The existing Series 9 customers wanted something bigger, and this undeniably is. It shares much in common with the 13.3in variant: the keyboard feels very similar to type on, with the main benefit being slightly more space for keys such as Home, Page Up and Down, and End.

The touchpad is even larger: it almost feels like a graphic tablet in terms of its size, and if Microsoft can add better gesture support in Windows 8 this could lend the 15in Series 9 a real advantage.

The screen shares some of the same characteristics as its 13.3in brother, most notably a slight hue as you move off-centre, but there’s no graininess here. With 1,600 x 900 pixels, we’d be very happy to use this as our everyday machine.

Samsung packs enough power in, too, with a Core i7 processor inside (hopefully Ivy Bridge when it arrives). Note that Samsung has not yet confirmed specs, prices or any release date.

One potential annoyance is the reliance on adapters for connecting to Ethernet and VGA; also note it’s a micro-HDMI slot rather than full-size. We’re pleased to see a full-size SD card slot, two USB 3 slots on the right-hand side, plus USB 2 on the left. There’s no Thunderbolt, though.

As with the 13.3in Series 9, the battery is designed to last for 1,500 lifecycles; that means it should still have 80% of its capacity even after four or five years, by which time it will definitely be time to give this laptop to someone else anyway.

Samsung claims a ten-and-a-half hour battery life, too, but as with the 13.3in version we’ll have to wait for the review samples to put this to the test.

The Series 9 is no such laptop. It looks and feels beautiful, with what Samsung terms as a “mineral matt-finish”. The end result is no fingerprints on the lid, which was one of the big complaints consumers had with the original Series 9.

And it’s helped along by an ultra-sleek chassis, with Samsung going all-out with its marketing hype: this, folks, is the world’s slimmest laptop. Or to be more precise, the 13.3in version of the Series 9 is, measuring a ridiculous 12.9mm thick. (See our preview of the 15in Series 9 here.)

Unlike so many laptops, as can be seen from the photo above, that claim this kind of girth it doesn’t gain much extra towards the back.

Then there’s the weight of 1.16kg. We’re now used to high-powered laptops being featherlight, but even so the Series 9 is exceptional.

The payback comes with the ports. This 13.3in model has one USB 3 port on the right and a USB 2 port on the left, plus a full-size SD slot neatly tucked into the side of the chassis, but aside from this you’re slipping into the world of micro and adapters: there’s a micro-HDMI port on the left, an adapter for Ethernet and VGA, plus one 3.5mm socket (usable for either a microphone or headphones).

Samsung doesn’t make too many compromises with the keyboard. Naturally there isn’t a massive amount of travel on the keys, but we got up to a decent speed (this review is actually being typed directly onto a showfloor Series 9) and didn’t notice much clatter. Yes, the Enter key is single-height, but it’s also nice and large – as is the excellent touchpad.

We’re a little less enamoured by the screen. This uses a Samsung LED panel that’s been custom-made by Samsung itself, and it suffers from a very slight grain. If you go a little off-centre, it also develops a slight yellow hue.

In practice, though, we don’t think we’d complain. For a start there’s minimal glare from the screen’s matte finish; and second, it’s very bright at full whack: 400cd/m² according to our man on the stand.

Perhaps even more important is the resolution: Samsung packs in 1,600 x 900 pixels into this 13.3in display, yet it doesn’t feel squashed or cramped.

This gives it a full notebook feel, and it’s helped further by a Core i7 processor – the exact spec has yet to be confirmed. Samsung is making bold claims about wake times too: 1.8 seconds from sleep, 9.8 seconds from off. Our tests didn’t quite bear this out, with the pre-production sample on show taking around 13 seconds (see the video below).

The final thing to note is the battery. Being a unibody chassis, sculpted from aluminium, the battery is built-in and there’s no option for replacement.

If Samsung is to be believed, however, this shouldn’t be an issue, because the battery is designed to last for 1,500 recharges before it loses 20% of its capacity. This compares, Samsung claims, to 300 recharges for a typical laptop.

