After whetting our appetite at CES, Samsung’s updated Series 7 Chronos is slowly squeaking its way into US retailers. Spotted at Best Buy for $1,200, this 21mm dynamo packs a 2.4GHz Intel Core i7 3635QM CPU and an AMD Radeon HD 8870M GPU along with a 15.6-inch touchscreen. While this lean, mean, Windows 8 machine’s streamlined design and spec sheet are impressive, such adornment comes at a price. Absent from the Chronos’ fine engineering is room for an optical drive, so DVD and Blu-ray enthusiasts be warned. However, should this caveat not apply to you, then by all means you have our blessings to check out Sammy’s new up-and-comer.
Despite being announced long before the budget-minded VivoTab Smart, ASUS’ higher-end Windows 8 laptop / tablet hybrid known as the Transformer Book has yet to make its way to store shelves — or receive official pricing, for that matter. Nonetheless, those intent on throwing one of the machines into their satchel can snag the Transformer Book on pre-order, which is available through MacMall for $1,479.99. The 13.3-inch system sports a 1,920 x 1,080 display, and in this particular configuration, you’ll fetch a dual-core 1.9GHz Core i7-3517U CPU with Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive that’s augmented by a 128GB SSD. This price includes the keyboard dock, but it’s worth reiterating that you might pay more than necessary to snag the system on pre-order. If you’re on the fence, be sure to revisit our hands-on from last summer’s Computex.
Only this morning we were being teased with the idea of a touchscreen Chromebook. Well, good news for people who hate waiting — it’s here, it’s called the Pixel, and you can pre-order today. The all-Google laptop is aimed at those who live in the cloud, but want a little more from their machine. Built from the ground up for the web, the 12.85-inch 3:2 ratio display claims to offer 18 percent more vertical space than 16:9 does. The screen the Pixel has is — as you can imagine — one of its proudest features, sporting a 2,560 x 1,700 resolution, giving a PPI of 239, and offers a brightness of 400nit. Oh, and of course, it’s touch-enabled so whatever your input preference, you’re covered. On the inside, there’s a dual-core 1.8Ghz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and two SSD options — 32Gb or 64GB. If that’s not enough, Google’s ahead of you, and is throwing in 1TB of Drive storage with every Pixel for three years — what it expects the life of the machine to be. You won’t be basing your choice just on storage though, as the smaller capacity model is WiFi only, while the 64GB comes with Verizon LTE baked right in, and a choice of plans.
As for the rest of the features, the Pixel also has a triple-microphone configuration — with one under the keyboard — which helps improve noise cancellation, including the rattle of your typing during excited hangouts. This is also where the speakers are hidden, so it will be interesting to see how those play nice together. Other features include an “HD” camera, a custom keyboard action for less finger-fatigue, and an enhanced smooth glass trackpad. As for ins and outs, there are two USB ports, a mini displayport, a mic / headphone jack and an SD card reader — notably, no Ethernet. Wirelessly, you have WiFi a thru n and Bluetooth (plus that LTE if you opt in). Wondering what effect that display might have on the (59Wh) battery? Well Google claims its open-source test (available for criticism online) has rated the Pixel at five hours. If you want to get yourself some touchscreen Pixel action, you can order starting today from the Play store, or Best Buy starting tomorrow. The WiFi-only model will cost you $1,299, rising to $1,449 if you want some LTE (currently US / Verizon only). Not enough info for you right there? Why not head over to our minty-fresh hands-on.
Only yesterday we were being teased with the idea of a touchscreen Chromebook. Well, good news for people who hate waiting — it’s here, it’s called the Pixel, and you can pre-order today. The all-Google laptop is aimed at those who live in the cloud, but want a little more from their machine. Built from the ground up for the web, the 12.85-inch 3:2 ratio display claims to offer 18 percent more vertical space than 16:9 does. The screen the Pixel has is — as you can imagine — one of its proudest features, sporting a 2,560 x 1,700 resolution, giving a PPI of 239, and offers a brightness of 400nit. Oh, and of course, it’s touch-enabled so whatever your input preference, you’re covered. On the inside, there’s a dual-core 1.8Ghz Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and two SSD options — 32GB or 64GB. If that’s not enough, Google’s ahead of you, and is throwing in 1TB of Drive storage with every Pixel for three years — what it expects the life of the machine to be. You won’t be basing your choice just on storage though, as the smaller capacity model is WiFi only, while the 64GB comes with Verizon LTE baked right in, and a choice of plans.
