Hasta La Gadget!

Nah, that’s not us yelling to dig deeper into oceanic unknowns — it’s a megaphone originating from Dell’s campus in Round Rock. As the story goes, Dell’s “oil and gas” consumers have been clamoring for more system memory on their mobile workstations, with the revamped Precision M6500 — which allows them to “review larger slices of the earth to find oil, enabling faster and more accurate drilling to find oil and gas reserves.” We say all that to mention the 32GB of system RAM that’s now shipping on fully loaded M6500s, but with four RAM slots, that’s not as difficult to accomplish as you might expect. Still, having 32GB in a single laptop is a rare sight these days, and if you aren’t into coughing up a fistful of Benjamins for that, Dell’s Precision M4500 is now available with 16GB of memory. You know, for running Maya with less lag… or something.

Dell ships Precision M6500 laptop with 32GB of RAM: drill, baby, drill originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If the pint-sized ASUS laptop above looks a wee bit familiar, it’s because you’ve seen it before — the 12-inch UL20FT is basically a refreshed UL20A, but with the surprisingly elusive Core i3 ULV guts. The UL20FT appeared at ExcaliberPC this weekend, while its Optimus-equipped big brother appears destined for Amazon; in a slight change of plans, both feature the 1.2GHz Core i3-330UM processor. While the $600 UL20FT is a solid netbook alternative, the $900 UL80JT has double the capacity (500GB) and memory (4GB) plus an optical disc drive, and if our review of its doppelganger is any indication, the 14-inch switchable graphics machine will have stellar battery life. Still, we can’t help feel a little bummed by the lack of the Core i7-640UM we were originally promised.

[Thanks, David T.]

ASUS UL-series laptops surface at e-tailers with Core i3 ULV processor originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Getac’s long-standing V100 has never been a thing of beauty, but you’d think it may get a little easier on the eyes over the years, wouldn’t you? Regrettably, we’re still left looking at a fairly industrial little machine, but at least the improved innards make it that much easier to focus on the Device Manager rather than, well… the device itself. Boasting a 10.4-inch sunlight viewable display, 320GB shock-mounted HDD and an 83-key waterproof backlit rubber keyboard, the revamped V100 is ready to chew through all sorts of computations while laying low from jungle cats and pools of quicksand. The 1.2GHz Core i7 within is the real standout, and it’s joined by a multitouch-capable LCD, 2 megapixel webcam, SD card reader, inbuilt Bluetooth, optional 3G and a GPS system. There’s no telling how much this five pounder will set you back, but we’re guessing it’ll run somewhere between “way up there” and “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

Continue reading Getac tosses 1.2GHz Core i7 into ultra-rugged V100 convertible laptop, drops it from atop ugly tree

Getac tosses 1.2GHz Core i7 into ultra-rugged V100 convertible laptop, drops it from atop ugly tree originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dealing with warranties is one thing — it’s almost always a crap-shoot, and you’re continually pressing your luck when trying to get something covered without any out-of-pocket expense. But how’s about the tech support that’s so whimsically promised with so many laptops these days? Our pals over at Laptop put in an inordinate amount of work in order to find out, pinging a full dozen manufacturers via phone and chat in order to measure hold time, level of support offered and overall satisfaction. Just about every major laptop maker was included (Acer, Apple, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Toshiba and Fujitsu, just to name a few), and an in-depth report of their findings was posted for each one. In general, though, they found that most companies wouldn’t hang around long enough to answer those nagging questions that typically end up in forums (“How do I remove bloatware?”), oftentimes pointing the caller to a paid alternative that would actually take the time to address their issues. If you’re considering a new machine, and you aren’t exactly one of those nerdy go-getters who can troubleshoot everything yourself, you should certainly give the source links below a look. Just try not to get too depressed, cool?

Laptop’s 2010 tech support showdown reveals ugly truth: you’re (almost) on your own originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jul 2010 18:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stuck on the Toshiba Portege R705’s magnesium alloy palmrest is a shiny sticker celebrating the company’s 25 years of “laptop innovation.” Now, we’re the first to hate on the plethora of decals that festoon Windows laptops these days — and this one also deserves to be peeled off and tossed into the garbage — but the sticker actually happens to speaks volumes about why the $800 R705 is such a big deal. We promise to keep the history lesson short, but for years the Portege series has been Toshiba’s top-of-the-line ultraportable brand, featuring the latest CPUs while usually setting the standard for portability, and always been attached to seriously hefty price tags. Take the Portege R500, which was the worlds lightest laptop in 2007, and cost two grand.

The Portege R705, which is exclusive to Best Buy for now, changes that formula. And in celebration of the big two-five, Toshiba’s put out a 3.2-pound, Core i3-powered stunner that’s less than half the price of past Porteges. Oh, and did we mention it has an on-board optical drive, 500GB of storage, Intel’s wireless display technology and promises 8.5 hours of battery life? We won’t beat around the bush — it’s impressive. But did Toshiba maintain the same Portege standards when creating the R705, or did it cut quality along with the dollar signs? That’s been our main question, and we’ll answer it and others after the break in our full review.

Continue reading Toshiba Portege R705 review

Toshiba Portege R705 review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 17:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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