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
Technically, the summer season runs another couple of weeks. Fall is undeniably in the air, however, and the back-to-school season has begun in earnest in many parts of the country. Before we fully embrace the colorful changing of the leaves, crisp and refreshing air, and cool temps that are headed our way, let's...
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Normally at this time of year, discrete graphics card shipments tend to decline, with Jon Peddie Research citing a 10-year average of a 7% drop. That gets chalked up to seasonality. In the second quarter of 2024, however, discrete GPU shipments bucked that trend and actually grew 1.8% compared to the previous quarter...
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If you can remember playing games on the original PlayStation 1 console released way back in the day, here's hoping the ibuprofen alleviates your back pain (no worries, I date back to the Atari 2600 era, as it relates to consoles). The PS1 will have released 30 years ago this December. In celebration of 30 years of...
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The last time Panasonic sold TVs in the United States around a decade ago, not long after it ceased production of plasma models. It's a far different landscape these days, both in terms of display technologies and features (as well as pricing), and now Panasonic is teaming up with Amazon (and also Costco, to an...
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If you've been around the block a time or two, then you may recall the race to 1GHz between AMD and Intel (which, despite protests from Intel and its Pentium III silicon, AMD is largely credited with winning with its Athon 1000 Thunderbird chip way back in the day). Now some 25 years later, it seems another race is...
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If it were up to us, a product with "Blaze" in the model name would be unveiled on April 20 for obvious (to some) reasons. Missed opportunity aside, Acer has chosen IFA 2024 as the launchpad for its first gaming handheld, the Nitro Blaze 7 (GN771), which is the latest hardware entry in a growing segment that Valve...
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There's not a whole lot of mystery surrounding MSI's next-generation Claw 8 AI+ handheld, as it's been teased, showed off, and talked about several times up to this point. Nevertheless, following the launch of Intel's Core Ultra Series 2 processors, otherwise known as Lunar Lake, MSI has now officially announced the...
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The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning consumers of a "massive" surge in Bitcoin ATM scams (add it to the list of cryptocurrency scams). According to the FTC, consumers posted collective losses totaling $110 million in 2023, which is a tenfold increase versus 2020. And in the first half of this...
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This is shaping up to be a big week for Microsoft's Copilot+ initiative. Yesterday, we covered Intel's official Core Ultra Series 2 launch (otherwise known as Lunar Lake), which will bring the Copilot+ branding to the x86 side of the pond in November. Now a day later, Qualcomm announced it is expanding its Snapragon X...
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Qualcomm is in the midst of a major push into the Windows ecosystem with its Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus silicon, which power the initial batch of Microsoft's Copilot+ branded laptops. Expanding on that effort, Qualcomm is rolling out two new 8-core variants of the Snapdragon X Plus, which should help usher...
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Intel is official with its Core Ultra 200V processor lineup, otherwise known as Core Ultra Series 2 (or Lunar Lake, if going by the architecture's codename), and right on cue, its hardware partners have started announcing refreshed products build around the chip maker's latest silicon. That includes Dell, which is...
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If you've ever thought to yourself, 'Self, what you really need is a gaming PC that looks like a friggin' shark straight out of the movie Jaws', then you'll be pleased as punch to know that Cooler Master will happily sell you one. The caveat is that you'll need to bring plenty of bait to reel in the company's Shark X...
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It took a minute (and not a New York minute) but as of right now, Windows 11 is the most widely-used operating system among gamers on Valve's Steam platform. It finally leapfrogged Windows 10 after trailing its predecessor by around 6% just a few short months ago. In addition, there was some interesting movement in...
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In all likelihood, it will be another few months before NVIDIA unveils its GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards based on its Blackwell GPU architecture. While we wait, the leaks and rumors are piling up, as are some events that could affect the eventual launch of NVIDIA's next-gen gaming GPUs. One of those events is...
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Ayaneo has been one of the more active participants in the handheld PC gaming console market, though up until now the bulk of its systems have been crowdfunded affairs with Indiegogo. That just changed—the Chinese manufacturer is apparently making a bigger push to infiltrate the US market, with two of its handheld...
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Extreme overclocker Roman Hartung, who you may recognize better as 'der8auer', has been around the block a time or two, delidded his fair share of CPUs over the years, and has seen things. Lots of things. However, the close-up examination and dissection of a fake AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor blew his mind, a phrase he used no less than three
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Apple has quite a few hardware refreshes that are now right around the corner, including its upcoming iPhone 16 lineup and a new generation of AirPods, both of which are expected to be unveiled at is Glowtime event next week. Coming just a tad later, some M4 Mac refreshes are on the horizon as well. That includes the...
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One of the best times to splurge on a gaming laptop without any guilt is when heading back to school. For one, these days you pretty much need a laptop (or at minimum, a capable tablet) for the school season, at least for college classes. And two, there are often timely deals as the summer season winds down. We've...
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While you're kicking back and enjoying Labor Day weekend, why not take a moment to browse some timely deals? Now is a good time to be in the market for an Apple product, as there are bunch of discounted items on Amazon currently. We've gone ahead and rounded up what we feel are 10 excellent bargains, starting with a...
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The United States Secret Service and United States Department of State are on the hunt for Belarusian national Volodymyr Iuriyovych Kadariya, who is wanted in connection with cybercrimes pertaining to the Angler Exploit Kit, and the agencies are willing to pay a massive reward for help in tracking him down. How...
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Have you ever waded in a hot tub for a long while before realizing that your smartphone was in the pocket of your swimming trunks the whole time? Just me, then? That's cool, but I'm certainly not alone in having subjected a smartphone to water damage. One of the prevailing tips for such incidents is to plop a wet...
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It's incredibly hard to fathom that Intel would split or sell off its chip manufacturing business similar to what AMD did 16 years ago, which eventually led to the creation of GlobalFoundries (which Intel was once rumored to be interested in buying), but both options are reportedly on the table in private discussions...
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