Portable technology is taking over the global market. Advertisements on the Internet, TV, and other forms of media promote the best and newest hand-held gadgets such as cell phones, TV’s, and other mobile devices. One of those devices, the handheld tablet, is gaining popularity among consumers of various ages. These devices are capable of carrying out a multitude of tasks as well as providing meaningful entertainment to prospective buyers. Many tablets have 3G or 4G capabilities and can be used with satellite ISPs, such as http://internet.clear.com.

The growing age of technology targets a population that is constantly on the go, so there are more powerful handheld devices being released to consumers from various companies on a consistent basis. The tablet is just one of those releases, but it is an elite device that has allowed consumers to compute on the go. Not only can it carry out most, if not all, the functions a normal desktop computer can, but tablets are user friendly devices. The prices for tablets vary depending on several factors such as storage space, screen size, operating system, and computing power.

Sometimes one can wonder what this world would be like without the technology in it and if it is all necessary, but it is proven that technology such as handheld tablets improve our efficiency and make our lives easier. They also provide entertainment and can help us express ourselves and stay in touch with others, as well as watch movies, send emails, read the news, write reports, and so much more. Mobile technology such as tablets have definitely transformed the way we live our lives. Thinking globally, living with no limits, and constantly moving has become a way of life.

High-end mobile technology such as tablet computers allow us to do so much more than we could ever before. They do come with a steep price, but it is well worth it based on productivity, entertainment, and the miscellaneous other tasks they perform. Take part in mobile technology today, and grab yourself a handheld tablet!

Recently, there’s been much ado about the flooding in Thailand in the tech world. Not because lots of people are dying and millions homeless, but because hard drive prices are rising.

About 40% of the world’s mechanical hard drive production capacity is located in Thailand, and since the land there has suddenly decided things really are better under the sea, most of it has ground to a halt.

No one can predict the exact impact this will have on production for the rest of 2011 because no one knows exactly when flood waters will recede, but it is looking more likely with each passing day that Thailand production will be crippled into early 2012. Even when the flood recedes, it will take some time to repair damaged facilities, a task that is going to be further hampered by the widespread local damage. Basic services like electricity, clean water and open roadways will be hard to come by.

According to Seagate’s latest SEC filing, the company believes total industry shipments for Q4 2011 will drop from an expected 180 million to 120 million or less. That means supply will be hampered by over 30%.

Hard drive prices have already risen – that’s a past event. The question many are now asking is what impact this will have on laptop prices rising over the next six months. ASUS has publically warned that current hard drive inventory is good only until the end of November. This statement probably does not mean that ASUS will have no more hard drives after that point, but it does mean that after November the company will have to pay higher prices for new drives.

This, in turn, will translate to higher prices for laptops. Again, the impact is hard to predict, and will largely depend on remaining supply. We’ve already seen the online retail consumer market take a huge hit, with some drives more than doubling in price. I believe this is due to huge HDD orders from the big vendors which have taken a lot of product out of the consumer market. There are some reports that even the large manufactures are now having trouble filling the orders they place – and have to do so at higher prices than before.

I think it is likely that a small increase in average pricing – about $20 – will take place. A hard drive is not a large part of the overall cost of building any computer, and that goes double for laptops, which often use cheap 500GB drives with low spindle speeds. However, the profit margins on laptops are not large. That’s the reason why HP’s now ousted CEO wanted to get rid of the company’s laptop division. In addition, small cost bumps add up over time. If the price of a 500GB hard drive went up by $10 for HP, and they build a million computers, you’re looking at 10 million dollars. And HP builds a lot more than a million computers, so that adds up to real money.

Although a small price increase like this would be notable for industry analysts, consumers probably wouldn’t much care. It’s even possible that a price increase like this could be compensated for in other ways. Manufacturers might keep prices the same, but slightly de-content laptops at a given price point to make up for the higher hard drive prices. We might see a computer that used to have a 2.3 GHz Core i5 drop down to a 2.1 GHz model without a price reduction, for example.

The worst case scenario is a situation where the supply has become so tight that manufacturers simply can’t find enough drives to put into the systems demanded. To compensate, more computers will be offered with solid state drives, but those are also more expensive than their mechanical counterparts. If a situation like this occurs, laptop prices could rise $50 or $100 on average.  Alternatively, we might see significant de-contenting – drops from Core i5 to i3 processors at the $600 price point could occur.