Hopefully that means you’ll still have at least 80% of the original capacity after five years; Samsung claims the 13.3in Series 9 lasts for six-and-a-half hours.

It adds up to a laptop with a lot of promise, and we look forward to Samsung confirming the launch date – and price – in the coming weeks.

Let us make one thing absolutely clear: these are the most stunning laptops to ever bear the Asus brand. They’re also the best looking Ultrabooks we’ve seen so far – more alluring than Toshiba’s, Lenovo’s and Acer’s.

And there’s no doubt about it, Asus better have the lawyers ready, because these two new models bear more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s MacBook Air.

The circular swirls on the lid add a welcome bit of individuality, and both models sport a metal chassis that tapers from 3mm at the front to 17mm at the rear. Combined with gloriously stout build, it’s hard not to come away impressed. The build quality is excellent, and while our Asus contact winced as we tried to snap their latest laptops in two, the chassis barely flexed at all.

The specifications are just as impressive. The 11.6in UX21 partners a 1.6GHz Core i5-2467M processor with 4GB of memory and a 128GB SSD, while the 13.3in UX31 is identical apart from two crucial upgrades: it’s got an even speedier 1.8GHz Core i7-2677M processor, and the display resolution bumps up from 1,366 x 768 to a spacious 1,600 x 900.

Asus claims around five hours of battery life for the baby of the range and over seven hours for the UX31, but the real fanfare was reserved for the system’s resume and standby abilities. While both systems spring from deep sleep in just two seconds, the UX21 is able to last a week on standby and the UX31, two weeks.

If there’s one casualty of Asus’s ruthless fat-trimming, though, it’s connectivity. Both models plump for two USB ports – USB 2 on one side, USB 3 on the other – and both shrink their D-SUB and HDMI sockets down to miniature proportions. You’ll need to make sure not to forget the Micro-HDMI and mini-VGA adapters on your travels. The only difference on the larger UX31 is the addition of an SD card reader – Asus couldn’t quite find room for one on the UX21, apparently.

Beauty and beastly strength aren’t the Zenbook’s only qualities, however, and Asus’s latest feels every inch the luxurious Ultrabook. The stiff base means that there’s not a hint of wallow in the keyboard, and the Scrabble-tile keys feel crisp and lively. The subtle scooped-out profile on each key is a nice touch, too, helping the smooth keys grip each fingertip for a more confident feel. In fact, our only gripe is the lack of keyboard backlighting – a disappointing omission.

The large glass touchpad beneath seemed pretty solid, but we’ll definitely want to spend a little more time with the Zenbooks before we make a final judgment. We’ve no qualms with the silky smooth surface, which makes for accurate, responsive cursor control, but we’re not quite so sure about the slightly stiff-feeling buttons along its bottom edge – these might take a little more getting used to.

If you’re wondering about the price of admission to Asus’s Zenbook range, well, you may just be in for a rather pleasant surprise: the UX21 is up for grabs at £849 and the UX31 at £999 – a few hundred pounds cheaper than the comparable MacBook Air models. With both laptops available to order from 21 October at Currys, PC World, Comet and Amazon, and our review units just days away, we have a feeling that this is the Ultrabook everyone’s going to want to get their hands on. Stay tuned for the full PC Pro review.

The Metro UI

First things first, Metro is your main entry point whatever your hardware – and that’s going to annoy a lot of people. It’s large, it’s almost childlike in its design, and it’s so obviously meant for tablets that it feels slightly insulting to anyone who’s comfortable with the ins and outs of the Windows environment.

The concept of full-screen-only apps makes little sense for any device above tablet size, as anyone who works with Outlook, Word, Tweetdeck and Chrome permanently open will quickly realise. You can split apps so that one occupies two-thirds of the screen, but that’s not particularly helpful on larger screens. The desktop itself is technically an app, so you can have that occupy two-thirds with several traditional windows within it. It’s not something I found useful, though.

