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Tag Archives: 2012

Do you want to buy an iPad 3?

CloudTags: iPad 3,  iPad HD,  battery ,  battery life , laptop batteries ,

In two days Tim Cook will take the stage to announce the iPad 3 or iPad HD, the Apple tablet we’ve anticipated for quite a while.

Leading up to the announcement PriceGrabbersurveyed 1,829 of its users to find out what features they want in the iPad 3.

You might be surprised to find out what nearly half of the respondents want from the iPad 3.

Of those surveyed 42 percent of iPad owners planned on upgrading to the iPad 3.

Most of these upgraders plan to buy the new iPad before the end of 2012, but 11% want the iPad 3 during the first week. With A Retina Display, better camera and upgraded processor, it make sense that many current iPad owners want to upgrade.

The number of upgrading iPad owners isn’t surprising, but the features that survey respondents want from the new iPad are.

Over half of the respondents said they want a cheaper iPad 3, but that’s not all.

53% want longer battery life from the iPad 3. That’s surprising because the iPad 2 delivers 10 hours of use.

In the real world, the iPad 2 can easily last an entire day unless you are playing games like Infinity Blade II non-stop. While the iPad 3 will likely have a better battery, the new Retina Display and processor are expected to use more power, resulting in a battery life that doesn’t change much.

iPad 3 Photos 620x2922 Do you want to buy an iPad 3?

The rest of the survey’s results are:

  • 49% indicated SD card to store data
  • 44% indicated better camera with flash
  • 44% indicated new A6 processor
  • 41% indicated built-in HDMI port
  • 36% indicated wireless synchronization facility

Those results are pretty easy to comment on. The SD card slot and HDMI port won’t happen anytime soon, though Apple does have adapters for both. The camera hole on the back of the iPad 3 seems to be larger, which should mean a better camera, but there’s no hole for a flash. It seems that only the iPhone gets a camera with a flash.

The new A6 processor seems likely, unless it’s an A5X chip. But either way, there will be a better CPU.

And, oddly enough, wireless sync, which already exists for the iPad, garnered 36 percent.

Are you planning on buying an iPad 3 when it goes on sale? If so, is battery life the most important deciding point for you? Let us know in the comments below.

 

The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

CloudTags: CES 2012 , laptops , 2012 , ultrabook , battery life uk , Toshiba pa3536u-1brs , Hp pavilion dv4 batteries , compaq pavilion dv6 battery life

If you’ve watched our extensive laptop coverage from CES 2012, only to look down at your own busted-up old clunker of a machine, then 2012 might be the year you buy a new laptop.

And with so many high-end, high-design systems hitting store shelves this year, there are more worthy candidates than ever to choose from, and many of them fall into the still-new ultrabook category.

If you need a refresher on what “ultrabook” means, it’s an Intel marketing term (much like Centrino was), encompassing a growing category of Windows laptops that are thin and reasonably powerful (typically under 188 millimeters thick with the latest Core i-series processors), with good battery life and at least some solid-state-drive (SSD) storage.

With all the ultrabooks already confirmed for 2012, it’s a fairly safe bet that your next laptop will be a very thin one.

Running from just under $1,000 to $1,500 or more, the 2012 laptops that seem the most exciting aren’t exactly the least expensive we’ve ever seen, especially after several years of falling prices, but at least they all look good.

Our question for you is: based on design, price, components, and features, which of these highly anticipated 2012 laptops are you hoping to buy this year?

Below you’ll find a brief executive summary of each one, linked to more in-depth coverage, with our take on why it’s a lustworthy machine. Check out the contenders, then vote in our poll. Or, if you have a different choice, let us know in the comments section below.

HP Envy 14 Spectre 05 620x350 The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

HP Envy 14 Spectre
Estimated price: $1,499, Q1 2012

The winner of our Computers and Hardware Best of CES category, this glass-covered beast is certainly unique. We’re still not convinced a glass-lid laptop can survive in the wild, but the NFC support and great audio controls are big pluses. 

Dell XPS 13 Top The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

Dell XPS 13
Estimated price: $999, Q1 2012 

The look and feel remind us of Dell corporate Latitude line spliced with a MacBook Air, rather than previous XPS laptops, and inside it has edge-to-edge Gorilla Glass over the screen and a large clickpad. 

Acer Aspire S5 3 1 620x350 The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

Acer Aspire S5
Estimated price: $999, Q2/3 2012 

The S5 is 15mm thick–2mm thinner than last year’s Aspire S3–weighs less than 3 pounds, and has a sleek Onyx Black magnesium alloy chassis. More importantly, the ports–HDMI, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt–are tucked away via a motorized rear port door.  

