Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon
Posted by By JPR Staff on November 7th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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The X1 Carbon is an aesthetic beauty in a “form follows function” kind of way. Its chassis is not bright and flashy. It’s the black Ducati 1199 Panigale or Heckler & Koch MP5 of notebooks and gets the job done without a lot of fanfare in its aesthetic impact. Light handling and accurate, all these machines have the power to put away the competition with the right operator. The masses can “think different” all they want, but some folks have no interest in being another brick in the wall of style or computing choices. MacBooks, at least in some neighborhoods, are generally the standard laptop seen at a café.
Benchmarking the FirePro W9000
Posted by Alex Herrera on November 7th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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{image_8}AMD’s FirePro W9000, one of the first members of a full family of new professional-caliber graphics cards from AMD, is out in the market. JPR got its hands on one and ran it through our standard battery of workstation-relevant tests. We’ve got numbers to review, not only stand-alone, but in context with results from benchmarking the company’s previous family of cards. Launched under the company’s Radeon brand in the first quarter of 2012, AMD’s “Southern Islands,” a.k.a. “Graphics Core Next,” might be viewed by gamers as old news. The consumer ranks tend to see the newest technology first, while professional/workstation-caliber products…
Review: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 and GTX 650
Posted by By Robert Dow and Harrison Grovy on September 26th 2012 | Permalink
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Hardware Review
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nvidia
graphics
aib
3d
opengl
gforce
developers
computers
kepler
Nvidia rounded out their Kepler line of GPU AIBs last week with the introduction of the GeForce GTX 660 and the GeForce GTX 650. We've taken the time to write up two reviews, one review on GeForce GTX 660 and one review on GeForce GTX 650.
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…
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…