I am skeptical that this worst-case scenario will occur because there will be great incentive for companies to put production back online or increase production at the plants that still are operating. Still, it can’t be entirely discounted as possible.

My advice? If you were thinking of buying a laptop this holiday season, do it, and sooner rather than later. Although laptop prices may not rise, they certainly won’t go down. In addition, Intel’s new processor line is not expected until May/April 2011, so you won’t be missing out on any new technology that’s right on the verge of being unleashed.

The introduction of Fusion processors for desktops has come alongside a new processor socket, called FM1, and two new motherboard chipsets called A55 and A75. Of the two, only A75 is available thus far, and it’s likely the only one a consumer building his or her own PC would want in the first place. That’s because the A75 provides solid USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps support, while the A55 doesn’t.

Fusion is an attractive HTPC option because of the high-quality graphics integrated in the chip, but the processor needs to be paired with a decent Micro-ATX motherboard. In this case, that’s not hard to find, because the majority of A75 motherboards make use of Micro-ATX instead of the full ATX form factor. Let’s have a look at three excellent solutions.

ASRock A75M-HVS

Simple, basic, cheap. Those aren’t exciting words, but sometimes they’re a better alternative than overpriced and complex – and besides, this is motherboards we’re talking about. They’re the pinnacle of sexy to begin with.

If you are building on a budget and don’t want or need many features, the ASRock A75M-HVS will suit you. Its main advantage is the price of $69.99, and its main feature is the fact that it will accept a Fusion processor and then turn on. Okay, that’s being a little harsh, but you won’t find super-advanced fan controls or sixty ways to overclock. What you will find is the basic features all A75 motherboards have including USB 3.0 support, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and one of each type of PCI slot (Express x16, x1 and vanilla).

Gamers and advanced users should steer clear of this board, but those constructing a simple media center or a home/office PC for Mother Deariest should be happy with what this board offers.

Buy the ASRock A75M-HVS on Newegg.

Gigabyte A75M-UD2H

A step up from the ASRock, this board comes from Gigabyte, one of the most well respected and reliable brands in the motherboard market. Priced at $89.99, this Gigabyte board is a full $20 bucks more expensive than the ASRock, but it provides a few extra features for the extra dough.

This includes an additional PCI Express x16 slot, better audio in the form of a Realtek audio chip with support for 8 channels, support for up to 32GB of RAM, and a huge variety of connections including FireWire, eSATA 6Gbps and DisplayPort in addition to more mundane options like USB 3.0 and HDMI. There is also on-board FireWire for additional connectivity via a enclosure’s front FireWire port.

Builders wanting to construct a media center will be happy with this board’s reliability, but connectivity is the big story. This would be an excellent board for a small but powerful home/office workstation.

Buy the Gigabyte A75M-UD2H on Amazon.com.

ASUS F1A75-M Pro

Often, system builders construct a small system because it needs to be inexpensive. Smaller motherboards and enclosures tend to cost less, and since there’s no need for expensive add-on cards, they don’t lead to space constraints. Even an enthusiast may want to build a small, inexpensive, but powerful system, and the ASUS F1A75-M Pro is among the best platforms for doing that.

The F1A75-M Pro has all the expected chipset features as well as Realtek 8-channel audio, but it’s the custom features provided by ASUS that set it apart. This includes the best fan speed controls in the industry, the best UEFI BIOS in the industry, and a superb software overclocking utility. ASUS makes it really simple to extract the most out of a system built on this motherboard.

Connectivity is the only flaw – it’s decent, but there’s no DisplayPort, eSATA or FireWire. The Gigabyte is clearly the winner in that regard. This board is also a tad more expensive at $109.99. Not everyone will need those extra ports, however. The F1A75-M Pro’s fan speed and overclocking features makes it particularly appealing to gamers.

Buy the ASUS F1A75-M Pro from Amazon.com.

Well this is interesting.

I was just biking home from Safeway when my HTC Thunderbolt made a noise. I looked at it, and found that the 4G LTE logo was now active. When I arrived home (about 10 minutes later) I opened up Speedtest to see if this was for real. According to the app, I managed a download speed of about 28 Mbps and an upload speed of 9.5 Mbps.

