Articles about Notebook
Alan Turing's LOST NOTEBOOK goes under the hammer
Auction house Bonhams says it has a lost Alan Turing notebook for sale.
The auctioneer says the notebook “dates from 1942 when he was working at Bletchley Park to break the German Enigma Code.” The 56 hand-written pages reportedly includes “... works on the foundations of mathematical notation and computer science”.
The …
Notebook news: Dell does density, but Lenovo's a lot lighter
CES 2015
January is here and CES is in full swing. That means a fresh crop of new devices, including a refresh to notebook lines for most companies.
Two of the more interesting notebooks to have appeared this week are new models from Dell and Lenovo that both look to break new ground in the design space.
From Dell, the XPS 13 boasts a …
Retailers toast welcome return of Back2School notebook biz
The Back2School sales fest that deserted the retail notebook industry a year ago has returned with a bang… sort of.
According to distie sales numbers crunched by Context, shipments across Western European wholesalers jumped 12.5 per cent in the first two months of Q3 and were up 17.5 per cent in the UK.
The sales are flattered …
FOCUS! 7680 x 4320 notebook and fondleslab screens are coming
An update to the DisplayPort standard is promising to bring about a new line of 8k screens for notebooks, tablets and all-in-ones.
The Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has published a new standard for embedded display hardware. The eDP 1.4a update will support connections of 8.1Gbps per-channel and allow for …
Notebook sales to surge, says notebook seller
Global notebook sales may be in the crapper, but according to the chairman of the company manufacturing notebooks for Acer, Dell, Toshiba, HP, and others, the bluebird of sales-revenue happiness will sing again in the second half of this year.
On Thursday, Compal Electronics chairman Ray Chen told an investors conference that …
Lenovo posts an INCREASE in desktop PC and notebook sales
Lenovo, the world’s largest maker of PCs, saw its profits leap 24 per cent this spring.
The China-based manufacturer reported first-quarter profits of $211m, compared to $170m for the year before.
That was from revenue that jumped 18 per cent to £10.39bn. Earnings per share for the giant were up, from $1.65 to $2.03 for the …
Son of Stan made president of Acer's cloud and notebook biz
Stan Shih, the man who founded Acer and returned late last year to stem the losses and rebuild the organisation has elevated his eldest son to overlord of slabs and cloudy wares.
A company spokesman confirmed that as part of a wider management re-shuffle, Maverick Shih (for it is he) is now president of the Build Your Own Cloud …
Global notebook sales tank in recent months
Global notebook shipments took it on the chin in the third quarter of this year, with Acer, Asustek, and Toshiba seeing sales plunge by 15 to 25 per cent when compared to the previous quarter.
One notebook vendor, however, bucked the trend, with sales of its notebooks climbing nearly 30 per cent during the same period. Care to …
AMD's new Carrizo: The x86 notebook processor that thinks it's a GPU
ISSCC 2015
AMD claims its new x86-powered Carrizo system-on-chip for notebooks has more transistors and yet consumes less power than the previous generation Kaveri – and has shown off some of its engineering to help back that up.
In time for this week's International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week, AMD has …
Seagate takes 7.2k notebook drives out back - and shoots them
A momentous moment: Seagate will end production of its Momentus 7,200rpm 2.5in disk-only drives.
The storage giant will stop making the gear by the end of this year to focus on drives mixed with flash memory, although it will continue to pump out 5,400rpm disks for cheap laptops.
“We are going stop building our notebook 7, …
Death knell for Windows with Bing, licences carved up
Microsoft is effectively killing off the Windows with Bing notebook market less than a year after it was created.
The low-cost portables released last summer were Redmond’s competitive response to Google’s Chromebook, giving PC OEMs the Windows OS licence at a heavily discounted rate, and consumers responded positively.
However …
Notebook makers turn to Android in face of Windows woes
Dissatisfied with sales of Windows 8 notebook and tablets, major PC vendors have reportedly joined Intel in a new push to launch convertible fondleslabs based on Google's Android OS.
So sayeth the supply-chain sleuths at Taiwanese tech news site DigiTimes, which cites anonymous sources inside the notebook vendors.
Chinese …
Gamers reach for BFG after Nvidia turns back the overclock
Laptop-wielding gamers are up in arms over a driver update from Nvidia, which disables overclocking in the company's gaming-laptop-targeted GeForce GTX 900M devices.
Those who installed the drivers had their clock settings wiped, and according to TechPowerUp, even third-party overclocking tools have been blocked.
The change was …
Dell intros '14in screen, 13in body' notebook
Dell took the wraps of its compact, "14in display in a 13in body" Inspiron 14z notebook at the IFA consumer electronics show in September, but now it has formally launched the XPS 14z, a skinnier version.
Dell XPS 14z 14in notebook
Specs for the 23mm-thick, 2kg Dell XPS 14z are what you'd expect: second-gen Intel Core i5 and …
Asus VivoBook S200 11.6in touchscreen notebook review
A few months ago I tried a preview of Windows 8 on my 11.6in HP Pavilion and frankly it made about as much sense as a vegetarian bacon sandwich. Why? Because, without a touch screen the Windows 8 Metro Modern UI lacks a crucial ingredient. Armed with only a keyboard and mouse, facing a wall of tiles just gets in the way.
