Notebooks, Tablets, Smartphones, Wearables And Gadgets
In-depth product reviews and news of notebooks, tablets, smartphones, wearable technologies and gadgets. We're now living in a contextually-aware computing world and mobile devices can not only help us enjoy the ride but create and capture new experiences as well.
"Fusion." We've heard that word from the good folks at AMD for what seems like an eternity, to be perfectly honest. Fusion is AMD's marketing moniker for the company's next generation of integrated processors with on-board graphics -- a "fusion" of the CPU along with the GPU into what AMD now affectionately calls an "APU" or Accelerated...
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In early September, Steve Jobs took to the stage and unveiled the new-and-improved Apple TV. What was once considered a “hobby” device was reworked, streamlined, made more affordable, and aimed squarely at the masses. It enters an increasingly crowded market of devices that offer near-instant access to libraries of recent movies...
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Is Intel's Pinetrail platform really all its cracked up to be? We recently took an in-depth look at the 1.8GHz processor / platform, but it's a different thing to take a look at the same thing in a shipping product that's available today to consumers. We have been longing for faster Atom processors, and particularly in recent months, we felt...
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There was a significant influx of CULV based notebooks earlier in the year, due in part to their excellent balance between power, performance, and price. While CULV based machines were a good fit for many users who didn't want to sacrifice much performance for longer battery life, CULV notebooks are being introduced at...
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Apple has been in the line of fire lately. It's an unusual place for the company, which has found itself on the positive end of things for quite a while. In fact, for a string of years, it seemed as if Apple could do no wrong. The iPhone 3G and 3GS were huge hits, as was the new "unibody" MacBook design. And then there was the iPad, which...
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It's been said for years by industry veterans: a lot can happen in a very short window of time when you're dealing with technology. As soon as one piece of cutting-edge tech makes it to market, the next big thing is just days, weeks or months away. In the netbook realm, that hasn't applied as much. Netbooks haven't evolved nearly as quickly...
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With the latest iteration of its 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro laptops, Apple finally jumped onto the Intel Core i3 and Core i5 bandwagon—bringing its flagship line of laptops up to the same performance level as the Windows-based competition (the 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops still use Intel Core 2 Duo processors). With a starting price...
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Google's Android mobile operating system originally launched back in 2008 with the introduction of the industry's first "Google-phone," the T-Mobile G1. The G1 was built by HTC, and at the time, it was fairly cutting edge. It wasn't the most exciting piece of hardware the world had ever seen, but it offered consumers with...
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It was this month last year that Apple launched the iPhone 3GS. Records were broken in terms of sales, and overall demand looked like it couldn't possibly be higher. It was Apple's third iPhone, and the 3GS was arguably the least impressive upgrade to date. The iPhone 3G was a drastic improvement over the original iPhone; it added 3G support,...
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Earlier this year, we attended the Asus 2010 CES Event in Las Vegas. While there, we caught a glimpse of several upcoming notebooks the hardware giant had in store. One of the most anticipated products we saw was in the Republic of Gamers line up. Dubbed the G73JH, it possessed a list of impressive specifications and an aggressive, stealth...
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There are two main types of road warriors in this world. First, there are the ones who value portability over all else. These users are more concerned with battery life and ease of transportation than they are with raw performance, and it's because of them that netbooks -- the very epitome of portability -- have become such a popular...
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At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, back in early January of this year, we showcased a myriad of upcoming products in our coverage of the event and the announcements being made. Of the literally thousands of items we saw at CES, however, we'd consider only a handful of them to be truly stand-out products. One of those geek-lust worthy...
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We've had the opportunity to review a few tablet / netbook combinations here at HotHardware (the Eee PC T91 from Asus immediately comes to mind), but in the 10+ years of covering computing technology, there has yet to be a tablet as polarizing, alluring, and promising as iPad. And after all of these years, who would've...
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It seems like just yesterday that we commented on how many new CULV notebooks had hit the scene, and how Intel had seemingly hit the proverbial sweet spot. These low-voltage Core processors fit perfectly between high-end netbooks and low-end mainstream laptops, offering enough power for most users in a package that...
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Perhaps one the more significant defining digital attributes of the first decade of the the 21st Century could be the size of the ginormous digital media collections so many of us have amassed--media collections made of up a disparate assortment of video, photos, and audio files from a wide variety of sources. The advent of digital...
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If you consider Intel's design execution over the past 12 months or so, you'd have to admit it's nothing short of impressive. Not only did we see the launch of a new desktop chip with the Core i7, but Intel then ramped up clock speeds, introduced lower-cost mainstream variants of the platform, and then drove that technology down into...
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The proliferation of NVIDIA's Ion GPU has been a long time coming. We've been talking about its merits for the better part of this year, but only recently has it been able to find its way into more than a handful of mainstream, shipping netbooks. We recently had a look at HP's Mini 311 with Windows 7 Home Premium, and while the Ion definitely...
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The first thing that came to mind when we tore the Asus UL80Vt from its box was this: "Hmm, this seems familiar." Turns out, the UL80Vt isn't all that different on the surface than the 13.3" UL30A that we reviewed back in September, but just because Asus' latest is another model in the expanded UL range doesn't mean that this machine...
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Windows 7 is upon us, and with the launch of Microsoft's self-proclaimed "best operating system" comes a slew of new desktop machines, notebooks, and netbooks looking to take advantage of its added stability and features. One of the companies that is looking to serve up a number of new Win7-based rigs is Asus, and without a doubt they have...
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In our 2009 Notebook Buyer's Guide, we discussed the merits and perils of CULV based notebooks. This suddenly popular and quickly growing sector looks to bridge the gap between the bargain basement netbook and the full-size notebook. It makes sense to think that a swath of 13.3" to 14" machines would be needed for those who find 10.1"...
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Recently, we've seen the meteoric rise of netbooks in the mobile space. Their ultra portability in conjunction with the global economic climate seems to have led consumers to think twice about spending large amounts of cash on mobile devices. This is especially true when netbooks offer the same basic services (word processing, internet...
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Synopsis: The 13" Macbook Pro features Apple's uni-body enclosure that is carved from a solid block of aluminum for added durability. The machine also features a LED-backlit screen with a higher color gamut than most notebooks, a backlit keyboard, and a 7 hour battery that actually lasts about 7 hours, which reaffirms Apple's reputation...
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