Metro is a bit iffy to navigate with a mouse. While the live previews in larger tiles are great (giving quick access to tweets, emails and the like – and they can be put on your lock screen too), the icons themselves are big and boxy on a 15in screen, and finding an application to launch manually – even once you’ve dragged them all into related groups of tiles – means much scrolling left and right.

Of course, that’s not the quickest way to launch an application from an idle desktop. In Windows 7 I simply press the Windows key and start typing the name, and the good news is you can still do that here – the difference is no Start menu appears. Or more accurately, the Metro UI is the Start menu, and a press of the Windows key (or a click of the now pretty useless bottom-left Start button) always takes you to that grid. If you’re fast you can ping the full-screen Metro interface up, type the app name and be back on the desktop again in a second, which begs the question why it needs to appear at all when the old, less graphically demanding and space-intensive system worked so well.

The closest thing to a traditional Start menu on the desktop arrives if you instead hover over the Start button. There you get a few menu options, along with a different way in to that search function, which here attempts to search within the currently active app. If that’s not where you want to search – and it usually won’t be – you pretty much have to end up with the full-screen Metro search taking over again. It needs work.

Changing your ways

As you’ll quickly discover, if you want to spend the majority of your time in the traditional desktop, you’re going to have to get used to doing things differently. More specifically, you’ll want to make extensive use of your desktop and taskbar. As we’ve seen, any application not pinned to one of those two locations is tough to launch without returning to the Metro UI in some form. Whether you pile your desktop high with shortcuts will largely depend on how annoying you find that big green grid on a daily basis.

At every opportunity, Windows 8 reminds you that Metro is its new baby: plugging in a USB stick brings up a green tile over the desktop, and further settings are all laid out in the Metro style. Selecting any of the menu options on that previously mentioned mini Start menu produces a vertical Metro bar to the right of the desktop. (Don’t even get us started on why a button in the bottom-left opens a menu on the far right, another design decision made seemingly without the mouse in mind).

All the talk from the launch event has been from people using Windows 8 on tablets, so the quick gestures are getting a lot of love in LA. Back in the real world of PCs and laptops, you can hover over the left edge of the screen to see the last application you had open, and either drag it out to switch to it or right-click to snap it to the right-edge column. It works okay, but other gestures just don’t translate: swiping upwards to unlock, for example, is just horrible with a mouse. Thankfully, a press of the keyboard’s up cursor does the same job, and as far as I can tell most existing keyboard shortcuts still work.

Improvements

Whatever you think of Metro, there are also several smaller changes that really do make a difference on a PC or laptop.

The new Task Manager is excellent, keeping the existing performance monitoring tools but adding heatmapping (think Excel’s conditional formatting) so you can instantly see which processes are using resources, and several graphs, including live wireless throughput. It adds detailed tabs for app history and user activity, and finally brings the Startup options of msconfig into a much more accessible place. Crapware can now easily be prevented from starting up with Windows.

Explorer windows bring back the Up button they’ve been sorely lacking, and while a lot of people hate the ribbon interface I’m not one of them. The file transfer dialog has been improved, with a dynamic graph now showing the transfer speed second by second, and an estimation of time remaining. It rolls multiple transfer jobs into one window too, which is a vast improvement on having them stacked up.

Finally, boot and resume times are excellent, at least on this test laptop. About a year old, and with nothing fancier than a 320GB mechanical hard disk inside, it boots to the lock screen (if you’ve set a password) in around 13 seconds, and to a ready-to-go Windows 8 in just under 19 seconds. Strangely, the only way to power the laptop down appears to be to go into the Power option in the Settings menu; presumably, Microsoft is hoping laptop users will simply close the lid and make use of the improved sleep mode.

Windows 8: the tablet OS

The biggest realisation from a couple of days with Windows 8 on a laptop is that if you’re not willing to throw yourself into the Metro interface with gusto, you’re really not going to see the kind of changes to the OS that everyone else will. Those who just want Windows 7 but better are going to find that, at least behind the fancy new UI, it doesn’t feel a whole lot different.

