Laptops - Page 42

We've already got the Retina MacBook Pro from Apple, featuring a 2560x1600 display, and Google's Chromebook Pixel with its 2560x1700 display - but both of those machines are built for Windows. Toshiba have just unveiled a new Ultrabook, that comes with Windows 8 - the Kirabook.

Toshiba's Kirabook comes with a 13.3-inch 2560x1440 display, giving us slightly less pixels than Apple and Google's offerings. Kirabook starts from $1599, which gives you an Intel third-generation Core i5 processor, 256GB of SSD, 8GB of RAM and a backlit keyboard. The $1999 model provides touchscreen capabilities, and a bump in processor to the Core i7. Toshiba's Kirabook is 0.7 inches thick, and weighs 2.6 pounds.

We should see pre-orders open up on May 3, with shipping beginning on May 12.

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."

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The flow of Windows 8 devices are about to begin. Gigabyte is out of the gate today with a bunch of new devices out that will be running Microsoft's latest operating system that launches today. Offerings range from convertible Ultrabooks to regular Ultrabooks, and gaming notebooks to slates. That's right, Gigabyte has launched a tablet.

Let's say hello to the Convertible U2142 (seen above).

ASUS have one of the most interesting Windows 8-based devices coming out this year, with their Taichi 21 dual-screen notebook. The ASUS Taichi 21 sports two 11.6-inch screens, both featuring 1920x1080-pixel IPS displays.

The first screen is where a notebook screen normally resides, in front of you, the user. The second one is on the rear of the screen, so when the lid on the notebook is closed it turns into an 11.6-inch touchscreen-capable Windows 8 tablet. It truly is a wonderful design. Both screens are IPS-based, meaning we'll see gorgeous color and viewing angles backed up by the Full HD 1080p resolution on each display.

Taichi 21's backside monitor supports 10-finger touch with an included stylus that offers 256 levels of pressure sensitivity. ASUS' Taichi 21 doesn't pack on the pounds, even though it packs dual screens where it measures in at just 0.7-inch thick, and 2.75lb with the included 6-cell battery.

Maingear has just unleashed their Nomad 17 customizable gaming notebook, which offers a choice of six sleek "custom automotice paint jobs", a Full HD 1080p matte display, multi-touch trackpad with gesture support, and dual speakers with a built-in subwoofer.

Getting to the good stuff, we'll find a third-generationg Intel Core i7 processor running at up to 3.8GHz, options for NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 675M or 680M, Blu-ray drive, up to two 512GB SSDs or dual 750GB 7200RPM drives, and up to 32GB of RAM.

Connectivity isn't left out either, with HDMI, DVI-I, Firewire, Ethernet, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports. Maingear's Nomad 17 starts at $1,700 on the base configuration and will begin shipping on October 14.

As an avid ultraportable laptop user, I've often wished that I had a way to upgrade my laptop's performance when I was sitting at home at my desk, or in the hotel at one of the many trade shows. Unfortunately, there doesn't currently exist a solution to my problem. But that could all soon change, if Lucid's technology catches on.

Lucid has demoed a technology that utilizes Intel's stupid-fast Thunderbolt port, which is capable of 20Gbps theoretical throughput. The Thunderport connects a laptop, or any Thunderbolt-enabled PC, to an external enclosure that houses a desktop graphics card and its accompanying power supply.

To upgrade your laptop capabilities, just plug the device in. The screen currently flashes black and then the GPU is recognized by Windows. This allowed an Ivy Bridge bridge system, which managed 28 FPS in 3DMark06 on HD4000 graphics, to achieve 89 FPS. The system theoretically can even handle Crossfire and SLI setups.

Intel are really pushing the Ultrabooks all over the world, but we haven't seen anything yet. We're beginning to hear about their 2013 models, which will include some pretty strict specs according to reports from TechEYE.net.

The site has seen some documents, where they cite that there will be some "serious difference in price and performance between the standard products and the top samples". Standard models will have a baseline Bill of Materials that most not exceed $699.

