Asus Zenbook, Fujitsu Life book, and Trinity notebook
Posted by Jon Peddie on September 26th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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All portables are not the same—by a long shot Even though we found almost two dozen Ultrabooks, we only had two we could test in time for this issue. And we have an AMD Trinity-based laptop. We put those three units through a couple of tests, specifically the FinalWire AID64 suite and 3Dmark11. The results were surprising, and a little disappointing. The three machines were similar but not exactly the same. We started out with great expectation on the graphics tested and then had to keep backing off down to 1024 x 600 resolution to get a useful FPS score. What…
Just how ULTRA are some of those Ultrabooks?
Posted by By Jon Peddie, Robert Dow, and Harrison Grovy on September 26th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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ces
computers
ultra
ultrabooks
laptops
At IDF we saw some delightful Ultrabooks. There are many now—over two dozen to choose from and more on their way. However, there are some differences in them and a value proposition.
Review: Mobile Monitor Technologies’ Monitor2Go–The more you can see, the more you can
Posted by Jon Peddie on September 26th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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ces
monitors
productivity
The world is a better place. Monitor prices and weight have gone down, while size and resolution have gone up. Ultrabooks have brought us lightweight and HD screens, as well as lightweight power supplies. Life is better.
Review: Newer Technology Power2U AC/USB In-Wall Charging Solution: More tangle but less dead devices
Posted by Jon Peddie on September 24th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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{image_1}Newer Technologies (is that a great name or what?) brought out a wall socket assembly, the Power2U, with a USB power cube built into it. Not only that, but it’s a smart cube that turns itself off when nothing is drawing power from it, so it’s not another zombie. Once we installed it, in a common place (near the printers), it was adopted almost immediately by the folks here—in fact, they even started fighting over it, one person unplugging another. Clearly, we have to install more units. We’ve been testing this unit for about six months now, and it has worked…
Review: Intel i5-3317U vs. AMD A10-4600M
Posted by Robert Dow and Harrison Grovy on August 31st 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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We compared the performance of an Intel i5-w3317U and an AMD QuadCore A10-4600M Trinity this week. The Intel i5 is the processor in our Fujitsu Lifebook, a review of which is available in the August 14 issue of TechWatch. The i5 is part of an Intel Panther Point HM76 chipset and is running with a core clock of 1.7 GHz, 100 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM, on 64-bit Windows 7 Pro. Our Trinity is running on a Hudson-3, AMD K15.1 MB at 2.3 GHz, 100 GB SSD, 4 GB RAM on 64-bit Windows 8. FinalWire, our friends in Budapest, released a…
Review: Fujitsu Lifebook U772 Ultrabook
Posted by Jon Peddie on August 20th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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review
netbook
laptop
fujitsu
ultrabook
We got an Ultrabook sample to play with and ran some tests on it The pros are it is an Ultrabook, lightweight, thin and sexy, reasonably quiet (it does have a fan), and pretty darn responsive. It boots fast (for now), and it’s attractive. The cons are it’s a little costly (starts at $1,149), has a limited resolution display (1366 x 768) with a glossy highly reflective display, limited I/O (no VGA for projectors), and the keyboard requires hard typing to get it to react, especially the spacebar—boy, is that a royal PITA. The Delete and Pause keys are reversed, which…
Adobe Edge
Posted by Kathleen Maher on June 9th 2012 | Permalink
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A sign of the times Adobe has opened the door to all its content creation products with its new subscription model. The company says one of the reasons it has done this is so it can introduce cool stuff as it’s ready. They can feed new technology out to users and gauge how people like it, or how they will decide to use it and then they can fine-tune it. The company has been offering new technology up for testing and comment through its labs, and it’s doing even more through subscription with bonus programs and technologies. Adobe Edge is one…
Tuning in and tuning out
Posted by Jon Peddie on June 9th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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Getting a good night’s (day’s) sleep If you travel (as if anyone reading this doesn’t), you know the challenge of trying to get a restful sleep on a long flight. You stuff polyurethane memory foam in your ears, don noise-canceling headphones, put eye patches on, and swallow a sleeping pill with a glass of wine or two, or maybe soothing herbal tea. That’s one technique, and it works, but it isn’t the most comfortable at times—especially the earplugs on a long flight, or while eating. We recently learned about SleepPhones from AcousticSheep (“pajamas for your ears”). This is a soft cotton…
Review: Nvidia’s dual GPU GTX 690 AIB
Posted by Jon Peddie on May 10th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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gpu
nvidia
graphics
report
Fastest, bestest, not biggest With the GTX 690, Nvidia was focused on creating not only the most powerful dual-GPU card in the world but also a card that was power efficient with great acoustics. There has always been a sacrifice when trying to cobble together the best enthusiast PC in trying to figure out what is the best way to get the best performance. Crossfire and SLi were the solutions up until now. Early attempts at dual-GPU cards underperformed compared to Crossfire and SLi, but the latter was expensive, took up quite a bit of real estate in the tower, and…
DisplayLink Targus
Posted by Jon Peddie on May 2nd 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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Video and FPSs across USB with Targus {image_1}DisplayLink started life as Newnham Research in Cambridge England in 2003 doing thin-client displays. It got the bright idea to provide a wireless connection to projectors from a PC. It was a great idea then, still is—even if it doesn’t yet exist. Sidestepping the radio issues, Newnham moved their video compression scheme to USB and sold the idea to Kensington Computer who put it in a universal docking station. They were the first customer for DisplayLink technology. In the early introduction of the DisplayLink USB to video devices (consisting of a software compressor and…
