Laptops

Crave Talk: Location, location, location

Know your place? Companies have been trying for a while to sell us location-based systems -- a combination of a portable device that knows where you are and a service that tells you something useful as a result.

The trouble with location-based systems to date is that they've been one big yawnathon. I've taken part in countless demos where I've walked through shopping centres in San Francisco, Stockholm or Swindon, peering at the PDA I've been given, which beeps self-importantly when I'm next door to a shop with a sale on. It might have been more impressive, if the shop in question didn't also have sale posters emblazoned across the window, which were visible from 50 yards away.

Admittedly I didn't see the posters, but only because I was so intent on watching the map unfurl on my pocket computer. And the only reason these demos are always in San Francisco, Stockholm or Swindon is because the population in those places is polite enough not to attack you for walking into them. Continue reading...

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Apple Time Machine and Seagate 750GB EHD: Sexy backups

We think making data backups is the most boring thing you can do with a PC. It's right up there with watching paint dry, listening to Blur, and people who go on about how great they are. Yawn.

Credit to Seagate and Apple for trying to make backups more appealing. Seagate has just released the 750GB Pushbutton Backup external hard drive for PC and Mac -- a device that can create copies of your entire hard drive at the touch of a button. Meanwhile, Apple has unveiled a new storage app called Time Machine, for its forthcoming Leopard operating system. Continue reading...

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Crave Talk: Will exploding laptops be banned from aircraft?

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it. That ancient saying should be etched into the eyelids of battery designers, who are constantly trying to make things smaller with more oomph (or "higher power density", as they call it). It's not entirely their fault, of course -- we want it too.

For most of the history of electronics there have been two types of rechargeable batteries -- lead acid and nickel cadmium. Car batteries and runts. Lead acid is too darn heavy for things without wheels (although Apple put one in its first portable Macintosh, as well as a carrying handle forged from melted-down Saturn V thrust girders -- no coincidence), while nicads have all the stamina of a deflating balloon. 

Initially, the only people who cared were policemen with walkie-talkies, but then personal consumer electronics arrived in the shape of the Sony Walkman. A dead battery meant no Dire Straits. Something had to be done... Continue reading...

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Acer TravelMate 4260: Internet-anywhere 3G laptop

Wi-Fi hotspots are great if you like sipping overpriced mochas from faceless coffee shops, but what if you're nowhere near a Starbucks? Until recently your best bet was to camp outside someone's garden trying to hijack their unsecured wireless network, all the while running the risk of looking like a sex pest.

Until now, that is. Acer recently sent us its TravelMate 4260 -- one of a new breed of laptop that lets you get online from anywhere. Tucked away beneath its battery is a 3G SIM card that enables full WWAN connectivity through tri-band GPRS/EDGE at 900, 1800, 1900 or 2100MHz, which means it will work in any region that has a GSM network. Continue reading...

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Alienware Aurora mALX: Six-toed gaming ninja

When the folks from Alienware came to visit us last week, knees buckling beneath the weight of an enormous rucksack, we guessed they were about to show us something special.

Inside the sack was the Alienware Aurora mALX -- a laptop that does for gaming what anabolic steroids do for sprinters. It has a great spec, but before we fired up a copy of Battlefield 2 we had to stop and gawk at its bold design.

Alienware has clearly been hiring youngsters with disciplinary problems to spray its laptops with interesting pictures. This one has a funky purple, black and green paint job that changes colour when you look at it from different angles. It's also been painted with what looks like the feet of a six-toed mutant ninja in sandals. Continue reading...

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And the winners of the Crave t-shirts are...

In May we ran a competition to win one of ten fabulous Crave t-shirts. Entrants had to write a user review of a product from the Reviews section, or a program from Downloads. After much deliberation, our judges picked the following winners, and here they are:

• Jai Shailer, for a review of the Apple iPod (60GB, video)

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Ten-year-old Apple Newton beats latest Windows UMPC

We pitted the Apple Newton Messagepad against the latest Samsung Q1 ultra-mobile PC (Origami project), and -- despite being a decade old -- the Newton won. Find out why by checking out the blow-by-blow account here. If you'd like to add your thoughts on the results of the match, click on the comments button below.

Apple launched the Newton over ten years ago, but it failed to capture the public's imagination and was ultimately discontinued. Many critics held the view that the Newton failed, not because it was a badly designed product, but because it was simply ahead of its time -- a market for ultra-mobile computers simply didn't exist back then.

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Apple Newton vs Samsung Q1 UMPC

Fans will tell you that the Apple Newton was years ahead of its time. Ten years on we're going to put that claim to the test. We're pitting a vintage Apple Newton against the brand-new Samsung Q1 ultra-mobile PC in a head-to-head battle.

