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
It's probably a bit premature to play Taps whenever the topic turns to Windows RT, but at the rate things are going, someone may want to type up an obituary just in case (Acer would be game). Windows RT is proving a tough sell, as evidenced by its lackluster market share and by deep price cuts, the latest of which comes from Dell. On the bright...
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Unofficially speaking, Samsung's Galaxy S4 device boarded a rocket ship and blasted off to four million shipments in just five days, qualifying it as the South Korean handset maker's fastest-selling smartphone to date. Why unofficially? Well, news of the spectacular shipment numbers comes from The Chosun Ilbo, a daily news site in Korea, rather...
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An angry bird in the hand is better than two in the bush, but what if you could have all three? Rovio is determined to find out. The Angry Birds creator will always have its wildly popular franchise to fall back on, which to date has tasked gamers with battling thieving pigs in space and in galaxies far, far away, but...
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If it's something "youthful and fun" you're looking for, book a ticket to Cancun over Spring Break and you're sure to find plenty of both. Alternately, there's BlackBerry's new BlackBerry Q5 smartphone featuring a QWERTY keyboard with discrete keys in a "stunning youthful design that is confident, fun, and bold,"...
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Android's theme song should be "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer (remember him?), because really, there's no other mobile operating system that comes close to the little green robot in the smartphone space. According to Gartner, 74.4 percent of the smartphones shipped around the globe in the first quarter of 2013 were...
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We've been excited about NVIDIA's Project SHIELD platform ever since we spent some hands-on time with a pre-production unit earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. In case you missed the buzz, Project SHIELD, now simply called SHIELD, is an open platform gaming portable with an...
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The rumor mill can stop spinning its wheels this morning following the launch of Nokia's Lumia 925 smartphone, the Finnish phone maker's second handset to make a debut this week. Like the Lumia 928 that preceded it, the 925 has been the topic of speculation, and as previously rumored, it sports an aluminum body...
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After several months of rumors, the HTC First emerged as the closest thing there is to a Facebook phone, only it doesn't appear long for this world. The fellas over at Boy Genius Report claim to have it on good authority that AT&T has already decided to flush the First from inventory and discontinue the...
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With each passing moment, we get closer to Apple's next iPhone launch, which is made even more dramatic by Apple's desperate need for a design win. It's not that Apple will go out of business if the next iPhone is a flop, but with Samsung gaining so much market share and BlackBerry's recent reemergence as a viable...
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Microsoft continues to flesh out is Windows Phone Store with new apps, though momentum has slowed a bit in recent months. Mentioned as an aside in announcing the Nokia Lumia 928 for Verizon, the Redmond outfit revealed that there are now 145,000 apps and games in the Windows Phone Store, which is about 25,000 more than it had in October. Most...
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Facebook Home is forever going to change the social networking scene! It's going to render standard Android launchers obsolete! In time, Facebook Home will be installed on every Android device in the world! The new launcher spells doom for all other social networks! Or maybe, just maybe, it won't become as popular as...
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Listen up, teen drivers -- put the mobile phone away and resist the temptation to check for or fire off a text message while operating a vehicle. It doesn't matter that you see parents/adults do it all the time, be the smarter (and safer) driver out there by waiting to text and you'll significantly increase the odds of getting from point A...
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Consumers are going crazy for tablet devices these days. It started with Apple's iPad, which is still the best selling tablet line out there, and continues with the influx of low-cost Android slates from name-brand vendors like Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Asus, and so forth. Tablets have become so popular that Microsoft went and re-imagined...
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Three months ago, Dell's Board of Directors unanimously approved a merger agreement under which company founder Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners would acquire the PC maker for $24.4 billion. Michael's plan is to take Dell private so he can run the company as he sees fit without the pressure of answering to shareholders...
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Google's mighty popular Nexus 4 device is still considered by many to be the best Android smartphone on the market, but it might also soon become old news. The Nexus 4 is becoming slightly less easy to find at various retailers, especially in the U.K. where Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U have both stopped selling the...
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If we're being totally honest, we all knew at some point a company would eventually release a mobile phone aimed at the 4-year-old demographic, right? Kids keep busy schedules these days, juggling weekend play dates and grueling hours at pre-school with visits to grandma's house. What happens if there's an emergency, like spilled milk or what...
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Word on the web is that Asus is building another 7-inch Nexus tablet for Google. That's pretty exciting, considering the original Nexus 7 is viewed by many to be the best Android tablet in its size class that's currently available, yet Asus left a little bit of room for improvement for a follow-up act. Will the next...
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Where there's smoke, there's fire, and there sure were a lot of smoke signals indicating the imminent release of Nokia's Lumia 928, the newest addition to the Lumia family and the company's new flagship device. Now it's official, as Nokia and Verizon both issued press releases announcing the new device, which will be...
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Kids and teens live in a different landscape than the one anybody in their thirties or above grew up in. We didn't have to worry about cyberbullying or having our Facebook posts scrutinized by potential employers, and we sure as hell weren't sending and receiving digital photos of our nude selves to other people...
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Microsoft earlier this week said it's sold 100 million Windows 8 licenses to date, though admitted that figure includes pre-installed copies of the touch-friendly operating system to retailers and OEMs. Perhaps a better gauge of where Windows 8 stands is to look at its market share, which is up slightly in April...
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There's been so much chatter regarding an Amazon smartphone that we're more inclined to think it's a matter of "when" and not "if" the mega online retailer will release one. The latest buzz coming from "people familiar with the plans" is that Amazon's handset will feature a 3D display that doesn't require any special glasses. It will use retinal-tracking...
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This is just getting awkward, leaving me more convinced than ever that Microsoft needs to tap into its riches to hire some creative folk who's collective task, and only task, is to come up with commercials that don't suck. Remember when Apple blitzed the TV screen with its Mac vs PC ads? Those were funny, even if...
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