Are you getting the most out of your laptop? Even if you have an old machine there are a couple of cheap tricks you can do to squeeze the best performance possible out of your PC. Want to know how? Laptop Magazine’s online editorial director Avram Piltch has the scoop. More »
Lenovo must have struck a chord with schools looking for some rough-and-tumble ThinkPads, as it’s bringing out the ThinkPad X131e even while teachers are still drafting their course plans for the fall semester. The new model keeps that better-than-military ruggedness in an 11.6-inch laptop while freshening the choices of AMD E-series chips or their Intel-made Celeron and Core i3 challengers. Dolby Advanced Audio even gives the speakers boost when it’s not a matter of all work and no play. Educators, in turn, get the usual options for extended support or customizing the laptops with a little school pride. There’s a premium to pay for putting classrooms on the cutting edge, however: at $499, the new systems are $70 more costly than the launch price of the X130e portables they replace, which leaves quite a bit less money for notebooks of the paper variety.
Continue reading Lenovo unveils toughened ThinkPad X131e for education, hikes price to $499
Filed under: Laptops
Lenovo unveils toughened ThinkPad X131e for education, hikes price to $499 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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When the MacBook Pro with Retina display is in the game, Apple’s “regular” Pros may seem a bit like also-rans. After all, why would you choose them when you could get a brilliant 15-inch 2,880 x 1,800 IPS panel and a Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor? Well, price, for one thing. While we walked away from our Retina MBP review mighty impressed, that model starts at $2,199. The latest crop of Pros, meanwhile, keep the same pricing scheme as last year’s models ($1,199 and up), but step up to Intel’s third-generation Ivy Bridge processors. We took the entry-level 13-incher for a spin to get a feel for how the dual-core Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4000 stack up to the competition. Read on to see how it fared.
Continue reading MacBook Pro review (13-inch, mid-2012)
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MacBook Pro review (13-inch, mid-2012) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Intel is kicking off its ultrabook symposium in Taipei tomorrow, and details have emerged of exactly what the company will be showcasing for the platform going forward. NetbookNews sat down with Navin Shenoy, the Vice President of Intel’s Architecture Group, and gleaned some information as to what to expect. As you might imagine, Intel is keen to promote ultrabooks and bring even more to market. Currently there are around 35 designs available to buy, but Intel says there are at least 140 designs for the platform.
Intel is also hoping to hit a very aggressive $699 price point for entry-level ultrabooks going forward in order to stave off competition from Apple’s MacBook Airs. There have been a couple of Sandy Bridge-based models that have briefly touched that price, but Intel is hoping for a wider range of ultrabooks to start hitting that specific number.
Standard ultrabooks are currently flooding from the market from a variety of manufacturers, but Intel hinted that around 40 ultrabooks with touch capabilities would see the light of day soon enough. Those models will launch around the fourth quarter, coinciding with the release of Windows 8 which places a new emphasis on touch operation.
Finally, the company once again hinted at its next-generation processor, Haswell. The processor will mark another jump in speed for Intel, but also bring with it reduced power requirements. Intel is pitching the 22nm processor as the first System on a Chip for the PC, claiming that it will use up to 20 times less power than Ivy Bridge. That low-power requirement will be especially important for ultrabooks, enabling true all day computing and bringing them closer to ARM-based tablets.
Intel: $699 ultrabooks coming soon is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Most tours of Chinese factories at least give workers a heads-up that they’ll be on camera. Not so the exposé that HP inadvertently gave one of its Swedish customers. Reddit user Malplace opened a new laptop to find that a 3-minute webcam video of the factory floor at HP’s contractor, Quanta, was sitting in Windows’ My Documents folder. If you’re looking for scandal from the footage, though, you won’t find it here: Chongqing Manufacturing City’s staff are shown dutifully moving the assembly line along in what looks like fair conditions, if exceptionally repetitive. The instance is most likely just a rare gaffe during testing at a manufacturer that pumps out millions of HP PCs every quarter, so we’ll cut Quanta some slack. It’s still a rare glimpse into a side of technology that’s considered off-limits for much of the buying public.
