Reviews
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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Lenovo made more noise at the Consumer Electronics Show in January than any other notebook maker, and while we have since been able to test out a few of the company's newest machines, the curious X100e had thus far eluded us. We just reviewed our sample of the smallest ThinkPad ever (that actually looks like a ThinkPad), and with Lenovo claiming...
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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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ATI has come on very strong in the consumer graphics space over the last few months. Besides being first to market with DirectX 11 compatible video cards, unleashing Eyefinity technology on to the masses, and expanding their product line up at every meaningful price point, the Red Team also lays claim to the fastest desktop graphics...
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With all of the press solid state drives have received over the last year or so, it would be easy to think that few advancements have been made in the hard drive space. After all, hard drive capacities have seemingly hit a plateau at 2TB, performance can't come close to even a mid-range SSD in most scenarios, and it's hard to imagine...
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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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Some might say that there has never been a better time to be a PC enthusiast. Compelling new products fighting for our attention abound, as the computer hardware scene is bursting at the seams with upgrade options. For example, it wasn't long ago that AMD launched the world's first DX11 videocard and now the company features a full lineup...
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Back in September of last year, just prior to the official arrival of the Radeon HD 5800 series, we first wrote about AMD's ATI Eyefinity technology and hinted at the fact that cards with six display outputs were coming. Since then, we had seen AMD's 6-output Radeon in action at a number of events, but hadn't been given the opportunity to...
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Samsung has not traditionally played a huge role in the evolution of notebooks. Companies such as Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer and Asus have all done noteworthy things to push the envelope, with the Adamo XPS, ThinkPad, IdeaPad and Eee PC all coming from this group. Even those who don't follow technology on a daily basis would probably...
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For better or worse, the launch of NVIDIA's next-generation GPU architecture codenamed Fermi, a.k.a. GF100, is one of the most highly anticipated in our industry, ever. Information about the GPU has been tricking out for many months now, some of it good and some bad. Regardless of what you have chosen to believe or ignore up to this...
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Computer cases tend to reveal certain things about their owners. With one glance, your friends can estimate just how serious (or casual) your computer hardware addiction may be. Whether the chassis is a generic, cream-colored throwback from the 90's, a standard mid-tower with a couple of LED fans, or an extravagant full-tower gaming behemoth...
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When you think about the market for a pre-built, proverbial "Killer Gaming Rig," you have to consider the class of consumer that would have interest in this type of system. For the most part, the average do-it-yourselfer isn't going to take much interest here, save for perhaps the appreciation of all the bleeding-edge technology...
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Although Solid State Drives are all the rage lately, they comprise only a fraction of the overall desktop PC storage market. While SSDs are undeniably fast and enhance the overall user experience, they are also prohibitively expensive for many users and offer relatively low capacities. As such, traditional, spinning hard drives, with their...
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Building a Home Theater PC is often times a much better option for enabling your entertainment center for various forms of digital media playback capability. Rather than stepping up to additional discrete components, like a stand-alone Blu-ray, DVD or CD player, why not infuse your living room entertainment center with real intelligence...
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Just this past week, the Game Developers Conference was held in downtown San Francisco, CA. If you're unfamiliar with GDC, it is the "world's largest professionals-only game industry event." In other words, everyday gaming enthusiast can't just walk in off the street to take a look around. GDC is held every spring...
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Although they are not due to hit store shelves for a few more weeks, Intel is using the always exciting Game Developers Conference currently being held in San Francisco to officially unveil the new Core i7-980X Extreme processor. Intel's Extreme Edition processors have always been targeted at enthusiasts and hardcore-gamers, so what better...
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Lenovo proved at the Consumer Electronics Show in January that it wasn't messing around when it comes to latest generation of notebook technologies. The company has a vast array of options, from tiny to huge, and they span the gamut from casual road warriors to hardcore business users. There's also a machine or two in there for the gaming...
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If you could design your own laptop in an effort to have the perfect balance of performance, price, size, weight, and features, what would you include and what could you live without? As part of its Blue Label program, Best Buy asked that question of its customers--accepting as much feedback as its customers could give and then channeling...
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For the last couple of years, Dell's foray into the small-form-factor desktop market was its successful mini-tower (with the emphasis on "mini") Studio Hybrid. But with Dell's latest small-form-factor entry, the Inspiron Zino HD, out goes the vertical mini-tower and in comes the horizontal square--7.8-inches wide by 7.8-inches deep to be exact,...
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Solid State Storage products are obviously setting the computing market on fire as of late. There is little question that the writing is on the wall. Like the vacuum tube transistors of yesterday, spinning hard drives are bound to go the way of the Dodo bird. It's only a matter of time; not if, but when. However, the...
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Ever since NVIDIA's original ION chipset proved it was possible to pair Intel's low-power Atom processor to a relatively powerful graphics core and attain acceptable multimedia performance, the market has been curious as to what NVIDIA's Ion 2 Next-Generation Ion product might offer. This has also been a topic of some discussion between...
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It has been quite a while since AMD launched a new high-end desktop chipset. The 790FX has been riding high at the top of AMD's line-up for over two years now. It has been paired to newer Southbridge chips and AMD did follow up with the 790GX about a year and half ago, but for all intents and purposes AMD's flagship desktop chipset has remained...
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