Laptop Reliability Ratings: Which Laptop is Really Most Reliable?

by Matthew Smith on May 7, 2010

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When I wrote the Smidgen PC laptop brand guide one of the issues which I touched upon was the overall reliability of the laptop brands as based on several sources of data. Today I want to take a closer look at overall laptop reliability in order to answer some common but typically unanswered questions. The main source [...]

The Best Laptop Brands: A Comprehensive Review

by Matthew Smith on April 23, 2010

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What’s the best laptop brand? That is actually a very hard question to answer. While there are many detailed reviews of laptops, these can only cover the most immediate questions such as performance and design. Other important issues, like customer service and reliability, cannot be covered in the scope of a product review. This makes [...]

Laptop Battery Care: A Tutorial

by Matthew Smith 04.13.2011

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 [...]

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Will Intel HD Graphics Work with World of Warcraft – And Other Games?

by Matthew Smith 04.09.2011

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 [...]

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The Best Pink Laptops

by Matthew Smith 04.06.2011

Hey, there. If you’re reading this post, you’re probably not part of my regular audience. Come on, you know its true. Most tech geeks are neckbeards who get all excited about cores and gigahertz. If you’re reading this, you’re probably more like my wife, who would prefer most anything in pink if it is available. [...]

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The Best Micro ATX Cases for PCs

by Matthew Smith 03.31.2011

As computers become more powerful, they’re also becoming smaller. That’s the natural result of the fact that you can do more with less; while some users will continue to build gigantic computers with the biggest and baddest components, other people can exchange some of that cutting-edge performance for a small profile. To do that, however, [...]

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The HTC Thunderbolt Battery Life Issue: A Warning for Smartphones to Come

by Matthew Smith 03.27.2011

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 [...]

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What Is The Best Laptop Under 500 Bucks?

by Matthew Smith 03.23.2011

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 [...]

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Hitting the Reset Button: Why Smartphones Are Important

by Matthew Smith 03.21.2011

It’s easy to assume that the technology we use today is used because it is the best option available at any time, but surprisingly, that’s not always the case. The modern personal computer is just one example of an endless array of possible end results; we continue to use it largely because it is familiar [...]

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What’s the Best Laptop Warranty?

by Matthew Smith 03.15.2011

Laptops are a big investment and, as I’ve discussed before in my laptop reliability article, they’re also prone to failure. Although about 70% of laptops will survive past their third year, a 30% three-year failure rate is still quite high on a product that often costs over $500, particularly when you consider the fact that [...]

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Rounding Up The Best AMD Fusion laptops

by Matthew Smith 03.11.2011

AMD’s Fusion processors are now widely available in a number of laptops. The new APU combines the power of a netbook processor with Radeon graphics, creating a well-balanced product that offers better all-around performance than Intel’s Atom processors and their anemic IGP. Indeed, the performance gap is sometimes massive, particularly in games and HD video [...]

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Motorola Xoom 3G Pricing – Thank You Sir May I Have Another…Gigabyte?

by Matthew Smith 02.22.2011

Americans often believe that our country is at the forefront of information technology. And perhaps 20 years ago, that was true. But today, America has become a digital backwater in many areas, and the latest example is the Motorola Xoom’s 3G Pricing plan via Verizon. Buckle up, kids, cause this one’s a doozy. $20 for [...]

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