The desktop is still there, your existing applications can still be run, and most of the noticeable upgrades are to background elements of the environment. We’ve no doubt prettying up the Control Panel and various other tools is long overdue, but what Windows 8 seems most intent on is changing your ways to suit the direction Microsoft is taking. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s certain to split opinion among long-time Windows users.

This is a very early build and I’m well aware that I’ve not spent nearly enough time with it to make a proper judgement. But it’s no surprise that Microsoft installed Windows 8 on a tablet to give to attendees of its Build conference, as that’s clearly where it’s more at home.

In the flesh, it’s stunning to behold. Measuring only 15.9mm at its thickest point, the Z830 impresses before you’ve even hit the power button. And where other Ultrabooks proudly proclaim their sub 1.4kg credentials, the Portege Z830 trumps them all:  at 1.12kg, Toshiba hasn’t just left every Ultrabook in its wake, it’s even trumped Sony’s VAIO Z Series.

Despite that headline-grabbing weight, the internal honeycomb struture allows it to feel unusually burly. Given its millimetre-thick stature, we could barely coax any flex out of the Z830’s base.

The lid, meanwhile, is more pliable – it brings to mind the taut, yet highly flexible likes of Sony’s VAIO Z Series – allowing it to absorb the shunts and knocks of a laptop on the road.

After spying the USB 3 port on the Z830’s right-hand side, and the SD card reader and audio inputs and outputs on the left, we initially assumed that Toshiba had been forced to compromise on connectivity; not so. Somehow Toshiba’s engineers have managed to squeeze in a comprehensive selection at the rear.

With two USB 2 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and a VGA socket, Toshiba’’s accepted zero compromise to achieve such a stunning form factor.  Wireless connectivity also includes all the usual faces: 802.11n (no confirmation whether dual-band is on the cards), Bluetooth 3.0 and optional 3G.

The backlit keyboard is very similar to that of Toshiba’s existing 13in notebooks. In our snatched minutes with the Z830, we noted a soft, cushioned key action, and there’s not a jot of flex anywhere to be found. The wide keys felt a little too squat for our liking, but we’ll hold off judgement on the keyboard until we get to play with the Z830 for a little longer.

There are no such issues with the touchpad, however. Again retaining the familiar Toshiba design and discrete clicky buttons, Toshiba’s clearly foregone flashy glass and buttonless designs for straightforward practicality: a good thing. A fingerprint reader hides in the middle, and it’s also possible to disable the touchpad with the button above.

Toshiba were  a little more coy when it came to exact specifications and pricing, stating that such information would be following in the coming weeks. They confirmed the basics, however:  as yet undisclosed variants of Intel’s second Generation Core processors will take the reins alongside a 128GB SSD and anything up to 6GB of RAM. Given that every other manufacturer has been happy to release the details of the CPUs in their Ultrabooks, we can’t help feeling that Toshiba’s got something new up its sleeve for the Z830.

Pricing will make all the difference to the fortunes of Toshiba’s featherweight Ultrabook, but with Portege and Satellite branded versions of the Z830 set to hit the shelves sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, it looks like the battle for the best Ultrabook has only just begun.

An increasing number of laptops these days boast SSDs, but capacities are rising quite slowly. For some people, 128GB as your main drive might be enough, but if you want more, is it worth shelling out the huge fees charged by manufacturers to upgrade to a higher capacity SSD, or can you make do with alternative storage?

To find out, we ran our standard file transfer tests – first between a RAM disk and the SSD of a brand new laptop, then between a RAM disk and a variety of external storage devices. The results are in the table at the bottom of this post.

The SSD

The tidiest upgrade is to a larger internal SSD, and there’s no doubt this is also best for performance. With a single 1.5GB file, the SSD in our test MacBook Air delivered read and write speeds of 187MB/sec and 156MB/sec. More importantly (you’ll see why later), with 1.5GB of tiny files its read and write speeds were a healthy 87MB/sec and 75MB/sec.

