra low voltage 1.7GHz Intel Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive. It has no discrete graphics option or optical drive, and is much thinner than the SB series, at 0.68 inches thick. The tradeoff, then, is that although the SB series weighs more, it offers standard voltage processors, more RAM and storage space to start (but not in the form of an SSD), along with an optical drive. We'll be honest: we're enamored with both -- albeit, for a different combination of reasons. The SB is less expensive and offers an optical drive (something some of us want), along with more ports and storage space. The Air is pricier, of course, but for those who can swing the cost and won't miss DVDs, it's skinnier, lighter, faster and offers slightly better integrated graphics performance (or so say the benchmarks, anyway).

But Sony's wrong to think this is just a two-horse race between the S Series and Apple's lineup. There's a whole market full of 13-inch PCs out there. Though it has a 14-, not 13-inch screen, we'd be remiss if we didn't touch on the HP Envy 14, just because it's a similarly sized laptop that starts at a comparable price of $999. Like many of the others listed here, it starts with the same 2.3GHz Core i5 processor, but it steps up to a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive, 6GB of RAM, an eight-cell battery and AMD Radeon HD 6630 graphics with a full gigabyte of dedicated video memory. It, too, has a backlit keyboard, and its basic warranty lasts two years, not one. We haven't yet reviewed the version with Sandy Bridge, so we can't say how the battery life compares to the SB's -- and we also can't vouch for its touchpad, which has been the Achilles heel for many an HP notebook we've tested. That said, on paper, at least, the Envy 14 can give the VAIO SB a run for its money.

And yes, there are laptops that arguably best the SB series when it comes to specs. Take the new Gateway ID47, for example. Depending on whether you're in the US or Canada, you'll find different configurations. Actually, there's just one available in the states, but it's a good example of what you can get for less money. For $700, you get the same 2.3GHz Core i5 CPU as our SB review unit, along with the same memory count (4GB) and a 500GB 5400RPM hard drive. We can't predict taste, of course, but we have a feeling some people would prefer the 4.6-pound metal-clad ID series, especially since it crams a 14-inch panel into a chassis normally reserved for 13-inch systems. And yes, the resolution there is also 1366 x 768, but some will appreciate the fact that the bezel takes up so much less space. The biggest drawback could be that it packs Intel integrated graphics, whereas the VAIO SB offers switchable cards for a starting price that's $200 higher.

SOFTWARE

We'd say the SB comes with more bundled software than your typical laptop. That's largely thanks to VAIO Gate, a dock that sits on top of the screen with a small flap showing, and flies down when you hover your cursor over it. If you've seen a Dell laptop in recent years, you'll know what we mean when we say it's kind of like Dell Dock. It's really just a row of shortcuts to your favorite apps. We can see where this may have improved the user experience back during the Vista era, but even then folks were free to customize the Start Menu and desktop. Now that we've moved on to Windows 7, though, having this dock layered on top of the OS doesn't make sense -- not when you can just pin programs, along with websites and files. In any case, if it's not your thing, you can uninstall it.

Other than that, the SB series comes loaded with a mix of VAIO-branded programs and your typical roster of third-party apps, including Microsoft Office 2010 and Norton Internet Security. Sony's own software includes Evernote for VAIO, VAIO Messenger, VAIO Smart Network, VAIO Help and Support and VAIO Care, which we mentioned earlier. As you might have noticed, the computer booted quickly even with these programs on board, and we'd add that Sony's utilities were generally less intrusive than, say, the ones we've seen bundled on HP laptops.

Wrap-up

In general, we tread carefully when someone asks us, "What laptop should I buy?" People have different budgets and performance needs, and there's also no accounting for taste. There's no absolute answer, and that's why we're thankful there are so many models to choose from.

But the VAIO SB is a rare laptop that we've been recommending left and right. The price is right for so many people, as is the performance, design and long battery life. This notebook is going to please a lot of people -- not just students, but many a mainstream user as well. Simply put, this is one of our favorite 13-inchers with an optical drive. We do think that those who can live without DVDs might prefer the MacBook Air, as it's thinner, lighter and has a faster solid-state drive (albeit, with fewer gigabytes to spare). Other than that caveat, though, there's no reason why the SB shouldn't be on your shortlist if all you're after is the elusive laptop that performs well, weighs very little and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Source: Engadget

The Engadget Interview: Fusion Garage's Chandra Rathakrishnan

2011-08-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

The most telling moment of our conversation with Chandra Rathakrishnan came at the end, just before the recording device shut off. The interview wrapped, and we politely thanked the Fusion Garage CEO for taking the time to speak with us. "Thank you for taking the time," he echoed, adding, "And for giving us another chance." Rathakrishnan never goes so far as to use the word "failure" to describe the company's poorly received JooJoo tablet -- at least not during the course of our interview -- but it seems clear that he harbors few illusions with regards to what the device truly was: a misfire. A grandiose experiment that was rushed out the door far too fast, with far too few resources.

The device's origins weren't all that pretty, either. The company teamed up with TechCrunch to offer up a $200 internet tablet dubbed the CrunchPad -- a plan that soon soured, with the two parting ways on a less-than-positive note. Fusion Garage rebranded the CrunchPad the JooJoo, and began a long journey of delays and price hikes. Despite its best efforts, it missed the boat, failing to release the device ahead of Apple's industry shaping iPad. When the 4GB tablet finally hit the market, it carried a $499 price tag -- more than double its initial utopian target.

Read on for the full interview.

The reviews weren't kind either. We gave the slate a three out of ten. Not surprisingly, the device failed to catch fire -- and while Rathakrishnan insists that sales weren't quite as dismal as reported, it's hard to imagine a yardstick by which the JooJoo might be considered a success. A firmware update did help matters a bit, but it was too little too late. So Fusion Garage regrouped, and in an industry where second chances for startups seem far-fetched at best, the company went undercover, working on a mystery campaign launched to coincide with the Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC.

A lot of money and resources were clearly poured into the promotion, which included a series of viral videos and the purchase of a sponsored tweet for the duration of August 15th -- the day of the company's big reveal. Whether that price actually bought the Rathakrishnan and Co. a second chance is debatable -- it did, however, afford Fusion Garage a level of press it might not have earned had it continued with business as usual. Whatever their reactions may have been to the actual announcement, people did genuinely want to know who precisely this TabCo company was.

Rathakrishnan dominated the stage during the strange little press conference, debuting the Grid 10 tablet, the Grid 4 phone and the Grid operating system, which tied the whole show together. In spite of building the OS on top of the Android kernel, Rathakrishnan also used the platform to tear into the Google mobile OS and the tablets that utilize it. The company, it seems, has no illusions about going toe to toe with Apple this time around, but the CEO is maintaining a sense of unflinching faith in the product's ability to succeed on its own merits -- even if convincing users to actually give the thing a shot will be an uphill battle.

We sat down with Rathakrishnan the night of his company's big unveiling to discuss the mistakes of the JooJoo, the importance of the Grid OS and why he believes that Fusion Garage deserves that second chance.

Have you learned your lessons from the JooJoo? Is this new tablet the result of those lessons?

I think [the JooJoo was] product that was delivered ahead of it being ready. I think we tried to rush it to the market too fast, with too little resources. We were a 14-man company then, and as much as we were earnest, we were a little overstretched in believing we could deliver a product that could challenge or create a category. So, I definitely think that was one lesson learned. The second one was that the world is going towards the web or the internet, but I don't think it's quite ready yet. I think we basically need to look at a hybrid world before that's gonna happen. I don't think that anyone is trying to do that really well today. You've seen that with the Chrome OS, trying to be completely web and nothing else. I think that's not the right path to pursue, given the expectations of the market today.

Obviously there were some things that you applied from that experience. The Grid 10 has built-in memory and expandable memory as well. Are there any other clear things that you can point to -- hardware differences between the two devices that were a direct result of the JooJoo's failings?

I think that goes beyond the hardware, because if you look at the OS itself, it's completely different right now. It's a new generation built on the Android kernel. Everything on top of that kernel has been changed almost beyond recognition to deliver what we've delivered today. It's night and day, the JooJoo was a web-only OS, and this is really what I would call groundbreaking. It's innovative, it's completely different from anything that anyone has tried to deliver since 2007, after the iPhone. So, I think that's one critical difference, having a new generation OS that's completely different in its functionality -- a different approach to UI, how we deal with the animations, all of that.

The second one's apps -- the ability to have local and native apps. I think this is a very critical thing. We obviously delivered that today in two ways: One with the support for Android apps. The API framework is being retained. You get almost immediate app support, because through the Amazon app store, you can download any of these Android apps on the Grid 10. And with the Grid Shop, I think what we are trying to do is trying to get the best of both worlds -- leverage the Android ecosystem of app developers and let them leverage the additional APIs and the wrappers that we have created to take advantage of the significant UI work and functionality that goes with the OS. So I think that's another area that is critically different.

When you look at the hardware itself, while I thought the JooJoo was pretty good hardware, it was a little too big -- 12 inches was pushing it. I think the market has clearly shown that somewhere between nine and 10 inches is probably the sweet spot, and that's exactly what we've tried to deliver this time around. So obviously there's 16GB of on-board storage that we didn't have last time around. There's expandable memory with the microSD slot. It's really different from a hardware standpoint, and this is one hell of a sexy design -- it's really sleek, it's slim, it's a 10.1 inch that is 16 x 9 aspect ratio which gives you a 1366 x 768 resolution.

It seemed as though you were rushing the clock with the release of the JooJoo -- that you were trying to beat the iPad to market. Was that what it felt like at the time?

Yeah, I think that was part of the reason, and also, with the time we had and the resources we had, it was just unbalanced. It's a very difficult thing to try and do hardware and an OS with the people that we had. But it's very different now, we have 100-plus people. We've raised tens of millions of dollars, and we've grown to a point where we are not just doing the OS, we're trying to make sure that the experience is complemented with the various things that you need to make this product a success.

You mentioned how much the staff has grown recently, and obviously a lot of money went into the ad campaign. Where is the money is coming from?

