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PCs take the lead at CES 2012: Laptops, desktops, and hardware

LAS VEGAS--It's a rare CES for which most of the digital ink spilled is about computers and hardware, rather than giant televisions. But 2012 was just such a year, thanks to the never-ending drumbeat of Intel's ultrabook platform.

Yes, ultrabooks again It seems like you couldn't walk more than a hundred steps across the velvety carpet of the CES show floor without running into a giant ULTRABOOK or WINDOWS 8 sign. The first official ultrabook-designated laptops (it's an Intel marketing term) arrived during the 2011 holiday season, but CES 2012 was a coming-out party for a host of new designs from nearly all manufacturers.

The laptops ranged from the diminutive (the Acer Aspire S5) to the large and bold (the HP Envy 14 Spectre), and to the copycat (the MacBook-Air-alike Dell XPS 13). And 14- and 15-inch models, some with optical drives, dedicated graphics, and hybrid solid-state/hard drives, have begun to blur a category only in its nascency, leading us to ask if the category will suffer from unnecessary mission creep.

Will that mean that consumers will have a hard time identifying what an ultrabook is, or even feel the category has become overhyped and overexposed by the end of this year? Ultrabooks may be the industry's next great hope, judging by Intel's ultrabook-obsessed keynote presentation, but that doesn't mean consumers are never going to want anything different.

But not just ultrabooks Only a handful of other, non-ultrabook laptops really stood out.… Read more

Get more and better search results with Mo-Search

Virtually anyone who's used the built-in Windows search utility can tell you that it has a lot of room for improvement; it's slow and not particularly powerful, and finding needed files with it can be an exercise in frustration. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternative search options, such as Mo-Search. When we tried it, this easy-to-use program left the built-in Windows search in the dust, quickly returning relevant results while the Windows search continued plodding along at a snail's pace.

The reason that Mo-Search is so quick is that it creates its own index of your files, … Read more

Toshiba plans to bring 13.3-inch tablet to U.S. market

LAS VEGAS--Get ready for jumbo tablets. Toshiba plans to bring a 13.3-inch tablet to the U.S. market later this year.

The oversize device--by tablet standards--will likely first emerge in Japan, where it can double, because of its screen size, as a portable TV in the home, a Toshiba representative on the CES show floor told CNET.

The target market for the U.S. would be customers looking for a larger tablet, according to the representative. Though he wasn't more specific, there was a demo screen (see photo below) showing a home automation control interface.

Toshiba is not revealing timing or pricing at this time. … Read more

Asus rocks the tablet boat

Intel is making a big push into smartphones and tablets, Polaroid has the first Android phone, and Asus hands out four cores for the price of two with the game-changing Asus Memo 370T.

Links from Wednesday's episode of Loaded, from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas:

Four cores for the price of two? Intel goes inside smartphones Polaroid's Android camera Box-less DVR with DirecTV and Samsung Buzzing about the Dell XPS 13 and the Inhon. Subscribe:  iTunes (MP3) |  iTunes (320x180) |  iTunes (HD) |  RSS (MP3) |  RSS (320x180) |  RSS HD

Dell shows off its aluminum, carbon fiber XPS 13 ultrabook

LAS VEGAS--Dell's got a new ultrabook on the way, and it's making use of aluminum and carbon fiber to get the job done.

During Intel's keynote here tonight, the vice chairman of Dell, Jeff Clarke, brought out the freshly-announced XPS 13, the new 13-inch model in Dell's XPS line that falls into the ultrabook category.

The sub-three-pound notebook is 6mm at its thinnest point and made out of machined aluminum. The base of the machine is made out of carbon fiber.

The machine, which the company will begin taking orders for in February, supports Intel's … Read more

Toshiba goes very big, very small with oddly sized, shaped tablets

LAS VEGAS--Toshiba is apparently ready to show off very large and very small tablets at CES.

Though there's no other labeling on the two devices yet, they're clearly marked as 13.3-inch and 5.1-inch tablets--both are unorthodox sizes.

And both are concept Android tablets, a Toshiba spokesperson told CNET.

More later when we find out what makes them tick.

MegaMind Player doesn't make the cut

With so many free media players available to download, it's hard to know which one to use. But they tend to break down into two kinds, easy-to-use and do-it-all. MegaMind Player is an easy-to-use media player, though a bit too basic: It offers few of the amenities needed to live up to its claim of being an all-in-one digital media solution, and there's some clunkiness, too. It also uses components of Windows Media Player, so it's not the best choice if you're looking for an alternative.

We've seen every kind of user interface, but MegaMind … Read more

Hands on with the HP Folio 13

Editors' note, January 20, 2012: We posted our full review of the HP Folio 13. We also added our hands-on video to the end of this blog.

As ultrabooks become a major part of the laptop landscape this year, the key to finding a good one might not lie in specs--since so many have identical innards--so much as look, feel, and bang for the buck.

In that regard, the HP Folio 13 might be a winner.

The HP Folio 13, which was announced last year, is a small business-targeted ultrabook that could be equally at home in the hands of a regular Joe User. After all, the "business" differentiation is merely cosmetic and arbitrary, unless you choose to upgrade to Windows 7 Professional an optional TPM chip. What the HP Folio 13 has--a Core i5 low-voltage CPU, 128GB SSD storage, 4GB of RAM--befits any laptop in the 13-inch ultrabook universe circa 2012.

It is a thicker laptop, and a heavier one, too, compared with the MacBook Air and any of last year's ultrabooks. Not by much, though; it's a little over 3 pounds, and still thinner than any "normal" laptop. It's just not wafer-thin. Consider the side benefits, though: the HP Folio 13 only costs $899, which undercuts a lot of the ultrabook competition by at least $100. And, in terms of both specs and features, there are few compromises. The Folio 13 comes with everything that most ultrabooks do, with none of the annoying compromises such as missing SD card slots or Ethernet jacks that were common to last year's ultrabook crop.… Read more

In 2012, MacBooks, ultrabooks mix it up

2012 promises to be a watershed year for laptops. Really thin will be in and internal optical drives out, while some designs venture into hybrid territory.

Apple: Apple is expected to incorporate the MacBook Air design theme into more models, including a 15-incher sans optical drive. And since Apple popularized the really-thin aesthetic with the January 2008 introduction of the MacBook Air, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the company will continue to be a trendsetter.

Trendsetting may include a rumored 2,880-by-1,800-pixel display. That would be a remarkable feat as workstation-class 15-inch Windows laptops, such as … Read more