Laptops News - Page 57

The latest and most important Laptops news - Page 57.

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Intel says we should expect Haswell-based Ultrabooks starting at $599

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 27, 2013 5:33 AM CDT

At the Intel Solutions Summit (ISS) 2013 last week, Intel teased the world that we should expect new Ultrabooks in the near future based on their fourth-generation Core processors, otherwise known as Haswell.

Better yet, they'll start at just $599. The news came from Senior Vice President and GM of Intel's PC Client Group, Kirk Skaugen, who told an audience of top Intel parts that new Haswell-based Ultrabooks would not only arrive at cheaper price points, but with more compelling features. Skaugen said that early Ultrabooks were "just a retrofit of what was already on the market," but has promised that Haswell-based Ultrabooks will require touch-screen support and faster SSDs, high-resolution displays, voice and facial recognition technology and finally, "all-day" battery life.

Skaugen had some interesting things to say about Haswell and the future of Ultrabooks, where he said "we designed this chip from the ground up for the Ultrabook. You'll truly be able to leave your [Ultrabook] battery pack at home."

Continue reading: Intel says we should expect Haswell-based Ultrabooks starting at $599 (full post)

Samsung unveil their Series 9 Premium Ultrabook, give it a 1080p display

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 25, 2013 9:32 PM CDT

Samsung have just injected some more pixels into their latest Ultrabook, the Series 9 Premium Ultrabook. The 13.3-inch Series 9 notebook included a 1600x900-pixel display, but the new and improved NP900X3E-A03US sports a 1920x1080 display.

It doesn't come close to the Google Chromebook Pixel or Apple MacBook Pro Retina displays, but it does provide a generous 40% more pixels than their previous generation Ultrabook. The improved Series 9 Premium Ultrabook includes the usual LED-backlit display which uses Samsung's SuperBright technology, which the South Korean company touts a 50% brighter display than a standard laptop monitor.

Cranking along inside the NP900X3E-A03US, we have Intel's Core i7-3517U processor, 4GB of RAM (why not 8GB?), a 256GB SSD, and Windows 8 Pro. Weighing in at 2.56 pounds and is just 0.51 inches at its thinnest point. What will all of this set you back? $1899.99. Not too bad, but the price is definitely getting up there.

Continue reading: Samsung unveil their Series 9 Premium Ultrabook, give it a 1080p display (full post)

Lenovo unveils their ThinkPad T431s Ultrabook, ships next month for $949

Anthony Garreffa | Mar 18, 2013 3:36 AM CDT

Lenovo have just unveiled their latest ThinkPad, the T431s. Lenovo's ThinkPad T431s is a 14-inch Ultrabook, sporting a 1600x900 matte display backed up by 250 nits of brightness. Inside, we have Intel HD graphics, a 720p front-facing camera, 4GB of RAM (upgradeable to 12GB), a 47WHr sealed battery, an optional backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 4.0 and support for both Wi-Fi and WWAN connections.

Diving in deeper, we find Intel's Core i5-3337U processor clocked at 2.7GHz, with an upgrade to a Core i7 available. A full-sized Ethernet port is available, while VGA makes a weird appearance, too. A 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack is here, two USB 3.0 ports, a 4-in-1 SD card reader and a 320GB 5400RPM mechanical HDD resides inside for storage - with the option to upgrade to a super-fast SSD. It'll ship with your choice of Windows 7 or Windows 8.

No touchscreen is here yet, but Lenovo have said that future T431s models might feature touch panels. The trackpad has lose its physical buttons, with a custom-built alternative at play from Lenovo and Synaptics that reportedly took two years to work on. The T431s' trackpad supports some 20 different gestures. Lenovo's latest Ultrabook will start at $949 and will be in stores next month.

Continue reading: Lenovo unveils their ThinkPad T431s Ultrabook, ships next month for $949 (full post)

Acer debuts upgraded C7 Chromebook, comes with more RAM, longer battery life, larger price tag

Trace Hagan | Mar 12, 2013 6:32 PM CDT

Acer has announced a new version of its C7 Chromebook that comes with more RAM and longer battery life. Of course, these upgrades come for a price. The original C7 retailed for $199 and came with around 4 hours of battery life and 2GB of RAM. The new C710-2055 model will set you back $280.

For the additional $81, customers will get around two extra hours of battery life. Along with the larger 6-cell battery, the RAM has been upped from 2GB to 4GB. This puts the Chromebook into the price range of cheaper Windows laptops and the iPad mini. It also makes the purchase less of an impulse purchase and one that actually requires a bit of thought.

Gregg Prendergast, vice president, U.S. Commercial Sales, Acer America:

Continue reading: Acer debuts upgraded C7 Chromebook, comes with more RAM, longer battery life, larger price tag (full post)

Amazon's top-selling laptop is the Linux-based Chromebook

Anthony Garreffa | Jan 7, 2013 1:32 AM CST

While Microsoft are having issues with sales numbers of Windows 8-based devices and Apple continue to push their awesome Retina-based MacBook's, it is the Linux-based Chromebook from Samsung and Google that is topping Amazon's charts.

Listed at just $249, with Amazon selling it for up to $317 - as demand is driving up the price and retailers are taking advantage of this. Even at $317, which is $68 more than its list price, it is still cheaper than all of the other 20 laptops in Amazon's top 20 laptop list. What makes the Chromebook such a huge seller?