Continue reading HP laptop comes with webcam standard, peek at Chinese factory as bonus (video)
Filed under: Laptops
HP laptop comes with webcam standard, peek at Chinese factory as bonus (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Jul 2012 03:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
What’s rectangular, coated in a royal bronze finish, opens like a clam and lasts for up to seven and a half hours? If you answered MSI’s new CR41 notebook, you’d be right (though we would’ve accepted self-destructing jewelry boxes as an answer). The 14-inch multimedia “mobile companion,” announced just today, packs a 1,366 x 768 HD display, dedicated HM76 graphics chipset, choice of Intel’s third-generation Core i processors and comes in a variety of storage configurations: 500 GB, 640GB or 720GB. Weighing in at 5.3 pounds (2.4kg) and measuring 13.8 x 9.2 x 1.3 inches (349.7 x 234.8 x 32mm), the laptop also features a six-cell 4,400mAh battery, support for Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi b/g/n, an optical drive, ports for HDMI, USB 3.0 (x2), USB 2.0 (x2), an SD slot and the requisite headphone jack. So far no official pricing or release dates have been made public for the Windows 7 rig, but when it does hit retailers’ shelves, rest assured it’ll be upgrade-ready for Redmond’s next great OS. Follow on past the break for the official PR.
Continue reading MSI outs new CR41 notebook, hopes you like the color royal bronze
Filed under: Laptops
MSI outs new CR41 notebook, hopes you like the color royal bronze originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 19:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Have you ever wondered how your computer gets made? Ever thought about the people who put it together? What about how life is like inside a computer factory? This video, which was found inside a brand new HP laptop, answers all your questions. More »
The One Laptop Per Child’s project just got one step closer to updating its venerable XO portable through a newly-struck licensing deal with Neonode. The XO Touch 1.75, a slight rebranding of the as yet unreleased XO 1.75 we saw last year, will use Neonode’s MultiSensing to give the laptop a multi-touch screen that’s both very responsive and eco-friendly in the same breath. Even as it samples finger input at up to 1GHz, the new OLPC system’s 300 DPI display will still use under 2W of power and remain viewable in bright sunlight — students can even wake up the new model with a gesture instead of using anything so crude as a power button. As important as these advances are to bringing touch to remote schools, we still have some questions about the release schedule and the cost. The XO 1.75 was originally due this year, but we don’t know if the Neonode pact will alter the timetable or hike the target price. We’ve reached out to the OLPC team for comment and will update if there’s new details.
Filed under: Laptops
OLPC XO Touch 1.75 to use Neonode tech, take multi-touch on world tour originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Amidst all the Mountain Lion excitement from yesterday, a few members of the Apple crowd were inadvertently forgotten — yes, we’re talking about 2011 / 2012 MacBook Air and Retina MBP owners looking for some extensive Power Nap action. Luckily for most of them, however, the Cupertino behemoth’s quickly acted, outing a solution that’ll see the efficacious napping feature make its way onto the aforementioned generations of MacBook Airs. Unfortunately, not all is good news, as that pixel-packed MacBook Pro will have to wait it out on the sidelines a little longer, with Apple saying an SMC update is “coming soon.” Sound good? You’ll find the download on the company’s support page, linked down below to save you more troubles.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: Laptops, Software
Apple delivers update to bring Power Nap feature to 2011, 2012 MacBook Airs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 14:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Just when you thought you knew exactly where you wanted to party and occasionally study electrical engineering, Seton Hall in New Jersey comes along to offer you something better. That’s right people, ‘free’ gadgets: in addition to those Lumia 900 phones it’s already promised, the university has also announced a splurge on Samsung Series 7 Slates for all science and honors degree juniors once Windows 8 arrives in the Fall, while those studying other disciplines will have to make do with a Series 5 Ultrabook. The scheme might sound like bribery or a soma to ward off campus activism, but it’s actually part of Seton Hall’s 15-year-old SHUmobile program, designed to ensure that “everyone has access to the advanced technology they need to succeed” — and according to the video after the break, that technology just has to be Microsoft Office.
[Thanks, Vincent]
Continue reading Seton Hall Uni to distract students with Windows 8 tablet handouts (video)
Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs
Seton Hall Uni to distract students with Windows 8 tablet handouts (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jul 2012 03:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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