Laptops - Page 45

RumorTT is back! RumorTT was taking a holiday on a Jamaican beach, sipping cocktails and sunbathing all day - because, its a boss and a ladies man. But, RumorTT is back into full swing with a pretty juicy rumor that Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks might sport 2560x1400 displays. This would be a huge gain for users who work with photographs, documents or many windows all at once. During last months IDF, there were a bunch of interesting disclosures and strategic directions unveiled, especially when it came to Intel's mobile product expansion.

What is the most interesting from that, is that 13.3-inch panels with a resolution of wait for it, 2560x1440 pixels could make their way onto Ultrabook screens by near year. Even the next-gen iPad which is rumored to have a 2048x1536 display is indeed available, but very expensive. With similar pixel density, a 2560x1400 13.3-inch screen would not be cheap, either. If we do see these super high-res panels on Ultrabooks, expect them to be expensive.

Considering that most 13-inch notebooks have 1366x768 "HD" ready displays, this would be a huge jump. Personally, I can't stand anything less than 1920x1080 on a screen, but each to their own. I'm a resolution and frame rate whore, and I know it.

ASUS' sexy U46SV ultra-thin laptop has been spotted in the U.S., with a pre-order listing now up over at ExcaliberPC. Having been out in Europe for a short while already, it's been quite the popular little number at its respective price point and certainly catches one's eye with its champagne-colored brushed aluminum casing.

With a price tag of $879 in the states at the aforementioned etailer, the U46SV-DH51 measures just 1.08-inches thick and is based on Intel's Huron River platform. It sports an LED-backlit display running at 1366x768 and is powered by a Core i5-2410M processor (2.3GHz) with 4GB of RAM, 640GB HDD, 3-in-1 card reader, GeForce 540M 1GB graphics, 0.3MP camera, Gigabit ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, SonicFocus audio, a USB 3.0 port, HDMI output and 8-cell battery.

It looks like the official U.S. release is around about October 1st.

With the ultrabook market really heating up of late, word of what ASUS has planned for this market segment by the second quarter of 2012 should ensure it's more lively again. We've seen a few pre-release Ultrabooks shown off lately from the likes of Acer, ASUS and Toshiba and they are already gathering quite a bit of attraction, but apparently ASUS will have some particularly aggressively priced Ultrabook models hit the scene in April 2012.

Digitimes reports that following the launch of 5 or 6 ultrabook models (11.6-inch and 13.3-inch variants) this coming October at tentative pricing starting at US$899 and going up, ASUS will then shift its focus onto Ivy Bridge and dish up ultrabooks based on this platform ranging from US$600-$900 for the entry-level segment; that is if ASUS' CEO Jerry Shen has his facts straight.

An Ivy Bridge powered ultra book for US$600? That oughta shake up the entire notebook market somewhat; certainly in the more entry/mid-range sectors where a similar amount of money to chunkier, heavier notebooks gets you a lighter, sleeker design without a performance or battery life trade-off.

Late last week news hit the web that Intel was pushing back its new netbook platform, Cedar Trail-M from a September release to November, with the reason given that the platform had encountered some graphics driver hiccups resulting in a failure to meet Windows 7 certification.

Fast forward to the other side of the weekend and we're now finding out that there's unsurprisingly more to it than that. Where it was initially thought to be just some video decoding issues holding them back, it's actually a different, more alarming element of the driver that Intel can't rustle out at this time, one directly relating to DX9 (not a typo).

The story goes that while the graphics core in Cedar Trail is based around DX10.1, Intel wasn't going to have supporting DX10.1 drivers ready in time for the platform's launch as it was, so that's where (what was supposedly) easier to build DX9 drivers came into play, to give a working base for the launch until such time as Intel can produce the DX10.1 drivers.

GamesCom 2011 - Earlier on today at GamesCom 2011 here in Germany, Samsung held a press conference (albeit completely in German) where they debuted their newest notebook which of course considering the event is focused right toward gamers. After seeing great success with televisions and smartphones, Samsung is now trying to attack the gaming market with force.

