Using the sun to power consumer electronics is horribly inefficient and expensive but as technology advances, the process gets a lot better. PCs are running in 5W now compared to over 10W just 5 years ago. Screen technology is getting more efficient and the solar equipment used to collect and store the energy from the sun is getting better. Solar panels are still expensive and inefficient but Changers have put together a solution that’s intelligent, easy, fun and not too expensive. It doesn’t quite deliver what it should and it’s […]

MyDigitalSSD sent over two of their BulletProof 4 SSDs for testing recently so I immediately took the opportunity to upgrade an  older Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook. The difference was noticeable, but not as noticeable as the upgrade on the Acer Aspire V5-122P– an AMD-based low-cost Windows 8 touchscreen sub-notebook which was running a 500GB spinning hard drive. The difference has been amazing! I also attempted to upgrade the Samsung Series 5 but had some problems with that due to the method I used. Details on that below along with performance tests, […]

Yesterday at Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, the company revealed a refreshed version of the MacBook Air, the company’s thin-and-light Ultrabook competitor. Both 11-inch and 13-inch versions are getting Intel’s latest Haswell chips. Apple claims 9 hours of battery life for the 11-inch Air and 12 hours for the 13-inch. While critics have called Ultrabooks ‘MacBook Air Clones’, Apple may be falling behind.

It’s going to be a confusing year for Ultrabook graphics as Haswell feeds-in. Not only are we still seeing sales of Sandy Bridge 2nd-gen Core-based Ultrabooks [can we take these out of the Ultrabook arena please, Intel?] but the new 4th-Gen Ultrabooks will be coming with a wider range of GPU options than ever before.  HD 4200, HD 4400, HD 5000 and HD 5100 (Intel Iris) GPUs are listed. Today we get the first indicators of performance on the HD4xxx range with HD5xxxx performance indicators likely in the next 24hrs […]

My Samsung Q1b, a 2007-era ultra mobile PC based on a VIA C7 CPU and including 3G was one of my most mobile UMPCs. I used it, without plugging it in to mains power, for 10 days. This 7-inch 800×480 resistive touch-screen PC weighing 770gm and including just 512MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive cost me over €1100. Battery life was around 3hrs. Today I found another use for it as an analogue audio recorder. After trying 5 different laptops, a tablet PC and a USB audio device […]

Update: Lenovo have now announced this as the Miix2 The wheels are starting to turn again for the Windows-based handhelds that were once called UMPCs. First the Acer Iconia W3 and now something from Lenovo. The Lenovo Miix 8 was shown at a Microsoft press event at Computex although there’s little information available.

Fujitsu has introduced the Lifebook UH90 Ultrabook which comes with a Haswell processor, is 15.5mm thick, has a gorgeous red finish and features a stunning 3200 x 1800 screen resolution.    

You saw the Creative 3D camera used in the Ultimate Coder challenge earlier this year and you probably heard that it’s going to be available as the Senz3D consumer product but there’s more going on. Intel expects depth sensors to be built into PCs by late 2014 and Intel Capital is putting $100 Million into the arena.