The funding is coming largely from Asia. Angel investors and professional investors from the region. That tells you the amount of confidence people have in our vision. Like you said, the JooJoo wasn't a successful product. We all know that. We're not hiding from the fact that we rushed the product and knew it wasn't good enough, so we discontinued sales the moment we realized we weren't going to be able to make that better than it already was. And we want to give [JooJoo buyers] a free Grid 10 as a token of appreciation on our part, to say "thank you for supporting us during the period where we didn't get this right." But we're gonna nail this one, and the investment that we are getting is helping us to provide the resources to do this the right way.

How many JooJoos did you actually sell?

Well, we are not revealing numbers, but I can guarantee you that it is way more than the rumored numbers you were getting.

At today's press conference, it seemed that you were essentially telling us that you presented the device [as TabCo] to give the product a fair shake. Do you feel like you were treated unfairly by the press?

Previously? I think it was balanced. I mean, if the production is not good enough and people are calling it out for what it is, you can't hide from that. We've never tried to hide from that. I think we just needed the time away. We had to show them what we were capable of, and that's what we have done. The press gave us a fair deal. They heard us. They wanted us to succeed. I don't think anyone wanted us to fail, but the hype of the product didn't live up to its performance. I think the press was doing its job.

Taking all of that into consideration, was it difficult when you were pitching this product around, trying to get all that funding?

It's never easy, especially with the economy the way it is. You need to have a special vision, and you've got to have the ability to assure that you can make money. We obviously need to have the right financial support, otherwise we would not be attempting to do what we are doing. While it was difficult, I think the investors showed faith in the vision we had, and I think they were patient enough to let us execute it within the time we needed. We had been away for a year. We had our heads down. We were focusing on getting the product right before getting it out there.

So there never was any question that there was going to be a new tablet coming out from Fusion Garage?

Back in the day, when the [expletive] was hitting the fan, I think I would be lying to you if I said we were sure that this would all pan out the way it has. We knuckled down and accepted reality for what it is. The team that stayed behind believed in the vision as well, and we had the passion to just take the pressure -- take the hit -- and focus on what we had to do. People were saying we were not communicating, people were saying we had left all our customers in a lurch, but we had to be patient through all that process.

Did you consider a more traditional Android route when you were working on all the prototypes?

No, I don't think that's in our DNA at all. If you look at what we were trying to do with the JooJoo, while it wasn't successful, I don't think anyone can take away from the fact that we were trying to create a category that didn't exist. There was no lack of trying on our part. Like I said, we were earnest, but I don't think we realized the size of the task, along with the resources we had, and the fact that we had to rush it so that it came out at the same time as the iPad was just insane.

Are there any Android tablets out there that are doing a good job?

No. I think the benchmark is the iPhone and the iPad, and that's the benchmark that we're trying to raise up. I don't think Android has been good enough.

So why use the Android kernel if it's a flawed system?

There are two things that Android has that are pretty solid. One, the fact that there is a very strong kernel that has been worked on for years. Even Apple did not try to start from scratch. They built on top of UNIX. We approach Android in a similar fashion. We took the kernel and completely branched out. This is no re-skin. This is a complete change from what Android is. It was stable, and it was in a good position for us to leverage and build on top of it.

The second thing is the app support. I think it is one thing to say you are going to have a lot of apps eventually, but I think it is another thing to say that you have app support from day one. Android has an ecosystem that is maybe not as striving as Apple, but it is there, and I think it was important to leverage that ecosystem right from the beginning.

The Android ecosystem is thriving, the iOS ecosystem is thriving. Palm / HP, on the other hand, is having difficulty bringing developers over to its side. Do you foresee difficulty on your end getting people to develop for your specific app store?

No, for two reasons. One, the compelling experience that we give will see consumer adoption, and the developers will come. The second thing is, if we were asking people right from day one to trust that it's going to get adopted, trust that its going to be great, trust that we are going to be able to deliver this so you should start writing for us from day one, that's not going to work. That's what webOS is trying to do, and that's what everyone else coming up with something new is trying to do. What we are telling people is that you already have an Android app, it already works well. We have the Grid Shop, we'll have it for our devices, and if this goes the way we say it's going to go, then you can easily extend upon that and use our API to provide a way better experience that ties in back to the innovations that we have created.

How do you convince consumers, when all everyone knows is the iPad and a handful of Android tablets? How do you convince users that this is a better experience for them?

While Apple is thriving, I'm not sure that everyone is really happy with the current conditions in the App Store. You see it with all the newspapers and magazines that are all trying to come out with their own HTML5 version to try and bypass the App Store. That tells you that they do not want to be held for ransom. We are starting to see people rebel, they are looking for alternatives that can let them rise to that challenge. I think we are seeing that in discussions we've been having in private as well.

The second thing is, if you're looking at Android, it's one thing to say the Galaxy S is selling very well, and it's another to say how Android marketplace actually works, and is it easy for people to find apps on these devices? I don't think this is happening in the way that this is happening with Apple. Both sides have a different set of problems, and I think that presents an opportunity for someone to take advantage of it. That's exactly what we are trying to do with the innovations that we have created.

What kind of goals do you have? What would you consider a successful amount of units shipped by the end of the year?

If you are spending the kind of money we are spending with the marketing campaign and the product development that we've invested over a year in, we clearly have financial goals. We clearly have business goals that we are looking to achieve, but I don't think it's about that right now. I think it's about awareness and about market acceptance and penetration, which is our focus. I think it's too early to talk about numbers right now. We want people like yourself to pick up the device when we give you a review unit and for you to say, "Wow, these guys have a chance. These guys have come up with something that is completely different." And I think that's exactly what we are looking for in the first phase of this roll-out. That's what we are expecting from consumers who are picking the device up from us.

Do you feel like you're overreaching at all by launching two devices in two totally distinct spaces?

It is two very different spaces. But the way we built this allows it to power more than one device, and I think it shows the seriousness of what we are trying to embark on and the commitment to the market when we launch two devices. I think it sends a completely different message about how serious we are about this, how confident we are about this, and how we believe this will shape both those spaces.

You did mention that you will be announcing carriers at some point. Do you have carriers lined up for this handset?

It's very early to say this right now. We are still in discussions. As the new Fusion Garage, we'd rather have the news first and then make the announcement, rather than promise and not deliver on it.

How many people attended the event today?

It wasn't a public event for sure. It was an event that had friends of the company, our suppliers and relationships and people working on the content side. This was a closed event that was attended by people who are part of the extended family, rather than by the public.

You weren't really reaching out to the press at that point?

The press was there. We obviously wanted the media to attend. That's why we did reach out to the media. I think the announcement was done the way it was done to show the seriousness of what we are trying to do, and to show how much we believe in the innovation that we've created.

We're not Apple. If I were to call you guys and say that Fusion Garage is trying to make an announcement about how they are coming back into the market, how many of you would really attend the event? And how many would have taken us seriously given what has happened in the past? So we're definitely confident. I know who I am, but I also know who I'm not.

VIEWSONIC LAUNCHES VIEWPAD 10PRO WITH ANDROID AND WINDOWS

2011-08-16T04:18:00.000-07:00

The ViewSonic ViewPad 10Pro 10 inch Android tablet has started shipping in the US. The company has been showing off the tablet since early this year.

The ViewPad 10Pro has a 1.5GHz Intel Atom Z670 processor and a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixels capacitive touchscreen display. Other specifications include 2GB of RAM, up to 32GB of storage, Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11b/g/n and HDMI output port. The

SOLAR POWERED SAMSUNG NC125 NOW AVAILABLE IN THE US FOR $392 AND UP

2011-08-16T03:11:00.000-07:00

The solar powered Samsung NC125 netbook has started shipping for $392 and up. For about 2 hours of charging in direct sunlight, the netbook will get up to 1 hour of runtime.
The Samsung NC125 was introduced a few months ago. It is designed for the developing world where access to solar power is far more reliable than access to electricity. Nonetheless, the company is offering the netbook in the

TARGET OFFERS $100 GIFT CARD WITH ACER ICONIA TAB A500 ANDROID TABLET

2011-08-16T02:28:00.000-07:00

Retailer Target has launched a promotion on the Acer Iconia Tab A500 Android tablet. As part of the promotion you will get a $100 gift card when you pick the Iconia Tab A500 for $399. That doesn't necessarily mean that you will get the tablet for $299. But if you were planning to do some other shopping at Target, then it is effectively the same.

The Iconia Tab A500 has a 10.1 inch 1280 x 800

SONY Vaio VPCYB15AG

2011-08-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Overview

VAIO Y Series (YB) is a mobile PC featuring 11.6-inch high-resolution screen and AMD Dual-Core Processor combined with discrete-class graphics — great for viewing video and playing games. Enjoy your free time or boost your productivity with this handy PC. In lively Green to liven up your day.

AMD Dual-Core Processor E-350 with AMD Radeon™ HD 6310 Discrete-Class Graphics
Genuine

Acer Iconia Tab A100 review

2011-08-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

It's been nine months -- nine months! -- since Acer first announced it was getting into the tablet game, with a promise of both 7- and 10-inch slates. Well, the 10-inch Iconia Tab A500 has been on the scene for months, but until now we've been tapping our feet impatiently waiting for the other tab to drop. Acer came out and said it wouldn't be here until the second half of the year, and meanwhile we'd heard rumors it would arrive in September and that it was delayed due to "Honeycomb compatibility issues".

Well, folks, dog years later it's finally here. Say hello to the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the company's first 7-inch tablet, and the first 7-inch tablet to run Android 3.2. Other than its OS, its specs are fairly run-of-the-mill: a Tegra 2 SoC, five- and two-megapixel cameras, and micro-USB and micro-HDMI ports. And rejoice, geeks, because that's vanilla Honeycomb loaded on there -- you won't find any custom skins or proprietary widgets clogging your home screens. As much promise as these vitals might have for nerds, though, Acer is clear the tablet is for mainstream consumers ("moms," among others, according to the press release). We're not sure how your mother would feel about the precious pattern on the back, but chances are she'd appreciate the bargain factor: the 8GB version costs $329.99 while the 16GB number rings in at a reasonable $349.99, undercutting the 16GB HTC Flyer by $150. We've been lucky to get some quality time with the A100 the past few days, and let's just say we're coming away with some mixed feelings. But do we like it enough that we feel this little guy was worth the wait? That's a toughie, guys.