These machines at $699 BoM must contain all-day battery life at nine hours, voice command, HD video chat with a 720p resolution camera, wireless display, robust Wi-Fi, bundled anti-virus protection in the consumer model, and a multi touchpad. Minimum capacity of 16GB NAND for While Using functions, with a storage product capable of scoring more than 16,000 in PCMark Vantage's HDD Sub Score, and capable of receiving more than 80MB/sec on the same benchmark's video editing score.

Finally, we're seeing a company branch out from the usual 11- and 13-inch Ultrabooks, and announce a 15-inch Ultrabook. ASUS have announced the Zenbook U500VZ which sports a 1920x1080 15-inch IPS-based panel, drool.

Thanks to its larger design, it has the room for a separate numeric keypad, if that's your thing. The entire keyboard is backlit, and all of this arrives in a package which measures just 19.7mm at its thickest point.

ASUS' Zenbook U500VZ, if you've noticed, has lost the Prime suffix, because the design of the Ultrabook isn't ultra-thin. It does however tag along the Zenbook Prime's upgraded screen and new keyboard. The ASUS Zenbook U500VZ sports Intel's Ivy Bridge Core i7 processor, an optional NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU, and storage-wise you've got some options. The Ultrabook sports two 2.5-inch drive bays, meaning you can scoop up two large SSDs if you really wanted to. ASUS offers a 128GB SSD + 500GB HDD option, if you want the best of both worlds.

If you are shopping for a new laptop, your choices just got a bit harder. With the slew of Windows 8 laptops and tablets starting to be announced, you know have more choices than ever and you have to decide whether or not to wait until the end of October to purchase a new machine, not always something a college student can do.

"With the introduction of our new Slate PCs, we are providing customers with greater choice while maintaining the power of a traditional PC," said Todd Bouman, vice president of marketing at Samsung's Enterprise Business Division. "We created our Slate PCs with a focus on beautiful design, powerful performance and ease of use, attributes that our customers have come to expect in their Samsung computing experience. Our mobile PC business has grown significantly over the past year, which is a testament to our ability to meet customer needs in this space, and we expect strong growth to continue with our new Slate PCs."

The new devices by Samsung weighs in at less than 2 pounds, so it is really pretty portable. The Series 7 slate also features a full Core i5 processor, so it should perform beautifully, if not a bit on the hot side. In the press release, Samsung says, "Samsung's renowned design inspiration is evident through the device's curved edges and smooth lines"--I just hope these lines and curved edges don't get them sued by Apple.

Brace yourselves, Windows 8 devices are coming! Today, the Acer Aspire S7 has broken cover and are we glad it did. This thing is absolutely gorgeous. Thin, stylish, and constructed from aluminium and magnesium, this device could be in the running for best looking laptop ever, if there were such a competition.

Of course, since it features Windows 8, this super sleek notebook features a capacitive touchscreen. According to The Verge, who got their hands on the device at IFA, "it's the prettiest laptop I've come across since first laying eyes on Apple's 2010 MacBook Air redesign." However, that's not to say it's perfect.

While using it, they experienced issues open the lid due to the stiff hinge, something that is required to have a touchscreen notebook, and the weird cutout that was supposed to aid lifting the screen. In a world of ever pushing the envelope, machines have gotten larger and less portable while just squeaking by Intel's specs.

CNET are reporting that the 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pro displays have gone into production, with NPD DisplaySearch analyst, Richard Shim, telling the site "The supply chain indications are that it's for a MacBook Pro 13.3 -- not a MacBook Air".

Shim continues to reveal that the displays are being made by Samsung, LGD and Sharp. He also reveals that the launch supplies for the 13-inch model will be much better than the 15-inch model, which goes to show just how popular the 13-inch MBP really is. Shim continues "with the 15.4 it's production of a few hundred thousand units versus one or two million for the 13.3".

So, we're looking at a considerable jump in stock, and I think this model will be the one that really dukes it out with the Ultrabooks. It'll be interesting to see what resolution the 13.3-inch model ends up getting.