For the first time in many years, I was in the market for a new personal laptop You would think that buying a laptop to run Linux on would be easy, but with recent changes it’s more difficult than it has to be. With some research, and a few preparation steps done ahead of time, it won’t be a huge challenge.
Lately consumers have been shunning the traditional desktop PC for laptops. Today’s mobile processors are powerful enough to meet the average user’s needs, and now power-sipping mobile chips are regularly showing up in PCs sold by companies such as Lenovo, Apple, and Dell. Is there still room for desktop CPUs in computers you won’t hide under the table?
Judie spent some hands-on time with the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 HD+. The tablet offers a Full HD display, a quad core processor, an 8MP front camera, 2GB of storage and runs Android 4.3. I have the original Yoga tablet and love the design. Check out Judie’s pictures and see if this should be your next tablet.
Judie got some hands-on time with the new HP Pavilion x360 laptop. Thanks to a 360-degree hinge this 11.6″ hybrid is able to switch between clamshell and tablet mode. No, this isn’t deja vu but you have seen this before. Priced starting at $399 it has Beats Audio and surprisingly good specs for the price. Check out the image gallery.
Lenovo’s Yoga line has been a huge hit, and the company is keeping the momentum at Mobile World Conference with a new Yoga Tablet 10 HD+ Android tablet. These will have an updated HD screen, plus a number of proprietary apps called DOit, SHAREit, and SECUREit to add productivity. These start at $350 this April, watch Lenovo’s site for more!
Today we got confirmation that Google sold its money-losing Motorola handset business for about $3 billion to Lenovo. Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion a couple of years ago, then sold off the set-top box unit and now the handset division. With the sale Google retains many of the valuable Motorola patents it sought initially.
I’m taking my first trip with the Lenovo Yoga I recently reviewed. The Yoga’s only caveat is that it has just 128GB of storage. Fortunately SanDisk’s Cruzer Fit, which Dan recently wrote about, is a perfect solution; it packs 64GB inside its tiny body, while SanDisk’s Cruzer Force also holds 64GB. Guess which one is now installed inside my Yoga?
As much as I like using touchscreen tablets, there are times when a keyboard simply makes life easier. And as much as I enjoy using mobile operating systems optimized for speed and convenient apps, there are times when they fall short. Is it possible to have it all — portability, a touchscreen, speed, apps, a keyboard, and a full OS?
While waiting for a Lenovo video to load, this hilarious Poo-Pourri ad popped up. Usually I click SKIP as soon as the option is available, but not this time. Maybe it’s the 5th grader still trapped inside of me, but this video made me laugh; even funnier is that it’s a product I know works as advertised. Don’t ask; just enjoy.
Lenovo’s Yang Yuanqing just gave $3.25 million of his bonus to 10,000 Lenovo employees. That’s $250,000 more than he gave last year and comes to about a month’s extra pay for many benefitting from his generosity. Don’t hold a benefit for Yang though. Even after his gift he made over $11 million last year. Via The Verge
Over the last couple of years I have reviewed the Hewlett-Packard (HP) Elitebook 8440w and 2540p, declaring them each as a laptop that I would love to be able to keep and use in my daily life, and as the two of the best business laptops I’d ever used. Well, HP has taken everything that made the 2540p and made it better in the form of the Elitebook 2570p! Let’s take a look!
A couple of weeks ago there was a supposed leak found in the header of an Aspyr newsletter pointing to the release of the iPad version of the classic Bioware RPG Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (KotOR for short). Since we don’t do rumors here I just fished through my .Mac mail to see the evidence (I hadn’t noticed it at first), then filed it away under OHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASEOHPLEASE … This morning we got everything but the final official confirmation, with a full review up at gaming site IGN. The review notes that some text is small, moving around…
Lenovo’s Yoga 11S Ultrabook convertible laptop captured a good bit of attention at CES 2013. Now it is available directly from Lenovo or for pre-order at Best Buy. If you are not familiar with the Yoga 11S Ultrabook convertible it is a thin, 11.6” ultrabook that will ship with a Core i3, i5 or i7 third generation Intel processor. That means those purchasing the Yoga 11S can configure the machine that will best serve their needs. What makes the Yoga 11S special is its ability to quickly and easily convert into four different modes. That means the device can serve…
It’s been widely reported over the web that Acer and Asus are pulling out of the netbook market as of today effectively ending the netbook as a viable platform. It says a great deal when Asus, who practically invented the netbook, has said they are done. I write not to bury the netbook but to praise it for what it was: a great and cheap way to get things done on the web. I remember the very first netbook, the Asus EeePC 701. It wasn’t the most powerful thing out there. It had a 900 MHz Celeron, 7 inch screen…
As long as I can recall – since the days when I had an Apple ][+ at least – people have been quick to call out Apple for high prices. For me as a multi-OS person who also happens to like Apple products, it has been a roller-coaster. For a long time in the 80s the utility of Apple ][ and later the Mac made it very much worthwhile – and for some things a complete necessity. Yet there have been many times – like most of the 90s – when the price to performance ratio simply wasn’t there. By…
Skooba Design was Gear Diary’s first advertiser back when Judie first launched the site. They were also the first company to become a Newsletter Underwriter. We tell you that in the interest of full disclosure, but what’s more important is that we really love AND use their stuff. Most recently, we were both taken by the new Skooba Design Laptop Weekender V.3, and are already getting a lot of use out of them. (Read the review here.) Skooba makes great products, and now comes outside confirmation of something that we’ve known for some time: they provide great customer service. Skooba…
For nearly two years I have been like a broken record: I simply never believed the numbers Samsung was supposedly selling in terms of tablets. Worse still, having put out a single unofficial number before switching to ‘percent improvement in shipments’, groups like the IDC and Gartner grabbed the initial number and then just applied the percent increase. This played out again last week in the numbers reported by the IDC showing that Samsung held the #2 tablet slot with 9.6% market share with ~2.4 million units sold. I like the Samsung tablets pretty well and they have created a…
Did you purchase a Lenovo ThinkCentre M70z or M90z All-in-One Computer? Or did you win one of the three that we gave away here on Gear Diary? If so, then you’ll want to pay attention to this recall notice. There are 16,000 M70z and M90z units affected, and the recall is focusing on the power supplies specifically because they can overheat and become a fire hazard! There have been two (world-wide) reports of this happening, and Lenovo is asking that people immediately stop using their desktops until they know for sure whether or not it is one of the affected…
Raw power is irrelevant if the apps running on the device don’t use it efficiently. Intel knows that and is making sure app developers have the tool to not only create great apps but to create great apps that are also highly efficient.
Well this is a bit different… I have seen other forms of live advertising in the past, but Lenovo just took it to a new level. We have all heard of blazing fast computers and internet speeds, but what about typing on top of a car?
We’ll be heading into “CES Unveiled: The Official Press Event of the International CES” shortly. Unveiled is an annual tradition for us and is the first chance to see some of the new items that will be coming in 2012. As the event blurb explains, …see the new year’s products at CES Unveiled with a pre-show look at who will be making news headlines before the show officially opens. Catch all the latest products in one room. Plus, get a sneak peek at the product debuts from our Innovations Design and Engineering Award Honorees. We’ll see some old favorites like…