Greatest Hits of CES 2013: PC Pro’s pick of the best products

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

The world’s largest consumer electronics show is now into its final throes, which means we can reveal the shortlist for our pick of the show’s innovations: PC Pro’s Greatest Hits of CES 2013.

Now we need your help to decide the winner for the Best Innovation. Read the descriptions below and then cast your vote using the link at the bottom of the blog — but be quick, because voting closes at 6pm (UK time) on Thursday 10 January. [Edit: the vote is now closed]

In addition to the winner of this category, on Friday we’ll also be announcing our pick of the tablets, phones and laptops that have been unveiled at CES 2013. (more…)

Sony VAIO Tap 20: a day with the world’s biggest tablet

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

Steve Jobs famously said a 7in tablet was too small — but for some, even a 10in like the iPad is a touch too tiny.

The assortment of 7in tablets are perfect for average people with normal hands, but while the rest of us consider whether the Nexus 7’s portability is more useful than the iPad, monstrously large people — such as 6ft 5in man-mountain Mike Jennings, PC Pro’s senior staff writer — are left prodding at minuscule icons with their sausage-like fingers.

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Windows 8 tablets: all the specs revealed

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012

Windows 8 tablets are on their way, with a host revealed at IFA last week.

The Berlin tech show saw the debut of Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets from Acer to Toshiba, but full details on the devices were few and far between – notably, few prices have yet to be revealed.

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Will every Windows 8 screen have touch, after all?

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

When Microsoft’s director of Windows Experience, Jensen Harris, proclaimed at the initial unveiling of Windows 8 that “every screen needs to be touch”, I wasn’t the only one in the room who witnessed their eyebrows heading northwards. Judging by the first batch of Windows 8 machines launched at this week’s Computex trade fair, however, it seems the PC manufacturers were taking him deadly seriously.

A swathe of fascinating Windows 8 devices have been unveiled in Taiwan, almost all of them involving at least one touchscreen, some of them two. Take the Asus Taichi, for example, a 13.3in laptop with another 11.6in IPS display on the back lid of the laptop, where you’d normally find nothing but a slab of plastic and the manufacturer’s logo. That secondary screen allows you to use the laptop as a tablet when it’s folded flat – albeit at the risk of arm ache, I suspect.

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Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and 10.1 review: first look

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Samsung’s roster of tablets is reaching unprecedented levels of confusion as the firm attempts to cover all possible bases. It already had 7.7in, 8.9in and 10.1in tablets in its range before Mobile World Congress kicked off. It added the Galaxy Note 10.1 to that list this week, along with another pair – the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. We’ve just been down to the Samsung stand to get hands on.

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Amazon Kindle Fire review: first look

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

When Amazon launched the Kindle Fire last year, it made the rather irritating decision not to bring it to the UK at the same time. The rotters didn’t even let us have the Kindle Touch, leaving us with the (admittedly excellent) fourth generation Kindle. If the rumours are to be believed, however, changes are afoot, and with the UK braced to receive Amazon’s latest baby, we’ve managed to get our hands on an import to see what’s what.

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Running PC Pro on tablets: how we got on

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Today, we tried to run PC Pro entirely on tablet hardware for the whole working day.

Tablets are often derided as mere toys, useful for little more than tweeting insults about Simon Cowell shows from the comfort of your sofa. We aimed to find out if that was true, by forcing the entire PC Pro editorial team to switch off their PCs and work purely on iOS or Android tablets for the day. We were using a variety of hardware, including the iPad 2, Motorola Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab. We also issued the team with a variety of wireless keyboards and docking stations, to save them from bashing out copy on the built-in keyboards.

We attempted to do everything from reading and replying to email, to updating the website, to writing news and reviews, using nothing more than the tablets, their web browsers and a variety of business apps.

Find out how we get on with the blog updates below:

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Budget Android tablets are a false economy

Monday, August 1st, 2011

Temptation must be a terrible thing when you’re the boss of a small technology company. Caught on the hop by Apple as it reinvents and reinvigorates a previously stagnant tablet market, the lure of the quick buck must be hard to resist.

I’m not sure any company can beat Apple’s marketing nous, build quality or lawyers, though, so any smaller firm wishing to make inroads has to approach the market from a different angle – by undercutting the fruit-themed firm and heading down the rutted and well-trodden value route.

That brings us to the bottom of today’s burgeoning tablet market. Far away from the Dell Streak, HP TouchPad and BlackBerry Playbook, you’ll find a multitude of familiar – and surprising – names trying to make ground with a constant stream of cheap, nasty and generic tablets.

It’s a counter-productive strategy that’s harmful for all involved, from company to consumer. (more…)

It takes more than a new processor to fix the Windows tablet

Thursday, July 7th, 2011

Intel’s “Oak Trail” Atom processor refresh has finally arrived, claiming to reduce heat and power consumption enough to power the next wave of tablets. On those promises it appears to deliver, with the Motion CL900 lasting almost eight hours on one charge – despite the bloat of Windows 7.

But if tablet manufacturers think this is the turning point for the Windows tablet – which, judging by the press releases arriving in my inbox, they do – they’re missing the mark by a mile. Yes, Oak Trail lowers the TDP to 3W to better suit handheld devices. But in doing so it takes a step backwards. (more…)

The big tablet debate: 3G or Wi-Fi-only?

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

Upon reading my review of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, our picky editor Barry Collins turned to me with a criticism. “The fact that there’s no 3G version,” he argued, “should surely count against it, shouldn’t it?”

Should it? We tend to review the Wi-Fi-only models of tablets, because that’s what we’re usually sent. We’ll mention the 3G options in the review, but it’s up to manufacturers to decide whether to offer them or not, and up to consumers to buy them.

It started a debate, one which began in the office and spilled over to the PC Pro podcast as well. Then I posed the question – to 3G or not to 3G? – on Twitter, and it generated an unexpected level of response. (more…)