by Matthew Smith on August 29, 2010
Ah, how the mighty have fallen!
It wasn’t long ago that the Nvidia name was liquid lightening. The company’s main competitor, ATI, began to lag Nvidia’s performance significantly starting with the GeForce 6 released in 2004. As the generations moved on, the gap between Nvidia and ATI seemed to only become wider, a trend that climaxed with the Geforce GT 8800. Released in 2007, the 8800 was all things to all men. It was extremely fast, but also very affordable.
This, however, was Nvidia’s peak – everything since then has been downhill. ATI, in a surprise move, delivered a blow to Nvidia with the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series. Released in June of 2008, the HD 4000 series managed to match or exceed the performance of Nvidia’s products. But it was worse than that. The GPU used by ATI was far smaller and more efficient than those being used by Nvidia. This meant that Nvidia was using more raw materials to build their chips. Knowing this, ATI instigated a price war.
Now the results from that war are becoming clear. Nvidia shipped less discrete graphics products than ATI in Q2 2010, the first time Nvidia has been bested in four years. While some might want to brush this away as a fluke, I think this trend will only accelerate. Consumers in this market seem to response slowly to changes in the performance crown. Nvidia was the default choice of gamers for four years – to this day, there are laymen gamers who believe Nvidia cards are far-and-away faster than similarly priced ATI products.
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by Matthew Smith on August 27, 2010
Multimedia laptops are becoming an important part of the laptop market. This isn’t terribly surprising. Laptops have been slowly replacing desktops for years now, but most users want their laptop to be capable of the same tasks their desktop can handle. This includes playing HD video.
This used to be a problem. HD video can be very demanding on processor resources, and mobile processor designs that were popular just a couple years ago could choke in some cases. However, advancements in the last two years have made HD video performance an almost non-issue. First, mobile processors (such as the Intel Core i3) have improved significantly. Second, integrated graphics solutions can now help play HD video.
These advancements are cause for celebration. Multimedia laptops are now inexpensive and readily available. In this article I’m going to highlight three of the best inexpensive multimedia laptops available today. These laptops are under $800, but are fully capable of playing HD video.
Lenovo Z560
The recently released Lenovo Z560 is a 1960’s talk show host. Its hair is slicked back and shiny, its pose is friendly but stiff, and it is always wearing a rather dour suit. It isn’t exactly sexy, but it certainly entertains, and does so with a elegance that is rarely found among more modern options.
I’m referring, of course, to the Z560’s silver-and-gray exterior of tough black plastics and smooth aluminum. Its both ugly and beautiful. Once you get past the looks – love them or hate them – you’ll find that the Z560 has a heart of gold. Okay, its actually silicon, but its damn good silicon – a Core i3 processor with Intel HD Graphics. Put these together and you have a recipe for HD entertainment. The Z560 sings well, too, thanks to Dolby 2.0 speakers. They lack bass, but they’re otherwise very crisp and loud.
The Z560 multimedia laptop costs just $700
, making it the best multimedia laptop value on the market today.
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by Matthew Smith on August 15, 2010
Touching something is a way of making it real. Running your fingers across a new gadget creates a visceral feeling that is difficult to explain. It can be good, or it can be bad, or somewhere in between. Either way, the feeling you receive from your fingers on that first encounter is very important in shaping your overall opinion of the device.
Apple knows this, and has used it aggressively by not only creating devices that feel good, but also devices that integrate touch into the very core of their functionality. Even the MacBooks do this with their massive multi-touch trackpads. Likewise, companies like Nokia and Blackberry have had trouble in the gadget market despite being technically competitive because they’re unable to provide a device that feels as nice.
Buying what you feel is nice is natural. There is just one problem with it, however – it can be a damn lie.
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by Matthew Smith on August 10, 2010
The notebook computer market can be a bit overwhelming. There are numerous laptop brands available, and each brand offers numerous different notebook models. Every model can also be sub-divided into different configurations, resulting in a nearly limitless array of options.
Choosing in this market can be difficult if you start looking without any idea what you might want. To help you, selected the top 10 notebook computers currently available. These notebook computers are, generally speaking, much better than competing products. They cover a variety of usage sceanrios and price ranges as well.
Apple MacBook Pro
It almost goes without saying that Apple’s MacBook Pro makes this top 10 list. Although very expensive, Apple’s MacBook Pro notebooks are built to a level quality that most other laptop manufacturers simply cannot hope to match. Brilliant displays, great keyboards and large trackpads make them a pleasure to use, and while performance isn’t off the charts it is respectable. Apple also provides the best customer service in the industry and has boasts above-average reliability.
Buy the MacBook Pro from Amazon.com
Sony Vaio Z
The ultra-expensive Sony Vaio Z is a super-premium 13 inch laptop that manages to cram the hardware power you’d expect from a 17 inch system into a thin 13 inch form factor. This includes a Core i7 processor, Nvidia 330M graphics and a surprisingly high resolution of 1600×900. This is also one of the few PC laptops that can match Apple’s quality. The razor-thin Z is built like a tank, and Sony’s much better than average reliability reputation suggests this laptop will be with you for the long haul.
Buy the Sony Vaio Z from Amazon.com
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by Matthew Smith on July 25, 2010
The release of the iPad predictably resulted in many tech journalists making predictions that the tablet would change the world. Soon we would no longer be using stupid old laptops with their efficient but horribly un-hip keyboards. No, we would instead be up to our neck in iPad knock-offs, swimming in a sea touchscreens.
Yet it seems that reality is not matching these predictions. The few tablets that have arrived, such as the Joo Joo, have been under-funded failures from small companies that no one that doesn’t read Engadget has ever heard of. Larger companies, such as ASUS, Acer and HP, have been slow to release their products, and it isn’t entirely clear where these new tablets will land once they arrive. Details are sketchy and seem to change week to week – the latest rumors about HP’s tablet state that it will only be an enterprise product.
And the journalists who predicted a tablet apocalypse cry – why? Where are these companies? Why are they being so slow? Don’t they know what they’re missing out on?
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by Matthew Smith on July 13, 2010
When you were little your parents may have told you that your head was in the clouds. Little did they know just how literal this phrase might become. Today’s Internet is becoming increasigly focused on cloud computing, and it is turning information into an artifact that is at once easier to use and more difficult to wield.
Social implications aside, there is something damned nifty about being able to store data in one remote location and access it anywhere else. That is the inherit usefulness that makes cloud computing attractive even to individuals. Most of us are no longer using just one-device but rather an array of devices including desktop and laptop PCs, tablets, smartphones, and etc.
So, let’s take a look at three of the best cloud computing applications.
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Ah, how the mighty have fallen!
