Hasta La Gadget!

Last month, Samsung gave us a look at two new ATIV Book 9 Ultrabooks, both of which will replace the company’s famed Series 9 lineup. While the ATIV Book 9 Plus, with its QHD+ display and brand-new Haswell chip, may be a tad more exciting than the Book 9 Lite with its unspecified quad-core processor, it’s the latter machine that’s getting US pricing info today. At the end of the month, Samsung will offer the Book 9 Lite for $800. That relatively affordable sum gets you a 13.3-inch, 1,366 x 768 capacitive touchscreen, 128 gigs of SSD storage, AMD Radeon graphics and up to 5.5 hours of battery life.

In our brief hands-on time, we found both the Plus and Lite models to be comfortable; the main differences are the Plus’ superior processor, higher-res display and slightly sleeker design. While both machines seem like solid options, we’d be remiss not to mention that the Plus will likely get a US launch date of its own very soon — and its higher-end specs could make it worth the wait. If you’re already set on the ATIV Book 9 Lite, though, you can get your pre-order on now at Samsung’s site, or look for the machine in stores starting on July 28th.

Filed under: Laptops, Samsung

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Snapped up a Chromebook for less than three Benjamins? If so, NPD thinks you’ve made Page and Co.’s devices account for 20 and 25 percent of laptops sold for under $300. Stephen Baker, an NPD analyst, told Bloomberg that the research firm was initially skeptical about the cloud-tied laptops, but Google’s hardware “found a niche in the marketplace.” Mountain View’s mobile PC foray took eight months to reach current sales numbers and NPD claims that based on price, they’re the fastest-growing part of the PC industry. Bloomberg attributes the recent uptick in sales to the education market and early adopters — increased retail availability probably doesn’t hurt, either.

Filed under: Laptops, Google

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Via: The Register (UK)

Source: Bloomberg

Vizio (yes, that one) decided to launch itself head-first into the laptop market with the 14-inch Thin and Light, a staggeringly beautiful piece of hardware. Sadly, what it lavished on a full-metal chassis, SSD and high-res display wasn’t matched in the battery and keyboard / mouse department. That’s why, as much as our reviewer wanted to love the hardware, it wasn’t to be. For those of you who know and love Vizio’s TVs and couldn’t resist trying one out — what did you think, and what do you think the company should do better the second time out?

Filed under: Laptops

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We usually associate Boston University with brain studies and bat-chasing UAVs; we’ll have to add technology patent lawsuits to the list. Following similar claims versus the likes of Amazon and Samsung, the university has sued Apple for allegedly infringing on a 1997 patent for making gallium nitride thin films used in semiconductors. The university wants both financial compensation (likely the real objective) and a ban on US sales of the purportedly offending iPad, iPhone 5 and MacBook Air. Neither side is commenting on the case, although we suspect that it will end with a whimper, not a bang. Like many big tech firms, Apple tends to fight patent lawsuits when it expects to win, and settle out of court when it doesn’t. We’d add that the patent expires in 2015 — a Boston University victory would have relatively little effect on Apple’s future.

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Tablets, Apple

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Via: AppleInsider

Source: Boston Herald

While the non-final build of Opera’s new browser for PC and Mac was simply called “Next,” today it’s chosen the more formal title of Opera 15 for its official release. There aren’t any features of note that we hadn’t seen in the desktop preview of the WebKit-based software (or should we call it Blink-based?), but to jog your memory, it sports a fresh design, a Discover feature for catching up on the latest news and a tweaked Speed Dial menu for quick access to your favorite corners of the internet. Also, the web-clipping Stash feature, predictive address-cum-search bar, new download manager and “Off-Road mode” for extra compression on lousy connections are all included in the final version. We ran a quick SunSpider benchmark on the Mac build of Opera 15, in which it scored 167ms, compared with 171ms in Chrome. If you’re not already allied to one of the many competing browsers and feel like giving Opera 15 a try, head to the source below for the download links.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Internet, Software

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Via: SlashGear

Source: Opera (1) (download), (2)