Samsung Series 9 2012 PID 07 620x350 The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

Samsung Series 9
Estimated price: $1,399, Q1 2012 

Last year’s big design winner was the ultraslim Samsung Series 9, which hit before anyone had ever heard of an ultrabook. This year’s version is even slicker, but still on the expensive side for what you get.  

yoga 06 interface 620x350 The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 

Estimated price: $1,199, Q2/3 2012 

Another laptop we’ll have to wait for Windows 8 to get our hands on, the Yoga works perfectly fine as a standard clamshell laptop, but its lid flips all the way back to form a touch-screen tablet, providing extra flexibility (no pun intended) in how you use it. 

 

34850080 TP 620x350 The Most Anticipated Ultrabook of 2012

Not a 15-inch MacBook Air.

15-inch Apple MacBook Air
Estimated price: $1,699 or more, sometime in 2012 

A shot in the dark here, but there have been enough rumors and online chatter about a larger version of Apple’s MacBook Air that it must be on at least some people’s list of most-lusted-after laptops of 2012. If there is indeed a 15-inch Air, it could very well hit sometime around midyear, when the next generation of Intel CPUs is expected, and would most likely involve a decent premium over the existing 11- and 13-inch versions.

 

 

HP Envy 15 Reviews (2012)

HP Envy 15 Reviews (2012)

CloudTags: HP , Envy 15 , 2012 , laptop battery , battery uk , hp batteries , Hp 510 battery life , Hp nc6000 battery replacement

HP ENVY 15 FrontOpen gallery post 580x412 HP Envy 15 Reviews (2012)

The HP Envy 15 (2012) ($1,249.99 direct) is the latest iteration of HP’s premium line of desktop replacement laptops, offering a mix of style, substance, and price that’s well suited to both work and play. Though it competes with current top dogs, like our Editors’ Choice Samsung Series 7 (NP700Z5A-S03) ($1,299 list, 4 stars), and bears a strong resemblance to the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Late 2011) ($1,799 direct, 4 stars), a number of additional features, such as deep integration of Beats Audio and an impressive number of wireless options, help set the Envy 15 apart from the pack.

Design
From its bare aluminum chassis to its large touchpad and black chiclet-style keyboard, the Envy 15 unabashedly copies everything that works well for Apple on the MacBook Pro. HP has added a few touches of its own, such as beveling the edges to increase comfort and utilizing a black lid (on our model; it’s also available in gray) with a glowing HP logo in one corner. The Envy is also just a shade heavier (5.7 pounds versus 5.5 pounds for the MacBook Pro).

The black chiclet-style keyboard is highlighted with a subtle yet striking red strip that runs around its recessed inside edge. Each key is individually backlit with an LED; the letters are brighter but the light leakage is significantly reduced. It’s also smarter than other backlights, with a proximity sensor that activates the backlight when you’re close enough to the keyboard to need it and turns it off when you move away. The large clickpad that accompanies the keyboard continues the Apple-flavored design, with the right and left buttons integrated into the surface, though its performance was not on par with Apple’s model. And though the multitouch worked smoothly, without any jumpiness or false positives, it felt plastic compared to Apple’s glass-surfaced clickpad.

66f23 86b54 photo 1 620x350 HP Envy 15 Reviews (2012)

The Envy 15 is also the showcase for HP’s Beats Audio, the same Dr. Dre–approved sound system backing several models of high-end headphones and making its way into smartphones and media players. The Envy 15 is well equipped to show off this quality 6.1-channel sound, with two top-firing speakers, four front-firing speakers, and an integrated subwoofer delivering decent bass. The audio may not top the superb sounds of the Asus N55SF-A1 ($1,249.99 list, 4 stars), but it’s still better than what you get with most laptops on the market. Set into the side of the Envy 15′s chassis is a volume control knob displaying a bright red Beats logo; it’s designed to mimic the look and feel of a control knob from a high-end stereo system, and provides digital precision with the tactile control of analog.

The gorgeous 1,920-by-1,080-resolution display on the Envy 15 looks just as good as the Beats Audio sounds. The 15.6-inch widescreen is bright and clear, with edge-to-edge glass and LED backlighting for visibility even in bright environments. But you’ll have to watch out for glare off of the glass, which might make it difficult to work or enjoy a movie outdoors or in certain lighting conditions.

HP Envy 15 Fall 2011HP Envy 15 Fall 2011 35096611 05 620x350 HP Envy 15 Reviews (2012)

Features
The Envy 15 also packs plenty of connectivity options and entertainment features. Along either side of the laptop you’ll find connections for video and audio alike. First there are DisplayPort and HDMI ports, for connecting to an external monitor or HDTV. Dual headphone jacks let you share the sweet sounds of Beats Audio, and headphone users actually get a further boost thanks to built-in headphone amplification. If you want to enjoy the video and audio without all those cables, the Envy 15 is equipped with Intel’s WiDi 2.0—a wireless alternative to HDMI (provided you have the appropriate adapter, like the $99 Netgear Push2TV)—and HP Wireless Audio, which streams multichannel audio to any compatible sound system or adapter without requiring a dongle for the laptop.