The big problem is the hefty price of a bigger SSD, with Apple charging £250 to step up from 128GB to 256GB in its 13in MacBook Air, and Sony charging £410 for the same upgrade in the VAIO Z. That’s a lot of money.

The external hard disk

The first alternative is an external hard disk, and it’s a cost-efficient way of adding storage, particularly for files you won’t always need to hand. The winner of this month’s USB 3 hard disk Labs (issue 204, in shops now!) costs only £51 inc VAT for a 500GB drive.

In our tests with a single 1.5GB file, it achieved identical read and write speeds of 82MB/sec. With 1.5GB of tiny files this figure fell, but only to 60MB/sec read and 51MB/sec write; not as fast as an SSD, but significantly cheaper.

Of course, not all laptops have USB 3 ports – the MacBook Air being one such example. In our last USB 2 hard disk Labs, the winner achieved 32MB/sec read and 28MB/sec write speeds with a single 1.5GB file, and 26MB/sec and 12MB/sec with 1.5GB of tiny files.

The SD card

Adding external storage is cheap and fast, but if you prefer the convenience of having something you don’t have to carry around, you could make use of the SD card slot. Now, SD cards aren’t built for the kind of constant writing that you do on your main hard disk. They have a limited number of guaranteed write cycles before the card risks failing, so they’re best considered for storing files you don’t update often – a media collection, for example.

There are also several speed categories of SD cards. Look for a class rating on the packaging: this refers to its minimum non-fragmented sequential write speed. So, Class 2 will do at least 2MB/sec, and Class 10 at least 10MB/sec. To confuse matters, some manufacturers use “x” ratings that have minimum rates even higher than Class 10.

Sure enough, in the large file test a Class 10 card saw read and write speeds of 30MB/sec and 23MB/sec. For Class 6 this was 18MB/sec and 15MB/sec, while Class 4 saw 16MB/sec and 6MB/sec. You wouldn’t want to write 64GB of data regularly, but for a one-off the speeds are fine.

With small files those cards had healthy read speeds too, from 44MB/sec on Class 10 down to 20MB/sec with Class 4. But the big problem with using an SD card in this way is writing multiple small files: transferring 1.5GB of files to a Class 10 card pummelled the speed down to below 1MB/sec, and that fell even further with lower classes. If you’re going to regularly write a lot of small files, these cards are a terrible choice.

The value question

For data that will be written once and largely stay unchanged, however, does an SD card offer a value alternative to an SSD upgrade? At the kind of large capacities where it’s feasible, we found several 32GB Class 10 cards on sale for less than £40 inc VAT, and 64GB Class 10 cards at around £100. That’s for basic cards; those rated faster and with a higher number of guaranteed write cycles can cost up to several hundred pounds, so you can pick and choose to suit your needs.

You’ll need an SDXC slot for 64GB cards, and some slots don’t accept the card fully inside – on the MacBook Air it protrudes by 8mm, ripe for the snapping. But if your laptop meets the requirements, and if you’re after only a quick boost in capacity for non-critical files, the sheer convenience of being able to leave an SD card in there at all times makes it a great way to save money. And at lower capacities we really are talking pocket money.

(Click to enlarge)

I know many PC owners react to new Mac products with an ire usually reserved for a looter on benefits, but I’ve been without a laptop for nearly a year now, and this Sandy Bridge generation of Air has finally won me over.

The merits and otherwise of buying Apple kit are not the point of this blog though. This blog is about the Apple Store — or, more specifically, how utterly terrifying it is.

I’ve never been in one before, ever. I’ve walked past many times, and always been struck by how unlike a shop it looks. Now I know: that’s because it is totally unlike any normal shop.

Walking in as an Apple Store virgin, it’s impossible to figure out what you’re supposed to do. To the left and right of the front door, people are checking their emails and posting Facebook updates on MacBooks. To the back there are “Personal Setup” stands, manned by staff with smiles that would scare Cherie Blair. Upstairs are Genius bars and iPod stands, and rack upon rack of accessories, where shoppers with glazed expressions try things on for size as if this were a Topshop sale.