At 0.92 pounds, the A100 is heavier than the 0.83-pound Samsung Galaxy Tab and on par with the 0.9-pound BlackBerry PlayBook and 0.93-pound HTC Flyer. At first glance, it looks thinner than average, thanks to its nearly flat surfaces and the fact that it's a shade slimmer than the 0.52-inch -thick HTC Flyer. But then you pick up a PlayBook, just four tenths of an inch thick, and the A100 suddenly feels like more of a burden.

But because of its more e-reader-like shape, it feels deceptively lighter than the Flyer. At 4.6 inches tall, it's narrower in portrait mode, making it that much easier to cradle with two hands and pound out emails using both thumbs. But with a width of 7.68 inches, it stretches farther in landscape mode, which means, conversely, that depending on the size of your hands, you might feel a bit more of a stretch in your fingers while tapping onscreen objects. Also, the bezel is bigger on the two short sides, which means if you're holding the A100 in landscape mode, you'll have more blank space flanking the display than if you held it in portrait.

Aesthetically, the A100 seems to take some design cues from laptops -- some slightly outdated ones, at that. The back cover has a navy finish with a pattern of thin, golden ribbons stretching from edge to edge. The back side is also stamped with Acer's logo, though we think it might have looked more elegant without it. There's also the five megapixel main camera on the back, along with an LED flash next to it.

The flip side to the A100's clean lines and squared-off corners is that there isn't much to hold onto. As dense as the Flyer is, we've always been endeared by the rubberized panels on the back, as they make the tablet easy to grip. The A100 has a glossy plastic back cover with a subtle contour that puffs out ever-so slightly in the center and tapers near the edges. Make no mistake: this isn't really an issue of ergonomics -- you're not likely to drop the A100 to an untimely death. There's just something to be said for the tactile experience of resting your fingers on rubber or cold aluminum instead of warm, slippery plastic.

On the front, you'll find the two megapixel secondary camera up top, with a home button built into the lower bezel. That button isn't a physical key, per se, in the sense that you don't push it, but tap it. Still, the home icon doesn't glow, but is instead painted so that it's always visible. And there's no haptic feedback, so it doesn't feel quite like interacting with the usual array of keys on an Android device. People who know their way around Honeycomb might find this addition redundant, but we often found it handy while using the tab in landscape mode.

Completing our tour, there's a glowing power / lock button on the same edge as the front-facing camera, so if you were holding the tablet in portrait mode these would be sitting on top. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack up there. On the opposite edge, below the home button, there are two small speakers on either end, with a micro-HDMI port, docking connector, and a micro-USB socket in between. (That docking connector, by the by, works with the same optional dock that was released around the time the Iconia Tab A500 came out.) Finally, if you were to cradle the slate in landscape mode, you'd see a lever to lock the screen orientation, a volume rocker, and a door hiding microSD slot. There's another slot next to it, but it's covered, and although it's the perfect spot for a SIM card, Acer just refuses to comment. We do wish that Acer labeled those volume buttons, though once you use them enough times you'll know which is which. On the bright side, we appreciate that the company made the external storage so easy to access unlike -- ahem -- some tablets we've tested recently.

Display and sound

The 7-inch (1024 x 600) display has something of a split personality as far as viewing angles go. On the one hand, you won't miss any detail if you're sharing the tablet with a friend and happen to be watching a YouTube clip from an awkward side angle. We did just that with Lady Gaga's "On the Edge of Glory" video, and even when viewing from oblique vantage points we could make out the smoke in the background along with the purple soundstage sky. On the other hand, trying to watch something with the tablet set down on a table in front of you is an exercise in futility. Forget a washed-out spot here or some color distortion there -- what you'll see is contrast so severe that you'll think you're looking at an inverse of whatever it is you were watching.

On the plus side, the sound quality is surprisingly decent, especially considering that we don't even have high hopes for audio on laptops, much less tablets. That catchy Lady Gaga number we mentioned? A pleasure to listen to, with a minimum of tininess and no one instrument overwhelming the others. The volume, as you might imagine, is pretty weak -- even cranked to the max, it felt just a half notch above our comfort level.

Cameras

Considering that tablet cameras typically offer mediocre image quality at best, we were pleasantly surprised by the A100's five megapixel rear sensor, which rendered natural-looking colors and did a fine job of capturing close-ups (in the gallery, you'll notice one sample in which the camera focused on the background instead of the foreground). We were less impressed by the two megapixel front-facing camera, which cast a faint blue tint over some of our shots. Many of our photos taken from that vantage point were also blurry -- and not from a failure on our part to stand still.

Software

The A100 makes a claim that's worth repeating: it's the first 7-inch tablet to run Android 3.2. In a move that will please geeks, the company went with vanilla Android, and refrained from topping it off with any proprietary skins or widgets. That's good news for people who know their way around Honeycomb, though we do think it's curious that Acer didn't attempt to make it any more user-friendly, as Lenovo did with the IdeaPad K1.

Acer also didn't add much in the way of popular apps, as Lenovo and Toshiba did with their recent slates aimed at mainstream consumers. You will, however, see Docs to Go, along with a lone card game (Solitaire). Acer did throw in one proprietary app of its own -- SocialJogger, a Facebook / Twitter aggregator. And, of course, the company bundled clear.fi its own home-brewed software for sharing media with over devices over a shared WiFi network.

Performance

Though Acer doesn't highlight this in it press materials, the main advantage to having Android 3.2 is the apparent performance boost. Like so many other tablets on the market, the A100 packs a 1GHz Tegra 2 processor. In general, we think the SoC has performance limitations, with some visible lags being fairly typical. That said, the A100 fares well. Apps are quick to open and minimize, and the display responds smoothly to taps and swipes. The A100 also has Flash 10.3 on board, and while it loaded sites a bit more briskly than other Honeycomb tablets, the difference was subtle, at best. It's definitely not a reason to consider buying this over another slate.

And while benchmarks don't tell the whole story, we were encouraged to see that its scores in Nenamark 1 and 2 and the mobile browser test Vellamo bested those we got out of 10-inchers such as the Lenovo IdeaPad K1. (This was the first time we tried to run the popular Quadrant on an Android 3.2 device, and the app crashed every single time.) In this patchwork of tests the A100 even bested the Toshiba Thrive, which in turn delivered numbers similar to the Galaxy Tab 10.1. It's nice, then, to see evidence that as cutesy as the A100 is, it might actually play in the same league as bigger, more expensive models.

We also had mixed luck in the stability department. While some apps, such as Tweetdeck, ran smoothly, others, including Amazon Kindle, force closed. Additionally, the accelerometer is way too sensitive. During our testing, it routinely flipped the screen's orientation when we didn't mean it to. It makes us appreciate other tablets, such as the K1, that pause before moving from landscape to portrait and back.

Benchmark	Score
Quadrant	Would not run
Linpack	28.38 MFLOPS (single thread) / 55.36 MFLOPS (multi-thread)
Nenamark 1	57 fps
Nenamark 2	24.5 fps
Vellamo	1,057

Battery Life

The diminutive A100 houses a small 1,530mAh battery that promises up to five hours of juice if you're just doing things over WiFi, and up to four and a half hours of 720p video playback. We say, that's about right. In our standard battery test, which involves playing the same movie on repeat with WiFi on and the brightness set to 50 percent, it lasted four hours and 54 minutes. The numbers don't lie: that's one of the shortest runtimes we've recorded on a tablet. Why, even the original Samsung Galaxy Tab lasted six hours and change. Not to mention -- after the 10-inch Iconia Tab A500 crapped out after less than seven hours, we would have hoped that Acer would have gone back to the drawing board and paid more attention to battery life, especially since the A100 was late to market anyway. It would seem that Acer either sacrificed a larger battery to keep the tablet small, or it wrongfully assumed that mainstream consumers don't care about longevity. Either way, we'd say that treating battery life as an afterthought is unwise.

	Battery Life
Acer Iconia Tab A100	4:54
Apple iPad 2	10:26
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	9:55
Apple iPad	9:33
HP TouchPad	8:33
Lenovo IdeaPad K1	8:20
Motorola Xoom	8:20
T-Mobile G-Slate	8:18
Archos 101	7:20
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook	7:01
Acer Iconia Tab A500	6:55
Toshiba Thrive	6:25
Samsung Galaxy Tab	6:09

The competition

If you're dead set on a 7-inch tablet, it probably means you've given your options some thought and decided you prefer that size to more ubiquitous 10-inchers. So in that sense, comparing the different screen sizes feels like something of an apple-to-oranges comparison. Still, we can see people eyeing this inexpensive tablet as a gift for a not-so-tech-savvy person, in which case they might well be pitting the A100 against obvious contenders such as the iPad and Galaxy Tab 10.1. The big draw in that case will almost certainly be the price: the 16GB A100 costs $150 less than an iPad or Galaxy Tab 10.1 with the same amount of storage. It doesn't hurt that the A100 is fast and runs the latest version of Android (granted, that's a feature mainstream users might not care about). Still, the iPad and 10.1 are thinner, and both last at least twice as long on a charge.

As for 7-inch tablets, your main options aside from the A100 are the original Galaxy Tab, the BlackBerry PlayBook and the HTC Flyer / EVO View 4G (pictured in the gallery above). The PlayBook, as you'll recall, is thinner and lighter, but also more expensive, with a starting price of $499 for 16GB. The OS is still a work in progress of sorts, with more functionality yet to come (like, you know, a native email app). The HTC Flyer, too, costs $499 for 16GB and doesn't even include the $80 stylus if you purchase it in the US. That said, it offers better battery life and arguably better ergonomics, but it's just as heavy, slightly thicker, and it doesn't run Honeycomb. For those of you who live outside Europe, there's the Galaxy Tab, which is almost a year old and still doesn't run Honeycomb (officially). And though its battery life trumps the A100's, it still trails other tablets we've tested.

