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.
Although Dell, IBM, and HP/Compaq get a lion's share of the press, there are several other major notebook brands vying for your hard earned dollar as well. Recently, Winbook's marketing machine has been in full swing emphasizing their new notebooks in the North American market. This means two things for potential notebook consumers. One, you...
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Off to school we go! Yes, it's that time of year again for many. But fear not! All is not lost, for it's also notebook hunting season. Of course, even if you enjoy going back to school, it's still a rare treat. After all, you are choosing a companion to help you stave off hours of boredom, and at the same time choosing an hombre to make your...
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Now that we've got the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad X41 Tablet PC review under our belts, we are going to backtrack a bit to take a look at the HP/Compaq TC4200. Although the IBM ThinkPad X41 Tablet PC hit the HotHardware lab first, the HP/Compaq TC4200 was actually introduced before the X41. These two Tablet PCs are targeted at slightly...
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Our previous coverage of the Inspiron XPS Gen 2 was mainly intended for prospective gaming and performance sensitive buyers. However, this perspective doesn't completely explore the multimedia possibilities of the XPS Gen 2, which can be configured with Microsoft's MCE 2005. So of course, we had an Inspiron XPS Gen 2 from Dell configured with...
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Asus made an interesting statement earlier in the year with their S5N notebook. Its flair wasn't necessarily original, but it was, and still remains, one of the smaller ultra-portable designs available. And it's for this reason, that the S5N remains one of the ultra-portable notebooks in our own personal notebook arsenal. So, needless to say,...
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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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Over the past year, it has been interesting to see the emphasis that the big names are willing to put on the "enthusiast" crowd, in regards to notebooks. In the past, notebooks have been targeted towards businessmen and the like. These days, however, the variety is so wide that there is a notebook targeted to just about every niche...
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The Notebook Lab here at Hothardware.com is currently full of business and professional class notebooks, but don't fret, we will get to some interesting consumer class designs soon. In the meantime though, there is still plenty to keep us busy, including our latest arrival, Dell's new business powerhouse - the Latitude D810. The Dell...
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Now that we've got some Dell, IBM, and HP notebook reviews under our belt, we are going to depart from the business oriented line of machines we've already looked at, and take some time to go over Compaq's new Presario V4000. After the acquisition by Hewlett Packard, Compaq fully devoted its Presario notebook designs towards the consumer...
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A few short years back, the T series notebook from IBM was exactly what most of us thought of whenever someone uttered the word "notebook". Through the years, it has been the friend of many students, business men, and serious travelers, with broad market brand-name recognition. Lately, it has undergone its latest refresh,...
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IBM's products are the time tested gold standard when it comes to the computing needs of business professionals or corporations as a whole. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM," many say. There is a reason for this reputation; most of it relating specifically to quality and technological features that have been incorporated cleverly...
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Lightweight notebooks have always been the weapon of choice for the professional with a need for speed and an eye for style. As new entries are brought into the market during the spring refresh, numerous companies have been scrambling to bring something that fuses aesthetics and power together in a conveniently portable package. Asus's track...
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With the next notebook refresh cycle right around the corner, we are taking the time to look at some of the more recently refreshed notebooks. In the meantime, there is a lot of buzz surrounding the AMD Turion platform, which we have been eagerly anticipating. The news so far (directly from a few system vendors) is that it does surprisingly...
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Centrino based notebooks are the mobile computing industry's current bread and butter. There is really no denying the huge market share that Intel has claimed in the notebook arena. Centrino is synonymous with mobility and power efficiency, and it is generally regarded as the present gold standard when it comes to mainstream mobile computing....
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When it comes to mainstream notebooks, the big three: Dell, HP/Compaq, and IBM still lead the pack in regard to overall notebook price, design, quality, and service. Of course, the enthusiast notebook vendors still get to set some interesting aesthetic and performance trends, but Dell and HP (Dell more so) have been picking up on the...
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About three weeks ago, we tested a new Acer notebook powered by ATI's Mobility Radeon X700. With our testing complete, we found the Mobility Radeon X700 to be a well-balanced mobile GPU that offered very good performance, in a thin and relatively light form factor. Then, a few days after that article went live, we...
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Widescreen notebook solutions are becoming more popular for general consumers, which is evident looking at the newest offerings from Dell or HP/Compaq. And as far as other OEMs go, there are few new players entering the market as well. In the past few years, we have started to see large motherboard manufacturers join the fray of OEM...
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Mobile Graphics technology is advancing at a fevered pace. In a little over a year, the once dominant Mobility Radeon 9600 was eclipsed by the Mobility Radeon 9700. Then, the MR 9700 was surpassed by the Mobility Radeon 9800, which itself was recently eclipsed by the Mobility Radeon X800. ATI's mobile GPUs went from 4, to 8, to 12 pixel...
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We are going to go start down the proverbial "rabbit hole' for notebooks in the coming weeks. And because of this, we need to lay a few things out before we go on. First and foremost, certain notebooks are designed with certain people in mind. Five or six years ago, not everyone was cut out to own a notebook, for a variety of reasons;...
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In May of this year, we had the chance to evaluate ATi's Mobility Radeon 9700. When our evaluation was complete, we came away impressed. And we weren't alone. The ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 has been almost universally praised by the press, and declared the fastest mobile 3D gaming GPU of its generation. Then, only a few short months later, ATi...
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The battle between NVIDIA and ATi for dominance in the desktop 3D gaming video card market has been on-going for many years. With each new product they release, both companies attempt to leap-frog the other by introducing new features and increasing performance over their previous generation. The competition has gotten so fierce,...
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The PC has undergone quite a metamorphosis recently. Over the past few years, we've seen the boring beige boxes of yesterday, transform into the multi-colored, windowed and lighted works of art of today. We've also seen (or should we say heard?) the community move away from multi-fan, super-loud cooling techniques, to more...
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