Fast performance and no frills We get to test a lot of unusual laptops—overclocked, oversize, over-dimensional, and just altogether overdone. Digital Storm’s x17, from first impression to Lab testing to real-world evaluation, is just a normal 17-inch laptop. It has high-end components that make it an extremely fast 17-inch laptop, but we’re not sure that’s enough to justify its high price[......]
Archive for the ‘Hardware’ Category
While Microsoft is all about its Windows Phone platform, Google's Android OS is proving a profitable nugget for the Redmond software giant. What some people don't know is that Microsoft collects license fees from several manufacturers who use Android in their products, and in exchange Microsoft agrees not to sue them for infringing on its IP. [......]
In some ways the Internet is like the digital equivalent of truth serum. It forces people to fess up and spill the beans on their shenanigans, because in some cases, their tricks are caught on video and uploaded to the Web for all the world to see. This happened to Intel at CES when Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel's PC client group, was caught faking a DirectX 11 graphics demo on an Ivy Bridge Ultrabook[......]
If you've been postponing your graphics card upgrade until AMD ships its Radeon HD 7950 GPU, go grab a pen or permanent marker and circle January 31, 2012 on your calendar. That's the day it will reportedly go on sale, following the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 7970 videocard, which is available to purchase right now for around $600. [......]
The PC market isn't growing as fast as it once was (though still expanding), economies in the U.S. [......]
Given a choice, most enthusiasts would prefer a stock build of Android on their smartphone, and the preference towards an unmolested UI is part of the reason people root. But not everyone has the know-how or courage to root, even though smartphones sporting custom UIs far outnumber ones with a stock build. The reason, according to Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha, is because it's tough to make money on stock devices. [......]
The Motion Picture Association of America doesn't like us. According to the MPAA blog on Tuesday, "Arts Technica" is a "tech blog with a long history of challenging efforts to curb content theft." (If so, we're the only such tech blog that actually encouraged a now-current MPAA lawyer to do copyright coverage for our site and that recommended the pro-rightsholder book Free Ride in this year's holiday guide.) One can see why MPAA staffers might think this way[......]
Haiti's tech legacy Today is the second anniversary of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake which devastated Haiti, killing up to 316,000 people and making millions more homeless. [......]
One of the first things I was told when I ducked into one of Nintendo’s suites to play with the Wii U was what they wouldn’t tell me. [......]
The PC industry is in decline. Or hadn’t you noticed[......]
As the saying goes, 'If at first you don't succeed, get your stuff together and roll out another hotfix already, it's 2012!' Maybe the saying doesn't go exactly like that, but it should if you're talking about the combination of Microsoft Windows and AMD's Bulldozer line. After pushing out a Bulldozer-boosting hotfix in mid-December, the Redmond software giant pulled it offline a few days later at the request of AMD, which called the patch "incomplete." Now it's back and it has the full blessing of the Santa Clara chip maker. "Currently, the CPU scheduling techniques used by Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 are not optimized for the module architecture of the AMD Opteron 6200 and 4200 Series processors," AMD said in a blog post [......]
You can view our interview with 50 Cent live at CES today at Noon Pacific/3pm Eastern. Why Fiddy and why at CES[......]
They say the grass is always greener on the other side, and a pair of announcements from CES seem to give that old cliché some credence. Qualcomm, a major player in the mobile chip market, wants to break into PCs by stocking thin-and-light Ultrabook-style notebooks with its Snapdragon processor, while Intel’s CEO spent part of his keynote address boasting than the company has inked deals with Lenovo and Motorola to power future generations of smartphones with Atom chips. The Verge got a chance to play with the Lenovo K800 , the first smartphone that actually runs on an Intel chip[......]
For those of you holding your breath waiting for Sony to announce a PlayStation 4 console and hoping good news would come at CES, take a moment to suck in some air and replenish your lungs. There will be no such announcement at the convention in Las Vegas, and it doesn't look like Sony will be unveiling a next generation game console at E3 later this year, either. So when will we see a PS4[......]
When is a gaming peripheral not a peripheral? When it’s an accessory. Peripheral maker MadCatz is hoping that fashion-conscious gamers will want to accessorize their accessories this spring when the company launches its new FREQ 5 gaming headset, which were specifically designed to match the look of its Cyborg line of products (like those nifty Cyborg RATs)[......]