There are also three USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and a card reader (SD/MMC). Internally, the Envy 15 offers 802.11n Wi-Fi, a slot-loading dual-layer DVD drive, and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive—the same size found in the Apple MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 15z (Microsoft) ($999 direct, 4 stars). A few newer competitors, like the Samsung Series 7 and Toshiba Satellite P755-S5269 ($979.99 list, 4 stars), offer larger 750GB drives, but 500GB will still hold a sizable media collection along with all of your programs and files.

The Envy 15 does come with some software preinstalled, but it’s far from bloatware. The Envy includes full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 and Adobe Premiere Elements 9, as well as Microsoft Office Starter 2010 Starter and a 60-day subscription to Norton Internet Security. HP covers the Envy with a two-year warranty on parts and labor along with toll-free tech support, available 24/7 via chat or email.

Performance
HP has equipped the Envy 15 with a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-2430 dual-core processor and 6GB of RAM. This hardware led to a strong showing in our productivity tests, but the Envy naturally fell behind the superior quad-core Core i7–equipped competition of the MacBook Pro and the Series 7—though not by much. In PCMark 7 the Envy 15 scored 2,218, nearly identical to the 2,235 earned by the Apple, but not quite the 2,697 of the Samsung. The biggest difference we saw was in CineBench R11.5, where the Envy 15 scored 2.67, on par with the Dell XPS 15z (2.53) and indicating more than enough horsepower for the average user, if not as impressive as the results from the MacBook Pro (5.08) and Samsung Series 7 (4.55). The Envy couldn’t keep up with them in our Photoshop CS5 or Handbrake tests, either; it needed 4 minutes 1 second for the former and 1 minute 51 seconds for the latter, compared with 3:39 and 1:30 for the Apple and 3:39 and 1:37 for the Samsung.

332915 hp envy 15 2012 HP Envy 15 Reviews (2012)

The Envy 15 also offers plenty of graphics power for both work and play, thanks to a discrete AMD Radeon HD 7690M video processor with manual switching. When disconnected from a power outlet, the laptop defaults to lower-powered integrated graphics, but you can switch back to the AMD GPU with just a few clicks. With discrete graphics enabled, the Envy 15 produced decent results in our gaming tests. In Crysis, it managed to crank out 62.7 frames per second (fps) at 1,024-by-768 resolution, with anti-aliasing turned off. With anti-aliasing turned up to 4x and the resolution cranked up to 1,920-by-1,080, the Envy produced an unplayable 9.4fps; this means you should have no problem playing most games as long as you go easy on the eye candy. We saw similar performance in Lost Planet 2, where the Envy 15 managed 63.9fps at lower resolution and detail, but 23.2fps at full resolution.

Though HP claimed the Envy 15 could produce 9 hours of battery life, we were skeptical of the claim—desktop replacements usually average around 5 hours. Testing with MobileMark 2007 confirmed our suspicions. The Envy 15 lasted 4 hours 1 minute, one of the shorter times for the category but still long enough to enjoy a double feature while stuck in an airport. By comparison, the Toshiba Satellite P755-S5269 lasted 5:07, the Samsung Series 7 lasted 6:41, and the Dell XPS 15z led the category with 7:13.

Its processing and graphics capabilities make the HP Envy 15 (2012) a solid alternative to pricier quad-core systems, and a true HD display and Beats Audio add polish to its entertainment side. It falters on batteries life and we would love to see an option for a Blu-ray configuration, so it won’t replace the Samsung Series 7 as our current Editors’ Choice. But on the whole there’s little to complain about, so you can buy the HP Envy 15 (2012) with confidence.

 

 

Top 5 High-Tech Gadget that Will Cost You More in 2012

Top 5 High-Tech Gadget that Will Cost You More in 2012

CloudTags: High-Tech , Gadget , Cost , 2012 , laptop batteries uk , Hp nc6000 , Hp pavilion dv4

Watch out: Cameras, hard drives, PCs, and mobile data will all cost more in 2012.

pricesup 8965886 Top 5 High Tech Gadget that Will Cost You More in 2012Every day, stories appear about a price drop for this or that tech gadget. As a result, consumers have a tendency to delay spending. After all, why buy something today that will be cheaper tomorrow?

That won’t be the case for everything in 2012, though. Here is a list of tech products and services whose prices are expected to rise in the coming months. If you’re shopping for any of them, you might want to buy sooner rather than later.

