Launched at CEATEC Japan this week is the Sharp Mebius Pad, the first tablet we’ve seen using the Baytrail Z3770. It also offers a 300 PPI IGZO screen, a docking station, a digitizer layer and water resistance. Yes, it’s business-focused.

Intel Quick Sync Video describes a bit of hardware built into modern Intel processors that’s specifically designs to encode and decode video. Quick Sync has big advantages over software encoding and decoding, but program support for Quick Sync has been limited. In a big win for Intel and Ultrabook users, two major programs, VLC and Twitch.TV, have added support for the technology.

At IDF we heard about three Baytrail-T devices. The ASUS T100 was launched, the Dell Encore was shown but the Acer Iconia was only mentioned in a press event. Finally we get confirmation that it exists along with a first-look by Tomas Hochstenbach of BouweenPC.nl The Acer Iconia W4 is clearly going to replace the rather poor W3, a small-screen tablet on Clovertrail that didn’t really have the best specifications. With the W4 we have the Intel Atom Z3740 (Baytrail, 1.3Ghz quad-core) and 2GB of RAM. Screen: 1280×800, wide viewing […]

Although it could be a month or more before the Toshiba Encore 8-inch Windows 8 tablet is availble, pre-order is now live at Amazon in Germany. It’s called the Encore WT8 (model number PDW09E) and the price and specs are as expected. Our Toshiba Encore WT8 specification page was nearly correct apart from the omission of the GPS module. We’ve updated it now. 299 Euro gets you the 32GB version. $349 Euro for the 64GB version (which is likely to be more popular.)

I checked out the Lenovo Flex 13 at IFA earlier this month (video below) and it was good to see efforts in the Ultrabook space trickling down to mainstream laptops, because that’s exactly what the Lenovo Flex is all about. It offers Ultrabook-like specifications in a multimode (laptop + easel) design. Pre-order for the mobile 13.3” version isn’t available yet but the 14-incher is up for $669 in the US (Core i5) and €499 in Europe (Core i3.)

First it’s the Acer W700, then it’s re-specified as the Acer P3 and now it’s the Acer TravelMate X313. Y and series and Pentium CPU’s are offered and the dock and keyboard are included. Available for pre-order now. Could this be a better productivity device than the 10-inch Surface Pro 2? There are some issues…

Now that a few days have passed since Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 2 it’s time for me to give some thought to the product and its target market. Why?  Because it confuses me. The Surface Pro 2 is a productive tablet with a detachable keyboard but at 10-inches it’s not ideal for that. Maybe it’s more focused on all-day mobility? Oh wait, there’s a docking station so it’s both? But it’s damn expensive! Have Microsoft tried too hard to cover all bases and compromised on all of them? `Where […]

Belkin has now made available a USB 3.0 dock with dual-video output targeted toward Ultrabook users. The dock adds a number of useful ports and could be a great solution for those of you using your Ultrabook as a desktop and laptop — but is the $199 price tag worth it?