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
Dell this week announced the launch of its new Venue Pro, the only Windows Phone 7 device with a vertical QWERTY keyboard, at least thus far. It's also equipped with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 4.1-inch multi-touch AMOLED display, 5MP camera with auto-focus and LED flash, 8GB or 16GB of...
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If you're an AVG user having trouble booting into Windows 7, you have our condolences. Perhaps it might come as a small consolation that you're not alone, and chances are you did nothing wrong. The culprit, AVG says, is that the latest virus database -- 271.1.1/3292 (432/3292) -- released...
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We've said it before and we'll say it again -- the netbook market isn't going anywhere, tablet PCs be damned. In fact, the netbook sector grew by two models today, courtesy of Toshiba, which just released the Mini NB500 and NB520. The more exciting of the bunch is the NB520, which features...
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You can blame James Cameron's Avatar for all the 3D ballyhooing that's taking place, an awesome flick admittedly well served by the extra dimension, which is more than we can say for the spate of 3D movies that have come out since then. Given that Avatar kicked off the whole 3D revolution...
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Microsoft on Monday announced it had sold 2.5 million Kinect motion controlled cameras in just 25 days and is on track to reach its goal of selling 5 million by the end of the year. Not to be outdone, Sony a day later issued a press...
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One of the big unknowns surrounding the emerging tablet market is whether or not slates would supplant dedicated eBook readers. Following the release of Apple's iPad, it didn't take long for eBook readers to drop in price, which made the proposition of buying a $500+ tablet to read electronic...
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A week ago today we posted an article examining the so-called "Apple Tax" and whether or not it exists. While the nomenclature isn't actually accurate, as it turns out, Apple does charge a premium for its parts, though it can be argued the Cupertino company provides a little extra as well...
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Mougg is the latest cloud-based streaming music service that helps you get your music from Point A to Point B without the need for an MP3 player, USB thumb stick, external hard drive, or anything else on your part. That's because Mougg stores your music on its own servers, which you can access from anywhere with an Internet connection. It...
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Will you shed a tear for the DVD format when it's dead and gone? What about for Blu-ray? Don't worry, neither one of those formats is on the verge of going belly-up, but that comes as little consolation to film studios and retailers who can do nothing but sit and watch as sales for these...
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Ready for the good news? Sharp has gone and announced plans to launch its line of Galapagos tablets on December 10, 2010, which means buyers will have almost 2 weeks to pick one up and put one under the Christmas tree. The bad? It's only launching over in Japan, at least initially. Sharp is...
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It might seem a little premature to discuss Apple's second generation iPad when the first-run tablet is one of only a very small handful of slates in existence, but if the Cupertino outfit sticks to its normal product refresh cycle, it will only be another five months before the iPad 2 hits...
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Social networking: It's all fun and games until some scuzzball infects your system with malware, but that's not a concern on Facebook, right? Wrong, says security firm BitDefender, which claims that malware is mucking around in news feeds of some 20 percent of Facebook users. When you're...
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It's not hard to believe that mobile phone users prefer unlimited data plans, nor do we really need a survey to tell us that. But to all you telecoms out there, listen up -- a new report by financial research firm Sanford Bernstein discovered that not only do mobile phone users like unlimited...
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Think back to when you were 6 years old waking up on Christmas morning. If you were lucky, your big ticket item was a BMX bike. Race car sets, Matchbox cars, and a new Michael Jackson album were all winning bets too. These days? Kids ages 6-12 want nothing more than to find an iPad sitting under the tree on December 25th. According to market...
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Black Friday is just days away, and if you're planning to fight through crowds of rapid shoppers, you better be prepared. That means making a list and checking it twice, though not to see who's been naughty or nice. You need a list of where the hottest deals are so you can come up with a game...
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Verizon this week issued a strong challenge to the U.S. Congress to update the nation's antiquated and anti-competitive telecom rules (Verizon's words, not ours), saying that Congress must act now to address telecommunications policies that are broken. "The grinding you hear are the gears...
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With all the talk of Android, iOS, Hummingbird/Snapdragon processors, and all other sorts of smartphone goodies, it's easy to forget that some people still like to roll with feature phones. And at $30/month now standard for a data plan, often-times attached to two-year service agreements (totaling $720 just in data charges for the life the...
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MSI is certainly no stranger to the all-in-one market, so what makes the company's new Wind Top AC1900 different from all the rest? According to MSI, the AC1900 is fit for "people of all ages," be it your 8-year-old son or your 78-year-old grandmother. Just because everyone can use it doesn't...
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Never mind that certain media outlets are declaring Android a failure in the tablet space at this very early stage in the game. The reality is the Android party is just getting underway, and though Samsung's Galaxy Tab might not be the iPad killer open-source fans hoped it would be, it's just...
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LCD monitors began as poor replacements for CRTs when it came to playing games, due in large part to sluggish response times resulting in ghosting, streaking, and other abnormalities. Today's LCD monitors do a much better job, but evidently there's still plenty of room for improvement. Enter...
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Steve Wozniak told a dutch newspaper something we already know: Android is awesome. He didn't come out and say it exactly that way, but the Apple co-founder might as well have. Instead, Wozniak told the De Telegraaf he thinks Android will...
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Don't think for a second Microsoft is willing to let its Windows Phone 7 platform suffer the same fate as the short lived Kin Phone venture. The challenge for Microsoft, however, is that it's going up against established platforms, namely Google Android and Apple's iPhone (iOS), both of which...
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