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
You may have noticed that NVIDIA's newest graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080, are nearly impossible to find in stock. In the wake of what looks like a severe shortage (which has people dubbing this a paper launch), you may have also noticed that NVIDIA's hardware partners have issued a round of...
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We're about a month removed from the most recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event in Las Vegas, where Acer made a splash with a bunch of product announcements. Apparently it had even more on tap. Announced today, Acer is expanding its Predator Helios Neo lineup with a couple of brand new gaming laptop lines...
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Watching the Super Bowl on a big screen TV is one thing, and bonus points if you're going to catch the game on an OLED or mini LED model. Even better? Kicking back and watching football (or anything, really) in a high-tech massage chair with heating, cooling, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Massage chairs aren't...
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So far, Nintendo has only offered a few bread crumbs in relation to its upcoming and highly-anticipated Switch 2 handheld game console. We know it exists and that it will sport a larger display and retooled Joy-Con controllers, but there's still a lot that we don't know about it. That's going to change in a couple of...
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Anyone remember the spoofed Apple iPhone 5s ad on the Conan O'Brien show a little over a decade ago? Pretend pitchman Raffi, dressed in a silk shirt and gold chains, enthusiastically declared, "Gold is best!" in reference to Apple's new (at the time) gold colorway. We haven't heard from Raffi since then, but if he...
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Are you ready for some football? How about some streaming goodness? Well, you can have both if you take advantage of Amazon's deals on its entire Fire TV Stick lineup, as well as its flagship Fire TV Cube, which is a more powerful streaming device that...brace yourself for this...is shaped like a cube. Imagine that!...
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Investors are fickle bunch and if you need proof of this, just look at AMD's share price this morning. It's down by more than 10% in early hours trading, despite AMD posting a monster quarter (another one) with a record $7.7 billion in revenue, along with massive gains in the data center—up 69% year-over-year for the...
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Following the immense success of Nintendo's first-gen Switch console, which has spawned several iterative refreshes (like the Switch Lite and Switch OLED), it's a safe assumption that the upcoming Switch 2 will attract a lot of buyers, many of which are eager for a true next-gen release. It's coming. So are the...
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Back at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last month, Dell announced several new products, including a retooled Alienware Area-51 desktop gaming PC. At the time, it promised to equip the refreshed desktop with NVIDIA's newest generation GPUs based on its Blackwell architecture once they became...
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In case you missed it, NVIDIA recently pushed out a new WHQL-certified driver package for GeForce hardware, version 572.16. That went out on January 30 to coincide with the retail release of its GeForce RTX 5090 and GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards. In the days since, however, NVIDIA has made available a hotfix GPU...
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Up until very recently, Microsoft detailed how you could go about installing Windows 11 on an older PC that does not meet the operating system's hardware requirements, and specifically the TPM 2.0 requirement. It recommended against going that route, but for those who were adventurous—and comfortable mucking around...
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If we were to make a list of the top things you should never do to your smartphone, holding a flame from a lighter to the display for 30 seconds (or any amount of time) would surely rank high. So would gouging the frame with a blade from a box cutter, and trying to bend the phone with enough force to make the...
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It's been four years and four months since Microsoft released Windows 11 to the wild. In the time since, it hasn't exactly ingratiated itself with a majority of users, especially those who are still clinging to Windows 10, but it has been able to capture more than a third of the overall Windows PC market. It also just...
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Whether the result of unprecedented demand, a bot invasion, or a paper launch (as some have surmised), all that really matters right now for gamers in the market for a GeForce RTX 5090 or GeForce RTX 5080 GPU is when retailers will have more stock available. The good news is, restocks will happen. The sobering news is...
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Outside of camping out in front of a Micro Center location days ahead of the retail release, scoring a GeForce RTX 5090 has been a near-impossible proposition. Even pitching a tent was not a guarantee of procuring NVIDIA's newest flagship GPU, with the US retailer reportedly having just 233 units available on launch...
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Microsoft released some new Surface Pro systems powered by Intel this week, and while intriguing, pricing starts at $1,499.99 for those models. If you're willing to give Qualcomm's Arm-based Snapdragon X platform a whirl, you can get a great deal on a Surface Pro Copilot+ system for around half the price with some...
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You still have just over a week to upgrade your TV for the big game. We're of course talking about the Super Bowl, which even if you have absolutely no interest in watching, it's still a great time to shop for a TV. This is the time of the year when we see big discounts, especially on previous generation models. That...
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Time is ticking if you're hoping to score a deal on a premium smartwatch, and if you strike while the iron is hot, you can save a significant amount of money on a fancy new wearable. To that end, Best Buy's 'deal of the day' is a big $200 discount on Samsung's Galaxy Watch Ultra. However, we found an even better deal...
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Intel posted its first earnings report since Pat Gelsinger retired from his post as Chief Executive Officer, and it largely shows the continued efforts of a major restructuring strategy that began before he left. For example, fourth quarter revenue declined 7% year-over-year to $14.3 billion, while the full year tally...
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It's become clear that there are not enough GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards to meet demand, and while we can debate the reasons why until we're blue in the face, it won't change the fact this now ranks as one of the most difficult-to-obtain tech products in a long time. What was a borderline silly situation, however...
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Around this time last week, reports began to surface that the nifty quick release mechanism ASUS implements on many of its motherboards was causing physical damage to graphics cards. Called Q-Release Slim, it's intended to make removing graphics cards a cinch. But does it come at the expense of too much harsh grinding...
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After a months of leaks and rumors followed by weeks of anticipation, NVIDIA's much-ballyhooed GeForce RTX 5090 released to retail this morning, and then sold out in a nanosecond. Maybe even faster. It was a 'blink-and-you-missed' it retail launch, though not an unexpected one—NVIDIA this week warned that it was anticipating "significant demand"
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