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Crave Talk: AMD and ATI merge -- rivals quiver in fear

Okay, so it's official: AMD has just earmarked a shed-load of cash to buy graphics card maker ATI. But what does it mean when two of the biggest and best-known acronyms in the IT world join forces?

Firstly, it gives AMD the ability to compete on an even footing with Intel. AMD has been praised for its achievements in keeping up with, and even surpassing, Intel in CPU performance terms, but the CPU is only a small part of today's PC.

Graphics cards and chipsets (the chip or chips on a motherboard that provide functions to support the CPU) also play a major role. The AMD-ATI deal means AMD can now produce complete platforms using its own CPUs, with chipsets and graphics cards from ATI to go toe-to-toe with Intel's bespoke platforms (such as Centrino).

The acquisition also essentially hands AMD the high-end graphics card market on a plate -- an area in which it has never even bothered competing, and an area in which Intel has failed miserably. Continue reading...

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Acer Aspire 9800: Giant laptop squashes competition

Twenty-inch laptops are like buses -- you wait ages for one and then two come along at once. We'd just finished admiring the awesome Dell XPS M2010 (watch out for the review soon), when its arch nemesis, the Acer Aspire 9800, landed on our laps.

The 9800, which we initially blogged a few months ago, is more conventional-looking than the M2010. It's slightly lighter (7.8Kg vs the Dell's 8.5Kg), but, unlike the M2010, there's no carry handle, no detachable keyboard and no gyroscopic remote control -- it's just a good, honest freak of laptop nature.

It's what you'd get if you pumped one of the standard Acer Aspire laptops full of steroids and sent it cross-training in the Russian mountain ranges with Ivan Drago. If this laptop were a Thai boxer, it would probably be kicking a tree with its bare shins until it collapsed in a crumpled heap. Continue reading...

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How to: Check that your PC is Windows Vista ready

For those of you that have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Windows Vista, that day is finally drawing close. Barring yet another delay, the new operating system, which features a new look and improved search and organisation capabilities, should be available in January 2007.

CNET.co.uk reader Andrew Fisher wrote to us this week asking how he could find out whether his PC is fast enough to run Vista. PC editor Rory Reid warns him that Vista is far more demanding than XP and needs an even higher spec if you want to navigate its stunning Aero user interface.

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Acer Ferrari 5000 and 1000 laptops unveiled

Following in the treadmarks of the recently released Asus Lamborghini VX1 laptop, Acer has just announced its second generation of Ferrari laptops, the Ferrari 5000 and the Ferrari 1000.

The Ferrari 5000 is the big boy of the pair, sporting a 15.4-inch WSXGA+ display with a high 1,680x1,050-pixel resolution and (slightly slow) 16ms response time. It's powered by the latest AMD powerhouse, the Turion 64 X2 TL-52 processor, which runs at 2GHz, and 2GB of DDR2 667MHz memory -- both of which are plenty quick.

Graphics are sorted, too. Acer has plumped for the ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB of dedicated memory (it can leach an extra 256MB from the main system memory if you get graphics-greedy) plus there's an HDMI port with HDCP -- which you'll need come the advent of Blu-ray, HD DVD and Windows Vista. Continue reading...

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Dell XPS M2010: Giant laptop hits UK!

The Dell XPS M2010 is here! The machine that started life as a concept at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show is now available to buy via the Dell UK Web site. Ours arrived yesterday and immediately sparked the biggest debate we've had concerning a laptop. Some of us though it was the coolest thing ever, others were literally freaked out by it.

In case you've been hiding under a rock, the 2,000 XPS M2010 isn't actually a laptop. We call it a 'laps-top' because you'll need more than one lap (or a desk) to use it on. It's over 470mm wide and has a screen measuring 20.1 inches across the diagonal. Continue reading...

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Asus R2H: Origami UMPC in 'quite good' shocker

Our friends at Asus (of Lamborghini and leather laptop fame) have just sent us the company's version of the Intel/Microsoft Origami concept. It's called the Asus R2H and it's the most serious rival to the Samsung Q1 Ultra-Mobile PC.

The R2H uses the same size screen (7 inches) and internal components as the Q1, though it's slightly larger. We'll forgive its girth as it boasts a bevy of additional features -- most notably a 1.3-megapixel camera above the screen for video-conferencing, and a fingerprint reader at the top left-hand side. Fingerprint readers are an increasingly popular feature on laptop PCs as they enable you to log into Windows without using a password. This, as most MI5 agents will tell you, will come in very handy if you lose the R2H in the back of a taxi. Continue reading...

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Dell XPS M1210: Lilliputian powerhouse

Remember the 20-inch XPS M2010 laps-top? Well this is its little brother -- the Dell XPS M1210. It's small, admittedly, but this 12-inch wonder packs a mean punch, as you probably guessed from the fact that it's part of the XPS range.

