Intel Core i7 for laptops: first review

Friday, September 18th, 2009

When it arrived on the desktop scene, Intel’s Core i7 levelled the opposition. With enough power to embarrass Intel’s own Core 2 architecture, not to mention AMD’s efforts, and coming at a cost that would make even a banker weep, Core i7 set the benchmark and set it high. Now, with the new Clarksfield range of processors it’s set to repeat the trick in the laptop market, and we’ve got our hands on a sample boasting the mid-range quad-core 1.73GHz i7-820QM.

The first processors to arrive will be quad-cores based on a 45nm process, with 32nm dual-core models following in early 2010. Intel has kept the quad-core line-up refreshingly simple too, with the 1.73GHz i7-820QM flanked on both sides by the 1.6GHz i7-720QM and the top of the range 2GHz i7-920XM. Unlike their Core 2 Quad predecessors, all four cores boast Hyper-Threading; a move that allows the processors to handle as many as eight separate threads at once.

A perfunctory look at the modest-looking clockspeeds is enough to leave the keen bystander a mite underwhelmed, but those figures don’t take any account of the ace resting up Core i7s sleeve – Turbo Boost.

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Meet the Adamo XPS… from Apple?

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

Regular readers of our reviews section will know we drooled all over Dell’s Adamo a few weeks back. Its metal slab design, superb build quality and all-round bloody loveliness won over most of the PC Pro crew and even elicited reluctantly positive grunts from several of MacUser’s troops too.

So what’s this Dell is now teasing? (Click to enlarge)

Puzzlingly, it’s a new 9.99mm-thin Adamo XPS laptop that looks remarkably like a MacBook Air. (more…)

First looks: Toshiba Satellite P500

Saturday, September 5th, 2009

The Toshiba Satellite P500 is a big laptop. Not a-little-larger-than-a-typical-laptop big, more size-of-the-universe big. Take a look at the photo if you don’t believe me: this is a kind and perfectly normal-sized lady at the Toshiba booth at IFA Berlin, yet it dwarfs her.

“It’s not funny,” she said, having held the laptop for 30 seconds as I fiddled with the camera, “this laptop is heavy.”

That’s also undeniably true, but then the Satellite P500 wasn’t built to be carried between home and office. This is a machine designed to entertain, and Toshiba packs in all the hi-tech goodies you can think of to make it a pleasure to use. (more…)

First look: Sony VAIO X-Series

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

We got our hands on an early sample of the all-new Sony VAIO X-Series at Sony’s pre-IFA show, and to say it looks an impressive feat of engineering completely understates matters.

Let’s get the facts out of the way first. This is the world’s lightest ever laptop, weighing less even than the Sony VAIO P-Series – and that weighed in at 640g.

Hold the X-Series in your hands and it feels breathtakingly light. Once you pick it up, you don’t want to put it down. (more…)

Laptops of the future

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

While most of the world seems to be raving about netbooks and budget computing, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks hunkered down in the Labs, ploughing through the forthcoming Ultimate Laptop Labs test.

It’s been an illuminating test for many reasons – not least the chance to test a dozen of the world’s most extravagant notebooks – but one of the most interesting themes to come out of this particular Labs is that the march of progress is, indeed, inevitable.

This is plain to see by comparing the line-ups from issue 169’s Luxury Laptops Labs and the dozen machines that we’ve got lined up for our Ultimate Laptop face-off.

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Acer’s new laptops and netbooks – first look

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Once upon a time, manufacturers would launch one product at a time, allowing you to soak up the details pass comment and have time for reflection. Some, however, insist on the scatter gun approach.

And Acer, having just announced a new netbook, six new laptops, two nettops, and several all-in-one PCs, including a Windows 7-equipped touchscreen model (which a spokesman said would be on the shelves on October 23) fall firmly into the latter category. (more…)

How to connect your PC to your hi-fi

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

It appears there’s some confusion, even among a few of my colleagues, about audio and PC speakers and amplifiers and stuff like that. Specifically, whether you can plug a PC into normal stereo speakers, whether it will work if you do and how to do it. We’ll start with a few simple facts in handy question-and-answer format.

Can I use normal living-room stereo speakers with my PC?

Probably not directly, but essentially yes. There’s no fundamental difference between PC speakers and normal speakers, except that PC speakers have a built-in amplifier. To use standard hi-fi stereo speakers you just need an amplifier to drive them. So, either get yourself a separate hi-fi amp and speakers, or take the cheap option and plug your PC into the stereo in the living room.

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Battery Chicken

Friday, February 13th, 2009

I confess; I’m chicken. I need a new battery for my Toshiba Satellie U200, so off I went and Googled for it. This is what online shopping should be for, after all: I can type in the part number of the laptop or the battery and get many pages of hits, all striving to garner my business with promises of guarantees, instant shipping, perfect compatibility… what could possibly go wrong

Well, take a look at pictures of the U200 Tosh. It has overhung screen hinges – by which I mean, when the screen is opened any further than about 50 degrees, the base of the screen starts to drop over the back of the laptop. By the time it is open at a sensible laptop viewing angle, the screen base is aligned with the bottom of the main body of the unit, and completely obscures the rear of the laptop. That’s why all the plugs are on the sides and even the front: the back is completely occupied by the battery.

So… why is someone selling this? – at first blush it looks like a jolly good idea. Extended battery runtime is an excellent concept, and hanging outside the form-factor of a laptop is a tried and tested way to get it. Having a standard battery dock in many models of laptop no doubt helps manufacturers keep prices down, too – but as with so much “should be easy” stuff on the web, it looks like this is one of those howlers it’s all too easy to get caught by.

I actually sat here for a few minutes, waggling the screen of the Tosh to and fro for a while, trying to figure out if the lid could possibly miss the bump on the back of the battery – then I realised it was much easier to confess to moral turpitude here and wait for someone to recommend a battery replacement website which actually knows what they are selling.

(by the way, no special criticism is intended for laptopbatterystore.co.uk – they are just one of the hundreds of sites all apparently using the same copatibility parts matrix to offer the same batteries for the same laptops)

First stop: Dell’s PC emporium

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

So my job this fortnight, as you may have discovered in Tim’s call to arms, is to spend £250 of his money on a brand new fully-built PC or laptop, using only the medium of this interweb thingy. All phones off the hook, face-to-face conversation on hold; this is just me, my surfing skills and his wallet. Heaven.

My first port of call was obvious: Dell. Where better to find a rock-bottom bargain PC to make this whole task as easy as a few quick clicks, feet up on the desk and a delivery in the post room? Well, as you ask, quite a lot of places actually.

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Hands on: NEC’s Intel Classmate PC

Wednesday, January 14th, 2009

The BETT education technology show at London’s Olympia was heaving today, suggesting that education may be one of the few sectors of the IT industry that isn’t yet suffering as a result of the economic meltdown.

Few stands, however, were attracting as much attention as the ones sporting Intel’s new Classmate PCs. NEC’s version of the Classmate is called the Otomo, and we managed to get our hands on the device for a few minutes on the BETT showfloor.

As we reported yesterday, the child-friendly laptop sports a new design that allows you to swivel the screen from the traditional laptop configuration into a tablet PC. A built-in accelerometer rotates the screen depending on which up way the tablet is being held – whether that be landscape or portrait – although it was certainly a little temperamental on  the pre-release version that we had our hands on.

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