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.
Back in 2011, Intel Capital, Intel's investment arm in support of their strategic objectives, ponied-up a cool $300 million to help give birth to a new class of notebooks called "Ultrabooks." Though there isn't a complete set of design specifications, Intel requires certain characteristics of performance, mechanical design, battery life...
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You might say Intel has been absolutely killing it as of late. Whether you consider their recent earnings announcement beating Wall Street's expectations, the Ultrabook craze, their re-entrance into the handset arena with their Medfield platform, or the proliferation of their 2nd generation Core Sandy Bridge-based processors in...
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Intel launched its Medfield platform only six weeks ago, but the company is moving ahead with plans for additional processors based on the 32nm SoC. At Mobile World Congress today, Santa Clara announced plans for two additional system on a chip (SoC) designs to flesh out its product roadmap. The current Z2460 that we covered in January...
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The second day of IDF began with Mooly Eden, Intel VP and General Manager of the PC Client Group, and his keynote discussion, detailing the current state of the company’s business and Ultrabook plans. Eden’s keynote began with a talk about growth in overall PC sales, due mostly to increased demand in emerging markets. Mr. Eden...
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For their new generation of notebook processors, Intel decided to take the opposite approach that they took in their desktop architecture, where they launched their mid-range quad-core product first, with a promise of top-end multi-core performance to come just a bit further down their roadmap. From a mobile standpoint, the Core i7 2820QM...
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About this time last year, Intel offered us a complete processor revamp and architecture update for both the desktop and mobile markets. Intel called it their evolutionary "tick" step in their manufacturing process migration from 45 to 32nm. The "tock," as it were, follows along in cadence offering refinement and feature enhancement...
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Is this the showdown of the year? In the smartphone world, we would argue that it is. If you're looking for arguably the world's best 3G smartphones right now, you're likely considering two specific choices: Apple's iPhone 4 on AT&T, or HTC's DROID Incredible on Verizon Wireless. Both phones provide an excellent user experience,...
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A little over two years ago, Intel formally unveiled the low-power Atom processor and its related chipset and platform technologies. At the time, Intel's vision for Atom had the diminutive CPU powering a diverse line-up of mobile internet devices, or MIDs, web-connected tablets, portable media players, and handheld gaming devices. Suffice...
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When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad at a frenzied event in California this past January, he said something interesting. It was a statement that got many in the tech industry thinking. Now that we have played with the company's first tablet for a couple of weeks, we think it's time to really take a look at how reasonable Jobs' statement...
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Apple's iPad has left an indelible mark on the Tablet PC universe. It wasn't that long ago when just about everyone gave up on the tablet. Just about every notebook manufacturer in existence tried their hand at making a tablet at one point or another, and just about everyone hung it up by 2005. For whatever reasons, tablets never managed to...
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As you've no doubt heard by now, Apple launched a new mobile computing device and it's within a product category that is all-new territory for the traditionally tight-lipped company. It's a bit of an odd choice for a company that revels in innovation, and after today's announcement, we're left with more questions than answers on whether or...
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At this year's CES show in Vegas there have been more than a couple of relatively exciting announcements and of course Intel was intent on joining the party. Today we got to spend some quality time behind closed doors with the folks in Intel's Mobile group learning a bit about some of the new features that will be coming to their Core...
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Looking back at silicon innovation over the past decade, you'll notice three primary design targets that tend to dominate industry motivation and trends - power consumption, price and performance. As processor technologies evolve and new technologies are invented, there are rare moments in time when an innovation can hit upon all three...
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For quite some time now, Intel has been the undisputed leader when it comes to laptop CPU performance. This advantage comes from the fact that Intel has successfully scaled its desktop processor technology for use in the mobile platform. That trend continues with the latest mobile processor platform being unleashed today from Intel: the...
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Intel has just officially announced the Montevina mobile platform, their 5th generation of the underlying technology that makes up the company's Centrino 2 mobile architecture. Like previous iterations, the Montevina platform consists of a processor, chipset, and a specific wireless network module. New with Montevina,...
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When you consider notebooks are easily the highest growth segment of the PC industry, isn't it sort of odd that we don't hear more about new product refresh efforts from the major OEMs? The simple fact of the matter is, that while we hear of new desktop and workstation technologies on a regular basis, core notebook architectures, more...
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Do you remember the original Pentium 4? It launched at 1.5 GHz and gave us our first bittersweet taste of the NetBurst microarchitecture, which Intel would use to replace the P6 design.When the Pentium 4 began its life, Intel manufactured the chips on a 180 nm node. The 42 million transistors that went into those first Pentium 4s - internally...
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Day 2 at this year’s IDF began with a mobility keynote hosted by Intel’s David “Dadi” Perlmutter and Anand Chandrasekher. The keynote was broken up into two parts; the first focused on notebooks and Intel’s mobile platforms as a whole and the second focused on “ultra mobility” featuring a number of UMPCs and MIDs....
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Back in 1992 IBM introduced its Thinkpad line of laptop computers. Since that time the Thinkpad has become a staple in mobile business computing. Thinkpads have had a history of firsts in the laptop industry with the invention and usage of such innovative features as the Trackpoint, Thinklight, Ultrabay, biometric fingerprint reader, and Magnesium/Titanium...
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It is fairly safe to say that Intel has far and away been the dominant player in the mobile processor market for what seems like forever. Though AMD's Turion 64 is a solid alternative to Intel solutions, clearly AMD's market share of 13% or so is an obvious sign that the company just hasn't been able to penetrate...
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This weekend Intel sponsored an event for the Global Gaming League, the TransAtlantic Showdown, that pitted some of the best gamers from North America against rivals from across the Atlantic. The TransAltantic Showdown was more than just a gaming tournament though. There were a couple of interesting twists that made the TransAtlantic Showdown...
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It has taken quite sometime for ultra-portables to be fully accepted by the notebook community. This really has more to do with their price tags, than any specific design or aesthetic issue. Considering that ultra-portables are usually more expensive than traditional notebooks, it isn't hard to see why most people would choose the cheaper...
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