The Series 7 gaming notebook is a 17.3-inch LED notebook using an Intel Core i7 processor, Radeon 6970M 2GB graphics, flash storage, Blu-ray optical drive, 1.5TB of HDD storage space and 16GB of DDR3 memory. The flash storage i.e. SSD is added on the motherboard itself and comes in at 8GB and is said to improve performance dramatically over a standard HDD... who woulda thought?!

Besides all the high-end desktop replacement specs, the keyboard looks pretty impressive with blue backlit keys and the gaming focused WASD keys are backlit in red. There is supposedly too some fancy cooling in play with the Series 7 notebook, but it was discussed all in German and we didn't get a chance to quiz anyone about it. It's going on sale on September 12th in Europe with a street price of 1799 Euro.

Toshiba have paved the way with their new Qosmio F755 which is the world's first laptop capable of delivering glasses-free 3D and 2D content at the same time on one screen. The Qosmio F755 3D laptop sports the latest in auto-stereoscopic display technology, equipped with a 15.6-inch full HD TriBrite display with Active Lens technology, the double parallax image display is able to project two sets of images at the same time, splitting them between left and right eyes to create the 3D effect.

Toshiba also includes their Face Tracking technology which uses the in-built webcam to perfect the projection of the image by reacting to the motion and position of the user, which delivers a broad viewing zone from which to view 3D content. The result? Glasses-free 3D goodness. As the only laptop of its kind to offer simultaneous viewing of both 2D and 3D content on the single screen, it provides users with the option to watch 3D content in a full-screen or condense it to a smaller window, preserving the 2D desktop to browse the Web or do other tasks.

Also included is the Toshiba Blu-ray Player which adds to the laptop's flexibility by delivering "one-click" 2D-to-3D content conversion for DVDs and videos, which gives the user the oppurtinity to enjoy the latest Blu-ray 3D movies or experience their existing 2D movie library in a whole new way.

MSI has just unveiled another gaming laptop with it already showing up in a few stores and being available for pre-order elsewhere.

The new GT683DX laptop is a 15.6-inch sized unit using one of NVIDIA's most recent high-end mobile GPUs, the GTX 570M with 1.5GB GDDR5 memory. The rest of the default specs include a 1920x1080 Full HD display, 2nd-gen Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU, 4GB of DDR3-1333MHz memory, 1TB (500GBx2 / RAID 0) storage, 8X DVDRW, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, 2xUSB 3.0, 720p webcam, 2.1 Dynaudio sound system and a 9-cell battery.

Depending on how much extra you may like to spend over the $1,600 odd base price, you can switch things up for a 120GB SSD+750GB HDD, 12GB RAM, Blu-ray drive and matt-finish display.

Alienware is putting on quite a song and dance in Australia at the moment with its world first Live Dimension Reality experience which took place in Melbourne on July 7th and its Area-52 tour which is scheduled to begin at Sydney's Circular Quay when it opens its doors on July 19, operating there until July 21.

As you can see from the piece of video coverage of the event last week, a great deal of effort has gone into this show, combining stunts, pyrotechnics, projection mapping and other special effects to demonstrate the power of Alienware. world renowned Melbourne based special effects studio, Boffswana were the powers that be to help reel the audience in to what was clearly quite an impressive performance indeed.

As for the Area-52 tour, this involves a fully decked out trailer they call the Area 52 Airstream, geared up with the latest in Alienware goodies and gives members of the public the chance to be a part of pop-up gaming events based on the street level presence of the Area 52. In all, it allows the public the chance to get some hands-on time with the latest from Alienware as well as win prizes through gaming competitions, all the while allowing Alienware to boost market presence as being the optimal choice to meet the needs and desires of gamers.

Following its first appearance at Computex early last month, GIGABYTE's T1125P booktop is now listed at website ExcaliberPC with an indicated date of availability being July 22, albeit pricing is yet to be disclosed on the unit.

In case you missed the rundown on it during all the goings on at last month's Computex, this is an 11.6-inch booktop (that can be used as a notebook, tablet or desktop PC) and is set to replace last year's T1125N which we reviewed a while back here.

The new T1125P weighs in at 1.73Kg (not too bad for a convertible laptop) and its multi-touch LED-backlit (1366 x 768) display is capable of rotating 360 degrees. Packed inside is a 1.33GHz Core i5-470UM CPU, 4GB of DDR3, GeForce 410M 1GB graphics with Optimus support and a 500GB mechanical HDD. The feature set gets rounded out with Gigabit ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, two speakers and two woofers, 1.3MP webcam, 1xUSB 3.0 port and a 6-cell battery.