As for the rest of the features, the Pixel also has a triple-microphone configuration — with one under the keyboard — which helps improve noise cancellation, including the rattle of your typing during excited hangouts. This is also where the speakers are hidden, so it will be interesting to see how those play nice together. Other features include an “HD” camera, a custom keyboard action for less finger-fatigue, and an enhanced smooth glass trackpad. As for ins and outs, there are two USB ports, a mini displayport, a mic / headphone jack and an SD card reader — notably, no Ethernet. Wirelessly, you have WiFi a thru n and Bluetooth (plus that LTE if you opt in). Wondering what effect that display might have on the (59Wh) battery? Well Google claims its open-source test (available for criticism online) has rated the Pixel at five hours. If you want to get yourself some touchscreen Pixel action, you can order starting today from the Play store, or Best Buy starting tomorrow. The WiFi-only model will cost you $1,299, rising to $1,449 if you want some LTE (currently US / Verizon only). Not enough info for you right there? Why not head over to our minty-fresh hands-on.
Update: The WiFi model is available now from the Google Play store and will be on Bestbuy.com starting tomorrow. You’ll have to wait until April before you can order the LTE version.
Dell has posted its 2013 financial results for both Q4 as well as the full fiscal year. In the fourth quarter, Dell’s revenue totaled $14.3 billion, which is an 11% decrease from 2012. Its revenue for the entire year was $56.9 billion, an 8% decrease from last year. Revenue from Dell’s enterprise solutions and services grew 6% in Q4 to $5.2 billion. The revenue for the full year totaled 34%, or $19.4 billion, of Dell’s total revenue. This was a 4% increase from fiscal year 2012.
GAAP earnings were $0.30 per share for Q4, and $1.35 per share for the whole year. The GAAP earnings were down 30% from Q4 2012, and down 28% for the fiscal year. Its non-GAAP earnings totaled $0.40 a share in the quarter, and $1.72 per share for the full year. The non-GAAP earnings were down 22% from Q4 2012, and 19% for the fiscal year. Dell’s GAAP operating income was $698 million, 4.9% of Dell’s revenue, and its operating income for the entire year was $3 billion. The non-GAAP operating income was $954 million, 6.7% of Dell’s revenue. The non-GAAP operating income for the year was $4 billion.
Dell ended Q4 with $15.3 billion in cash and investments, with $3.3 billion for the entire year. Dell’s server revenue increased 5%, and it’s networking products and solutions saw a 42% revenue increase. Dell’s Quest software brought in revenue that went well over Dell’s expected $180-$200 million mark for the quarter. Unfortunately, Dell’s desktop and mobile sector revenue decreased 20% in the quarter.
Dell wasn’t able to provide an outlook for Q1 2014 or for the full fiscal year due to its pending merger agreement to make the company private. The company will be buying back its stock for $24 billion, with a $2 billion loan from Microsoft. While Dell’s consumer revenue fell 24% in Q4 to $2.8 billion, and its operating income saw an 87% decrease to $8 million, Dell’s financial results are much higher than they had expected.
This week we’re having a look at the real-deal final release iteration of the ASUS VivoBook U38N with full touchscreen capabilities, Windows 8, and AMD innards. This machine is sleek, keeps with the fantastic ASUS style language we’ve been loving since the ASUS Transformer Prime stole our hears back in 2011, and provides a rather rare look at this sort of amalgamation of bits with AMD under the hood. It all starts with 5-point capacitive touch on a Full HD 1920 x 1080 panel with a rather nice “frameless” design up front.
Hardware
With an ASUS piece of hardware you know you’re getting a machine whose creators spent some time perfecting its casings, and here we’ve got a design that’s been perfected several times over. This notebook will not look unique to you if you’ve worked with an ASUS laptop in the last few years. It’s certainly thin at between 6-19mm from its thinnest to its fattest, and it’s light enough to fit in your standard backpack at just 1.55Kg.
The panel you’re looking at is 13.3-inches of Full HD IPS LCD at a 16:9 aspect ratio. The front-facing camera you’re working with is HD 720p for video chat and you’ve got a standard integrated microphone so you can chat without additional accessories. If you do want to plug in, on the other hand, you’ve got 3x USB 3.0 ports, a Mini VGA port, full-sized HDMI-out, and an SD card reader so you can rock and roll.
The keyboard here is a really standard ASUS setup – working with a bit more breathing room than we’ve seen on the slightly smaller Transformer tablet units over the past couple of years with a touchpad that’s also had some usability improvements. Of course if you continue to compare an Android tablet user experience to a Windows user experience here with full Windows 8, you’re going to feel that this device is rocking and rolling in the hardware department – it does have a bit to do with the fact that Windows 8 is made for a desktop environment, of course.
Inside you’ve got a choice between 2.5῀ 7mm 500 GB HDD and 2.5῀ 7mm SSD 128GB as well as DDR3 1600MHz 2GB (on board) with either 2GB or 4GB Slot DIMM. It all depends on what you need to keep you kicking. You’ve also got a choice between AMD Radeon HD7600G and AMD Radeon HD7620G graphics on either AMD A8-4555M or A10-4655M Quad-Core APU processors. All this magic comes clean with the AMD A70M Hub Controller – your only choice for chipset.