As far as I can tell no official announcement has been made by Verizon regarding 4G LTE coverage in the Portland area. To be more precise, I live just outside of Tigard, which is on the southwest side of the city. I’m a good 10 miles from downtown as the crow flies.

This is not the first time I’ve had this occur. When I was downtown about two weeks ago, the 4G LTE turned on for approximately thirty seconds, then disappeared. It’s been about 20 minutes since it turned on for my Thunderbolt, however. So maybe this time it’s for real.

Do you know anything about 4G LTE being turned on here? Let me know in the comments.

It used to be that computers belonged on desks, and we needed to be rooted in one place in order to use them. However, with the spread of laptop usage and the growth of tablet and smart phone industries, we can now do just about anything we always could with a desktop computer with the added convenience of portability. In fact, about the only feature that portable devices seem to lack is printing capability; we can use laptops and tablets to type documents, play games, manage schedules, store information, and many other things. And now, thanks to companies like Clear and the general expansion of 4G service, we can also access the Internet remotely with our portable devices.

One way to gain Internet access through your wireless device is to simply do it through your cellular phone service provider, if they offer 4G service. However, there are also companies that exist solely to provide 4G service, which can also help you to connect to the wireless network. Essentially, you can purchase a package from these companies that allows you to pay a certain amount (depending on the level of service you want for your devices, and how long you want it) in exchange for a modem. Once you have the modem, it can be as simple as plugging it into your device, and you will have access to the entire Internet, wirelessly, without depending on your office network, or whatever network is present where you are. You will be able to browse the Internet, stream videos, send and receive email, and do everything else you like to do online with the same speed and clarity as if you were connected the old fashioned way, with an Ethernet cord at a desktop computer.

Finding the best 4G service is an important thing to consider with the rise of portable devices like laptops and smart tablets. These devices have become popular mostly because of the flexibility and convenience they allow people in their business and personal endeavors. With the right service, you can add expanded Internet access to the list of conveniences brought to you by your portable device. You will be able to get online just about anywhere, from your neighborhood coffee house to your school or office. This is not only a luxury, but almost a necessity in today’s world, when seemingly everything is run online, and moves more and more quickly by the day. Capitalize on the potential of your portable devices and look into finding the best wireless Internet service for you.

This article was brought to you by Clear Wireless

Laptops are hot. Anyone who has tried to play a round of Counter-Strike with their laptop in, well, their lap, has likely figured this out on their own. Although most of today’s laptops do a great job of keeping their cool when at idle, ramping up the CPU, the GPU, or both, can cause a sudden upswing in temperatures.

That’s not good for your laptop’s life, and it can be no good for your lap. You may be wondering how you can monitor your laptop’s temperature so you don’t run into any problems. Fortunately, there are several great solutions already available.

How to Monitor Laptop Temperature

Laptop brands are not oblivious to the problems that can be caused by high laptop temperatures. Far from it, in fact – shipping out a product with a tendency to overheat can cause major problems for a brand’s reputation. As a result, most laptops come equipped with several sensors that monitor the internal temperature of components in your laptop.

The information from these sensors is available, but not in the default operating system. Windows users can make use of several programs, among which my favorite is SpeedFan. This program can report the temperature readings from all sensors in your laptop. This will include not only the sensors monitoring the processor but also, if applicable, the sensors monitoring the hard disk, the GPU, and other components.

Alternatively, you might want to try PC Wizard, Real Temp or Core Temp. Apple fans can try Temperature Monitor for Mac. These programs offer similar information about internal temperatures. Although I like SpeedFan, I highly recommend downloading a second program to verify the accuracy of the temperatures reported. It never hurts to double-check.

What’s a Normal Laptop Temperature?

Now that you’ve installed software that lets you monitor laptop temperature, you need to know what’s normal – and what’s not.

Most laptops will report a normal idle CPU temperature of between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius. In ideal conditions (a cool room, a new laptop), you may see a laptop report in the high 30s. An idle temperature above 50 degrees Celsius is not necessarily worrisome, but is a bit higher than average. Anything beyond 60 degrees Celsius is certainly unusual and a cause for concern.