But nowhere is there a bloody till! A simple sign that says “Pay here”. Where do you, y’know, actually buy things?

After ten minutes not unlike the experience of walking past a Scientology centre — head down, ignore the cheery clones, don’t give them money — I eventually asked a woman idly standing in the middle where I could go to hand someone money in exchange for an expensive Apple product.

“Ask the man over there with the iPad 2,” she replied. The man with the iPad 2. Obviously.

I found the only man with an iPad 2 that wasn’t covered with drool, and I asked him if I could buy a laptop, please sir thank you very much. He took my name and told me the next available assistant would be ten minutes. Other people were waiting there too, just milling around in the middle. Worst still, there seemed to be no concept of a physical queue.

Ten minutes later a man with an iPhone 4 walked over and introduced himself (”Hi David!”) with the kind of enthusiasm I only just muster at my annual salary appraisals. He clicked through a few order screens on an idle MacBook, then we had a perfectly pleasant chat about his Windows PC (seriously) while an order progress screen ticked over with agonising slowness. From behind me a man appeared holding my MacBook Air, handed it over, then vanished again. I’d been here 20 minutes by this point.

To pay, we walked over to a card terminal sitting randomly in a corner, where I entered my pin, while my new best friend put my purchase into a trendy pull-cord shoulder bag with no useful carrying handle. “That’s great, David, I’ll just grab your receipt.”

The receipt was somewhere at the back of the store, presumably coming out of an actual till that remains hidden because it’s not wafer-thin and made of machined aluminium. He walked back over and handed it to me, shook my hand and hoped to see me again like an old friend, and I gratefully stepped back out into the pouring rain.

When I compare the simple experience of buying this laptop with that of the last one I bought, I’m shocked by how stressful this was. Last time, I walked in, pointed to a laptop, went to a till and paid. It took five minutes at most, and that was in the hell otherwise known as PC World.

Much as I love my new MacBook Air, I would take that experience over the horrifying Apple Store every single time.

***We’ve now published our comprehensive review of Sony’s VAIO Z Series, so click here for the full lowdown *** Sony’s VAIO Z Series is one of the finest ultraportables to ever travel the Earth, but now, several years after its 2009 debut, Sony has ripped up the rulebook and started afresh. At a launch event in London, we caught our first up-close look at the all-new Z Series.

The hardware

After several generations of subtle tinkering – not least the addition of super-fast quad-SSD arrays in the most recent models – the new Z marks a quantum shift. Sony has pared the chassis down to an impossibly slim 16.65mm, and it now tips the scales at a barely-there 1.18kg. While it looks unhealthily slender, fear not: the carbon-fibre construction feels stiffer and stronger than you’d expect.

If you’re wondering quite how Sony managed to shave off those grams, the answer’s simple: the optical drive and dedicated AMD graphics chipset have been shifted into the external 685g Power Media Dock (pictured right).

Part docking station, part outboard graphics powerhouse, it uses Intel’s Light Peak technology to provide a high-speed link to the AMD Radeon HD 6650M graphics chipset inside. Just don’t call it ThunderBolt: as Sony’s utilised a tweaked USB 3 port to connect to the dock, it isn’t actually compatible with the products we’ll soon see for Apple’s port, and Sony told us not to expect any handy USB-to-ThunderBolt adaptors either.

Still, it’s a nice idea: in addition to the optical drive and graphics chipset, there are also VGA and HDMI 1.4 video outputs (which allows for up to three external displays at any one time), Gigabit Ethernet, twin USB 2 ports and a single USB 3 port.

While we couldn’t help but shed a tear at the loss of in-built discrete graphics, the VAIO Z promises, gram-for-gram, to remain the fastest ultraportable out there. Even the slowest model includes a 2.3Ghz Core i5-2410M processor, and it’s possible to upgrade to the dual-core 2.7Ghz Core i7-2620M. Battery life remains a critical question mark, but Sony claim up to seven hours from the internal lithium polymer battery; a figure doubled by the optional battery slice (seen clipped to the underside in the picture below).

