notebooks

Get a 15.6-inch HP laptop for $299.99

In the market for a starter or entry-level laptop? You know, the kind that's good for things like word processing, Web browsing, and e-mail? Good for students and grandparents and folks with simplistic needs?

Look no further: While supplies last, Best Buy has the HP 2000-416dx 15.6-inch laptop for $299.99 shipped (not including sales tax). Surprisingly, it's new, not refurbished.

Not to gush, but that is just an amazing price. Granted, the HP won't win any speed awards (or, for that matter, design awards), but it covers all the computing bases well enough.

To wit: … Read more

Will the third-generation iPad finally replace your laptop?

Every new tablet, supersize smartphone, or other multifuncton device seems to give industry watchers yet another excuse to declare the traditional laptop dead, or at least on the way out.

With the new features and capabilities built into the just-announced third-gen iPad (also known as the "new iPad"), I expect a flood of reader e-mail over the next few days, asking if a revamped iPad is better investment than a new laptop.

And it's not a crazy question, even if you've thus far resisted the urge to move more and more of your computing tasks to … Read more

Acer shows off new ultrabooks and laptops at CeBit

Two new laptops from Acer have turned up at the annual CeBit trade show held in Hanover, Germany.

The Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3, in addition to having a really long name, is a 15-inch ultrabook (meaning it meets Intel's specifications for using that trademarked term), and it breaks new ground by including a discrete graphics card and an optical drive. Acer says of the system:

The latest Timeline series is slimmer and lighter than its predecessors (measuring just 20 mm thin), without compromising its state-of-the-art performance. In fact, the new Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 raises the bar by being the first Ultrabook with dedicated NVIDIA GeForce GT640M graphics for enhanced content creation and consumption.

… Read more

Before getting excited about a Valve PC game console, remember the Phantom

With all the excited chatter among gamers about a rumored new PC-based game console from PC game publisher Valve, it may be worth taking a look back at one of the previous attempts to do something similar.

Building a successful living room console that's nearly identical to a desktop gaming PC has long been one of the interactive entertainment industry's unfulfilled goals. After all, the catalog of games for a PC-based console could easily dwarf any proprietary living room console. In a best-case scenario, indie developers could hypothetically release whatever they wanted, without having to get games approved by Microsoft, Sony, or Nintendo (and without cutting those big companies in on the profits). And, of course, there's also the better graphics and more precise controls offered by high-end PC hardware.

Recent reports, first on The Verge, then followed up by Kotaku and others, claimed that Valve, the PC gaming company best known for the Half-Life and Portal games, was working on just such a PC-based console, anchored by an Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GPU, and controlled with a new hybrid game pad. And, of course, as Valve also controls Steam, a leading online PC game store, there could be a sizable catalog of content potentially in play.

But before anyone gets too excited about being able to play high-end PC games on a big-screen living room TV (I've tried lugging over a gaming laptop and hooking it up via HDMI, but it's just not the same), it would be wise to remember the last time people thought a PC-based console was imminent. The device was called The Phantom, a name that would end up being unintentionally apt. My encounter with the Phantom, from a company then called Infinium Labs, dates back to CES 2005. … Read more

Ultrabook Battle Royale

Acer, Asus, Toshiba, and Lenovo took part in the first wave of ultrabook laptops late last year, releasing impressive systems all less than 18 millimeters thick, and each with second-generation Intel Core i-series processors and solid-state storage, all required parts of Intel's ultrabook spec.

Some of the biggest names in mobile computing--HP and Dell--were not among the first movers in this new category (Ultrabook is actually a trademarked Intel marketing term). However, both of those PC giants now have 13-inch ultrabooks available, and they've taken leading positions in our ongoing ultrabook battle royale. … Read more

Does Windows 8 diss the PC?

It's become very fashionable lately to talk down the personal computer. HP infamously flirted with dropping out of the PC business before backtracking under a new CEO, and a Dell executive recently said, "We're no longer a PC company, we're an IT company." Add two years of non-stop iPad fever (and the resultant tablet gold rush), and that old-fashioned keyboard-touchpad-screen device sitting on your lap suddenly seems very out of style. … Read more

Windows 8 FAQ

What is Microsoft releasing today? Starting today, you can download the Consumer Preview beta version of Windows 8 (as well as the beta of Windows Server 8 and the beta of Visual Studio 11). The Consumer Preview version is free and available to the general public to try out.

Where can I download the beta? Right here from Microsoft: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download. And here from Download.com: CNET's full first take on Windows 8 beta

Does that include the ARM version? No, here's no ARM-based beta you can download today. Microsoft has said it will make preloaded Windows/ARM devices available to developers soon. … Read more

Verizon to offer shared family data plan by midyear

Verizon customers looking to save a few dollars on data should get their wish this year in the form of a shared family plan.

Answering questions at a Deutsche Bank conference on Monday, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said the carrier will launch a family data plan by midyear (PDF). Specifically, Shammo referred to data sharing as "having the ability to connect more devices without having to in essence pay more for a bundle."

Many families would be happy to share budget-friendly data plans among their notebooks, smartphones, and tablets. Data plans for each separate device can … Read more

Dell XPS 13 review: Is this the ultrabook you've been waiting for?

The long-awaited Dell ultrabook is here. Having skipped the first round of new superslim laptops, the new XPS 13 is largely worth the wait, and hits a lot of what you'd want in an ultrabook.

At $999 for a 128GB SSD and Intel Core i5-2467M CPU, the XPS 13 is reasonably priced, although HP, Toshiba, and others offer similar specs for $100 or so less. Working in Dell's favor are the system's excellent build quality--the body is a mix of aluminum, magnesium alloy, and carbon fiber--and its smaller footprint. It's not quite a 13-inch laptop in an 11-inch body, but it's in the ballpark. … Read more