Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer might be working overtime to keep Apple at bay, but the PC market that his company largely built is hurting, if you ask researchers at Gartner and IDC. Both estimate that shipments of traditional computers dropped by a tenth of a point in the second quarter of 2012 — not a good sign when Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors and a wave of Ultrabooks were supposed to usher in a PC renaissance. While the exact numbers vary, the two paint a partly familiar picture of the world stage: HP and Dell are taking a bruising, while ASUS and Lenovo are making huge leaps forward. Depending on who you ask, though, Acer is either kicking Dell down to fourth place or occupying that all too comfortable spot itself. The economy and tablets are once again blamed for making would-be PC upgraders jittery, although this time it may also be the wait for Windows 8 leading some to hold off.

If there’s a point of contention, it’s the US figures. Gartner and IDC alike agree that Acer, Dell and HP all took a drubbing. The two analyst groups are at odds with each other when it comes to everyone else, though. Apple will have gained market share to as much as 12 percent, but either increased or shrank its shipments; it’s Lenovo or Toshiba completing the top five outside of the usual suspects. Accordingly, take results with a grain of salt until all the PC builders have reported in. Nonetheless, if the groups have the same reasonable level of precision as they’ve had in the past, Microsoft may have to defer its ambitions for a little while longer.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablet PCs

IDC and Gartner: PC market flattened out in Q2 while Apple, ASUS and Lenovo remain the stars originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Gartner, IDC  | Email this | Comments

LG unveiled today in Korea two new notebooks with eh N550 and N450. Both model come with a wide selection of Core i5 and Core i7 Ivy Bridge CPUs, as well as an AMD Radeon HD7650 Graphics and a slim bezel design.
The N550 comes with a nice 15” screen with a HD Plus resolution (1600×900) and 3D, while the N450 comes with a 14” screen with a 1366×768 resolution.
While LG did not communicate on the N550 price, the N450 will be however sold at around 1.69 Million Won.

Announced early May, then officialized early June, Today (Early July) NEC finally gave its LaVie Z its definitive launch date and price line-up. So technically speaker nothing much has changed here, the LaVie Z is still an ultrabook and still comes with a Core-i7-3517U or Core i5-3317U, SSD, a 13.3″ screen with a 1600×900 resolution and lithium-magnesium alloy but comes now in an even lighter package and now weight just 875g instead of the 999g previously announced!
Anyway the first …

Dell’s XPS 13 Ultrabook has been rather lonely since it launched in early 2012, but the company is introducing two new laptops to round out the updated XPS line. Today it announced the 14-inch XPS 14 and the 15-inch XPS 15, both of which feature the same aluminum chassis as the XPS 13 and run Core i5 or Core i7 Ivy Bridge processors.

The XPS 14 Ultrabook will be available in two configurations, both of which include a backlit keyboard and a 400-nit, 1600 x 900 display. The main difference between the two models is connectivity: the higher-end XPS 14 comes with integrated mobile broadband and uses Dell’s NetReady “pay as you go” service to get online when Wi-Fi is out of range. Both versions come with up to 8GB of RAM and can be configured with a 500GB drive spinning at 5,400 RPM paired with a 32GB SSD or a standalone 512GB SSD, and the WWAN model comes standard with a 500GB drive with a free fall sensor on board. Another difference is graphics: the base model ships with Intel HD Graphics 4000, while the WWAN model offers an NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M GPU. Dell claims the notebook provides up to 11 hours of runtime, “the longest battery life of any Ultrabook.” The XPS 14 starts at $1,099 and is available today. It just so happens that we’ve already taken the laptop for a full test drive: check out our review here.

Next up is the XPS 15, which weighs 5.79 pounds and sports a 1920 x 1080 Corning Gorilla Glass display. The laptop includes either a DVD-RW or Blu-Ray drive and comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. As far as graphics go, you get a choice of NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 630M chip with 1GB of dedicated memory or GeForce GT 640M graphics with 2GB of RAM. Pricing starts at $1,299, and like the XPS 14 this laptop is available today. Check out our hands-on gallery below.

Continue reading Dell outs XPS 14 with optional mobile broadband, XPS 15 with Kepler graphics

Dell outs XPS 14 with optional mobile broadband, XPS 15 with Kepler graphics originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 26 Jun 2012 03:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments