Paul Lilly
Paul is a seasoned geek who was first seduced into the world of computers and technology by the Commodore 64, and through the years he’s courted a number of OSes and platforms from DOS on up to the latest version of Windows. Having joined the HotHardware team in 2011, Paul is now a mainstay of the site covering the news beat and reviews, and resident wiseguy who keeps the mood light. He’s also an experienced freelance technology writer whose work has appeared in a number of online and print publications.
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Best Buy management now has the support of its founder, Richard Schulze, who's returning to the electronics chain as chairman emeritus after he left the Board last year amid a scandal and then tried to buy out the company. He's already named two former colleagues, Brad Anderson, who previously served as Chief...
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Kingston Technology might be known for its iconic blue heatspreaders, but that doesn't mean the company is afraid to dive deeper into its boxy of crayons. Apparently its customers have been requesting a black line of memory, and Kingston answered the call by introducing all-new black printed circuit boards (PCBs) on...
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It's inevitable that all good things eventually come to an end, but who could have predicted that Steve Kondik's stint working for Samsung wouldn't even last two years? You might know Kondik better as "Cyanogen," his online moniker that became a household name in Android rooting communities. He created CyanogenMod...
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If it seems like Samsung's devices keep getting bigger, that's because they are. To wit, the Galaxy Note II features a 5.55-inch display that sits firmly in phablet territory, but it's not just hybrid devices that sport large touchscreens. The new Galaxy S4 wields a 5-inch display, a full inch larger than the original...
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Google's recently announced Chromebook Pixel and Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina display are two entirely different animals, but there's one area where the former trumps the latter. The 12.85-inch display on the Chromebook Pixel features a 2560x1700 resolution, which translates to 4.3 million pixels and 239 pixels per...
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Apple iPad and iPhone owners are in for a treat. Come this summer, Firaxis and 2K Games will port the turn-based tactical role-playing strategy game to iOS, the game's developers announced at PAX East. The ported title will come with all the same features found on the PC and console versions. "It's a straight port. We have not made any game...
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A new survey reveals that around 3 percent of all computer users surf naked on the web, which is to say they choose not to protect their PC with any security software at all, as opposed to literally surfing naked (a statistic we care not to know, thank you very much). That means the vast majority are rocking some form...
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A software platform is only as good as its apps, and towards that end, Microsoft's Windows Store now boasts over 50,000 of them. There are 50,341 at the time of this writing, according to MetroStore Scanner, a site that makes Windows Store apps easily searchable from the Web. The number of apps is steadily rising, having more than doubled...
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I'm a big fan of the LG Optimus G, particularly the Sprint version that wields a 13MP rear camera (versus the version on AT&T, which touts an 8MP camera). It's a solid phone with high end specs, like a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB internal storage, and a 4.7-inch True HD IPS Plus display. One of the knocks...
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Surface RT tablet sales haven't exactly been through the roof. Out of the 1.5 million Surface tablet sales to date, a million of them belong to Surface RT, falling well short of Microsoft's expectations, assuming it's true that the Redmond outfit ordered 3 million Surface RT slates. Is Windows RT to blame? It's a bit...
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Julius Genachowski announced today that he will be stepping down from his post as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in the "coming weeks." Thus will end a nearly four-year run for the lawyer and businessman, who was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate at the end of June in 2009...
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Time and time again, we're reminded that Windows isn't the only operating system that malware writers target. It's the most popular platform for malware, sure, but it's not the only one. If you're a Mac user, don't let your guard down, and be especially leery of browsers plug-ins you run into, especially those that claim they're required to...
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Well folks, the wait is over. If you've been holding out for a BlackBerry Z10 device (without having to pay out the nose for one), today is your day, provided you're willing to sign a two-year service agreement with AT&T, the first U.S. carrier to start offering BlackBerry's flagship smartphone to home consumers...
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Are iPhone users more satisfied with their smartphone of choice than, say, Galaxy S III or Lumia 920 owners? That's up for debate, though it's worth pointing out that Apple topped the J.D. Power 2013 Wireless Smartphone Satisfaction Study, landing ahead of the competition for the ninth consecutive time. It wasn't a...
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Tablet PCs don't have a reputation for being easy to service (just the opposite, in fact, though there are exceptions), and if you were to tear open an Xperia Z slate, two things are likely to happen. One, there's a decent chance you'll ruin it, a risk that increases exponentially the lower your skill level and/or experience, and number two,...
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As the days roll by, we inch closer to the inevitable launch of Apple's next iPhone, presumably the iPhone 5S, and the are no shortages of rumors and leaked information to digest. The newest bit of supposed inside info comes from sources within the upstream supply chain, according to news and rumor site Digitimes...
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If there's one thing that can make you feel old, it's a birthday, and it doesn't even matter if it's your own or for someone you know. Today is Twitter's birthday, as the microblogging site that took the social networking scene by storm turns 7 years old. Converted into technology years, that's roughly equivalent to a person turning 134! Twitter...
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A company called Intertrust Technologies has filed a lawsuit against Apple in the U.S. Federal Court in the Northern District of California alleging the Cupertino outfit infringed on more than a dozen patents. Intertrust's lawsuit lists several Apple products and services, including iOS devices such as the iPhone and...
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A mobile platform is only as good as its apps, and on that front, BlackBerry 10 (BB10) is off to a stellar start. According to the company previously known as Research In Motion (now it's simply called "BlackBerry"), the BB10 store has been fleshed out with 30,000 new apps in just the past seven weeks, bringing the total number to more than...
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Have you watched a video on YouTube today? Whether or not you have, there's a good chance you know someone who did, as the sheer statistics of YouTube video views dictate that the human population is in love with streaming media. YouTube now reaches a billion -- a BILLION! -- unique monthly users, the Google-owned...
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Sapphire announced a new HD 7950 Mac Edition graphics card based on AMD's latest Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. According to Sapphire, it's the only company carrying a Radeon HD 7950 part that's compatible with Apple's Mac Pro series of desktop computers, giving Mac gamers a potent upgrade path. How potent?...
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eBay announced that it's restructuring its fees for sellers on its online auction site, the timing of which has everything to do with Amazon recently raising fees for merchants on its e-commerce portal. As the price of doing business through Amazon goes up, eBay hopes to attract disgruntled sellers looking to jump ship. In order to do that,...
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