Digital Cameras

Smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone 4S and the T-Mobile MyTouch 4G Slide (which won out as the best smartphone camera in our tests last year), are eating into the low end of the digital camera market. Numbers for the digital point-and-shoot camera market were down 17 percent in units and 18 percent in dollars for the first 11 months of 2011, according to the NPD Group.

By contrast, during the same period, digital cameras with detachable lenses saw a 12 percent increase in units shipped, and an 11 percent bump up in dollars. More expensive point-and-shoot cameras with large zooms also saw increases during the time frame–16 percent in units shipped and 10 percent in dollars.

Camera makers can see the handwriting on the wall. They’re going to be adding features and pumping up the quality of their new cameras, and you can expect all of that to translate into higher camera prices in the coming months.

Hard Drives

The price of storage has shown a nice, steady decline in the past, but not this year.

Flooding of historic proportions in Thailand last year has disrupted the hard-drive supply chain. Thailand accounts for up to 45 percent of worldwide hard-drive production, and the flooding has damaged more than a dozen hard-drive factories, according to market research firm IDC.

Bargain-hunting site DealNews.com says that the flooding has forced some retailers to ration hard-drive-based products over the past year–and that has reduced the number of discounts that merchants can offer on hard-drive products. DealNews predicts that hard-drive shortages will continue throughout the first quarter of 2012. IDC, however, anticipates that hard-drive prices will stabilize by June, and that the industry should return to normal by the second half of the year.

Desktop Computers

Two factors will contribute to higher prices for desktop computers in 2012.

bdfa3 pricesdown2 8968092 Top 5 High Tech Gadget that Will Cost You More in 2012Climbing hard-drive prices, of course, are in turn raising the prices of PCs. According to high-tech market watcher Gartner, PC makers will be unable to absorb the higher cost of hard drives, and will be passing that cost on to consumers. IDC agrees: PC prices may rise as a result of the prolonged and substantial effects of the flooding, says Loren Loverde, IDC vice president. Hard drives constitute about 7 percent to 10 percent of the total cost of a PC, Loverde notes. Gartner predicts that desktops will be the first to succumb to the upward price pressure, followed by laptops.

Along with the hard-drive trend, design changes will fire up prices. More all-in-one desktops will enter the market, and many will have touchscreens, which are more expensive to produce than traditional hands-off displays, according to NPD, which predicts a 30 percent increase in the average price of a PC.

A sign at Best Buy in a Norwalk, Connecticut store apologizes for hard drive prices.Mobile-Device Data Plans

Although the rollout of faster data-delivery technologies usually depresses the cost of data plans for consumers, in 4G’s case that development will be offset by wireless carriers’ movement away from unlimited data plans, according to DealNews.

Verizon, for instance, has been busy building out its wireless 4G LTE network over the past 12 months. Not surprisingly, earlier this summer it announced that it was killing its unlimited data plan in favor of a tiered pricing model with data caps. AT&T also announced similar plans. The result? Many consumers will be paying more for their mobile data this year, especially heavy users.

Shipping

If you plan to buy anything on the Internet, you can expect delivery to cost more. Postal rates are scheduled to climb 4.6 percent in 2012–provided that the Postal Service is still around to raise them. Reports also indicate that both Federal Express and UPS will be jacking up their rates on small packages by 4.9 percent.

Online shopping is growing in popularity (up 15 percent in the past year, according to ComScore). If you intend to shop for gifts on the Web this year, you might want to budget some extra shipping costs into your budget.

7 things I learned at CES 2012 by batteryfast.co.uk

7 things I learned at CES 2012 by batteryfast.co.uk

CloudTags: CES , 2012 , OLED , TV , Dell inspiron 1545 batteries , Hp probook 4310s battery life , Lenovo thinkpad t61 battery pack

At many major tech conferences, one big story–a product, technology, or trend–dominates the entire show.

CES 2012 was not one of those events. Intel’s Ultrabook was closest thing there was to a show-dominating topic, but in the end, what I was struck by was the diversity of stuff on display at the Las Vegas Convention Center and surrounding venues. And in some cases, the no-shows were as interesting as the products that were there.

Herewith, a few of the lessons I took home with me after four jam-packed days in Vegas:

ces 7 things I learned at CES 2012 by batteryfast.co.uk

Giant OLED TVs aren’t inherently amazing.It’s a long-standing CES tradition for TV makers to try and out-do each other with demos of high-end big screens that won’t wind up in many living rooms anytime soon. This year, the makers in question were LG and Samsung, which had 55-inch OLED TVs at their booths. I checked out both sets–and didn’t come away lusting after either one. The LG, at least when I saw it, was displaying gimmicky 3D videos, which made it hard to judge how good it would be for anything else. And the video clips I saw on the Samsung were way over-saturated, giving everything an artificial, candy-colored effect that reminded me of some OLED smartphones.