Chics it up a notch, geddit? Chic styling, yeah, you know you do. Today, Gateway intros in a new, revamped style of two of its Gateway notebook PCs, the Gateway ID Series and Gateway NV Series. Both lines feature incredibly stylish designs in the most in-demand sizes, powered by the latest and greatest mobile technology. First up the Gateway ID47 Series sports a 14-inch HD widescreen LED backlit display with full edge-to-edge glass which slides into a chassis usually designed for smaller 13.3-inch models.

The Gateway NV Series features a new sleek design with a bigger 15.6-inch display with instant social media connections. Both lines include USB 3.0 for fast transfers and device charging. The Gateway ID Series comes in two designs, "Infinity Blue Liquid" which is meant to resemble tranquil water whilst the second design dubbed "Brushed Platinum" conveys an industrial modern feel.

Both the ID and NV Series include instant social networking with quick-use hot keys that give customers quick access to their social networks on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Pushing the button launches and integrated widget that lets customers easily make updates to their own sites by posting information, images and video as well as checking out the status feeds of friends, family and colleagues.

Intel's new x86 Atom architecture dubbed 'Cloverview', is set to launch before Windows 8 hits shelves early next year. Intel's Director of Product and Technology Media Relations, Bill Korcos has said the Atom Clover Trail and its Cloverview processor are designed to work with Windows 8 and it will be a "nice one-two chip-software punch."

He didn't give an exact month or quarter launch frame, but rumors of Windows 8 hitting RTM status in April would be a good indication of Intel's launch details. Kircos was clear that the upcoming x86 Atom architecture would power a bunch of new tablets, netbooks, slider devices and more.

Cloverview will be one of Intel Atom's first 32nm-based chips and is intended for tablets, which is great because the shrink is set to reduce power consumption and improve battery life. There is of course the Cedar Trail and Medfield which are prepped for netbooks and phones/tablets respectively. NVIDIA and ARM have some competition against their Kal-El and Cortex A15 products. Can Intel win? We will have to wait and see!

If you're in the market for an outrageously fast notebook for gaming and the current top dog choices of mobile GPUs from both the green and red teams weren't impressive enough to meet your expectations, hold onto your seats folks, for notebooks equipped with a new GPU weapon are on the immediate horizon thanks to the launch of NVIDIA's new mobile GPU today; the GTX 580M.

With previous GTX-500M series GPUs not up to par in the performance stakes with the previous gen GTX-480M, this new model from NVIDIA comes much welcomed and looks to boast some very impressive performance, well overshading the aforementioned 480M.

Specs wise, the GPU runs at a clock speed of 1240MHz and a memory clock of up to 1500MHz. It houses 384 CUDA cores and up to 2GB of 256-bit 96GB/s GDDR5 memory.

Acer today introduce two new top-of-the-line multimedia notebook PC lines for both the US and Canada. The new Acer Aspire Ethos AS8951G and AS5951G are designed to deliver an unparalleled high-definition personal theatre experience for a wide range of activities, including graphics-intensive gaming, video streaming and enjoying high-definition DVDs, photography or videos.

Dell have finally released their aimed-at-the-Apple-MacBook-Pro notebook in the form of the Dell XPS 15z, a 15-inch, powerhouse of a system that looks virtually identical to the stylish-yet-expensive MacBook Pro. Dell's XPS 15z starts at a decent $999 and can be ordered today. The XPS 15z features both Core i5 and Core i7 options from the second-generation Core architecture, weighs in at 5.54 pounds and is under an inch thick.

Apple is set to inject their ultra-thin MacBook Air range with some Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt goodness come this June/July. The refreshed models will bring the Air range in line with the Sandy Bridge-refreshed MacBook Pro and iMac range that have just recently been updated. DigiTimes is citing industry sources saying that the supply chain makers for the new models remain the same.

In case you missed the Google I/O Livestream and the coverage by every online tech blog in the world, here's what Google posted on their blog yesterday, as well as some great video including a Chromebook promo and the Day 2 Keynote where they announced it: