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 [...]

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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Slimbrowser (Review) – A Feature Filled Free Alternative Web Browser

by Matthew Smith 02.18.2011

Web browsers are tricky. There are a lot of them available besides the big three (those being IE, Chrome and Firefox, of course) but many are lacking. Usually the problem is not bugs or a bad interface, but rather a lack of features that define them from the most popular options. Indeed, many alternative web [...]

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Large-Screen Netbooks: An Upcoming Netbook Trend?

by Matthew Smith 02.14.2011

The term netbook has always been a bit nebulous, but one of the most concrete ways of determining if something is a netbook has been the size. The Atom processor used to power virtually all netbooks has always been found in smaller laptops. That’s not a coincidence, or because of any so-called market reality. The reason [...]

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The 3 Best Touchscreen PCs

by Matthew Smith 02.07.2011

Is touch the way of the future? Partially. I don’t think that the old fashioned keyboard and mouse is going to go anywhere soon, but touch-screens offer an alternative way to interact with our computers that has unique advantages and disadvantages. I wouldn’t want to type a term paper on a touch-screen virtual keyboard, but [...]

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Say Hello to Rift Clerics . NET

by Matthew Smith 01.31.2011

Up until now, Smidgen PC has been my only blog. It’s been humming along nicely, averaging around 15,000 visitors a month. I enjoy it, but I sometimes lack motivation to update this site because it’s heavily intertwined with things that I write about for my various clients. I’ve been thinking about starting a blog connected [...]

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Sandy Bridge Laptop Processors Stun and Amaze

by Matthew Smith 01.28.2011

I’ll let you into a little secret; I’m an AMD fanboy. I like rooting for the underdog, and that’s AMD at the moment. I also think that Intel is a bit of an evil empire; they were bullies back when AMD had truly competitive product, and so now Intel remains an effective monopoly, while AMD [...]

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Still Waiting for the iPad Killers

by Matthew Smith 01.24.2011

CES 2011 was a blast. It was also, however, deeply repetitive of last year and perhaps a bit disappointing, at least in terms of the new technologies shown. The most impressive items were not high-volume consumer products but either hardware, such as the Intel Sandybridge and AMD Fusion chips, or niche concepts, such as Razer’s [...]

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