Tag: LAPTOPS

It's been a slow and painful death for Windows XP, and it's not over yet. (If the operating system were a beloved pet, you'd have put it to sleep ages ago.) Microsoft plans to officially start barring manufacturers from selling computers preloaded with the aging OS on October 22nd, and Dell plans to get a head start on the phase-out by eliminating XP as an option from its direct sales site this ...

Take a moment to glance down at your laptop. Chances are, you see a bunch of hideous, glittery stickers, with the names or logos of companies like Skype, Intel or Microsoft [Ed. Note: Nope! Just see white. Cult of Mac!]. Don't try and remove them, though. Scratching off these stickers, as with Chicken Pox, will only result in even uglier scars and residue. So, why are they there? The New York ...

Dear Switched: Help an Apple-hater out. I've searched everywhere for the PC equivalent of a MacBook Air: super slim, light, with a good-sized display, a full-powered processor and good battery life at a similar price. But amazingly, I haven't found any to equal it. I can't stand the thought of giving Steve Jobs my loyalty, much less my cash, so help a hater out and JTMWTG! Dear Hater: We ...

It may not be as bad as exploding batteries, but it turns out that some 535,000 Sony laptops that started shipping in January may have a fatal flaw, causing them to overheat and potentially deform. The problem lies within the BIOS installed on the Vaio F and Vaio C series machines. The bug affects the computers' basic heat management systems. Sony has recorded 39 instances of the laptops ...

The Libretto has a long and distinguished history; it was one of the first and most successful devices in a category that eventually came to be known as UMPCs and netbooks. When it launched in 1996, cramming desktop-quality PC components into a package that weighed five pounds (much less two) was unheard of. So, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its laptop business, Toshiba is reviving this ...

In theory, it's a noble public initiative to provide every high school student with the latest, high-tech laptops. What's not so noble, though, is to make every kid pay for it themselves. As of September 2011, every student attending Beverly High School in Massachusetts will be required to have their own MacBook as part of a district-wide campaign to modernize classroom technology. According ...

We said they were coming yesterday and here they are, brand new MacBook Pros. The entire line has been given at least a slight boost, but the 15-inch and 17-inch models are where the real fun is. Both the of the larger models have been given shiny new Intel Core i5 and i7 CPUs, as well as NVIDIA GeForce 330M graphics chips equipped with the battery-saving Optimus switching feature. The RAM has ...

No one ever said college professors weren't a bit crazy, but few would go so far as to call them vandals. After a recent physics lecture at the Unviersity of Oklahoma, though, some students were ready to do just that after a professor went all Office Space on a kid's laptop. Fed up with his students paying more attention to their laptops than to the finer points of his general physics ...

There's nothing new about a laptop that can switch between a low-power, integrated graphics processor (IGP), which extends battery life, and a high-end discreet chip, which gives a little extra graphics "oomph." That process is often a little problematic, however, frequently requiring a user to manually switch over, or even forcing a reboot. Today, NVIDIA unveiled Optimus, which aims to make ...

While 3-D TVs and slate PCs stole most of the attention at CES, there were plenty of interesting developments afoot in the normally mundane world of laptops and netbooks. (Yes, we're lumping them together. What is a netbook but a laptop for people with nothing to do but check Facebook?) There were laptops made out of recycled plastics, new connectivity technologies, surprising Linux demos, and ...

Other than the Palm Pre, the biggest darling of CES has clearly been the Sony VAIO P Series Lifestyle PC. There has been plenty of coverage of the clutch-purse-like device, but we wanted to boil it down to just what you really need to know. We spent some time with the tiny "don't call it a netbook" from Sony and came away quite impressed with it on the whole. We couldn't truly test any ...

Computers are progressively getting smaller -- at this point it's a good chance that your cell phone is more powerful than the machines used to send the Apollo missions to the moon. The move from desktops to laptops occurred first in the workplace, and the shift towards smaller and lighter laptops has been primarily driven by business users. The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that some ...

Traveling isn't what it used to be, particularly now that you have to whip out your laptop at security checks. (We also can't stand the tight spaces in economy class that make opening a laptop fully on a tray table to work all but impossible.) Luckily, nearly all computer manufacturers are pulling out the stops and creating super-compact, ultra-thin laptops that are aimed ...

Over the last decade, you've probably lusted after some sleekly designed Samsung cell phone, MP3 player, or flat-screen TV, but unfortunately you've never had the chance to lust after a Samsung laptop. That's because, unlike the rest of the world, Samsung's laptops have never been available in the U.S. – until now. Today, Samsung unveiled a new line of high-end portable computers, which ...

Earthquakes strike dozens of times every day around the world, usually doing no more than rattling a few dishes, but occasionally causing some real damage. There's a worldwide network of sensors able to track and locate the center of earthquakes after they've struck, but a new network is being built up in the hopes of detecting quakes as they happen, communicating that information to those likely ...