Archive for the ‘Mix Reviews’ Category

When is a laptop not a laptop? When it’s so big it takes more than one lap to accommodate it.

Although the desktop-replacement model has been around for a long time now, offering the grunt of a conventional PC within a compact frame, sooner or later someone was going to take it one step too far. That someone was the Taiwanese chassis-builder Clevo, which provided AJP with a frame more than 40cm wide to stuff with cutting-edge components, including dual-SLI graphics cards (see page 48 of the June 06 issue).

This column appears in the June 06 issue of PC Advisor, available now.

Laptops aimed at gamers are nothing new, but surely their limited upgradeability makes them less attractive to potential buyers? Especially if you have to fork out more than £2,000. Why not buy a high-spec desktop and upgrade individual components as they age? Let’s face it: that takes only a few months.

If you’re looking to get your PC out of the study and into the living room, take a look at the Philips Showline MCP9350i (reviewed here) – a superior model to the Sony Vaio Media Center PC we looked at last month. There are several different ways of hooking it up to the rest of your home-entertainment kit, and all the cables you could possibly need are bundled with the unit. Not bad for a grand.

But we wouldn’t want to be accused of looking at the PC market through one eye – so we’ve had a peek at a couple of products by Apple this month.

Before you start booing and hissing, can

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Laptop Reviews

Labtop Reviews

When laptop’s first became available there where few choices of brands and even fewer choices of options. Now there are new laptop computers coming on the market continuously, all with specialized options. Before choosing a laptop decide what your focus is. There is probably a laptop computer that comes with exactly the standard features you are looking for. Below is a sample of just a few laptop computers and the features that make them unique.

Dell

With an exceptionally fast processor and graphics engine, Dell has developed a laptop especially geared for gaming. The lightweight laptop, weighing only 8.6 pounds is very portable. In addition the Dell XPS M170 has a 2.26 GHz Intel processors, one of the fastest available.

Toshiba

Toshiba has focussed its laptop computers on multimedia features. Their line of laptops have TV, DVR, stereo, DVD players as well as all other traditional multimedia components. For music, video and visual effects this is the best laptop computer.

Hewlett Packard

Hewlett Packard has focussed on developing a laptop that includes all the features of a desktop without the space requirements. It has both entertainment and computing features and great performance ratings. It comes with a CR-RW/DVD-ROM combo that can read and write all types of multimedia.

Apple

Apple Powerbook laptop computers have a unique designed that make them stand out in a crowd. Apple laptop computers use the Apple MacOS X 10.4 and come with speakers, Bluetooth antenna and wireless LAN antenna as standard features.

Acer

Acer laptop computers come with a 40 GB hard dive, 256 MB ram, DVD-RW drive and a 15-inch screen. There is a good selection of bundled software included that has games, Norton AntiVirus and a CD maker program. It is silver in color and stylish in design.

Sony VAIO

Sony has focussed on their original XBRITE LCD technology and Smart Display Sensor to enhance visual presentation on the viewing screen. The screen automatically adjusts to various lighting to maximize the viewer’s ability to see the display. Using Windows XP Pro and a 3-hour standard battery this laptop notebook is designed for presentations and getting information across.

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Ever since Intel debuted the Core Duo processor at CES earlier this year, a steady stream of dual-core laptops has been flowing into CNET Labs. And while we haven’t seen the mind-blowing performance gains initially promised by Intel–at a December 2005 press briefing, a company rep said they expected dual-core processors to be 68 percent faster than the Pentium M–Core Duo has brought about a noticeable boost in performance, particularly for multimedia apps or multitasking. Arguably the dual-core laptop to make the biggest splash has been the Apple MacBook Pro, the first Apple laptop to be built around the Intel architecture. But we think all the dual-core laptops here are worth noting, whether for their remarkably small size (Lenovo ThinkPad X60s) or their remarkable performance (Dell XPS M1710). Stay tuned for more reviews of Core Duo laptops as manufacturers continue to incorporate the processor into new product lines.

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The Dell Inspiron E1505 makes a good basic home or small-business laptop and has a solid set of multimedia capabilities, though comparable competitive models can be found at slightly lower price points.

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Laptop Reviews