Wrap-up

Who knew the long-awaited Acer Iconia Tab A100 would turn out to be such an odd bird? On the one hand, the press release specifically calls out moms as potential customers and indeed, the company caters to them with an unabashedly feminine design. And yet, it's also a curiosity for geeks, given that it's the first 7-inch tablet to run Android 3.2. We don't mean to imply that there aren't any lady geeks out there (you're listening to one right now!), but soccer mamas and nerds make for an unlikely combination -- is there really a whole lot of overlap there? As it is, we think the tablet might alienate both groups. Do mainstream users care if a tablet runs Android 3.2 as opposed to 3.1 or even 3.0? Are there many geeks jonesing for a design that so unsubtly panders to women? And does anyone want a device offering half the battery life of its competitors? We're guessing not on all counts.

Acer simply isn't doing a good enough job of convincing mainstream shoppers that the latest version of Honeycomb on a 7-inch tablet offers a better user experience than an iPad. And if Acer is banking on women choosing a 7-inch tablet just because they have tiny fingers, then that's some misguided strategy too. People will choose the 7-inch form factor because it seems like the perfect balance between mobility and screen real estate, not because a 10-inch slate is too unwieldy. And if anything, we can more easily see a low-tech person picking up an HTC Flyer -- yes, it runs Gingerbread with Sense, but that would at least ring familiar to folks who aren't as gung-ho about their gadgets, but have at least mastered a smartphone.

Meanwhile, the company might have just burned a bridge with nerds who wouldn't be caught dead toting anything whose pattern looks like fishnets -- or that has sub-five-hour battery life, for that matter. Sure, it runs Android 3.2, but it won't be long before other tablets get updated to this version of Honeycomb and start reaping the performance benefits. The A100 isn't making a persuasive case for geeks either, then. And it's a shame, because the company might have had more success if it went after that person -- the enthusiast who has done his or her homework and decided 7 inches is the ideal size for a tablet. The person who can appreciate the value in having the latest version of Android. Acer should have gone after those people, and come up with more compelling reasons for them to bite.

SOURCE: ENGADGET

Sony VAIO Z Full Review Ver (2011)

2011-08-15T16:56:00.000-07:00

We see countless laptops come and go through the seasons, but a rare few have built up something of a following. Make no mistake: the Sony VAIO Z, a skinny ultraportable brimming with cutting-edge technology and powerful innards, is that kind of gem. So when it disappeared from Sony's online store earlier this year, more than a few techies took note. After all, the Z is part of a small fraternity of notebooks that combine an impossibly lightweight design with performance worthy of a larger system. People who missed out on the last-gen Z wondered when they'd next get the chance to buy, while some lucky folks out there with thousands to burn started itching for something thinner, something lighter, something... better.

Well, it's here. The 2011 VAIO Z is, indeed, thinner, lighter, and more powerful. It also might not be the Z you were expecting. Whereas the last generation combined it all, cramming in an optical drive and switchable graphics, this year's model leaves much of that at the door -- or, at least, in an external dock that ships with the laptop. This time around, the Z has no optical drive, and packs just an integrated Intel graphics card on board. (Don't worry, it does squeeze in lots of other goodies, including standard-voltage Sandy Bridge processors and expanded solid-state storage.) If you want that Blu-ray burner or the stock AMD Radeon HD 6650M graphics card, you'll have to plug into the Power Media Dock, an external peripheral that uses Intel's Light Peak technology.

That's quite the gamble Sony is taking -- after all, the company is essentially betting that you won't need to do anything too intensive while you're on the go. On the one hand, this inventive design is sure to intrigue the Z's usual early adopter fanbase. But will it satisfy those who always liked the Z because of its no-compromise design? And then there's the issue of that $1,969 starting price, a likely stumbling block for people trying to decide between this and an equally thin, less expensive ultraportable. What's a well-heeled geek to do? Let's find out.

Look and feel

The last time we reviewed the VAIO Z, we didn't have a whole lot to say about the design -- after all, the company didn't muck around much with the Z that came before that. This time around, the Z got a facelift and a touch of liposuction -- a makeover that's left it half a pound lighter and a whole lot flatter. As we mentioned, Sony gutted the Z so that it no longer houses an optical drive or dual graphics cards. Because of that, it was able to knock the weight down to an absurdly light 2.57 pounds (1.2kg) and whittle the thickness from one inch (25.4mm) to just six tenths of an inch (15.24mm). And when we say 0.6 inches, we mean at its thinnest and thickest point. That's right, this is a pancake-flat laptop the whole way through -- a departure from the deceptive wedge shape you'll see on scads of other laptops. The result is one unbelievably light notebook -- the lightest 13-incher with a standard voltage processor, to be exact. It feels even less dense than some netbooks we've tested, and it makes Lenovo's 3.7-pound (1.7kg) ThinkPad X1, for one, seem unwieldy by comparison. And yes, for those of you who were wondering, it's also lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air, which weighs in at 2.96 pounds (1.3kg).

The Z is, of course, thicker, than either the Air or Samsung's 2.8-pound (1.3kg) Series 9. But the Z at least justifies its "heft," if you can even call it that: it houses a whole lot more I/O openings, including a headphone / mic port, an Ethernet jack, USB 2.0 and 3.0 sockets, VGA-out, and separate SD and Memory Stick slots. And that's not even counting the ones you'll find on the Power Media Dock, which we'll walk you through in just a moment.

Laptops
Sony VAIO Z review (2011)
By Dana Wollman posted Jul 29th 2011 4:30PM
Review
We see countless laptops come and go through the seasons, but a rare few have built up something of a following. Make no mistake: the Sony VAIO Z, a skinny ultraportable brimming with cutting-edge technology and powerful innards, is that kind of gem. So when it disappeared from Sony's online store earlier this year, more than a few techies took note. After all, the Z is part of a small fraternity of notebooks that combine an impossibly lightweight design with performance worthy of a larger system. People who missed out on the last-gen Z wondered when they'd next get the chance to buy, while some lucky folks out there with thousands to burn started itching for something thinner, something lighter, something... better.

Well, it's here. The 2011 VAIO Z is, indeed, thinner, lighter, and more powerful. It also might not be the Z you were expecting. Whereas the last generation combined it all, cramming in an optical drive and switchable graphics, this year's model leaves much of that at the door -- or, at least, in an external dock that ships with the laptop. This time around, the Z has no optical drive, and packs just an integrated Intel graphics card on board. (Don't worry, it does squeeze in lots of other goodies, including standard-voltage Sandy Bridge processors and expanded solid-state storage.) If you want that Blu-ray burner or the stock AMD Radeon HD 6650M graphics card, you'll have to plug into the Power Media Dock, an external peripheral that uses Intel's Light Peak technology.

That's quite the gamble Sony is taking -- after all, the company is essentially betting that you won't need to do anything too intensive while you're on the go. On the one hand, this inventive design is sure to intrigue the Z's usual early adopter fanbase. But will it satisfy those who always liked the Z because of its no-compromise design? And then there's the issue of that $1,969 starting price, a likely stumbling block for people trying to decide between this and an equally thin, less expensive ultraportable. What's a well-heeled geek to do? Let's find out.
Sony VAIO Z review (2011)

Look and feel

The last time we reviewed the VAIO Z, we didn't have a whole lot to say about the design -- after all, the company didn't muck around much with the Z that came before that. This time around, the Z got a facelift and a touch of liposuction -- a makeover that's left it half a pound lighter and a whole lot flatter. As we mentioned, Sony gutted the Z so that it no longer houses an optical drive or dual graphics cards. Because of that, it was able to knock the weight down to an absurdly light 2.57 pounds (1.2kg) and whittle the thickness from one inch (25.4mm) to just six tenths of an inch (15.24mm). And when we say 0.6 inches, we mean at its thinnest and thickest point. That's right, this is a pancake-flat laptop the whole way through -- a departure from the deceptive wedge shape you'll see on scads of other laptops. The result is one unbelievably light notebook -- the lightest 13-incher with a standard voltage processor, to be exact. It feels even less dense than some netbooks we've tested, and it makes Lenovo's 3.7-pound (1.7kg) ThinkPad X1, for one, seem unwieldy by comparison. And yes, for those of you who were wondering, it's also lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air, which weighs in at 2.96 pounds (1.3kg).

The Z is, of course, thicker, than either the Air or Samsung's 2.8-pound (1.3kg) Series 9. But the Z at least justifies its "heft," if you can even call it that: it houses a whole lot more I/O openings, including a headphone / mic port, an Ethernet jack, USB 2.0 and 3.0 sockets, VGA-out, and separate SD and Memory Stick slots. And that's not even counting the ones you'll find on the Power Media Dock, which we'll walk you through in just a moment.

But the cosmetic differences between this year's Z and the last-gen model don't stop at inches and pounds. Like many VAIOs of yesteryear, the last-gen model had a rounded hinge with the power button baked in, whereas this one has a sunken display that sits so low that it grazes the table when it's open. In fact, at first blush it looks like the Z's missing a hinge. The power button, meanwhile, sits on the upper-rightmost corner of the keyboard deck. (And yes, it still glows that familiar green.) When we first unboxed the Z we a bit disoriented, but the new arrangement looks slick and also serves a practical purpose -- that new dropped hinge gives the keyboard a nice, subtle tilt when the lid is open. Moving along, Sony also added a brushed metal strip to the the back edge of the lid -- an over-the-top touch for a machine that doesn't need to prove it's premium. That metal accent just doesn't jibe with Sony's typical laptop design, and screams, "I'm expensive!" Well, we knew that.

