Geek deals: $437 off Dell laptop, docking station, and 20-inch monitor mega bundle
Business laptops can be boring. We understand your pain when your system breaks down and it’s time for a thick, hefty BlandBook, in a business-friendly color, with the mandatory optical drive, average about of RAM, and cost effective processor. Sometimes computers exist to get work done — you know it and we know it — but when you have to pick up a work computer, it makes sense to minimize the blandness and minimize the price, so as much many as possible can go back in your pocket. Read more...
Students gain credit for stealing 30 laptops from university staff
Stealing someone’s laptop could land you in jail. Stealing 30 of them would certainly earn you a longer sentence. But if you attend the University of Twente in the Netherlands, it may instead count as credit towards your degree.
Students did manage to steal 30 laptops from the Twente university campus, but no arrests were made because the whole thing was an experiment. It was setup by Trajce Dimkov, a PhD student and researcher in the Distributed and Embedded Security Group at the university. He wanted to find out how much human behavior factored into the security of an organization, specifically when viewed in isolation from the security practices in place there. Read more...
Intel recasts Pentium chip for servers
Intel is giving new life to its Pentium processor for servers, and has started shipping the new Pentium 350 chip for low-end servers.
The dual-core processor operates at a clock speed of 1.2GHz and has 3MB of cache. Like many server chips, the Pentium 350 lacks features such as integrated graphics, which are on most of Intel's laptop and desktop processors.
The iconic Pentium line of processors has been around for more than a decade, but now is mostly targeted at budget laptops and desktops. Pentium was Intel's flagship PC processor line, a mantle now held by the Core chips. The company once offered Pentium III and Pentium II Xeon processors for servers. Read more...
Surf the web and fry an egg on this futuristic computer
The Electrolux Mobile Kitchen can slice, dice, cook, and surf the web all at the samElectrolux Mobile e. And, miraculously, all on the same laptop. Unfortunately, it's just a concept design right now from designer Dragan Trenchevski, but a very cool one.
The idea is to have an induction heat stove top, a cutting board and touch screen LCD in one unit. You can use the monitor to browse through recipes or watch videos on how to cook. There would be a web cam embedded on top of it so you can talk with your friends who may be walking you through the cooking process. Read more...
Sorry, tablets, laptops still dominate the enterprise
Bruce Smith is feeling some tablet pressure. As director of computing services for Cummins Inc., Smith helps the company's 40,000 employees get the right computers for their jobs.
For a majority of those employees, it's a desktop PC. For mobile professionals, it's a laptop. Select employees, such as engineers, get both a laptop and a workstation capable of high-capacity computing.
Now there's a new possibility on the horizon. Smith says lately he's been getting more and more requests from workers throughout the organization, from executives to HR, to deviate from the standard selection and bring tablets into the mix at the Columbus, Ind.-based company, which designs, manufactures, distributes and services engines and related technologies.
So far he has said no. Read more...
Masterful mousing: 6 out-of-the-ordinary laptop mice
If you're still using a traditional computer (as opposed to a tablet), you're probably also still using a traditional mouse. While laptops all come with touchpads to help us move our cursors around the screen, there's no denying that many users are more comfortable pushing a mouse around a desktop. However, sometimes there isn't a desktop -- and sometimes you need a mouse that is more portable or more powerful than the $20 piece of plastic that you picked up on sale.
To help deal with such issues, we've found six mice that break the design mold that most of today's mice are built from. They do have some things in common -- they are all laser mice and they all use wireless Bluetooth to connect with the computer. Otherwise, these cursor-control devices don't have a whole lot in common -- except possibly the ability to make computing more efficient.
Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Gaming Mouse
You think a mouse is a simple device? You've got another thought coming. The Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Gaming Mouse is one of the most customizable mice around -- this is the mouse for gamers who are really, really serious about their pursuits. It offers a wide variety of tweaks, including interchangeable palm rests and pinkie grips; two batteries (one to power the mouse, the other to recharge in the wireless receiver/recharge dock); five 6-gram weights that you can subtract or add in order to get a perfectly weighted mouse (the knob that you unscrew to get at the weights doubles as a screwdriver to help you adjust other parts of the mouse); five programmable buttons; the ability to change the dpi rating (which goes up to an impressive 5600 dpi) -- and that's just for starters. This $150 device is the Maserati of mice. Read more...Apple’s 13-in. MacBook Air: All this style and speed, too
I'm not going to hem and haw: As far as I'm concerned, Apple's new 13-in. MacBook Air is just about perfect.
Usually, when I'm reviewing laptops, I wind up with a variety of caveats that weed out potential buyers for whatever I have in hand. The screen isn't big enough. There's not enough RAM. The processor is outdated. The keyboard is spongy.
I'm having a tough time finding similar flaws in the new Air, which Apple rolled out last month when it released OS X 10.7, better known as Lion. Part of what makes the Air such a great little laptop is Lion. Part of it is the hardware itself. Put those two pieces together and you have a solid nexus of modern OS and top-notch hardware that makes this laptop a real pleasure to use.