Windows Phone was the mobile platform of the year. At CES 2011, Android devices such as Motorola’s Xoom tablet and Atrix phone generated a huge amount of buzz. This year, however, I heard more chatter about Windows Phone–especially Nokia’s promising Lumia 900. For awhile now, folks who have tried Windows Phone have been impressed by it; now even industry types who haven’t used it seem to have a favorable impression. It’ll be fascinating to see if Microsoft can translate all that goodwill into the one thing Windows Phone doesn’t have: meaningful market share.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich still isn’t the current version of Android. At least if “current” means that you can safely assume it will come preinstalled on brand-new devices. Upcoming phones such as Droid Razr Maxx will ship with 2010′s Android 2.3 Gingerbread, with the promise of an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade at a future date.

Once again, it isn’t the year of the tablet. At CES 2011, Motorola’s Xoom and RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook got so much attention that it would have been rational to expect that non-iPad tablets were about to chip away meaningfully at Apple’s head start. A year later, though, the market has changed surprisingly little. And while there were plenty of new tablets at CES 2012, most of them didn’t make much of a splash. The most newsworthy one was probably Samsung’s Galaxy Note–a pocket-size device that’s either a tablet-esque phone or a phone-like tablet.

3D TV is no longer cool. I’m not saying that it’s a failure, but for the most part, TV companies weren’t pushing it as the future of home entertainment. (LG’s extremely 3D-centric booth was an exception.) As Samsung’s press conference, for instance, Boo-Keun Yoon, president of the company’s consumer electronics division, said that Samsung is “continuing to invest heavily” in 3D TV. But the press conference emphasized Internet connectivity, not 3D.

Thunderbolt is making progress. The connectivity standard, invented by Intel, is pretty darn neat. Until now, however, it’s only shown up on new Macs and a handful of peripherals. That’s why I was happy to see it figure in several announcements at CES. Acer’s Aspire S5 Ultrabook, for instance, is one of the first Windows computers with a Thunderbolt port. Seagate showed offadapters, due in January, that turn its external drives into Thunderbolt drives. And Western Digital gave a sneak peek of Thunderbolt disks it plans to ship by mid-2012.

Gesture and voice input could be CES 2013′s biggest story. Using body motion and voice to control consumer-electronics devices was a mini-trend at this year’s show, thanks to debutantes such as Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows and Samsung’s TV with gesture and voice control. I’m betting that both types of input will get lots more attention at next year’s conference–especially if the conventional wisdom that Apple is working on a TV with Siri voice control turns out to be true.

I came back from CES 2012 feeling smarter about the consumer-electronics industry, and better prepared for the year to come. That’s all you can ask of an event like this. It’s more than enough to keep the show valuable even in an era when giant trade shows are an endangered species.

 

CES 2012: Top 5 Best Cameras and Camcorders

CES 2012: Top 5 Best Cameras and Camcorders 

CloudTags: CES , 2012 , Cameras , Camcorders , canon BP-512 batteries , JVC BN-VF707 camcorder batteries , olympus LI-42B camera batteries

ces 300x227 CES 2012: Top 5 Best Cameras and Camcorders Hard to believe that CES, that behemoth of a tradeshow is over. We’re bidding the Las Vegas Convention Center a fond farewell by counting down the top five trends and announcements we saw at the show.

Canon G1 X: Some of us thought we’d see a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera at this year’s CES. Instead, we got the G1X – a souped up G12 with a large 1.5-inch sensor and a fixed 4x optical zoom lens. We’re not saying that like it’s a bad thing. The G12 is a proven class leader and the G1 X has some serious potential with its not-quite-APS-C sized sensor and highly capable DIGIC 5 processor. Will all of that be enough to help potential buyers overlook a steep $800 price tag? We’ll see.

canon g1 x CES 2012: Top 5 Best Cameras and Camcorders

Fujifilm X-Pro1: The Fuji X-Pro1 made its official debut at a frenzied press conference the day before the show kicked off. What details we gleaned from the launch were enticing enough – a new APS-C CMOS sensor with a re-tooled pixel array, second-generation hybrid viewfinder and three new XF lenses, for starters. And who can resist all of that retro charm – the dials, the finish, the chrome accents? Not us, that’s for sure.

fujifilm x pro 1 camera 01 CES 2012: Top 5 Best Cameras and Camcorders

CES 2012 the Best Wins: LG’s 55-inch 55EM9600 OLED TV

CES 2012 the Best Wins: LG’s 55-inch 55EM9600 OLED TV  

CloudTags: LG , 55EM9600 , OLED , TV , CES , 2012 , Samsung nc10 , Dell latitude d630 batteries

lg oled CES 2012 the Best Wins: LGs 55 inch 55EM9600 OLED TV

OLED: Potentially better picture than LCD and plasma, definitely thinner and more expensive.