Lift the lid, though, and the Z starts looking a bit more like its old self. There's the same island keyboard you know and love, and Sony hasn't ditched its commitment to physical buttons either. Above it, you'll find the tried-and-true WiFi switch, along with dedicated launch keys for VAIO Assist, VAIO Care, and a web browser of your choice. That strip above the 'board is a little less cluttered this time around, given that there's no lever for toggling between an integrated or discrete graphics card. The entire interior has a minimal look, even though there's a ridge near the palm rest that puts it on a slightly higher plane than the rest of the keyboard deck. Speaking of clean, the lid (available in black and an arresting indigo) did a good job of masking our fingerprints, even after a week of use.

Also like the last generation, the Z is constructed out of aluminum and carbon fiber, which makes the whole thing feel solid, particularly when you hold it one hand. In conversations with Sony, we asked why it didn't opt for a scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass display, as Lenovo did with the X1. While the company didn't exactly give us a straight answer, it did say that it deliberately made the display flexible so that it would better respond to travel and all-purpose manhandling. Make of that what you will -- we can see the advantage to building in some leeway, though there's no question that the screen feels less sturdy than the rest of the machine. And that's not unique to the Z either -- we have a lower-end VAIO SB in house, and its screen, too, tends to wobble, Given that we've seen the lower and higher end of what Sony has to offer, we're inclined to say we'd expect a bit more from the machine that costs north of two grand.

Keyboard and trackpad

As common as Chiclet keyboards are today, Sony was one of the first to jump on the island-style bandwagon. That means it's had a lot of time to think about what makes a great typing experience: how bouncy should the keys be? How far apart should they sit, and to what extent, if any, can people tolerate shrunken Shift buttons? All told, we'd say Sony has landed a winning formula. The keys are well spaced, fairly quiet, and have a pleasant, soft finish. Like the last-generation, this year's Z has a backlit keyboard-- a touch we'd be shocked not to find in a premium system like this.

And yet, while we made few spelling errors, the shallow keys didn't quite feel as comfy as other keyboards we've tested. The best analogy we can think of is what it's like to wear flip-flops. When you're wearing these shoes, which lack any kind of heel or arch support, you might notice your toes rolling into a claw. They push into the flip-flop, gripping the rubber to the extent that there's anything to grab. With the Z's keyboard, too, the keys are so short that there isn't much to latch onto. As we typed, we could feel ourselves bearing down on the keys with a bit more pressure than we'd normally apply. Even the MacBook Pro has slightly cushier keys -- and let's not even get started on the pillowy keyboard found on any ThinkPad. With bigger, more tactile keys like those, our hands fly over the keyboard -- they don't tense up because the buttons are simply easier to press. That said, in the grand scheme of things, the VAIO Z's keyboard is one of the sturdier and better arranged we've seen.

In yet another design switcheroo, Sony opted for a buttonless trackpad this go 'round. We'll be honest, we've had mixed experiences with seamless touchpads -- though most use the same underlying Synaptics technology, laptop manufacturers implement it differently. In Sony's case, the touch experience is mostly pleasant, at least when it comes to just moving the cursor to and fro. The touchpad, which measures nearly three inches by one and a half (76.2 x 38.1mm), has a low-friction surface, while a raised, lizard-inspired pattern makes the tactile experience. The touch buttons are ever-so slightly stiff, but the real problem is that there's a hyper sensitive fingerprint reader wedged in the center. It's all too easy to accidentally tap it with your fingers, which causes unwanted dialog boxes to appear onscreen. We suggest disabling that, unless biometric sensors are your cup of tea. Other than that, our main complaint about the touchpad is that it chokes on two-fingered scrolling. At first it'll appear to work seamlessly. You'll feel in control as you page up and down through a document. It all works perfectly until... it doesn't. Intermittently, we had vexing moments when we had to press hard with our fingers to make scrolling work, or where we moved our digits up and down and nothing happened.

Display and sound

The 13.1-inch display on our test unit had 1920 x 1080 resolution, though the base model comes with a 1600 x 900 panel. One of the first things we noticed about the Z -- even before its impossibly light weight, perhaps -- is that if you look at the screen from the side it has an odd reddish tint. It's a shame, because the viewing angles from the sides are actually quite good. Head-on, fortunately, the display looks gorgeous, with white whites, black blacks, and no sign of that puzzling red overcast that troubled us from oblique angles. We're also happy to report that the viewing angles are equally excellent if you push the lid forward -- a real possibility if you intend to use this thing on a plane or commuter rail.

While Sony's dished up one premium display, it dropped the ball as far as sound quality goes. The twin speakers deliver pretty weak volume and, what's more, the audio is pretty tinny. Not necessarily a more metallic sound than you'd get with any old notebook but remember, this isn't any old notebook. For two grand, we'd expect some deeper bass notes and volume loud enough to entertain a guest or twenty.

Power Media Dock

Here's the part you've been waiting for -- the thing that makes the Z look so peculiar in photos. The Power Media Dock -- and, with it, a completely different set of assumptions about how you're going touse your computer. This year's Z forgoes both the optical drive and discrete graphics card, and stuffs 'em both in a external drive, dubbed the Power Media Dock. The idea, simply put, is that you'll wait until you're plugged in to play Call of Duty: Black Ops and crunch 1080p video.

The dock, which comes bundled with the Z, has an AMD Radeon HD 6650M card with 1GB of video memory, and uses Intel's Light Peak technology, the same basic standard uses to power Thunderbolt on Macs. As some of you might recall, Sony uses the USB port to implement Light Peak. So, the attached cable has an odd, two-pronged connector, which plugs into the AC port and the adjacent USB 3.0 port. Once you plug it in, you'll see the screen flicker briefly, along with an onscreen dialog box acknowledging, essentially, that you're now cooking with butter. The cool thing about that is setup, of course, is that when you're not hooked up to the dock, you can instead use that port with USB 2.0 or 3.0 devices. Meanwhile, the dock comes with a fairly large power brick, in addition to the smaller one meant to connect the laptop directly to an outlet. So, you can leave the dock plugged into the wall using its own AC adapter, and keep the littler one on you while you're out and about with the Z.

Like the laptop itself, the dock has a thin, angular shape, with that that same band of metal ringing the end. If you pretend for a minute that the dock doesn't have a disc slot or various I/O ports, you might mistake its 8.7 x 5.8 x 0.7-inch (221 x 147.3 x 17.8mm) frame for an external hard drive. If you like, you can lay it flat on your desk, though it's mean to sit horizontally in a matching metal stand -- our favorite option, particularly since the stand has such a luxurious, weighty feel to it, complete with a rubberized bottom that ensures it won't skid on your desk. When you place the dock in the stand, the ports will be exposed on one end, with the slot-loading optical drive on the other. Those ports two more USB 2.0 ports (along with one of the 3.0 persuasion), as well as a VGA socket, port replicator, and duplicate HDMI and Ethernet sockets. If you go for the base $1,969 model, the dock will play and burn DVDs, though if you've got even more cash lying around you can step up to a BD-ROM or BD-RW drive.

Performance and graphics

Like the last Z, this year's model comes with your choice of standard voltage processors. It makes sense, given that the hard sell here is that you'll be getting a machine that purportedly offers no compromises in portability or performance. This time, as you can imagine, the processor options include Sandy Bridge CPUs. Our $2,749 tester machine came stocked with a 2.7GHz Core i7-2620M CPU, 4GB of RAM, dual 128GB SSDs, and integrated Intel graphics. That combination was enough to deliver a score of 11,808 in PCMark Vantage (11,855 with the Power Media Dock) -- either way, a roughly 25 percent gain over the current MacBook Air and a 56 percent improvement over the Series 9 we tested earlier this year.

Anecdotally, even without the Power Media Dock the Z didn't miss a beat as we jumped between tabs in Chrome, wrote emails, yammered away in Gchat, downloaded two games, edited a wiki page, watched YouTube and Hulu at full-screen, and installed two PC games. And, we booted into our Windows 7 desktop in an astonishingly fast 25 seconds. Throughout our testing, though, the fans spun so noisily that someone sitting nearby in our office stopped what he was doing to express concern. They became particularly insistent while we played Call of Duty 4 (and this was even after we lowered the resolution from 1080p to 1024 x 768), though they piped down as soon as we exited the game. Additionally, that vent on the left side gets hot to the touch, though the rest of the machine, fortunately, stays cool.

	PCMarkVantage	3DMark06	Battery Life
2011 Sony VAIO Z (2.7GHz Core i7-2620M, Intel HD Graphics 3000 / AMD Radeon HD 6650M)	11,808 / 11,855	4,339 / 7,955	4:15 / 8:43
2011 MacBook Air (1.7GHz Core i5-2557M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	9,484	4,223	4:12
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 (2.5GHz Core i5-2520M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,787	3,726	3:31 / 6:57
Samsung Series 9 (1.4GHz Core i5-2537M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,582	2,240	4:20
ThinkPad X220 (2.5GHz Core i5-2520M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	7,635	3,517	7:19
ASUS U36Jc (2.53GHz M460, NVIDIA GeForce 310M)	5,981	2,048 / 3,524	5:30
Toshiba Portege R705 (2.26GHz Core i3-350M, Intel HD Graphics 3000)	5,024	1,739 / 3,686	4:25
Notes: the higher the score the better. For 3DMark06, the first number reflects score with GPU off, the second with it on.

So as much as some spec junkies are bound to grouse about the laptop's internal Intel graphics card, the system's well-equipped to keep up with you the vast majority of the time. It's in areas such as gaming and HD video encoding that that Radeon HD graphics card is poised to save you a headache or two. For one thing, it helped the Z's 3DMark06 soar from 4,339 to 7,955. (In 3DMark11, which requires a DirectX11-capable card, it notched P1248 at 720p resolution and X430 at 1080p.)

The graphics oomph was just as obvious when we tried playing games with the Power Media Dock and then without it. In Call of Duty 4, for instance, we managed frame rates of 28 fps at 1080p resolution and a more playable 58 fps at 1600 x 900. When we disconnected the machine, though, those rates sank to 7 fps for 1080p and 16 fps for 1600 x 900. Even when we lowered the resolution to the default 1024 x 768, we still only eked out a sluggish 16 frames per second. Likewise, Batman: Arkham Asylum ran at a snail's pace (12 fps) unplugged, but rose to a more acceptable 30 fps with the help of the dock.