After its price being the number one reason, secondly just about anyone can use it as a Chromebook is pretty much just a Chrome web browser-based notebook, and that is definitely not a bad thing. Linux is churning away underneath, but you don't see that on top of the OS. Most people turn away from a Chromebook because they think Google's many services are all online-only, but they're not.

Continue reading: Amazon's top-selling laptop is the Linux-based Chromebook (full post)

NEC unveils ultra-thin 15.6-inch Lavie X Ultrabook, sports 1080p IPS screen

Anthony Garreffa | Dec 18, 2012 9:30 PM CST

Ultrabooks have been here for a while, but they can be thinner, right? Well, NEC have added another member to their Lavie notebook family with a new premium system that is said to be the thinnest of its kind. At its slimmest point, NEC's new 15.6-inch Lavie X Ultrabook is only 0.5 inches thick, which is quite amazing.

In order to get it down to this super-thin design, NEC required ultra-thin internal components that measured less than 3.5mm thick, as well as a specially engineered keyboard that took 1mm off the design. There is, however, two fans that measure 5mm in thickness in the Lavie X. It doesn't weigh too much, either, at just 3.5lbs (1.59kg) - compared to the 13.3-inch Lavie Z which is 1.92lb (0.87kg).

At 1.59kg, you're receiving the 15.6-inch 1080p IPS screen, 1.9GHz Intel Core i7-3517U processor, 4GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, two USB 3.0 ports, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 + HS, HDMI-out, an SD card reader and 2-megapixel webcam. NEC's Lavie X offers up to seven hours of run time and its battery can be rapidly recharged to about 80% of its total in just a single hour.

Continue reading: NEC unveils ultra-thin 15.6-inch Lavie X Ultrabook, sports 1080p IPS screen (full post)

Dell offers up Ubuntu-based XPS 13, priced at $1549

Anthony Garreffa | Nov 30, 2012 4:39 AM CST

Dell's once internal skunkworks project dubbed "Project Sputnik" eventually launched as the XPS 13 Developer Edition, but now the Ultrabook-based is now shipping with a Precise Pangolin Ubuntu build that comes pre-installed.

It also sports feature-complete drivers that make sure that the maximum peripheral compatibility is great out of the box. The XPS 13 also comes bundled with Project Sputnik's open source tools, such as Profile Tool and Cloud Launcher, that are included to help developers install and deploy their projects in a quick and timely manner.

Hardware wise, the new XPS 13 is quite powerful - sporting a choice of an Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core i5 or i7, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SATA III SSD. The Developer Edition of the XPS 13 costs $1549, which is $50 more than the Windows-based XPS 13.

Continue reading: Dell offers up Ubuntu-based XPS 13, priced at $1549 (full post)

Google shows off new $199 Acer C7 Chromebook that goes on sale Tuesday

Trace Hagan | Nov 12, 2012 1:35 PM CST

Google and Samsung's $249 Chromebook did well. It sold out of the Play Store quite quickly, so what better way to follow it up than by releasing a cheaper version? Well, that's just what Google has done with the Acer C7 Chromebook that was announced today. Google has said it will go on sale Tuesday for a mere $199.

For that $199, you'll get the option to buy it on either Google Play or Best Buy's website, an 11.6-inch screen capable of 1366 x 768, 100GB of free Google Drive storage, a 320GB internal drive, and 3.5 hours of battery life. The specifications certainly aren't amazing, but the price doesn't allow for them to be.

Now the question remains: will this even cheaper Chromebook see as good as or better success than the Samsung Chromebook that Google released last month? I guess we'll have to wait until later this week to find out.

Continue reading: Google shows off new $199 Acer C7 Chromebook that goes on sale Tuesday (full post)

Linus Torvalds would like to see laptops with 2560x1600 displays, and so would I

Anthony Garreffa | Nov 1, 2012 5:30 AM CDT

It looks like Linus Torvalds and I have something in common, we both want to see higher resolution notebook displays. Torvalds has used his Google+ account to post about the subject, asking "can we please just make that [the 2560x1600-pixel] the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please."

The problem is, as he says, is that we're seeing so many 1366x768 displays in this Full HD world of displays, and it really is just crap. He does state that "soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays".

I fully, 100% agree with Torvalds, and I think every sector needs a reality check. TVs should have jumped from 1080p ages ago, and so should PC screens. I had 1920x1200 displays when the first Dell FP2405W came out and that cost me $1500+, I upgraded to the HP LP3065 monitor as soon as it came out because I wanted the 2560x1600 res it offered. Now we're going backward with 90% or more of displays only offering 1920x1080.

Continue reading: Linus Torvalds would like to see laptops with 2560x1600 displays, and so would I (full post)

Hands-on with ASUS Windows 8 hardware including the dual-screen Taichi

Matthew Wu | Oct 26, 2012 12:38 AM CDT

ASUS Australia invited Aussie journalists to see and *touch* the new range of Windows 8 notebooks & tablets.

Vivian Hung, Regional head of ASUS Australia described the notion of "design thinking" for the new family of devices. Hung introduced the new VivoTab family, which was the "first ASUS Windows 8 tablet" before introducing Anson Zhang, the product manager for tablets in Australia.

Zhang provided some numbers from Telsyte Research about the forecast of tablets in Australia, "11 million Australians will have tablets by the year 2016" he informed the crowd shortly after asking how many people had tablets (about 90% of the attendees raised their hands). In other words, about one in every two people in Australia will have a tablet in 2-3 years; this isn't really surprising due to the influx of affordable tablet devices coming out.

Continue reading: Hands-on with ASUS Windows 8 hardware including the dual-screen Taichi (full post)