Greatest Hits of MWC 2013

Sunday, February 24th, 2013

With the world’s largest mobile technology show about to take place in the sunny environs of Barcelona. it’s time to kick off something new for our coverage of the show this year: PC Pro’s Greatest Hits of MWC 2013. It’s our pick of the best products and technologies on show at the event. Nine products will walk away with a Greatest Hits award, and as ever we’re looking for our readers’ help in picking the winners.

If you see a product you think deserves to be considered, then make a comment on this blog by midnight Tuesday 5 February (UK time). In addition to five products earning the Greatest Hits accolade, we’re giving away four awards in the following specific categories:

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Intel’s NUC arrives – in a box that plays the Intel Inside jingle

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

A couple of intriguing boxes turned up this morning which, when unwrapped revealed a couple of very nice surprises. Intel had, after months of nagging, finally sent us review samples of its tiny barebones PC – the NUC – which Darien first caught sight of at IDF last year.

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The techs to watch in 2013

Monday, December 31st, 2012

With the January sales looming, you might be wondering whether it’s time to grab a bargain, or whether you should  hold out a little longer and see what technologies the new year brings. I’ve been closely watching the industry in 2012, and keeping track of announcements for the coming year – and below you’ll find my predictions of what’s going to happen in various areas of technology in 2013.

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AMD Trinity review: first look

Thursday, September 27th, 2012

This blog has now been updated with additional benchmarks and pricing details. See below for our verdict on AMD Trinity.

We’ve heaped praise on AMD’s Accelerated Processing Units in the past, and it’s clear that the firm is onto a winner by cramming a processor and a Radeon graphics core into the same package – its A8-3870K took home a Recommended award in our last processor Labs.

The next generation of desktop parts is here, and the new chips, codenamed Trinity, are set to offer a better balance of application performance, gaming power and price. AMD’s hoping its APUs take more of a fight to Intel thanks to the inclusion of Bulldozer cores – the same technology that’s currently on show in its FX processors. (more…)

Motorola Razr i review: first look

Tuesday, September 18th, 2012

There was a time when it was considered commercial suicide to launch any device, let alone another smartphone, at the same time as an Apple iPhone. Yet as Android has matured, rival manufacturers have steadily become bolder with the timing, and with the razzmatazz surrounding their announcements.

The latest to attempt to give Apple a black eye is Motorola with a new addition to its Razr family of smartphones. The Razr i will be available in the UK from the beginning of October.

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Intel NUC mini-PC review: first look

Thursday, September 13th, 2012

It’s not just transistors that are shrinking at Intel. In an unobtrusive corner of IDF, the company has been demonstrating its new “Next Unit of Computing” (NUC) mini-PC, based on a 4in square motherboard and a tasteful moulded plastic case.

Internally, the NUC is powered by a 17-watt Core i3-3217U processor soldered to the underside of the motherboard. It’s a dual-core, Hyper-Threaded Ivy Bridge part clocked at 1.8GHz with no Turbo Boost – not exactly a powerhouse, but considerably more capable than the Atoms we’ve come to associate with tiny PCs.

The motherboard offers two SO-DIMM slots, supporting up to 16GB of DDR3, an mSATA slot for storage and a mini PCI-E slot for adding a wireless or other card as required. (more…)

HP Envy x2 (Intel Clover Trail) review: first look

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

Intel has been struggling for years to get its Atom processors into smartphones, but handset manufacturers’ existing investment in ARM-based processes and software is a big obstacle.

(It was no surprise when product marketing director Sumeet Syal, speaking here at IDF, revealed that most of the hardware and software for the San Diego smartphone had been developed in-house by Intel, and handed over to Orange as more or less a finished product.)

Atom, however, isn’t only about smartphones: Intel has long been pushing it as a tablet processor too, and with the advent of Windows 8 it looks like that ambition is about to be fulfilled. Here, all the history is on Intel’s side: ARM is the newcomer, suffering from limited hardware and software support, while Atom-based Windows 8 tablets can run the full range of desktop applications, as well as supporting business-friendly features such as joining domains and participating in group policies. Syal described Atom as, quite simply, “a great solution” for tablets. (more…)

Intel shows off technologies of the future

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

The Intel Developer Forum starts tomorrow in San Francisco, hopefully with some good news about the processors and chipsets we’ll be drooling over in the coming Spring.

As an appetiser, however, the company has today been looking further ahead with one of its occasional “technology showcases”, introducing a few projects from its labs that are currently mere prototypes, but which could change our everyday lives in years to come – the most striking of which you’ll find below.

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Gigabyte X11 Ultrabook review: first look

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012

Ultrabooks are increasingly slipping into an all-too-familiar blueprint, so it’s good to see some companies trying to push the envelope. Gigabyte’s latest design, the X11, claims to be the world’s lightest 11.6in Ultrabook – and, at less than a kilogram, we’re not going to argue. (more…)

Is Microsoft’s Surface Pro waiting on Intel?

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

One of the curious things about Microsoft’s Surface announcement is the release timetable. The Windows RT model is expected to arrive at the same time as Windows 8; but the Surface for Windows 8 Pro, running real desktop Windows, isn’t due until three months after that, which probably means after Christmas.

Is this delay a deliberate tactical move to give Metro a boost? After all, early Surface adopters will now have no choice but to buy into the RT ecosystem. But if that were the intention it would have made much more sense not to announce the Surface Pro (as I shall call it) at all. It makes no sense to show off the flagship Windows 8 device and then voluntarily hold it back so as to miss the biggest shopping season of the year.

It seems more likely that the Surface Pro simply isn’t going to be ready in time for the Windows 8 launch. But why not? It surely can’t be a software delay – by that time the OS will be officially compatible with millions of desktop and laptop configurations worldwide. And since Microsoft has already announced confidently that the Surface RT will be ready to launch alongside the OS, it clearly has manufacturing capacity in hand. So what exactly is causing the hold-up?

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