You’ll also find that you’ve got a built-in Bang & Olufsen ICE Power audio system that’ll make dorm room video watching a successful venture without a doubt. Each speaker is 2.5 W and you’ve got the guarantee that Bang & Olufsen worked with the ASUSA special Golden Ear team for an “exclusive” SonicMaster Technology experience. In short: this laptop sounds very, very nice.
Software & Performance
With Windows 8 you’ve got a fully touch-friendly experience ahead of you from start to finish, and with the 5-finger touch functionality of the ASUS U38N series, you’ll be tapping all day long. To keep you running strong, you’ve got AMD to keep you warmed up nice and toasty, complete with several AMD-exclusive features. Have a peek here first at a system readout for this unit:
System – ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. U38N
Manufacturer
Asus
Product Type
Notebook
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 8 Pro (64-bit)
Motherboard
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. U38N
Processor
AMD A10-4655M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Processor ID
AuthenticAMD Family 21 Model 16 Stepping 1
Processor Frequency
2.00 GHz
Processors
1
Threads
4
Cores
4
L1 Instruction Cache
64.0 KB
L1 Data Cache
16.0 KB
L2 Cache
2.00 MB
L3 Cache
0.00 B
Memory
3.45 GB DDR3 SDRAM 675MHz
FSB
202 MHz
BIOS
American Megatrends Inc. U38N.TPM.ALS.0x20
With this build of Windows 8 you’ll be seeing a fairly clean design with not one whole heck of a lot of extra software pushed by ASUS. That said, there are some interesting additions you’re going to want to see in our hands-on with the system coming up next. Note while you’re watching how sleek the system is and how well touch is responded to right here with this basic out-of-box build.
Finally have a peek at our basic benchmark result from Geekbench. This notebook is certainly not the most powerful we’ve come across, but it definitely gets the job done for your everyday computing needs. If you’re looking for some notebooks to compare to, feel free to head down into our Laptop Reviews tag portal for machines from each of the finest manufacturers on the market. AMD does seem to be holding its own against some of the more visible names in the public today!
Benchmark Score – ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. U38N
Section
Description
Score
Total Score
Windows x86 (64-bit) – Microsoft Windows 8 Pro (64-bit)
Integer
Processor integer performance
3270
3578
Floating Point
Processor floating point performance
4806
Memory
Memory performance
2245
Stream
Memory bandwidth performance
3025
Wrap-Up
With the ASUS VivoBook U38N you’ve got a rather well-rounded solution for your school or everyday home use. With the high-quality audio system and the Full HD picture right in front of your face, you’ll also do well to work with this machine as a home entertainment blaster, especially if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t use a giant TV. If you DO use a giant TV, you’ve also got the option to output via HDMI as well – easy as pie!
This is easily one of ASUS’ finest efforts to date, and with AMD under the hood you know you’ll have a unique solution that your best buddy will be interested in fiddling around with. ASUS also works with a collection of their own accessories that work with this notebook, and the manufacturer continues to support their ever-growing line of products with both hardware and software upgrades into the future. Let us know if you’re onboard!
Great news for those people who love to lie around, but also need to get some work done… Thanko made it possible for you to work hard while relaxing flat on your back. It’s a folding desk with up to a 70cm top panel, clips and belt. You can strap your laptop (up to 5kg) or a book or magazine to the desk, and while you are on your back, relaxing in bed, you can work or read. And there is no need to worry about your computer overheating. Just plug in the table’s small fans through …
Apple has slashed the price of its MacBook Pro with Retina display notebooks, throwing in some updated specifications along the way. The tweaked 13-inch MBP with Retina now starts at $1,499, a $200 saving from the old price, while the newest 15-inch MBP with Retina gets a spec boost, and the 13-inch MacBook Air has also seen a price cut, down to $1,399 from $1,499 for the 256GB flash version.
As for the specification bump to the Retina-blessed MacBook Pro line-up, they see Intel’s latest processors slotted inside. The $1,699 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display kicks off with a 2.6GHz processor paired with 256GB of flash storage, for instance.
There are more changes for the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, with the entry-level model now getting a 2.4GHz quadcore processor instead of the 2.3GHz chip previously used. Its more expensive sibling now gets a 2.7GHz quadcore processor and 16GB of memory, up from the 2.6GHz and 8GB of RAM previously specified.
All of the new models are available to order from Apple’s online store, retail stores, and resellers from today, with customization options also available if you build-to-order online. More on the notebooks themselves in our 2012 reviews; you can find them in the timeline below.