Our team of crack technology editors argued long into the Vegas afternoon yesterday, painstakingly honing hundreds of cumulative man- and woman-hours of CES 2012 coverage into 10 category winners and, finally, one product sharp enough to earn Best in Show: the LG 55EM9600.

It’s a TV. And its organic light-emitting diode display technology is the future of flat-panel tech. OLED promises better picture quality than either plasma or LCD/LED–thanks to effectively infinite contrast (for realzies this time!), wide viewing angles and lightning-fast response times–combined with an unbelievable form factor. The winning LG measures just 4mm in depth, “three credit cards thick” as LG’s Tim Alessi cooed accepting the award, and boasts a bezel around the screen just 1mm wide. It’s basically all gorgeous picture.

Plenty of other non-TVs vied for our editors’ votes. The cool Simple.TV over-the-air DVR and price-busting Asus Memo 370T tablet each garnered votes, while the amazing Makerbot Replicator 3D printer grabbed the second-most number of supporters after the LG OLED. Meanwhile the people’s voice winner was Razer’s crazy Project Fiona concept gaming tablet. 

LG wasn’t the only TV maker to release a 55-inch OLED TV at the show. Samsung followed suit, touting the superiority of its version of OLED in a closed-door session with myself and Ty Pendlebury. Both companies will release their OLED sets this year, for undisclosed but, I’m sure, astronomical prices.

image CES 2012 the Best Wins: LGs 55 inch 55EM9600 OLED TV

So why did you guys pick the LG over the Samsung?%

CES 2012: The Second-Generation Samsung Series 9 Review

CES 2012: The Second-Generation Samsung Series 9 Review

CloudTags: CES , 2012 , Samsung , Series 9 , samsung batteries , laptop battery AU , laptop batteries UK , Samsung nc10

227067 116052751812605 100002236414848 145766 1996210 n 300x205 CES 2012: The Second Generation Samsung Series 9 ReviewThin and light laptops are dish of the day at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, but Samsung has a leg-up on the competition, because it unveiled its slender Series 9 PC a year ago – like a hipster tech giant crafting MacBook Air-bothering laptops before it was cool.

The second-generation Series 9 adds some new tech, comes in both 13 and 15-inch sizes and brings a refined design. We’ve had a go with it ahead of its official launch (we think it’ll go on sale in the next few months), and we’re about to bombard you with first impressions. 

Design

Although Samsung hasn’t called the Series 9 an ultrabook, there are few who would judge you unfavourably if you used that term to describe it. Extremely thin and very light, the Series 9 looks just like the ultrabook machines revealed by LG, Asus and others.

Samsung clocks the Series 9 as 12.9mm thick for the 13-inch model, and 14.9mm in the 15-inch version. Like the first one it sports a wedge-shaped chassis, where the hinge is a bit thicker than the front edge. The 13-inch laptop weighs 1.16kg, which is light indeed, and makes the Series 9 perfectly suited to jaunts about town. The 15-inch version is a heavier (but still very light) 1.59kg.

We’ve been told that the Series 9 is now completely crafted from aluminium, and we reckon this was a wise move. The construction felt very solid, and considerably less flexible than its more plasticky predecessor.

We think that makes all the difference. We’re not sure the Series 9 feels quite as polished as the painfully stylish MacBook Air, but our first impressions are certainly that it’s a classier machine than most ultrabook PCs out there.

6672127887 03c8c12077 b 300x226 CES 2012: The Second Generation Samsung Series 9 ReviewSamsung says it has sand-blasted the Series 9, to make it less vulnerable to fingerprints. That’s certainly a relief, because the first model picked up more prints than a forensic scientist.

The hinge has been given a makeover too, making it more robust. We gave it a little test-drive, and it certainly felt sturdy. It’s worth noting that there’s no Ethernet port or optical drive, though a network adaptor cable is included and fits into a tiny port on the left of the Series 9, and you can plug an Ethernet cable into that. 

Display

We were impressed with the display on show, which looked bright and colourful, pumping out good-looking images. Best of all there’s a matte finish applied to the screen, which makes the Series 9 a decent bet if you need to use it outside or in a bright room, as you won’t get as many annoying screen reflections as you would on a glossy display.

The display is what Samsung has snappily dubbed ‘HD+ SuperBright Plus’, and supposedly it boasts a very wide viewing angle. We’ll be checking this out in more detail in our full review, but at a glance the Series 9 viewing angle did indeed look impressive. 

Hardware

The Series 9 comes with an array of components that are built for speed. Intel’s Core i5 and i7 processors will be powering Windows, which should make these laptops more than capable of handling tasks like web browsing and HD video playback.

SSD drives are in place in either 128 or 256GB flavours. While more expensive than traditional hard drives, these solid state wonders are less likely to break if you drop them, and they’re faster too. Indeed Samsung reckons the Series 9 can wake up in 1.4 seconds.