The folks at Dell sent us one this morning and though we've fondled one before, we were instantly reminded of why we like it. It's got a very plucky Intel Centrino Duo T2400 processor that runs at 1.83GHz, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 100GB hard drive and an Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics card. Continue reading...

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Sony Vaio TX3: Heartbreak healer

Remember the Sony Vaio TX2 laptop? We fell head over heels in love with that thing. We gave up our friends, ignored our family and damn-near bankrupted ourselves trying to keep one step ahead of the laptop-owning Joneses.

So you can imagine how devastated we were to spot the ultra-portable harlot cavorting with all manner of dirty, sweaty commuters, when we thought we'd left it safely at home, tucked up in front of the TV watching Trisha.

But it doesn't matter. Crave is a resilient blog and we'll get revenge by putting the TX2 on DontDateHimGirl.com and pursuing its younger, sexier sibling -- the TX3. We spotted this hottie posing on the Internet shortly after the TX2 let us down. Continue reading...

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Sony Vaio SZ2VP: Jekyll and Hyde laptop

If you're the proud owner of a Sony Vaio laptop, you could be forgiven for being smug. Vaios, after all, are the computing equivalent of Rolls Royces thanks to their superior blend of style, performance and, of course, their hefty price tags.

But don't sit next to us on the train in the mornings. While you're hammering away at your (admittedly nice) Vaio S5VP, we're putting fellow commuters to shame with the brand-new VGN-SZ2VP. It's the Mercedes-Benz Maybach to your S5VP's BMW 316 -- a vision of laptop loveliness that comes with all the normal trimmings and more.

Ours arrived this morning with just 2.16GHz on the clock, its Intel Core Duo T2600 engine purring quietly beneath its lightweight (1.7kg) carbon-fibre chassis. Naturally, it has all the components that push it towards the high end of the thin-and-light laptop market, including 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, dual-layer DVD rewriter, integrated webcam and a fingerprint reader for secure logins. But it's the laptop's graphics abilities that truly impressed us. Continue reading...

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Crave Talk: Google snoops on your TV

You've got to worry about Google. Not happy with watching our every keystroke while we're searching the Web, giving us email that reads what we're sending, and quietly plotting to give away free of charge every darn thing they ever do, it's now thinking how to teach our laptops to eavesdrop on our telly habits.

The idea's simple, say researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja on the Google research blog. Get the laptop's microphone to pick up the sound from the TV while you're watching it, check it against a database of programme audio, and the computer will know what you're watching. You can then talk online to other people who are watching the same programme, find out more information about it, or be sold the brand of shirt that the presenter is wearing. These people want to Google our entire lives, and dress us like Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. Continue reading...

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Crave's guide to World Cup gadgets: Part One

Crave is jetting off to Germany next week to watch England's match against Sweden, so excuse us if we're a little distracted with the excitement of it all. To keep ourselves busy until then, we've been fine-tuning our gadget collection to make sure we have everything we need to get the most out of the next four weeks of nail-biting action. Here are some gadgets that will help you keep an eye (or ear) on the pitch at work...

Asus Lamborghini VX1
With the BBC broadcasting all its World Cup games live on the Internet, you'll be needing a decent monitor at work to watch the action. If you're not able to persuade your tech support staff that you need a larger monitor to see all the columns in the company's financial spreadsheets, then it may be worth investing in a laptop of your own. One of the sexiest laptops currently on the market is the Asus Lamborghini VX1 (pictured). With its 15-inch SXGA panel, which has a native resolution of 1,400x1,050 pixels, you'll be able to get a detailed view of the matches. The 2GHz dual-core Intel processor and 2GB of RAM should give you enough processing power and memory to get on with work between games. At 1,899, it's a luxury laptop, but worth splashing out just to be able to say you own a Lamborghini. Just hope that no-one asks you for a lift. Continue reading...

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Flybook VM: Mile-high, club-class laptop

Picture the scene: you're bored out of your skull on a long-haul flight, you're desperate for entertainment, so you fire up your laptop when THUNK! -- the loser sat in front of you reclines his chair as though we he was on the beach in Rio de Ja-flippin'-neiro.

Historically there's been little you could do about this, other than curse your inability to afford a business-class seat or get into an argument with the aforementioned loser and risk being restrained by an Air Marshal and locked in the luggage hold.

Luckily Flybook, purveyor of many a stylish laptop, has just announced the VM, a laptop with an 'aeroplane-friendly' design. It looks like an ordinary laptop when closed, but the 12.1-inch screen is attached to an extendable column, which once raised allows it to be swivelled and repositioned. Continue reading...

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