The essentials

Drastic changes aside, the redesign hasn’t forgotten the essentials. The thin chassis means that the backlit Scrabble-tile keys have less travel than on previous models, but the spacious layout and crisp feel make for comfortable typing. The decision to integrate the buttons into the touchpad’s surface immediately set off alarm bells, but we didn’t notice any issues in our time with it. We’ll reserve final judgement until we get a full review unit.

Above the keyboard,  the VAIO Z’s 13.1in display is as great as ever. The matte finish minimises eye-straining glare, and with even the lower-specced VAIO Z boasting a generous 1,600 x 900 resolution, and a 1080p panel available as an optional upgrade,there are plenty enough pixels for proper multitasking. Viewing angles were also far better than those of the S Series.

Two USB ports (one USB 2, one USB 3) nestle alongside HDMI 1.4, Gigabit Ethernet and a single audio in/out minijack. With dual-band 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 and optional 3G covering the airwaves, the VAIO Z ticks pretty much every box going. And, even if you’re concerned about the Power Media Dock using up that solitary USB 3 connector (see the close-up to the right), the dock adds three USB ports of its own.

The price

In a word: expensive. In several: very, very expensive. Head over to Sony’s configure-to-order page and its possible to make even Platinum credit cards wilt under the load of a fully-laden VAIO Z .

Without a Power Media Dock, the base model clocks in at £1,454 inc VAT. That includes a Core i5-2410M, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD and a 1,600 x 900 screen.

Some of the upgrades are surprisingly affordable: a 1080p screen costs a reasonable £40; the battery slice, £60; a 3G modem, £100; a backlit keyboard, £15. Others, however, quickly push past the £2,000 mark. The basic Power Media Dock with DVD writer costs £400, while the Blu-ray writer-equipped version costs £525. Expanding the 128GB SSD to 256GB costs £410; pushing up to 512GB a stratospheric £1,130.

Throw caution to the wind, and a VAIO Z with all the trimmings costs a mere £3,634 inc VAT.

If you’re having trouble deciding whether to buy a car, a luxury holiday or a laptop with that four grand burning a hole in your pocket, the new VAIO Z’s likely to make your decision even harder. With the pre-production models at today’s event returning home for the finishing touches, Sony expects to have review units with us by the end of July. Until then, best get saving.

While some low-end Pavilions will still rock the plastic, the higher-end Pavilions are now finished in what HP describes as a ‘Dark Umber’ aluminium finish. It looks great, and feels solid, too.

In keeping with the reasonable asking prices – just £699 inc VAT for the the dv6-6150ea, and £899 for the dv7-6150ea – both utilise the mid-range Core i5-2410M processor. Switchable graphics chipsets also see AMD’s Radeon HD 6490M buddying up with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000.

HP’s Beats Audio now comes as standard on both models, and the speakers have been moved around the chassis, with four on the dv6 and six on the dv7. The latter packs in a miniature ’subwoofer’ driver on its base, too, making for a pair of seriously crisp-sounding laptops.

HP has also responded to the complaints levelled at its previous models, so the touchpad has been redesigned from scratch. Gone are the fiddly integrated buttons, replaced by a wide, responsive touchpad and two discrete buttons – a huge improvement. The Scrabble-tile keyboard, meanwhile, is as good as ever.

A careful scout around the new Pavilion’s ports and connectors sees USB 3 makes its debut. All the networking essentials are still present, with Gigabit Ethernet partnered with 802.11bgn and Bluetooth, while a 1.3 megapixel webcam with low-light mode is enough to keep Skype users happy.

A fingerprint reader comes as standard, and HP’s SimplePass software makes light work of securely managing multiple login details. Assign login details to individual fingers, and a single stroke of the finger is all it takes to fire up the browser and automatically log in to your preferred site.

