Laptops News - Page 47

According to the latest rumors, Apple is preparing two new MacBook Air models for 2016, something we should see unveiled at their WWDC 2016 event in June. The actual launch of the new MBA models will be in Q3 2016.

The thinner MacBook Air models would arrive in 13- and 15-inch, but the 11-inch model is still up in the air. The new models will be thinner thanks to "fully redesigned" internal components, with Apple working with its suppliers to develop these new, thinner components. Apple expanded its MacBook Air range earlier this year with the new MacBook, which featured a 12-inch Retina display and used Intel's new ultra low voltage chips for its fanless design.

Acer is launching its Predator 15 and Predator 17 gaming notebooks today.

All models include an Intel Core i7-6700HQ 2.6GHz CPU, a GeForce GTX 980M, and support for 4K and G-Sync. The key difference between the 15 and 17 is the display: a 15.6'' for the former, and a 17.3'' IPS for the latter. Then there are variations between each on RAM and storage.

Predator 15

Eurocom are known for producing laptops with crazy specifications and price tags to match, but if you get in quick you might be able to score yourself one for below the market price.

As part of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, Eurocom are offering up its Sky X9 'Desktop Laptop' with a $500 discount. The headline of a recently issued press release shows exactly why a computing enthusiast might drool over this model, with it offering a dekstop Intel Skylake CPU, a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 desktop GPU and a smooth 64GB of DDR4 memory.

The Skylake desktop CPU on offer is none other than the Core i7 6700K and it comes paired with two 1Gb LAN ports, a 4K UHD display, USB 3.1, HDMI 2.0 and support for over 5TB of storage, including facilities for RAID, M.2 SSDs, HDDs and normal SSDs alike.

If you're looking to pick up a portable computing device, it seems that waiting for the Black Friday sales is the best way to go. Costco has charged out of the gates with both fists swinging, announcing specials such as a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Windows 10 bundle for a crazy $300 off.

Featuring 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, Windows 10 Pro, a protective cover, Surface pen, 2160 x 1440 resolution and one year of Office 365 Personal included, this Intel Core i7-powered surface dwarfs the $100 saving on ASUS' TP500 Flip 15.6" Touchscreen laptop.

However, if you are looking for something with a little more storage space, this ASUS system comes in at just under $400 and features a 500GB hard drive paired with a slower Intel Core i3 processor.

Microsoft's new Surface Book has been lauded as a revolutionary new PC that's fully capable of replacing your premium tablet and laptop. The all-in-one was built with business-fueled productivity in mind, but also has a number of flavors to reflect the needs of its owners. For all of its mighty pros, the Surface Book has one serious flaw: it's a total nightmare for do-it-yourself repairs.

The hardware gurus at iFixit have just torn apart the Surface Book to take a good look at the system's guts, revealing all its innards to the world. As per usual the tecchies show the process in a detailed step-by-step tutorial so you can follow along. But you won't want to follow along, as the Surface Book is a rectangular puzzle of doom.

What makes the Surface Book so hard to repair? Let's take a closer look. The LCD panel and glass plate are fused together, meaning you'll have to replace the entire thing instead of one or the other. Secondly the RAM and Skylake CPU are soldered to the motherboard, making for very tough RAM replacement.

The Surface Book launches today, and with it, Microsoft is apparently not content to just have it be a success with those already in its camp, but wants a piece of that Apple pie, too. And so it's designed a website -- dubbed "Making the switch" -- intended to help Macbook users make the transition, whether they're considering a Surface Book or already have one.

The site is comprimised of four main sections. The first helps Mac users become acquainted with the Start menu and the interface; the second answers common questions longtime Mac users have like "Do I have to worry about getting viruses now?" and "How do I talk to my friends and family without FaceTime and iMessage?"; the third offers step-by-step instructions on how to move files, contacts, and so on from your Macbook over to the Surface Book, and the fourth offers information on iPhone, iCloud, and iTunes compatibility (MS says they all work fine).

If you are a Macbook user and are thinking about making the switch or already have, hit the source.

MSI has announced that its new compact and lightweight GS40 Phantom is now available to ship out, giving an edge to consumers who want to take high-performance enthusiast-grade gaming on the go.