The 15-inch model has a touted batteries life of 10 hours, though we’ll wait until we can run our punishing battery benchmarks before making any claims about this laptop’s ability to survive away from the mains. 

Outlook

The Series 9 looks like a classy little laptop, and we like the new design features that Samsung’s seen fit to slap on. The last model was expensive though, so we’ll be expecting seriously good build quality and performance. Stay tuned for the full review.

 

 

CES 2012: Acer Unveils World’s Thinnest Ultrabook Laptop, Aspire S5

CES 2012: Acer Unveils World’s Thinnest Ultrabook Laptop, Aspire S5

CloudTags: CES , 2012 , Acer , Thinnest , Ultrabook , Laptop , Aspire S5 , Acer Batteries , Acer as07b41

acer aspire s5 ultrabook laptop CES 2012: Acer Unveils Worlds Thinnest Ultrabook Laptop, Aspire S5

Acer has wasted no time kicking off CES 2012 with some laptop announcements, including a brand-new Ultrabook and an update Aspire Timeline series.The company calls the Aspire S5 (pictured) the world’s thinnest Ultrabook at just 15mm at its thickest point, and the 13.3-inch notebook weighs just under 3 pounds. It will come with an yet-unnamed Intel Core processor, solid state drive, and HDMI, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt ports. To my knowledge, this is the first Ultrabook to include a Thunderbolt port, though by the end of the week, it probably won’t be the last.

The S5 will be available sometime in the second quarter, though pricing was not revealed.Acer also announced 14-inch and 15-inch models of its Aspire Timeline Ultra notebooks with eight hours of battery life, dual core Intel processors, around 20mm thick, dedicated graphics for 3D gaming, and a slim DVD optical drive.

The new Aspire Timeline Ultra series are designed to provide more a traditional laptop experience in the Ultrabook form factor, complete with two-spindle design. As with previous Timelines, Acer promises 8 hours of battery life, and they will come with discrete graphics cards, DVD burners, and the “latest” Intel Core i series CPUs. Like the S5, they also include Acer Green Instant On technology that lets the computer wake up in 1.5 seconds from a battery-saving sleep mode.

We’re not provided with pricing for the new Timelines, either, but you may find out sooner than with the S5 since they are expected in Q1. And check back with us all week, as there will be plenty of more Ultrabook announcements still to come.

125149 acer inspire one CES 2012: Acer Unveils Worlds Thinnest Ultrabook Laptop, Aspire S5

The Acer S5 Ultrabook looks less like the MacBook Air than other Ultrabooks so far.

Acer media conference, held two days ahead of the official CES show, sets the scene for tough competition in 2012 between manufacturers readying to pump out Ultrabooks, which are small, thin yet powerful notebook computers with form factors similar to Apple’s MacBook Air.

Unlike regular notebooks, Ultrabooks have special Intel dual core processors coupled with inbuilt graphics, capable of performing many of the functions of high-end computers such as video editing and gaming.

It has a black magnesium-aluminum alloy cover and looks less like the MacBook Air than other Ultrabooks so far. The Aspire is due to ship in the second quarter.

Acer today did not reveal the price of its Ultrabook, however general pricing of less than $1000 will be crucial if the Ultrabook is to be successful, given that powerful notebooks weighing a little more that are not technically Ultrabooks can be bought for about $500.

Analyst Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies told AFP the S5 was “quite significant”.

“It looks like the thinnest and lightest, and it sets the bar for the rest of the ultrabook vendors,” Mr Bajarin said.

Intel’s Ultrabook form factor also faces competition from high-end tablet computers and a new line of “Ultrathin” notebooks — rival AMD’s version of the Ultrabook that are due for release in Australia early this year.

Acer also will roll out a cloud service — AcerCloud, which will allow users to retrieve multimedia and data files on any Acer mobile device. Acer said it would include AcerCloud on all new Acer consumer PCs without additional cost.

 

Safeguard Your PCs in 2012

Safeguard Your PCs in 2012

CloudTags: Safeguard , PC , 2012 , Hp 484170-001 batteries , Acer as07b41, Hp dv6 battery

363 Safeguard Your PCs in 2012A race is constantly going on between software vendors identifying and patching security holes, and malicious attackers trying to exploit them. Don’t let your company get caught in the middle of that contest. This year, resolve to make it simpler to update and protect your systems.

The world is an imperfect place, and software is certainly no exception. The operating systems and complex applications that businesses rely on are composed of millions of lines of code, and it is inevitable that flaws will exist and that attackers will exploit them. It is a simple fact of IT life.

Most software developers do their best to follow secure coding practices, and diligently work to identify and resolve flaws, while hackers and malware developers focus on finding vulnerabilities to exploit. Businesses and end users are caught in the middle, just trying to minimize risk and avoid malware exploits.