It should go without saying that whether or not you'll be able to manage without the dock depends on your routine. We Engadget editors find ourselves in the somewhat abnormal situation of having to edit HD video and batch edit photos on the go -- all while writing stories, talking to each other over IM, and running an endless series of web searches, of course. So ditching the discrete graphics card while unplugged might not be ideal, although even then we'd feel confident about doing most of those things, especially the multitasking and light photo editing. At the end of the day, we'd still prefer that discrete card for Photoshopping and editing video, though something like an Elgato Turbo h.264 stick for encoding movies could be a good enough solution. Whatever your lifestyle, it's a fair question to ask yourself, given that you can't upgrade the discrete card or add more video memory. Think hard about the graphics performance we've been describing, because you can either take it or leave it.

Battery life and software

This year's Z marks the first time you can buy it with an optional $150 sheet battery, much like the one already on sale with the mid-range S series. Though it detracts from the Z's thinness, it's still easy to carry with that extra battery. On its own, the 4,000 mAh promises up to seven hours of juice -- 14, if you add the sheet battery. In our standard battery test, which involves looping a movie with WiFi on, the Z made it four hours and fifteen minutes on its own, and eight hours and forty-three minutes with the slice. On its own, the battery life is on the money -- it matches, almost minute-for-minute, what we've seen in the Series 9 and the Air, though that nearly nine-hour runtime is unheard of in this class. The closest time we've seen recently is from the Lenovo ThinkPad X220, which lasted seven hours and nineteen minutes in the same test.

Although the VAIO Z comes bundled with some software you didn't ask for, most of that is Sony's own utilities, including VAIO Care for optimizing your PC, VAIO Support for troubleshooting, as well as a networking manager. Of the usual suspects known to clog up programs lists, the only ones you'll find are Microsoft Office 2010 and the annoying-but-benign Norton Internet Security. Not bad at all.

Configuration options

The Z starts at $1,969.99 with a 2.3GHz Core i5-2410M processor, 4GB of RAM, dual 64GB solid-state drives, a 1600 x 900 panel, and a DVD burner on the Power Media Dock. That 2.7GHz Core i7 processor in our test unit is a $250 upgrade, though if you don't want to spend quite that much you can opt for the 2.6GHz Core i5-2420M option for an additional hundred bucks. It'll also cost you $100 to boost the resolution to 1080p or upgrade to 6GB of RAM (getting the maximum 8GB will add $200 to the base cost). Other options include dual 128GB SSDs for $300, twin 512GB drives for $1,100, a mobile broadband module for $50, a Blu-ray player for $100, or a Blu-ray burner for $200. We hope you've been saving up.

The competition

When we review laptops, we typicaly compare them to any number of similar notebooks on the market. How many budget 15-inchers have you seen, for instance? Enough to crowd the displays at Best Buy. Thin-and-lights with 13- and 14-inch displays? Most every company wants to sell you one. But the VAIO Z is a rarer breed. If you're looking for a super lightweight laptop that promises long battery life and performance on par with a larger, heavier notebook, you'll find your options shrink to just a handful of models. Chief among them is the Samsung Series 9, which just got a refresh. This, too, has a 13-inch (1366 x 768) display, starting at $1,349 with a Core i5-2477M processor, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD. (Just to be clear, this is the Series 9 we reviewed earlier this year, only it's since gotten a $300 price cut.) Moving up the line, there's a $1,649 version that doubles the storage to 256GB. Finally, a $2,049 configuration boosts the RAM to 6GB and steps up to a Core i7-2617M processor. To be fair, though, if you opt for this and you'll be getting an ultra-low volage, not standard, processor, along with integrated-only graphics.

And although it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, we know a lot of shoppers are going to see this thing and compare it to the MacBook Air, which just got updated with Sandy Bridge processors. Why isn't this a completely fair comparison, you might ask? Well, aside from the fact that they're both 13-inch laptops with thin, lightweight designs, they don't have a whole lot in common. The MacBook Air has fewer features: discrete graphics aren't an option, nor is an optical drive. Its Sandy Bridge processors are ultra low voltage, as opposed to the standard-voltage kind used in the VAIO Z, while its resolution maxes out at 1440 x 900. Even the larger MacBook Airs have just two USB 2.0 ports, along with a Thunderbolt socket. And as for performance, it, too, has solid-state storage, though it starts with smaller drives. The Air offers less, but it's also cheaper, with a starting price of $1,299. Even Apple will tell you it's for everyday computing, whereas Sony has said it sees early adopters and artsy professionals snapping up the Z. And besides, those folks considering the VAIO Z have almost certainly heard of the Air, and might have already decided that they're not interested.

While we're at it, here's another imperfect comparison. The Toshiba Portege R830 is a 13.3-inch laptop with an integrated optical drive that starts at three pounds -- not to mention, a much more palatable price of $899. But although it falls into the same general class as the Z -- a light laptop with a standard-voltage processor -- its lower price means decidedly inferior specs and, possibly, more performance compromises. The base configuration comes with a Core i3-2310M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 640GB 5400RPM hard drive, and integrated graphics. At the high end, there's a $1,649 version with an i7-2620M CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD -- expandable to a 512GB drive with 8GB of RAM, if you like. Even then, though, you're still not coming anywhere near the $2,749 our VAIO Z costs.

Wrap-up

There's no question that this year's Z, like all three that came before it, is a striking, formiddable sliver of machinery. Equally indisputable: $2,749 is a lot to spend on a laptop, particularly at a time when other ultrportables such as the Samsung Series 9 and MacBook Air are getting skinnier and more capable. Whether or not the Z is worth that chunk of change ultimately depends on how you define "best." If it means superior specs and benchmark scores, then we're going to have a hard time selling you on something else. Thanks to the Power Media Dock, the Z bests all of its competitors that top out at integrated graphics, offer fewer ports, and are missing an optical drive. There are no two ways about it: the Z is simply a more powerful laptop.

But not all of us swear by benchmarks, and not all of us are hardcore gamers or photography hobbyists. There are people considering this machine who have money to spend, sure, but really just want something more ambiguous: strong enough performance to handle "everyday computing," whatever that means for them. For those people, the 13-inch Air ($1,299 and up) or even the "lower-end" $1,349 Series 9 will seem just as sexy-thin -- not to mention, sufficiently powerful. These laptops also have more comfortable keyboards, and if you use them you might find yourself less troubled by fan noise. If performance and ports are what you're after, though, these ultra low voltage alternatives simply won't do, and we're guessing you're not giving them much thought anyway.

Did Apple alter photos of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in its injunction filing?

2011-08-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

Previously, on Apple Versus Samsung: Cupertino's finest sued Samsung for making "similar" products -- a legal spectacle that most recently culminated with an injunction blocking the sale of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 across Europe (with one exception). The case hinges on Apple's assertion that Samsung is ripping off its designs, but tech site Webwereld spotted signs that perhaps Apple's claims are exaggerated, and that the outfit might have even gone so far as to alter images of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 to suit its case. The comparison shot you see up there is lifted from page 28 of a filing made by Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer, Apple's European lawyers. Both devices look pretty identical with an aspect ratio of 4:3 -- except in reality, the Tab has a 16:9 16:10 aspect ratio and is far narrower than Steve's magical slate. Of course, we might never know if this was actually a malicious move on Apple's part -- certainly, Samsung's legal team isn't saying anything. For now, though, if you're game to play armchair attorney, head past the break for a comparison shot of the competing tabs as we actually know and love them.

Citrix app opens Windows for Chromebook owners

2011-08-15T05:16:00.000-07:00

Google hasn't made any bones about its desire to position Chrome OS as a presence in the business space. But for plenty of users, the relatively limited functionality of Chromebooks doesn't quite get the job done when it comes to doing serious work. The latest offering from Citrix could change that for a number of Chromebook-sporting business-types, offering access to Windows applications and desktops. Citrix Receiver Tech Preview is free from the Chrome Web Store (but requires a MyCitrix login). So now there's no excuse for not getting any work done -- except maybe a bad connection.

ASUS EEE PAD SLIDER FULL SPECS

2011-08-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

Asus has released the official specifications of its Eee Pad Slider SL101 Android tablet. The Slider is a 10 inch tablet with a slide-out keyboard. It runs Google's Android 3.1 Honeycomb operating system. Asus has also designed a custom user interface for the tablet.

The tablet's 10.1 inch multi-touch IPS display has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. And to make the display scratch resistant

ASUS Eee Pad Slider shows off its specs, may launch in September

2011-08-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

ASUS' Eee Pad Slider is fast becoming just as mythical as the flying horse the company's named after. We've had several encounters with potential release windows for the slate, only to see it continually creep back into fall. Well, judging by a recent report from Notebook Italia and the tab's new product page, it looks like we may actually see a September launch for the 10.1-incher -- in Italy. Contrary to prior rumors, the company will be offering the Slider in two storage configurations -- 16GB and 32GB at potential €479 and €599 price points overseas, while $400 and $550 models should hit the US. We've also got a slew of official specs for the Honeycomb-based device, which should ship with Android 3.1 installed, with a promised 3.2 upgrade to follow. The QWERTYfied tablet packs a 1280 x 800 WXGA display, dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of memory, 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, USB 2.0, mini-HDMI, microSD card reader, WiFi and Bluetooth. The company's also thrown in one year of "unlimited ASUS Web Storage" for your cloud computing needs. Will the electronics maker finally commit to a concrete launch for the Slider? We'll find out in a month's time.