Gigabyte unleashed the beast today with a 17.3-inch gaming laptop that’s named, awkwardly enough, the P2742G. The system combines a quad-core Core i7 CPU and a GeForce GTX 660M GPU with Windows 8 and a 1080p display. First announced last fall, the P2742G is now available from £909 in the UK via retailers such as Amazon. Likewise, we’ve spotted similar pre-order prices for US markets in the neighborhood of $1,450. The laptop boasts two storage bays with RAID array support, an optional Blu-ray combo drive and THX TruStudio Pro enhancements. You’ll also find a 2-megapixel webcam in the mix, but your color choices are limited to either orange or black. That said, if you’re able to grab both, you’ll be well-coordinated for when Halloween comes around. In the meantime, you’ll find the full spec sheet at the source link.
This week we’ve gotten our hands on the Microsoft Surface Pro for an extended review, and one of the first things to strike us was the idea that this device might be another competitor for the MacBook Air. With the Surface Pro running Windows 8 and the MacBook Air (the newest model, that is), running OS X, there’s some things that simply cannot be compared – some people simply prefer one over the other. When it comes down to the experience and one-on-one comparisons between these two devices, on the other hand, winning features shine through on both devices.
With the MacBook Air you’ve got an 11.6-inch display while the Surface Pro works with a 10.6-inch display – you could also get a 13-inch MacBook Air, mind you, but here we’ll compare the display that’s nearest the Surface Pro. The display on the Surface Pro works with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution while the MacBook Air’s native resolution is 1366 x 768 pixels. It’s also worth making the distinction between these two displays in the fact that the MacBook Air does not work touch.
Windows 8 is an operating system that makes full use of the 10-finger touchscreen display on the Surface Pro while the MacBook Air is a machine that relies on its touchpad to mouse around, select items, and make gestures. The Surface Pro works with a cover that doubles as a keyboard, too. And in that point is the biggest differentiation point between these two machines – one is a tablet, the other a notebook.
While the Macbook Air is a notebook computer that made and continues to make a point of its ultra-thin nature and how it can work as a full-function notebook computer with as tiny an amount of bulk as possible. You’ll see from the images above and below as well as the hands-on video we’ve got prepared that the MacBook Pro is a significant amount thinner than the Surface Pro – or so it might seem at first.
MacBook Air (11-inch) Thickness: 0.11-0.68 inches Width: 11.8 inches Height (front to back, while closed) : 7.56 inches Weight: 2.38 pounds
Both devices have the ability to store a massive amount of data, with the Surface Pro having two iterations, 64GB and 128GB. Those are the amount of internal storage the Surface Pro has in its two different iterations, each of them with their own cash cost – that’s also one of the only things that differentiates the different versions of the Surface Pro at this very moment. The MacBook Air comes int two different iterations (with several different modifications available therein), one of them 64GB, the other 128GB.
The power you’ll be able to work with in a MacBook Air is either an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor. The Microsoft Surface Pro works with one configuration at the moment for processing power, that being an Intel Core i5 – and all of the processors here are 3rd gen Ivy Bridge, mind you, regardless of Apple or Microsoft surroundings.
The MacBook Pro has a lovely collection of ports and connections including: 720p “FaceTime” HD camera 2x USB 3 ports Thunderbolt port MagSafe 2 power port Microphone Headphone port Wifi Bluetooth Stereo Speakers
With the Surface Pro you’ll also be connecting with ports and wirelessly like mad: 2x 720p HD “LifeCam” cameras (front and rear-facing) USB 3 port microSDXC card slot power port Microphone Headphone port Wifi Bluetooth Stereo Speakers
You’ll notice that the 11-inch MacBook Pro doesn’t have an SD card slot – the 13-inch version of this device does, but the 11-inch version does not. The Surface Pro also benefits from its form factor in that it can make use of such sensors as an Accelerometer, a Gyroscope, and a Compass. With these you’ll be about to, for example, steer a car in a racing game, while the MacBook Air is meant to stay stationary while you’re using it.
The MacBook Air also benefits from the fact that it’s a notebook computer, able to stand up on its own with its keyboard attached, while the Surface Pro works in an entirely different way for stationary standing. The Surface Pro uses a kickstand on its back that’ll keep it upright while you tap away and also has a keyboard cover that, like a notebook computer, folds up and protects the device’s display or down for everyday typing use.
The Surface Pro also works with its own pen that sticks to the side of the tablet when not in use, utilizing an active digitizer in the display to make more than just standard capacitive moves galore. The pen creates a rather unique experience for you with the Surface Pro while the MacBook Air really isn’t the same universe – the only other place you’re going to get a digital pen experience in a mobile sense like this right now is in the Samsung Galaxy Note series – have a peek at our Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 review for more on that environment.
And this is only part of the story – for more information on both machines, you’ll want to check our full reviews of both devices. Have a peek at our MacBook Air (mid-2012) review as well as our Microsoft Surface Pro review for everything you could ever want to know!
Also be sure to let us know which of these two devices seem like they’d suit your needs given what you know today. Is there one that strikes your fancy more than the other?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