Wearing a Bull’s-Eye on Your Back

Zero-day vulnerabilities are not as big a threat as sensational headlines make them seem, but a well-executed zero-day exploit can have devastating impact. The reality is that most attacks target known vulnerabilities, but you must protect your endpoint PCs against both known and unknown threats.

Microsoft recently revealed that “none of the top malware families in the first half of 2011 were known to be distributed through the use of zero days, and while some smaller families did take advantage of zero-day vulnerabilities, less than one percent of all exploit attempts were against zero-day issues.”

There is a rich history of highly successful exploits and malware attacks targeting known vulnerabilities. The SQL Slammer worm that crippled much of the Internet in less than an hour in 2003 targeted a buffer overflow flaw in SQL Server that Microsoft had identified and developed a patch for more than six months earlier. The compromised systems simply weren’t patched in time.

The flip side of that coin, though, is that it’s always possible a malicious attack could discover and exploit an unknown vulnerability. Precision attacks directed at specific targets with a focused goal do particularly well with zero-day exploits.

Businesses need effective security in place to protect endpoint systems during the gap between when a patch is published and when it is actually deployed to endpoint PCs. You need to make sure that your PCs are adequately protected against known vulnerabilities, and that they also have technologies in place to recognize and thwart emerging threats.

Just Keeping Up

Staying informed of flaws and vulnerabilities and securing endpoints to guard against attacks is a full-time job. Microsoft published 99 security bulletins in 2011, addressing hundreds of individual software vulnerabilities, any of which malware or some other attack might exploit.

That figure is just for Microsoft, and it doesn’t include other less urgent updates for Microsoft operating systems and applications that don’t have a security impact. And while many organizations rely heavily on Microsoft software, ubiquitous tools such as Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Java, as well as a wide range of third-party applications and technologies, also have holes and weaknesses that could be exploited.

Embracing Diversity

Safeguard Your PCs in 2012As if that weren’t complicated enough, many organizations must also deal with an increasingly diverse array of operating systems and technologies. As employees continue to bring their own devices to work (the BYOD trend) and as IT evolves and becomes more consumerized, the world is getting less Microsoft-centric over time.

While there are pros and cons to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and there are benefits to deploying a heterogeneous platform, doing so inevitably introduces more complexity. The more diverse and less uniform the IT infrastructure becomes, the more difficult it is to keep all of it protected and up to date.

State-of-the-Art Defense

Smaller businesses are often at a disadvantage relative to larger enterprises. They face the same threats and security issues, but lack the financial resources and dedicated IT staff to monitor and defend the network 24/7. What these businesses need is a simple solution that can protect endpoint PCs with minimal cost and administrative overhead.

Symantec Endpoint Protection provides a comprehensive suite of security tools that can be managed and deployed from one console. Symantec Endpoint Protection includes antivirus, antispyware, personal firewall, and host intrusion prevention to guard PCs against a complete range of malware and malicious attacks.

Symantec is a recognized leader in information security, and the state-of-the-art security in Symantec Endpoint Protection includes:

  • Symantec Insight—a system that proactively tracks the age, prevalence, and security rating of nearly every file on the Internet. By actively monitoring all files traversing the Internet, Symantec can simplify analysis and quickly recognize new or changed threats.
  • SONAR 3—The next-generation replacement for Symantec’s TruScan technology, SONAR 3 examines programs as they are running to identify suspicious or malicious behavior and stop threats in their tracks.
  • Browser Intrusion Prevention—Symantec recognizes that the Web browser has become the target of choice for malware attacks, and it has developed protection to specifically recognize and block browser-based attacks.
  • Antivirus for Mac OS X and Linux—While the scope and impact of malware threats for platforms other than Windows is minimal, attacks are still possible. As Mac OS X and Linux systems gain a bigger footprint in the PC arena, they also become bigger targets and need to have protection in place.

Effective PC Protection

Symantec Endpoint Protection provides a framework to protect your PCs from virtually all attacks, whether from known or emerging threats.

As important as the protection itself is, it is also critical that the security solution itself be simple to manage and maintain. Symantec Endpoint Protection delivers on the administrative side as well.

Symantec Endpoint Protection has a central console so you can manage your security from a single PC. It comes with wizards and flexible deployment options that streamline installations and upgrades on the endpoint PCs, and the Smart Scheduler technology lets you configure Symantec Endpoint Security to perform noncritical security tasks at times when the computer is idle to avoid impacting productivity.

There is no such thing as a set-it-and-forget-it, silver-bullet approach to PC security. You always have to monitor and maintain your security to make sure your PCs are protected. But Symantec Endpoint Protection enables you to do that with minimal effort and gets you back to focusing on your real business.