During load (any period of sustained CPU use) the temperature will likely rise above 50 degrees Celsius, and perhaps over 60 degrees Celsius. I would not become concerned until you reach the upper 60s. Although most processors can sustain a temperature above 70 degrees Celsius, you usually want some breathing room.

GPUs also often idle between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius, but can shoot up significantly under load. I would not become overly concerned until the GPU starts to read above 90 degrees Celsius. If your GPU seems to be providing a very high temperature reading, look out for artifacts and graphics corruption while playing games or watching video. If the GPU is truly overheating, these are the first symptoms. You might want to try a stress test like Furmark to help pinpoint possible glitches.

Other components, such as the hard drive, should generally stay below 50 degrees Celsius.

What to do About High Temperatures?

Hopefully, learning how to monitor your laptop temperature has simply given you peace of mind. But if you found that your laptop is running hot, you need to figure out why, and what you can do about it.

Environmental factors are the number one reason for high laptop temperatures. I do not have air conditioning in my apartment, since it rarely becomes very hot where I live. But for one or two weeks every summer the temperatures go above 90, and it becomes very warm inside. On these days, the temperature of both my laptop and my desktop computers become higher than I’m comfortable with. Since the apartment is so warm, there’s no cool air for my computers to take in. Once they’re hot, they stay hot.

Obviously, this is an obvious case. You can run into similar problems if you’re using your laptop near space heater, for example. Blankets and other insulating materials are another common environmental factor. Many people use their laptops while in bed. Doing so will push your laptop’s cooling to the limit.

If your laptop is still overheating in a cool environment on a flat table or desk, the cooling system may have failed, or be turned off. Enter your laptop’s BIOS to see if the fan settings have somehow been changed. If that doesn’t solve the problem, it may be time to call customer service. Laptop cooling systems are not designed to be user serviceable, and I don’t recommend that you try to change a fan or apply additional thermal paste.

Conclusion

Failure of a laptop’s cooling can sound it’s death knell, particularly if it’s out of warranty. Most problems, however, can be solved by understanding the issue and taking steps to address what might be causing the laptop to overheat. Indeed, many users who feel their laptop is abnormally warm don’t have a problem at all. It is normal for a laptop to run warm if it performing complex tasks, so check the internal temperatures before becoming too concerned.

If you’ve owned more a laptop, and you’ve used their portability often, you may have noticed that the battery life tends to degrade over time. A laptop that starts off with four hours of battery life may end up with only three at the end of the year. As time passes, the battery becomes nearly unusable, holding a mere fraction of its original charge.

Battery degradation is an inevitable result of battery use. Although a great battery can last for many years, even the most well cared for battery will eventually lose its ability to hold a charge. Proper laptop battery care has a huge impact on how long your battery lasts, however.

How do you treat your battery right? Read on to find out.

Disconnect Your Battery When Plugged In

The batteries in laptops are sensitive to heat. Excessively high temperatures will cause a battery to age more quickly than normal. Laptops themselves are often quite warm, particularly when they’re plugged into a wall socket and given free reign to use all of their processing power. If your battery is fully charged, it will be gaining no benefit from being plugged in while you’re connected to a wall socket.

In addition, its hard to be quite sure how your laptop is charging your battery when it is at 100%. Ideally the battery should not be sent any more current; however, there’s no way of knowing if the battery is being left on its own or is being sent a battery-life-killing trickle charge.

Store Your Battery Properly

Surprisingly, laptop battery care doesn’t just mean keeping an eye on while it is in your laptop. If you remove your laptop’s battery to preserve it during a period of extended desktop use, or your merely need to store your laptop and/or battery because you do not need it for some time, you need to pay attention to how your store your battery.

The number one rule of proper laptop battery care is to NEVER store your battery in a hot place. Not the attic, not the closet that never gets air conditioning, and most certainly not your car or a storage unit that isn’t climate controlled. Cool temperatures are less of a concern, although you can damage a battery if you place it temperatures well below zero. Although these tips are most critical during long-term storage, the best laptop battery care will pay attention to them at all times. For example, leaving your laptop in your backpack in your car during a hot summer’s day will, over time, damage the battery.

