Backing up DVDs is an important topic for many people. Transferring the DVD to a portable format isn’t easy though and can take a lot of time. My daughter is away this weekend and I thought it would be nice for her to be able to watch some of her DVDs on her PC while she’s away. Her netbook, tablet and smartphone don’t have DVD drives (although the netbook has a DVD playback license) so there’s only one thing possible – transfer them to a portable digital format. I’ve tested […]

The Acer Iconia W3, the 8-inch Clovertrail-based Windows 8 tablet with bundled Microsoft Office is now only $299.99, or $349.99 if you want 64GB of storage. Similar price cuts are being seen internationally. The Acer Iconia W3, a smaller screen version of the W510 I took on holiday last week, has one major issue though. It’s such an issue it’s prevented me from writing about and recommending it. The screen. A cheap non-IPS screen is running the experience for many. While I haven’t used the W3 myself, I’ve read many a […]

Is ‘Windows’ Microsoft’s biggest problem when it comes to being relevant in a world of computing that’s mobile, fun, social and always-on.  The laptop, for example, is still viewed by most people as a place where you work. No social, no gaming and a 5-minute wait until the laptop finishes updating and then tells you that you really should go and find the power adaptor. Heavy, noisy, hot, boring, boring, BORING. ‘Windows’ is largely responsible for this having focused on ‘work’ for much of its lifetime.  Adding a new touch […]

Trade shows, conferences and holidays are always a good challenge for ultra-mobile devices and on my family holiday this year I decided to take just three key bits of computing kit. The Nokia 808, a MiFi unit and an Acer W510 Windows 8 detachable. Total cost is under $1000. Total weight, about 1.5KG. The idea was to enable everything in as many scenarios as possible but to accept the trade-off that it might not be as fast as some dedicated solutions. After 4 days on my first charge, I’m 100% […]

Today I’m pitting the Sony Vaio Duo 13 (third-gen Haswell Ultrabook) against the Asus UX31E (first-gen Sandybridge Ultrabook) in sleep and wake times. One of Intel’s goals for the Ultrabook platform was to eventually reach a point of instant-on, just like a tablet or smartphone, with Haswell, they’ve finally done it.

Chippy brought you an initial look at Sony’s new Vaio Duo 13 Haswell Ultrabook convertible, and now I’m digging deep to suss out the details. First up is a look at the stylus and how it works with the unit’s N-Trig active digitizer touchscreen. I’ve got a 25 minute video for you, showing the in’s and out’s of the Duo 13’s stylus. One unfortunate detail that I’ll tell you up front is that the stylus does not work properly with Photoshop… or perhaps Photoshop does not work properly with the […]