Take a look at the back of most Ultrabooks and you’ll find nothing. By having sealed-in batteries the OEMS save money, weight and space. The owner, however, is left with the big unknown of battery lifetime and if you’ve ever owned a laptop you’ll know how totally useless they are when you have to drag the mains cable around with you everywhere. I recently had to order a new internal battery for a Samsung Series 5 NP530 that is under two years old and has zero battery capacity. On the […]

I’ve just unboxed two 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablets. The ASUS Vivotab Note 8 and Dell Venue Pro 8 both have digitizer layers but one has a Wacom layer and a pen compartment.

It’s sad news today as we hear of Sony’s intention to sell their PC business. The VAIO brand will go to Japan Industrial Partners, be re-evaluated and reduced to Japanese marketing operations only. The chances of us ever buying a VAIO laptop or Ultrabook outside Japan now look very slim indeed.

The Lenovo Miix 2 10 is a 2-in-1 Windows 8.1 tablet with a keyboard dock, not a laptop with detachable tablet! You’ll find out why in the detailed Lenovo Miix 2 10 review below along with details on performance, battery life, usability and quality. We’ve also included a comparison with the ASUS Transformer Book T100.

  Baytrail-M is the platform that we’re generally expecting to see in low-cost touchscreen laptops but it’s just shown-up in a 10-inch low-cost tablet from ChiliGREEN. In Europe, the is now the lowest cost 10-inch Baytrail tablet available at just 329 Euro (Austria, 274 Euro before tax.)

Remember back to IFA last September and my interview with Ben Saunders of the Scott Expedition? They’ve been walking for 102 days now and in 2 days they will have completed the 1800 miles that Sir Robert Falcon Scott failed to complete in 1912. This is an amazing accomplishment, not only for the two expedition members on the journey but for two Sony Vaio Pro Ultrabooks, solar panels, Li-Ion battery packs and a satellite internet link that has provided, for the first time, amazing photos, blogs and videos during  such […]

ABI reported last week that ultra-portable PCs accounted for 12% of all notebook shipments in 2013, way short of anything Intel wanted to achieve with the Ultrabook segment. It raises questions as we see marketing efforts for Ultrabooks fall. Is this leading-edge notebook segment ever going to be a big seller? If it has good profit margins does it need to be or are we underestimating the impact that the Ultrabook ‘project’ has had on the wider notebook market?