Also, charge level is a factor during long-term storage. Apple recommends that its batteries be stored at a 50% charge level, while many other manufacturers recommend 40%. A battery that is completely discharged runs a small risk of becoming impossible to recharge if left that way long enough. A battery at full charge, on the other hand, will tend to lose storage capacity if stored at full charge for a long period of time.

Don’t Use Your Laptop in Bed

This is the heat issue again. Your bed, your couch, or even your pants can serve as an insulating material that increases the temperatures inside a laptop. This can damage your battery’s storage capacity over time, as well as cause damage to the laptop components themselves.

Although the lap desks may seem silly, they’re not without purpose. Proper laptop battery care asks that users always place their laptop on a flat, cool surface. This ensures that air continues to flow normally through the laptop and temperatures are kept as low as possible.

Cycle Your Battery Frequently

Most batteries in laptops have a very unusual usage cycle. They’re often partially discharged and then fully or partially recharged, and rarely are allowed to reach a fully discharged state.

The problem with this is that batteries – or at least, the batteries in laptops – do not have a fuel gauge inside of them. The battery life is judged via a digital gauge, which makes its best guess based on the information it knows about the laptops previous charge and discharge cycles. If you do not fully discharge a battery on occasion, the digital gauge will lose its accuracy. This can cause the a perceived sudden drop in battery life if the gauge is over-estimating the remaining charge, or it can cause a perceived loss in battery capacity if the digital gauge is under-estimating the remaining charge.

You don’t need to cycle your battery every day or every time you use it. I recommend doing it once a month. Cycling your battery does not impact battery capacity directly, but it can prevent you from mis-judging a battery’s wear. In one instance, I nearly threw out a battery because I’d forgotten to cycle it. When I remembered and did so, I discovered that the battery actually had an additional hour of juice in it. The poor reading I received from that laptop was an error caused by over a year of use without a full discharge cycle.

Conclusion

The main point you should take away from this laptop battery care tutorial is simple. Heat kills batteries. Heat from your laptop, heat from a warm summer’s day, heat from a blanket’s insulation – it doesn’t matter. Extreme temperatures can really chew through a battery, causing an noticeable drop in battery capacity in as little as a year.

Proper laptop battery care means keeping your battery away from heat. It also means cycling your battery to keep an eye on its true capacity and storing your battery if you do not plan to use it for long periods of time. Eventually, a battery will die no matter what you do, particularly if you use it frequently. But proper laptop battery care can mean the difference between a battery that needs to be replaced within a year and a battery that lasts three years or more.

The last decade as throughly transformed PC gaming. On the other hand, exclusive AAA releases are rarer than they used to be, and hardcore gamers are feeling abandoned. On the other, casual and mainstream gamers have turned in droves to titles like World of Warcraft, which offer a gaming experience unique to the PC. Game like WoW have, as part of their mass-market appeal, forgone cutting-edge graphics in favor of more stylized but technically simple graphics that can run on more computers.

Still, casual gamers must deal with broad spectrum of hardware available. One of the most common questions is “Will the Intel HD graphics card work with WoW?” Intel is technically the world’s biggest graphics chip maker, as they place Intel HD Graphics into all of their new computers. They’re particularly common in laptops because of their low power draw.

So, can Intel HD graphics run WoW?

The short answer is – Yes.

But as always, there is more to it than that.

What is Intel HD Graphics?

Intel has been shipping integrated graphics processors (IGPs) with desktops and laptops using their processors for years, but it’s only recently that Intel started using the “Intel HD” brand name. The first Intel IGPs given the Intel HD name shipped with the Clarkdale line of Core processors, known to most people as Core i3 and Core i5 (and a few Core i7s also ended up with this technology). Previously, Intel’s call its IGPs by the name Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA).

The decision to switch to Intel HD Graphics was not arbitrary. Prior to Intel HD Graphics, all IGPs were part of the motherboard chipset. The first incarnation of Intel HD Graphics placed them onto the processor die instead, as well as updated the architecture to improve performance. The number of shader processors, for example, was bumped from 10 to 12, and the maximum clock speed available was bumped from 800 MHz to 900 MHz. These changes were serious, so Intel changed the name as well.