Lenovo IdeaPad K1 review

2011-08-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Let's do a roll call, shall we? Who doesn't have a Honeycomb tablet to shill in the states? Acer, ASUS, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba all have something to their names, with Dell possibly bringing its China-only Dell Streak 10 Pro here too. Until now, Lenovo was one glaring exception. The company already had a head start selling the LePad tablet in China, but it was only last month that it announced not one, but two Honeycomb slates for the US market: the IdeaPad K1 for mainstream consumers, and the ThinkPad Tablet for business users (and a fair share of geeks, too). Now, we could easily roll our eyes at how saturated the market for Android tablets is becoming, but Lenovo isn't just any old OEM. The brand has won such an avid following that we bet the company could have essentially slapped its name on a plain-Jane black slab and waited for loyal fans to line up.

In fact, though, you're in for a bit more than name recognition. The K1 goes after mainstream consumers with a winsome design, sure, but also a software package designed to make Honeycomb easier to use, and to help ensure that flummoxed, low-tech users don't have to spend too much time downloading apps out of the box. What's more, it ships with Android 3.1 and has a two-cell battery that promises up to ten hours of battery life. Oh, and the 32GB model rings in $499, undercutting the 32GB iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 by $100. But is that enough for it to stand out? Let's see.

Hardware

Even though this tablet falls under Lenovo's IdeaPad brand, which isn't nearly as iconic as ThinkPad, it still looks like something Lenovo would make, a distant cousin to all those laptops you know and love -- not to mention, the LePad. Although the K1 comes in basic black, it's also available in white and red (our personal favorite) -- a trio of colors that subconsciously invokes other Lenovo products. Though the body is made of matte aluminum, there's a glossy panel on the back that sits off center, taking up about three quarters of the back side. We didn't fully appreciate that multi-layered design when we first saw the tablet last month, but now that we think about it a bit more, the effect of seeing the glossy piece sitting atop the smooth metal is visually interesting in a way that's playful, but not tacky.

At 1.65 pounds (0.7kg), the K1 is heavier than most tablets, and on par with the 1.66-pound Toshiba Thrive and HP's 1.65-pound TouchPad. It's also chunky at 10.39 x 7.44 x 0.52 inches (264 x 189 x 13.3mm), though not as meaty as the Thrive, which measures .62 inches deep. In any case, it feels solid in the hands, and perhaps not as dense as you'd expect. Overall, the build quality is up to snuff, though it's not exactly premium either. We say that mainly because that back cover is a veritable fingerprint magnet, and your digits might well slip on the slick surface. As chintzy as the Thrive is, its textured back at least makes it easier to grip.

If you hold the K1 in landscape mode, you'll see the 2 megapixel front-facing camera sits discreetly in the upper bezel, while the 5 megapixel rear cam sits on the back side, tucked in a corner. That back camera has an ovular shape and a thin metal ring around it -- a combination that surely helps make the K1 look as sporty as it does (the ruby red paint doesn't hurt either). We found, too, that the camera is placed high enough on the back lid that you're unlikely to obscure the lens with your finger while shooting. If you keep imagining for a minute that you're cradling the tablet that way, you'll find a power button, twin volume keys, a screen lock switch, and a microSD slot on the left side. Annoyingly, the microSD slot comes with a metal cover that you can only pop out by inserting a paper clip into a tiny hole next to it -- that's right, just like a tray-loading optical drive. Quaint, huh?

On the bottom, meanwhile, there's a 30-pin docking connector, which you'll use to connect the tab to the bundled AC adapter or your PC via an included USB cable. (Or you can plug it into the compatible dock that Lenovo's selling separately for $45.) Also on the bottom, there's a micro-HDMI socket and a 3.5mm headphone jack. And, trippiest of all, Lenovo tossed in a home button on the right side of the bezel (that could below the screen, if you hold it in portrait mode). It's so blatantly iPad-esque, and frankly, it's something that most Android tablets have not borrowed from Steve Jobs' magical slate. And we can see why. If you're accustomed to Android, then you're most likely not used to pressing a physical button when you want to return to the home screen. As it is, Lenovo told us it's going after mainstream consumers by pre-installing lots of popular apps and adding a skin on top of Honeycomb that's supposed to make it more user-friendly. We have to wonder if there's a similar rationale behind the home button, if maybe it's meant to make iPhone users feel more at home with their first Android product. If that's the case, fair enough, though having a physical home button and a soft one onscreen feels redundant.

You can use that touch button as an optical trackpad for limited gestures, but it works so poorly that you can't fairly call it a shortcut. We were able to swipe between home screens, for instance, but the movement looked janky onscreen and it took us a few tries to pull the gesture off. (You'll know you're on the right track if two LED lights near the button start glowing white.) We had more luck swiping to the left to navigate backward in the browser, though be warned that you'll have to apply more pressure to the button than you would the display.

Then again, there's at least one practical use case for that home button. The K1 makes it easy to take screenshots -- normally, a big bowl of tedium for Android users. Similar to what you'd do with an iPhone or iPad, just press the home key and the volume down button at the same time to take a snapshot of what's on the screen. Not a huge selling point, but a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

Display and sound

The 10.1-inch (1280 x 800) display has viewing angles comparable to other tablets we've seen, which is to say you can get away with watching a movie from the side or with the tab face-up on a table, but the glare from the screen might make it a not-so-pleasant experience. And while the resolution is on par with pretty much any other 10-inch slate, the panel doesn't seem quite as bright as some others. The Galaxy Tab 10.1's screen, for instance, has the same size and resolution screen, but it's noticeably more vibrant. The K1's looks murky by comparison.

The small speakers, which sit on the back side of the device, deliver decently loud sound, though as you might expect, music has a tinny, metallic quality to it. Still, it's no worse than other tablets on the market (or some laptops, for that matter).

Performance and battery life

Like so many other Honeycomb tablets, the K1 packs a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC. Mainstream consumers might look at us cockeyed if we told them the performance could be zippier -- for those folks, the performance should be plenty fast. But more discerning techies will likely notice some lags when minimizing and opening apps. The screen was also often slow to switch orientations as we flipped from landscape mode to portrait and back, and more than once the display was unresponsive, leaving us tapping multiple times before the tablet did what we wanted it to. In general, we tend to say that all Tegra 2 tablets have some obvious performance limitations, but the K1 felt pokier than others we've tested. Indeed, its score of 1,448 in the Quadrant benchmark falls short of the 1,546 and 1,584 that the Thrive and 10.1 notched. And while we try not to put too much stock in benchmarks, we think these numbers are telling, given our anecdotal experience with the device.

Also, not to beat a dead horse, but at some point during our testing, we took a break to play with the 10.1, and immediately breathed a sigh of relief. It's hard to tell how much of that was the 10.1's solid-yet-lighter build, the bright display, or the quick performance, but boy, did we miss it. The 10.1 is markedly faster, and the difference becomes painfully obvious when you play with the two side by side. The 10.1 is quicker to respond to taps and swipes, its screen rotates faster, and it opens and minimizes apps more briskly.

Benchmark	Score
Quadrant	1,448
Linpack	32.77 MFLOPS (single thread) / 61.33 MFLOPS (multi-thread)
Nenamark 1	30.1 fps
Nenamark 2	19.6 fps
Vellamo	945

The K1 has a 2-cell, 7400mAh battery that promises up to ten hours of battery life -- the same claim made by the iPad 2. In our standard battery rundown test (movie looping, WiFi on), it lasted eight hours and twenty minutes, matching the Motorola Xoom and falling about ten minutes short of the TouchPad. But it doesn't approach the Galaxy Tab 10.1's ten hours nor the iPad 2's ten and a half, which seems like a problem given that the K1 is markedly chunkier. If a tablet's going to be bigger, we want it to make up for it with longer battery life and / or more robust performance. The K1 doesn't quite do that on the longevity front, though it did have a much better showing than the Thrive, which lasted just six and a half hours in the same test.

	Battery Life
Lenovo IdeaPad K1	8:20
Apple iPad 2	10:26
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1	9:55
Apple iPad	9:33
HP TouchPad	8:33
Motorola Xoom	8:20
T-Mobile G-Slate	8:18
Archos 101	7:20
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook	7:01
Toshiba Thrive	6:25
Samsung Galaxy Tab	6:09
ASUS EeePad Transformer	Ran a different test

Cameras

The K1 has a 5 megapixel camera in the back and a 2 megapixel one on the front -- pretty standard fare for tablets these days. To tell the truth, we never have high hopes for tablet cameras -- they too often feel like an afterthought, and almost all of them struggle in dimly and harshly lit shooting conditions. The K1 is no exception, though we had a rougher time getting crisp images than with other tabs we've tested (in retrospect, we got pretty spoiled by the HTC Flyer / EVO View 4G). If you peek at our gallery of pics taken with the rear camera, you'll see that we sometimes had to try multiple times to get a usable macro shot. Even then, we couldn't get that close to our subject and the background was often blown out to heavenly whiteness, as you can see in that photo above. It's a shame, because the colors were fairly true-to-life, if sometimes lacking in punch.
The K1's 720p video isn't half bad. You can see some faint ghosting as cars and other moving objects hurdle across the screen, but the motion is actually fairly fluid.

Software
The K1 comes with Android 3.1 on board, and though Lenovo has put its own spin on the OS, the customization is at least pretty moderate as far as skins go. The usual back and home icons are white, not blue, which looks alright by itself, but then you notice that the navigation bar doesn't match the clock in the lower right corner, which still glows blue.

Beyond that, the biggest cosmetic change is a five-way app launcher sitting smack dab in the middle of the home screen. By default, it includes shortcuts to email and the browser, along with more task-oriented icons labeled "Watch," "Listen," and "Read." Now, before you start getting resentful that Lenovo's trying to tell you what to do, know that you can customize those shortcuts so that "Watch" redirects to YouTube instead of, say, Gallery. Or, you can scrap those preset categories all together and add shortcuts to any other application instead. The concept kind of reminds us of what Dell was trying to accomplish with Dell Dock, which seems to assume that a row of larger, glossier icons is easier to use than the Start Menu, the traditional Windows desktop, or even pinned programs in Windows 7. In either case, that extra option isn't annoying so much as superfluous.