The GS40 Phantom packs in all the latest trappings you'd expect in a high-grade gaming rig into a 3.5 lbs package, making it the "world's thinnest and lightest gaming laptop". Although it's so portable, the laptop sports serious hardware with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M GPU, 16GB of onboard DDR4 RAM clocked at 2133 MHz, and a sixth-gen Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU clocked at 3.5GHz with Turbo Boost. The display is a 14" non-reflective full HD screen at 1920 x 1080 resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio and True Color support. For blistering-fast game loading, the Phanom sports a high-performance PCIe Gen 3.0 SSD configured in NVMe to deliver read speeds over 2,200 MB/s.

"The GS40 Phantom is a breakthrough in design that combines the power of bigger gaming laptops with the portability of a netbook," said MSI president Andy Tung. "The GS40 Phantom does not scale back on performance just to be lighter or thinner, it complements its svelte physique with technologies not even found in larger units."

With its new Surface Book, Microsoft one-ups its own Surface Pro line by melding the on-the-go utility of a tablet with the functionality of a laptop and the performance of a desktop. Microsoft touts the Surface Book as the "world's most powerful, thinnest laptop", and new info on the 2-in-1's dual-GPU setup helps add credence to Redmond's claims.

Rather than featuring a single graphics solution, the more expensive Surface Book models actually have dual-GPU setups: an iGPU complimented by a dGPU. The Surface Book's tablet portion houses Intel's integrated Iris Graphics by default, so this is the graphics solution you'll get with the $1500 and $1700 models.

Consumers who opt in for the $1900 and above flavors get a second discrete GPU that's housed in the attached keyboard base. The discrete solution is a Maxwell-based GPU with 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM that's been custom-built by NVIDIA. "The new GPU is a Maxwell-based GPU, and was designed to deliver the best performance in ultra-thin form factors such as the Surface Book keyboard dock," NVIDIA told Gizmodo. "With NVIDIA GeForce GPU powering this new hybrid, users will be able to speed up productivity apps such as Adobe Illustrator and Lightroom, and light PC gaming."

Not long ahead of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie launch and about a week before the Star Wars: Battlefront game launch, HP is releasing its Star Wars Special Edition Pavillion notebook.

It's a cheeky love letter of sorts to the hardcore Star Wars fan that packs in Star Wars sound bytes (like R2-D2 talking when you plug or unplug devices), a Death Star themed recycle bin icon that changes depending on how full it is, and a treasure trove of over 1,100 behind the scenes images, storyboards, artwork, audio selections, concept art, and more (which you can browse via the "Star Wars Command Center").

As for hardware, you can choose between a Skylake Core i5 or i7 CPU and Intel HD Graphics 520 or NVIDIA GeForce 940M7 GPUs, and set yourself up with as much as 12GB of RAM and 2TB storage. The display is a welcome 15.6'' and can be made touchscreen; an optical drive and B&O tuned speakers are also included; the battery will last you about seven hours. This is not the gaming laptop you are looking for, but if you're a Star Wars geek, it may be worth the $699.99 they're asking (an extra $39.99 if you want the themed wireless mouse and sleeve) over the $549.99 for the non-themed version.

Microsoft has taken aim at Apple's Macbook line with its own 2-in-1 Surface Book, a 13.5-inch Windows 10 laptop that features higher-end specs while fitting right into the new Windows ecosystem.

The Surface Book is touted as the "world's most powerful, thinnest PC" and Microsoft boasts that "ounce for ounce its the fastest 13-inch laptop on the planet". The hybrid laptop can be docked or removed from the base to transform from a laptop or a tablet, but the GPU itself is located in the base so you'll need to keep it docked to tap its power.

Even with these claims Microsoft has been somewhat vague on the GPU specifics, saying that the Surface Book has an accelerated NVIDIA GeForce GPU with GDDR5 memory that's been tuned by the Xbox team. It sports Intel's latest 6th-generation Skylake Core i5 and i7 processors for beefy performance, and can utilize up to 16GB of RAM. There's word that a NVIDIA GeForce 940M could be the GPU that powers the Surface Book's base, but nothing's been confirmed just yet.