Performance increased substantially because of these improvements. Although still very slow when compared directly to any discrete GPU of similar vintage, it is at least possible to run games like World of Warcraft at acceptable framerates (30 FPS and above), provided that you’re willing bump the details settings down. The same holds true for many other games that were released a few years back. For example, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Dragon Age: Origins should run at low detail settings.

Intel HD Graphics 2000/3000

While Intel HD Graphics are a big improvement over GMA, they’re still the bare minimum required in most games. Not satisfied to stop there, Intel has released yet another significant revision with its latest line of Core processors

Although still known by the name of Intel HD Graphics, the latest versions have the 2000 or 3000 suffixes attached. There is one major difference between them, and that’s the number of shader processors – the 2000 has 6 and the 3000 has 12. Otherwise, they’re the same.

Intel HD Graphics 2000  has performance similar to the Intel HD Graphics shipping on the previous generation of Intel processors. That’s surprising only because it actually manages to keep up with its predecessor – it’s doing about the same amount of work with half the shader processors. Intel HD Graphics 2000 remains capable of playing World of Warcraft, but not at high resolutions and detail settings.

The Intel HD Graphics 3000, however, is much more interesting. This part actually offers performance on par with some entry-level discrete GPUs and is capable of achieving almost 60 FPS in World of Warcraft if you have the detail settings turned to fair and are playing are a resolution 0f 1024×768. Even at the more common laptop resolution of 1366×768, the game remains playable at this level of detail.

What if I have GMA?

If you have a Core 2 Duo processor in your desktop or laptop, you don’t have Intel HD Graphics. You instead have the older GMA, and it’s much slower.

That doesn’t mean playing WoW is impossible, but you’ll be lucky if you clear an average of 20 FPS. That’s playable, but only just barely – and if you enter a high-traffic area like Stormwind the game will likely turn into a slideshow.

Conclusion

So, will the Intel HD Graphics work with World of Warcraft?

Yes, they will. They’ll also work with other relatively recent games. Even newer titles like Rift and Starcraft 2 are playable on Intel HD Graphics if you keep the detail settings low. You should not expect to play any modern 3D game at 1080p resolution on Intel HD Graphics – even the new 3000 incarnation. But if your expectations are realistic, you should not have a problem.

It’s easy to get caught up in the love for ARM. If you read magazines or sites that focus on smartphones, you’re likely lead to believe that ARM processors are the poster-child of power efficiency. Nothing is impossible with this wonderful, easily licensed instruction set. While Intel is soldiering on with its old-fashioned x86 based processors, ARM is pushing forward, making revolutionary products like smartphones and tablets possible.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this were true? Unfortunately, as often is the case, reality is bit harsher than the hype – and HTC’s new Thunderbolt smartphone is the perfect example of a problem that smartphones, and the ARM processors within them, are already struggling with.

That problem is the battery. Just ask any HTC Thunderbolt owner about their battery life issues. When used in an area that supports 4G LTE the Thunderbolt’s battery can be drained from 100% to zero by just a couple hours of constant Internet use. Obviously, that’s makes 4G LTE of extremely questionable use. Many people would likely prefer the slower speeds if it means more reasonable battery life, and some users are looking into ways to turn off the 4G LTE altogether (the Thunderbolt doesn’t have that option baked in, for reasons I can’t imagine).

Bashing HTC over this issue is easy, but it also misses the larger scope of the problem. As people look at smartphones more like mobile computers, they’re going to use them in new and different ways. This means not only constant web surfing and frequent downloads but also a demand for more powerful hardware. This summer will be the summer of the dual-core phone, and quad-core ARM processors are already being developed.

This new hardware isn’t without a power cost, however. The rule of thumb with processors is this: if you increase the clock speed of a processor, or increase its size (by adding more cores), you increase its power draw. There are ways to combat the increased power draw, but ultimately it’s a losing battle. For example, a 100 Mhz Pentium Processor had a TDP of 10 watts. Intel’s recent Core i3-530, on the other hand, has a power draw of 73 watts. The Core i3 offers much more performance per watt, as it is literally hundreds of times quicker than the Pentium. But that doesn’t change the fact that the TDP has risen by 63 watts.

An increase in the power draw wouldn’t be a problem for smartphones if battery technology was improving by leaps and bounds. But it isn’t. While processors become faster with every passing year, battery engineers are satisfied if they can eek another 10% out of an existing design.