With both models just hitting the shop shelves as you read this, HP’s promised to send us a pair of review units by the end of this week. Keep an eye on the website, and we’ll bring you the full low-down as soon as we can.

The Apple MacBook Pro 13in is a glorious laptop. It’s thin and light, gorgeous both to look at and to use, and it packs no small amount of power in its tiny chassis. Yet our tests have uncovered a performance issue that will affect every user.

We ran our new Real World Benchmarks on the top-end model, with a dual-core 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-2620M processor, 4GB of DDR3 and a 500GB hard disk. It’s a very fast laptop for its size, as a final score of 0.70 shows – that’s only around 20% slower than the top-end quad-core 17in model. Yet it’s not quite as fast as it should be.

We first noticed a problem when the benchmarks finished five full runs and the results popped up on screen: the times taken to complete several of the most intensive tests were rising with each run. This would suggest an overheating problem, so we ran a temperature monitor to find out how hot this Sandy Bridge CPU was getting. Here are the readings both when idle and under full load:

We should point out that 93°C is not necessarily too high for a modern CPU, but it is the root cause of the bigger performance problem. To explain, here’s that full-load temperature again, along with Intel’s own Turbo Boost monitor:

The temperature of 93°C was reached with the processor peaking at 2.7GHz. The Core i7-2620M should be able to Turbo Boost up to a maximum of 3.4GHz, but in this laptop it doesn’t top 2.7GHz at any temperature.

For comparison, here is the same reading from the Core i7-2720QM in the top-end 17in model:

Here it’s being Turbo Boosted from its stock 2.2GHz. Notice how the blisteringly fast 17in model only peaks a few degrees hotter than the 13in, and that’s with the maximum boost. As soon as the fans kicked in that settled comfortably in the high eighties.

What does this all mean? Well, if the CPU in the MacBook Pro 13in hits 93°C at stock speeds, we can only imagine how hot it would get if Turbo Boost was allowed to kick in. So we suspect Apple has disabled it completely to prevent overheating in such a tiny chassis.

It’s an issue we haven’t seen highlighted, perhaps because to the end user it doesn’t really affect the day-to-day experience – and it shouldn’t put you off buying what is in every other way a fantastic piece of kit. But Apple is promoting this on its website as a Turbo Boost-enabled laptop. We’ve asked Apple for comment and await its response.

We also now have the £999 model with its 2.3GHz Core i5 processor in the Labs. We ran the same tests on that one and can confirm that its processor is Turbo Boosting in Boot Camp as it should. The issue is unique to the i7 model.

However, secondly, we must doff our caps to Anandtech and show you our reading from a utility they used called MSR Tools:

We stand corrected on one count: it is indeed Turbo Boosting in OS X. We ran a temperature monitor for several minutes as well, and those boosted speeds occurred with a peak temperature of 93°C, the exact same as the peak in Windows without the boost.

The Turbo Boost issue therefore looks to be one of processor cooling in Windows. That affects a far smaller group of users that an OS X flaw, but it remains a mystery: does the Core i7 model of the MacBook Pro 13in run so hot under Windows drivers that Apple has chosen to disable Turbo Boost? Our tests make that a plausible scenario.

Heat is an issue that’s difficult to ignore. Even on the Core i5 model, just unpacking a large zip file had the Turbo Boosted Core i5 quickly rising to 90°C; during a stress test that hit 99°C. And that has a knock-on effect: with an IR temperature gun we measured the aluminium underside of the laptop at a thigh-scalding 60°C!

We’re more sure than ever that Apple had a real task on its hands getting such fast processors into this chassis, and from everything we’ve seen we’re leaning away from the top-end 13in model as a purchase. If the sight of our benchmarks gradually getting slower with each consecutive run wasn’t enough to highlight the cooling problem, a heat gun pointed at the metal underside certainly was.

There is one plus to the Turbo Boost mystery, however: if you intended to buy a MacBook Pro 13in and install Windows on it, you’ll probably find the cheaper model actually runs faster than the top-end one. Save yourself £300.