Hasta La Gadget!

Sony likes to do things differently, and the VAIO Duo 11 is its unusual entrant to the Windows 8 tablet market. Billed as a “hybrid sliding PC” the Duo 11 looks, at first glance, like a chunky tablet, but pull up just above the front-facing webcam and the touchscreen slides back and up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It’s an approach we’ve seen before, from the ASUS Eee Pad Slider, but here running Microsoft’s full Windows platform and with a digital stylus for handwriting and sketching.

VAIO notebooks generally look the part, especially the more expensive ones, and the Duo 11 follows in those footsteps with an angular black casing that’s a nice diversion from the usual round-cornered fare. The glossy plastic is a fingerprint magnet, of course, and Sony’s non-final hardware showed some flex when you pull the screen open, but once upright and in place – in a single, non-adjustable angle – it stuck fast no matter how roughly we jabbed at it.

Sony has chased connectivity not headline grabbing dimensions, and so while the Duo 11 isn’t the fattest tablet we’ve ever seen, nor does it rival recent Samsung and Apple slates for waifish form-factors. Instead, you get HDMI and USB connections, along with – in what seems to be a bizarre accommodation of legacy business users – a full-sized VGA connection. Things get even thicker if you bolt on the extended battery slice, doubling runtimes at the cost of significantly increasing width.

Sony VAIO Duo 11 hands-on video:

Unfortunately, adding that extended battery is seemingly the only way to accommodate the pen when you’re not using it – it slots into a cutaway underneath – which is a shame since stylus input works well in general. OneNote, Microsoft’s unfairly overlooked notetaking app (which will sync its notes with its cut-down counterpart on Windows Phones), receives digital ink with aplomb, the pressure sensitivity of what we’re guessing to be a Wacom-sourced digitizer paying dividends for quick sketches and handwritten notes.

As for the keyboard, it’s more compact than a regular notebook, but still very usable for typing. There’s a trackpoint-style navigation nub in the middle of the ‘board, though rather than physically moving it uses an optical sensor to map the movement of your fingertip. Still, we found ourselves using the touchscreen more often than not, as reaching forward felt more natural.

Unlike some Windows 8 tablets, Sony hasn’t compromised on raw grunt. There’s Intel’s Core i7-3517U paired with 4Gb or 8GB of RAM, and up to 256GB of SSD storage; the 1080p 11.6-inch display is incredibly crisp and bright. The underlying message is yes, you can use this as your main PC, but you’re probably going to have to pay handsomely for it. Sony will announce numbers closer to the VAIO Duo 11′s official release in late October.

Sony VAIO Duo 11 hands-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

At IFA 2012 Lenovo has revealed their next generation of affordable, thin, and light computers with the IdeaPad S Series Laptop lineup. This set of devices brings a balance between performance and portability with Lenovo providing more power than a netbook and longer battery life than your traditional notebook. The IdeaPad S300, S400, and S405 laptops each bring an affordable price to the market as well.

Each of the S Series notebooks measures in at 21.9mm thin and weighs in at 1.8kg. The entire S Series also works with either a 3rd generation Intel Core or AMD A-Series processor under the hood, and each come with a lovely metallic finnish on their outer bits. These units are finished in a variety of colors including crimson red, silver grey and cotton-candy pink, too!

The differences between these devices are in their components, each of the units having just a few changes from the next. With the Lenovo IdeaPad S300 and S400 you’ll be working with Intel’s 3rd Generation Core i3 or i5 processors. With the IdeaPad S405 you’ll have the option to work with up to an AMD A8 quad-core processor. Each of the units has up to 500GB of hard disk storage – save the S405 which has up to 1TB of HDD – and both the S400 and S405 have another storage option as well. Both the S400 and S405 have an available 32GB solid state drive to boost your speed on your boot time as well as the responsiveness of your applications.

Each of the S Series machines will be appearing with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Professional and will be eligible for the Windows 8 update program from Microsoft. Each of these units also works with Lenovo’s Quick Start “Instant On” functionality to hit the internet in mere moments. You’ll also have Lenovo OneKey Rescue System for your data right out of the box. Each S Series laptop has an AccuType keyboard as well for easy comfortable typing with individually rounded keys across the whole grid. The S Series’ intelligent touchpad also has functions for Windows 8 with both scrolling and zooming features.

Every unit in the S Series lineup has up to a 14-inch HD widescreen display, HDMI out port, Dolby Advanced Audio v2 certification, and stereo speakers besides. The Lenovo IdeaPad S300, S400, and S405 will be available starting today through your favorite Lenovo retailer in the USA. Depending on what features you’d like or model you opt for, this lineup will be starting at $499 USD.

Lenovo IdeaPad S Series Laptops get thin and affordable is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Dell’s XPS Duo 12 has some lineage, but it’s not really the sort of ancestry you’d want to talk about too loudly. The original Inspiron Duo was a case of good in theory, poor in practice: a notebook with a rotating touchscreen that could turn it into a slate, let down by an underperforming CPU, clunky build and Windows 7′s lack of finger-friendliness. Now, with the XPS Duo 12, Dell has brought some of its ultrabook knowledge to the concept, and from what we’ve seen today it’s with good result.

Dell isn’t allowing people to properly play with the XPS Duo 12, and in fact the convertible ultrabook spent most of its time behind glass. Nonetheless, we’ve seen enough to be impressed by the industrial design. Gone is the cheap, thick bezel; gone is the fat chassis that made the original Duo so unconvincing as a slate.

They’re replaced by crisply finished metal, and the end result is a machine that looks great: convincing both as a notebook and as a tablet. What’s going on inside won’t be announced until closer to launch, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the performance lives up to the slickness of the exterior.

There’s inevitably a size and weight compromise when you bring a keyboard along with you, but Dell isn’t alone in expecting that Windows 8 tablet users will want traditional QWERTY input more often than not. Most other manufacturers are opting for the detachable keyboard-dock system, which makes for a lighter tablet but means you do end up with a thicker hinge.

In contrast, the XPS Duo 12 is an all-in-one for on-the-go. That distinctiveness, if Dell can price and power it accordingly, may well earn it some attention in what’s likely to be a crowded Windows 8 marketplace.

Dell XPS Duo 12 eyes-on is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Parallels 8 has arrived with a raft of tweaks that makes running Windows on your Mac that much easier. The newest version lets you use Mountain Lion’s dictation feature in Windows, open any website in Internet Explorer with a single click and you can even add Redmond-hewn apps to Launchpad. Retina display support is now included, offering you eye-popping detail no matter your operating system and the company’s claiming performance has been boosted by up to 30 percent. It’ll cost you $80 for the full version, while students get it for $40, and if you purchased Parallels 7 after July 25th, you’re eligible to upgrade for free. Meanwhile, if you’re more into running Windows software on your iOS device, Parallels Mobile is available from the App Store for $5.

Continue reading Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac: Retina Support, Dictation, Instant switching and 30 percent faster performance

Filed under: Desktops, Software

Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac: Retina Support, Dictation, Instant switching and 30 percent faster performance originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 05:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over the next few weeks, you’re going to hear a lot of noise from manufacturers about how one hybrid product or another gives you all of the benefits of a laptop and a tablet, with no compromises on design. The Dell XPS Duo 12 is one of the few that actually seems to back that up. More »