Without a breakthrough, it seems likely that smartphones are going to run into a battery power wall, beyond which they will have difficulty breaking. A smartphone is not a large device, after all; the 4.3 inch models currently available or likely the largest the market will tolerate. This seriously hinders the size of the battery that will fit into the device, and puts smartphone engineers in a nasty spot.

Again, the Thunderbolt provides a great example. It’s not a small device by any measure; it’s big, thick, and heavy, partially because of the need to house a 1400 mAh battery. Yet that battery simply is insufficient when the HTC Thunderbolt makes use of 4G LTE. A larger battery would help. So would a more efficient processor, or display, or operating system. But HTC, and everyone else, is still dealing with the reality that a phone can only be so large before consumers turn up their noses at it, and that in turn means the battery can only be so large.

ARM, x86, or fairy dust; it really doesn’t matter what you have in your phone. At some point, a more powerful processor will require more power consumption. The Thunderbolt is likely just the first victim of this reality.

Finding the best laptop under 500 bucks can be difficult. Finding a laptop to buy isn’t hard to do; finding a laptop that’s actually worth your money is the challenge. Many of the laptops under 500 dollars are budget models cobbled together from older components and whatever laptop chassis the vendor has on hand. Performance and battery life are often sacrificed in the name of a low price – and that’s real shame, because there are some great laptops that fit this budget. So, let’s take at look at some great candidates for the title of best laptop under 500 bucks.

ASUS Eee PC 1215N

A personal favorite of mine, the ASUS Eee PC 1215N is a Atom-based netbook with some spice throw in; specifically, Nvidia Ion discrete graphics. Although Atom is generally very quick, the ASUS Eee PC 1215N has a dual-core variant of the netbook processor. Combine that with the quick Nvidia graphics and you have a surprisingly fast small laptop.

The Eee PC 1215N is still a netbook, though, and that means it has great battery life. Six hours should be expected from moderate real-world usage with Wi-Fi on. If you treat the battery more delicately, you could squeeze eight hours or more out of this machine. Plus, the laptop has a great keyboard, a big touchpad, and decent screen.

You can find the ASUS Eee PC 1215N at Amazon.com for about $485.

Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5134

A rather unique laptop, the Toshiba Satellite C655D is effectively a netbook with a 15.6″ display. It is equipped with a single-core AMD E-240 APU that has processor performance roughly on par with a single-core Intel Atom, but graphics performance that is equivalent to a low-end discrete GPU. This combination has limitations, and this is not the laptop to buy if you want cutting-edge performance.

Placing a low-power netbook processor into a big chassis has advantages, however. This laptop is extremely quiet, never warms noticeably, and has a decent display that’s easy on the eyes. Plus, because the processor sips power, you can expect over 4 hours of real-world battery life despite the large display.

The Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5134 can be found on Amazon.com for about $370.

Dell Inspiron M5030 2800B3D

The Dell Inspiron M5030 2800B3D could serve as the perfect laptop for secret government agents. Clad in nothing but black, and having few distinguishing marks of any kind, this laptop won’t attract much attention based on looks. Once you consider the hardware, however, the Dell Inspiron M5030 makes a lot of sense.

A 2.3 Ghz AMD Athlon II dual-core processor powers this laptop, and it’s paired with Radeon 4250 integrated graphics. This duo provides excellent performance for a budget laptop, and the four gigabytes of RAM provide plenty of room for multi-tasking. On the downside, there isn’t room in a $500 budget for a fast processor AND a big battery, so the Dell Inspirion M5030 mediocre battery life of between 2 and 3 hours.

Buy the Dell Inspirion M5030 2800B3D for $470 at Amazon.com.

Conclusion

All of three of these laptops are great, but which one is the best laptop under 500 bucks?

Overall, I think the honor goes to the Toshiba Satellite C655D. The ASUS Eee PC 1215N is an amazing netbook, but it’s small size makes it a bit uncomfortable for use as your only computer. The Dell Inspirion M5030, on the other hand, is substantially quicker – but the battery life makes travel difficult.

Depending on your needs, you may find the other two options serve you better. But the rock-bottom price of the Toshiba Satellite C655D-S5134 makes it difficult to beat.