That centerpiece also includes a shortcut to the tablet's settings -- another design choice aimed at low-tech users who'd rather not dig around the apps menu. Some of us have parents who might prefer a dumbed-down tablet, though we're not convinced they'd know what to do in the settings once they got there, so this could be a moot point for some people. Regardless, Lenovo's skin is pretty harmless -- it's not like the company mucked around with the stock Honeycomb keyboard or loaded any widgets you can't remove. You can even delete that conspicuous launcher if you like, though you'll have to tap through an "are you sure?" dialog box first.

The launcher also offers the option of so-called Lenovo Messages, including tips for using the device and -- buzz word alert -- "special offers." Just heed our advice and don't enable them. What you'll see are ads, and who needs those in a product you are most certainly not getting for free?

By the way, when we talk about widgets, we mean AccuWeather, and also SocialTouch, an app created by Lenovo that at first glance looks like a skinned version of Google Calendar. Actually, though, it aggregates Facebook and Twitter updates, in addition to email and calendar entries. On the whole, it's nice to be able to scroll through it all at once, though we do have some suggestions: one, linking your Twitter account is probably a mistake -- at least if the luminaries you follow are as update-happy as the people in our circles. Also, SocialTouch has a demarcation indicating when you're crossing into emails / appointments / tweets / what-have-you from a different day, and at the top of each day's list there's a stack of calendar appointments. Since these appointments live in that specific place, you'll shove them off-screen as soon as you start scrolling. We think the software would have been smarter if the app kept these calendar entries locked in their own pane.

Look closer and you'll see a few more tweaks to garden-variety Honeycomb. For one thing, this take on the OS makes it easy to kill apps you forgot you had open. Lenovo added an "X" mark to the vertical, pop-up menu of open apps, allowing you to shutter them in a pinch. Also in that row, there's an icon that looks like a talk bubble but is actually yet another app launcher. This one presents a select few favorites in a carousel in the lower right corner of the screen -- a list that you can customize by dragging and dropping favorites.

Apps

Depending on your point of view, Lenovo either saddled this thing with bloatware or did you the thoughtful, generous favor of bundling apps you might actually find useful. Out of the box, you'll find AccuWeather, Amazon Kindle, Arcade by Kongregate, 4GB of free storage through ArcSync, the IM client eBuddy, Documents to Go 3.0, File Mgmt., Movie Story, Movie Studio, mSpot and mSpot Movies, Norton Security, ooVoo for video chats, PhotoStudio, PokeTalk, and a raft of games that includes Angry Birds HD, GOF2THD, backgammon, euchre, hearts, solitaire, spades, and NFS Shift. As Toshiba did with the Thrive, Lenovo also threw in the excellent PrinterShare for printing web pages, emails, and photos using a WiFi-enabled printer on the same network.

The tablet also comes with Netflix pre-installed, which lets you stream movies over WiFi, of course, as well as play them on a larger set via the HDMI connection. Alas, if you'll recall, a previous report that certain tablets would be able to store these movies offline as DRM-protected files was untrue.

And what tablet would be complete without its own proprietary app store? As it is, the K1 lets you install apps from unknown sources, but Lenovo has also bundled its aptly named Lenovo App Shop. What you'll find here is a curated experience, with selections dispersed across 13 broad categories (some, such as entertainment, have a bunch of subsections). As with other custom app stores, such as Toshiba's, the selection is limited, with just a single app in some categories. Still, the store is nicely designed, from a splashy home page with featured selections to a drop down menu of categories. The apps themselves look useful, too. A quick perusal brought us VLC Player and RpnCalc, a financial calculator. The thing is, you can download these in Android Market for the same price. The real benefit, as we see it, is that apps might be easier to discover in the App Shop -- a boon for people like our parents who don't have much experience researching and sizing up apps, and who might feel overwhelmed by Android Market's sprawling selection. Somehow, though, we don't think that describes the typical Engadget reader.

As an added twee touch, there's also a social component whereby you can see what your friends are buying, though in order for that to happen they'd also have to be happy Lenovo tablet owners with a penchant for monitoring other people's Golf Solitaire downloads. Womp womp.

Configurations and the competition

Although the K1 will soon ship with 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB of storage, as of this writing only that mid-range version is available. According to Lenovo, the 16GB and 64GB flavors will ship in three to four weeks for $449 and $599, respectively. The company's also been crystal clear that the K1 will eventually make its way to US carriers, though right now we don't know anything about pricing or availability.

And though we haven't reviewed it yet, we suspect the K1 will have some competition from none other than its big brother, the ThinkPad Tablet. This guy's more expensive, with a starting price of $479 for 16GB ($589 for 32GB), plus an extra $30 for the dual digitzer pen. Even so, geeks might prefer its more ThinkPad-y design, complete with a red-tipped stylus, as well as its full-sized USB port and accompanying case that has a USB-powered keyboard built in. Again, we'll reserve judgment for our full review -- for all we know, the ThinkPad Tablet could be a huge dud -- but if we're just talking hype, we can see diehard Lenovo fans getting more amped up about the ThinkPad. The K1 is a less expensive tablet more worthy of mainstream consumers, and according to conversations we've had with Lenovo, that's precisely the split the company was going for.

And then there's, you know, every other Android tab on the market. If Honeycomb is what you're after (and why wouldn't it be?) you'll certainly pay more for either the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, though you'll get longer battery life and slimmer, more compelling designs. The 10.1, if you'll recall, costs $599 for the 32GB model -- a $100 premium -- whereas the 32GB ASUS Eee Pad Transformer also costs $499 without the $150 docking station. (There's also a $399 16GB configuration.) If you're also considering an iPad -- and we suspect many mainstream consumers are -- you'll be making a similar trade-off as you would with the 10.1: it's $100 more expensive, but also offers battery life, along with more sex appeal.

But in addition to talking about our favorite tabs at the moment, we also feel the need to stack up the K1 against other relatively chunky models -- because admit it, you know you're curious. Long story short, the K1 does a half-hearted job of justifying its extra ounces. Its battery life is roughly on par with the HP TouchPad, another thick slate, which means both offer good-but-not-amazing longevity. It's not like either tablet is packing a battery so large it can surpass or even match the ten and a half hours we squeezed out of the iPad 2. Still, the K1's battery life is certainly an improvement over the Thrive's six and a half hours and its build quality is more solid, too. We still say the Thrive is mainly worth it for people who are either sold on the $429 starting price or the fact that it has full-sized HDMI and USB ports and an SD slot. Unless you're dead-set on them, these sockets don't fully make up for its shortcomings. At the same time, when we reviewed the TouchPad we dinged it, in part, for offering a buggy user experience. That simply wasn't the case with the K1, although the TouchPad has since received an update meant to boost both speed and performance.

Wrap-up

The IdeaPad K1 is cute, (relatively) affordable, and easy to use, and we know it'll be a sensible choice for some shoppers. We're just not sure that's you, our dear, tech-savvy readers. See, the K1 has two big strengths: one, it's aggressively priced, starting at $449 for 16GB (granted, that version's not on sale, so if you buy today, it's going to be the $499 32GB model). The other major thing the K1 has going for it is simplicity. Lenovo's tweaked Android 3.1 so that settings are easier to find and apps are a cinch to kill. It also comes with an array of popular apps (or bloatware, if you're cynical). Factor in the attractive design, and we can recommend this, particularly for people with budget constraints, or those looking to give a techie gift to a not-so-techie person. Those things aside, the K1 is heavier than most tablets, and doesn't justify its heft with additional ports, extraordinary battery life or even zippy performance. If you didn't want ports anyway, and know your way around Honeycomb without Lenovo's help (thank you very much), why not just get something thinner, faster, and longer-lasting? Or, you know, at least stick around and see how Lenovo's geekier ThinkPad Tablet fares.

ASUS EEE PAD TRANSFORMER AND SLIDER COMPARED

2011-08-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer and Eee Pad Slider both have 10 inch HD displays, 1GHz dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processors and Google Android Honeycomb operating system. Both models are available with keyboard options. While the Transformer has an optional keyboard docking station, the Slider comes standard with a slide-out keyboard.

The Transformer has been shipping for a while, but the Slider

DELL REFRESHES INSPIRON 14Z WITH SANDY BRIDGE CHIPS AND USB 3.0

2011-08-12T23:55:00.000-07:00

Dell has upgraded its Inspiron 14z with Intel's Sandy Bridge processors and USB 3.0 ports. The 14 incher now sports a new design with aluminum case. It is available with a choice of Intel Core i3-2330M or Core i5-2410M processors.

The new Inspiron 14z measures less than 1 inch in thickness and weighs around 5 pounds. It is available in black or red color and sports a chiclet style keyboard.

DELL LATITUDE XT3 CONVERTIBLE TABLET STYLE NOTEBOOK UP FOR ORDER

2011-08-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

The 13.3 inch Dell Latitude XT3 convertible tablet style laptop is now available for purchase. It is available with a choice of Intel's Sandy Bridge Core i3 2310M, i5 2520M or i7 2620M dual core processors.

The Dell Latitude XT3 is a sequel to the 12 inch XT2. It has a swivel that would let you rotate the display down over the keyboard for using the device in the tablet model. The display has a

AXIOO Neon CLW.7.846

2011-08-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

IBM exec says PC is 'going the way of the typewriter,' kills our birthday buzz

2011-08-12T17:33:00.000-07:00

Well, this is awkward. As the IBM PC celebrates its 30th birthday today, one of its original designers is already mulling the end of its reign. In a blog post penned this week, Mark Dean, IBM's CTO for the Middle East and Africa, reflected on the dawn of the desktop era and looked forward to its seemingly inevitable demise.
"When I helped design the PC, I didn't think I'd live long enough to witness its decline. But, while PCs will continue to be much-used devices, they're no longer at the leading edge of computing. They're going the way of the vacuum tube, typewriter, vinyl records, CRT and incandescent light bulbs."

Dean added that he's glad his company sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2005, as part of a move that, according to him, allowed IBM to position itself at the forefront of the "post-PC" era. No word yet on when the funeral rites will be held, but you can read the full post at the source link, below.