Dell XPS 18 review: first look

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

The Dell XPS 18 joins the Asus Transformer AiO and the Sony VAIO Tap 20 in the growing portable all-in-one market, and Dell reckons it has the march on its rivals – the XPS is both slimmer and lighter than its competitors.

The XPS 18 is around 20mm thick, and it weighs 2.1kg – making it 300g lighter than the Asus, and less than half as hefty as Sony’s 5.1kg VAIO. That’s especially impressive considering a battery has been crammed in too  - if the XPS 18 can live up to Dell’s claims of five-hour battery life, it will double the Sony’s longevity. (more…)

Windows 8: a touch of madness

Monday, February 18th, 2013

For the last week or so I’ve been using Windows 8 and, for the most part it hasn’t been the least bit horrid.

Yes, it forced me to restart this morning just as I sat down to get some work done and, yes, the procedure to actually turn off the computer is like a putative storyline scribbled on a napkin by Franz Kafka but later rejected for being too complicated. And yes, the way PDFs, JPEGs and a few other file types insist on opening full-screen (how many PDFs are that important?) is jarring, but still, most of my work is done in a browser these days, making the operating system in the background irrelevant most of the time.

It is, as operating systems go, perfectly fine.

(more…)

Tactus first look: the screen technology that adds a physical keyboard to a tablet

Friday, January 11th, 2013

We wouldn’t have believed this if we hadn’t seen it with our eyes, but Tactus has created a way to add a genuine, physical keyboard to any touchscreen device. The cleverest bit: it appears when you’re typing and disappears when you no longer need to enter text.

(more…)

3M’s 84in multitouch display: (several) hands on

Thursday, January 10th, 2013

3M clearly thinks bigger is better: the centerpiece of its stand at CES 2013 in Las Vegas is a massive 84in, 1080p multitouch display, set up as a table larger than most people eat dinner on.

The new prototype is the biggest in 3M’s lineup of projected capacitive technologies — the same systems used in smartphones — and the dimensions aren’t the only impressive number about the massive multitouch display.

(more…)

Does the Windows 8 hybrid overcomplicate a simple problem?

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

I’m not sure exactly when I lost patience with Microsoft and Windows 8 — most likely when using the Surface for the first time. It’s always been an OS with a split personality, but from the start we were promised the hardware would make it all seem natural. It would innovate, the OS ushering in a new era of mobile computing.

With a few exceptions – touchscreen Ultrabooks are undoubtedly cool – the new era hasn’t started well. (more…)

Sony Reader Wi-Fi review: in-depth first look

Friday, September 30th, 2011

The announcement of the new Amazon Kindles caused all manner of excitement in the PC Pro office this week, until we realised Amazon actually had no plans to release the most exciting products in the UK. What a let-down. Still, that does at least give other manufacturers a chance to steal a march, and that appears to be exactly what Sony has done with its new Reader Wi-Fi, of which we have an early sample.

The first thing to notice when you pick up the Reader Wi-Fi is how light it is. It tipped our scales at just 162g, which makes the current Kindle look positively portly. With no keyboard it’s small enough to slip into an inside jacket pocket, and although it does feel a touch plasticky, it’s well made and the soft-touch plastic rear gives you a nice grippy surface to hold onto.

(more…)

Is this the first sign of a touchscreen Chromebook?

Monday, September 26th, 2011

Those of you on the beta channel of Google Chrome may have noticed the new-look homescreen on version 15 of the browser. Gone is the single page containing your most-visited websites, apps and bookmarks. In its place comes a tabbed-based homepage that allows you to flick between the various options.

One thing is immediately obvious from this revamped design: Google is designing for touchscreens. Look at those large finger-friendly icons for the bookmarks — which aren’t entirely dissimilar to the bookmarks in the early betas of Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8.

(more…)

Toshiba Libretto W100 dual-screen laptop: first-look review

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Microsoft’s Courier tablet might be languishing somewhere in a Redmond wheelie-bin, but Toshiba’s Libretto W100 has turned the keyboard-free concept into reality. With dual 7in touchscreens, a miniature netbook form factor and no sign of Intel’s weakling Atom, the Libretto takes a daring stride into the future.

(more…)

Extreme handwriting recognition on the Dell Latitude XT2

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

This is my first and possibly only handwritten blog entry…

that’s because ‘an in a cramped airplane._ seat and the ride is d little bumpy. that, and everyone who can see what lam dough watching me avidly’ The XT2 uses windows7 pen extensions and as a long ten fan of the concept of pen computing I touchscreens and the business of handwriting instead of keyboarding.

(more…)

Can Lexmark change the way we buy printers?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

Lexmark’s inkjet printers have had a pretty rough ride from PC Pro in recent reviews and Greg Caster, senior development manager for inkjet R&D, admitted to me yesterday that its 2008 range was simply a step behind its competitors. To change that, Lexmark is finally moving to individual inks for its next all-wireless range of inkjet all-in-ones, and introducing a fantastic touchscreen interface that I’ll come to later.

But the real news for me – and for anyone who ever has trouble choosing a printer – is the way Lexmark’s eight-product line has been assembled.

Currently, buying a printer is a confusing experience, with too many competing manufacturers, each with too many printer ranges that contain too many similar models and accept too many different cartridge types. Even within a single manufacturer’s product range, the variation in quality and speed can be staggering.

(more…)