And I'm saying this as someone who always -- always -- defaults to a larger screen, aiming for as much high-resolution real estate as I can get. Preferably with the fastest processor available. (Right now, my personal laptop of choice is the top-of-the-line 17-in. MacBook Pro.) Read more...
Ghosting issues haunt Lenovo ThinkPad X220
Some Lenovo customers are concerned about ghosting on LCD screens in the ThinkPad X220 laptop, in which images temporarily remain fixed on screens, but the company tried to allay fears by saying that images dissipate in a short time and do not damage panels.
The ghosting phenomena -- commonly called image persistence -- are common to LCDs and do not cause images to burn into displays, said Ray Gorman, a Lenovo spokesman, in an email. But some customers have raised concerns, saying the image persistence was prominent, and the issue was not as seemingly normal as projected by Lenovo. Read more...
Police: Computer tech installed peeping software
An Orange County computer repair tech was arrested on suspicion of installing spyware on laptops that allowed him to photograph women showering and undressing in their homes.
Fullerton police Sgt. Andrew Goodrich said Trevor Harwell, 20, a technician for Rezitech Inc, installed a computer program that took control of the webcam on his clients' Mac laptops.
The software sent fake error messages telling users to "fix their internal sensor soon," and "try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor," Goodrich said. Read more...
Intel launches new class of ‘Ultrabook’ laptops
Intel announced plans for a new class of thin and light laptops at the Computex trade show on Tuesday, its latest move to improve its competitiveness in the mobile computing market.
The new class of "Ultrabook" PCs will have "thin, light, beautiful" designs and be priced for the mainstream market, as opposed to high-end buyers. Intel expects the new systems to account for 40 percent of consumer laptop sales by the end of next year, it said.
It will take time for the systems to evolve, however. An initial crop of Ultrabook PCs will go on sale from PC makers in time for the holiday shopping season at the end of this year. Based on Intel's existing Core processors, they will be less than 20mm (0.8 inches) thick and priced under US$1,000, Intel said. Read more...
Hands on: Can the ThinkPad X1 take on the MacBook Air?
Known for its straightforward business laptops, Lenovo is adding a touch of style with its new ThinkPad X1. The ultrathin laptop will be available May 24th for a starting price of $1,399.
With a footprint of 13.2 x 9 in., the ThinkPad X1's jet-black case is 0.4 in. wider than two other 13.3-in. rivals, the Apple MacBook Air and the Dell Vostro V130; at 0.8-in. thick, it is a tenth of an inch thicker than the Air's super-slim profile.
Google-powered laptops to go on sale June 15
The first laptops running on a Google-designed software system will go on sale in the U.S. and six other countries next month.
The June 15 release date announced Wednesday means the lightweight laptops will hit the market nearly two years after Google Inc. began working on an operating system based on its Chrome Web browser.
Since then, Apple Inc.'s iPad and other tablet computers have become hot sellers. The growing popularity of tablets has raised questions about how interested consumers will be interested in buying Google-powered laptops specifically tailored for Web surfing. Read more...
HP pay-as-you-go service provides 3G mobile broadband for laptops
Hewlett-Packard said on Monday it will start offering pay-as-you-go 3G mobile broadband services for its business laptops as the company looks to package more services with PCs.
HP is offering the DataPass mobile broadband service with its new 3G-enabled Elitebook business laptops, which were also announced on Monday. The service provides access to 3G data networks in the U.S., and does not require a user to sign a monthly or yearly contract with a wireless carrier.
The DataPass service can be purchased easily in blocks through the laptop, and users don't need to pay any activation fee, said Mike Hockey, an HP spokesman. With plans starting at $5, the service is good for quick access to the Internet for different durations at places like airports or hotels, where Internet access could otherwise be expensive. Read more...
Is Firefox doomed?
Ed Bott's March 22nd ZDNET post "Why Internet Explorer will survive and Firefox won't" answers the question yes. "So long, Firefox. It was nice to know you," he writes about the browser's future. Well, I don't agree with that. But Bott makes another prediction that rings right. If so, the new browser wars will make the 1990s skirmish between Microsoft and Netscape look like kids fighting with sticks.
Bott puts Firefox's future in context of a new platform war, as the computing market transitions from the PC era to the cloud connected device era. I riled some Betanews readers regading this transition with February 9th post: "The PC era is over." Read more...
Dell ships laptops with Intel’s latest Sandy Bridge chips
Dell on Thursday started shipping new Inspiron and Vostro laptops powered by Intel's latest Sandy Bridge processors with prices starting at $499.
The company's Vostro 3000-series laptops will come with 13-, 14-, 15- and 17-inch screens, with prices starting at $499. The laptops will be equipped with the newest Core i3, i5 and i7 dual- and quad-core processors based on Intel's latest microarchitecture, code-named Sandy Bridge.
Dell also announced Inspiron R-series consumer laptops with Intel's new processors. The laptops will come with screen sizes of 14, 15 and 17 inches. Read more...