The last week has been pretty poor in terms of Ultrabook news. There’s been some discussion about sales numbers and prices (again!), some discussion about the MacBook Air (again) and some discussion about the Transformer Prime as it relates to Ultrabooks (e.g. here and here. Update: Similar here.) I saw a major online PC magazine pump out a raft of generic Ultrabook articles for Google to trawl and to top it off, Lenovo said they couldn’t send us a U300s for testing. Thank goodness Daniel sent us his U300s owner […]

Could Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich be the OS that not only bridges the gap between smartphone and tablet, but also extends to the desktop?

While the Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0.) is the first to bring the much lauded Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to Samsung’s 7″ form-factor, it also makes some rather strange omissions which make this feel more like a prequel than a sequel.

I’ve been using the iPhone for three generations now — starting with the iPhone 3G, then the iPhone 3GS, and finally the iPhone 4 which is my current companion. I’m finally due for an upgrade and I must say that I’ve come closer than ever before to picking an Android phone (specifically the Galaxy Nexus) over an iPhone, but it just wasn’t meant to be and I’ll explain why. Be sure to note that what’s important to have in a phone for me might not be the same for you; […]

Germany was one of the countries that never got that good value Ultrabook alternative the Samsung NP350 so maybe that’s the reason why the Series 5 Ultrabook has entered the market there at an interesting price point. In other countries, low Series 5 pricing could clash with the existing NP350.  €780 for the Core i5 version in Germany is a very good price and if you want to go up to Core i7 with 8GB RAM, there’s an option at around €1000 today. For those not familiar with Euros, it’s […]

It looks like this article from The Verge is more of a ‘must comment’ than a ‘must read’ but I encourage you to do both. Fellow tech blogger Joanna Stern has published a review of the MacBook Air running Windows. If any of you are still here after seeing the link, go back and read some of the comments. There’s a huge, and sometimes over-excited, comments section. One thing is for sure, the Ultrabook sector is clearly a HOT topic.  

It’s almost a dumb thing to say really but yes, the price of 1st-gen Ultrabooks will drop. The question is, how much and will they be worth having? Lets get one thing straight though, the Sandy Bridge platform is a good one and Ivy Bridge will be better but there won’t be a huge amount of difference for most people. Yes, they will be worth having although there’s a small matter of Windows 8 to consider! You’ll probably see 15-30 minutes more battery life for average use cases as designs […]

I’ve just updated my Nokia N8 to Symbian Belle. It’s a worthwhile update that completely changes the user interface over ‘Anna’ and gives it a much simplified, smartphone-like feel. Pull-down control, info and notification bar, a single layer of program panes and more flexibility in organising multiple home screens. The underlying capabilities seem to be much the same as before which is good and bad because you get lots of configuration options but you still have some limitations when it comes to true smartphone features. Still, the camera is the […]