Asus …
Samsung abandons Chromebooks, laptops, PCs in Europe
Samsung will hit the eject button on its the European PC business after deciding its low sales volumes simply aren't worth the cost.
The move will not surprise industry types as earlier this year the chaebol exited the entry-level notebook segment in the Euro region – to concentrate on premium portables including Ultrabooks. …
Notebook makers hit hard in pre-Ivy Bridge lull
Taiwanese ODMs which produce notebooks for some of the world’s biggest brands including Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo are set to see shipments fall by up to 20 per cent in April as the transition to Intel’s much anticipated Ivy Bridge platform takes hold.
The new chips are set to land later in the month, but large scale shipments of …
Asus NV550JV 15.6in full HD notebook - the one we didn't have to send back
Review
When Asus sent the N550 to Vulture Central, I sent it back: the wrong model had been dispatched. Having seen so many tiresome comments following El Reg laptop reviews along the lines of “when I saw it was only 1366 x 768 I stopped reading”, I wasn’t going to proceed with this spec - and with more than these moans as …
Nvidia's screaming new Maxwell GPUs bring 4K gaming to notebooks
Nvidia took wraps off the latest in its line of dedicated notebook GPUs on Tuesday, ones it says can deliver near-desktop performance in a portable form factor.
Like some of the earlier GeForce 800M series, the new GeForce GTX 970M and GeForce GTX 980M cards are based on Nvidia's Maxwell architecture. But while Maxwell was …
HP readies AMD, Intel sub-notebook
HP has updated its 11.6in notebook-not-netbook machine, the dm1.
The new version is specced with a choice of new AMD E-series dual-core 'Zacate' CPUs with on-board GPUs - and discrete Radeon HD graphics chips - or Intel 'Sandy Bridge' second-gen Core i processors, also with on-chip graphics but no discrete GPU too.
HP dm1 11. …
Apple winks at parents: C'mon, get your kid a tweaked Macbook Pro
Apple has updated its MacBook Pro notebook line, adding a slightly faster processor and more memory for the cheapest models.
The company said the update will double the memory for models Apple describes as "entry-level" MacBook Pro Retina screen notebooks. The systems will retain their starting price of $1,299 and will now sport …
Oz carrier Tiger Air takes terror alerts to new heights
If you plan to fly in Australia, at least try to act as if you take the threat of terrorism seriously, or you might get hauled off the plane, handed over to the cops, and banned from an airline.
It's with some incredulity that The Register reports that one Oliver Buckworth, who doodled that “In a land of melting ice-cream, sandy …
Samsung’s SUPER-speedy SSD is a real power-sipper
Samsung’s latest small form factor PCIe flash drive shunts data at up to 2.15GB/sec, making it a right speedy little critter.
It’s also much more power-efficient, using its “L1.2 low power standby mode (which allows all high-speed circuits to be turned off when a PC is on sleeping or in hibernation) as defined by PCI-SIG (the …
NASA halts 'naut flogging Apollo 13 notebook
NASA has sparred with one of its most famous astronauts over the sale of a checklist of life-saving calculations.
Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, led the ruptured space vessel to a safe return landing on Earth in 1970 - but now the 83-year-old has right royally angered his old bosses by auctioning off the …
Notebook makers cautious about Ultrabooks
Notebook makers are playing it cautious with Ultrabooks, it seems, limiting shipments to 50,000 or less as the gauge demand through the remainder of 2011.
So say manufacturer moles cited by DigiTimes. Their caution is explained by their experience with past Intel notebook initiatives, most notably for so-called "CULV" - Consumer …
Samsung Ativ Book 9 Lite: 13.3-inch slimline notebook with a secret
Review
It seems an odd paradox that the more a company tries to hide something, the more publicity it attracts. Apple certainly uses this notion to good effect, knowing that it can't keep those secrets indefinitely, but also knowing that when it eventually lifts its kimono, what's new in the garden customarily causes a commotion among …
Samsung goes super slim with Notebook 9 series
Samsung released a super-slim notebook today in a bid to compete with Apple's MacBook Air. The company also said it will increase laptop sales by 80 per cent in 2011.
The 13.3in Notebook 9 Series is 16mm thick and weighs 1.3kg. It runs on a Core i5 processor and comes with a seven-hour battery life.
Samsung says it will cost ₩2 …
Asus N56VM 15.6in notebook review
A good journalist always tries to avoid clichés, but sometimes when I’m writing laptop reviews I do find myself reaching for a few stock phrases, such as: the speakers are crap. Imagine my relief, then, to discover that the speakers on the Asus N56VM don't fall into the crap category, but are actually rather good, no doubt …
Samsung Series 3 NP300E5A 15in notebook
Review
Samsung’s NP300E5A-A01DX is the Core i3 model in its Series 3 family of notebooks and is priced accordingly, at around £400. Unashamedly aimed at the cost conscious end of market it has plenty of company including Acer’s Aspire 5749 that Reg Hardware reviewed late last year.
Samsung Series 3 NP300E5A 15in notebook Samsung …
Lenovo ups in-house notebook production
It could be sweaty palm time for Taiwan’s ODMs after reports emerged that Lenovo is set to step up in-house production of its notebooks and PCs.
The Chinese hardware giant is planning new production lines in Japan and Brazil as well as at its LCFC joint venture with Compal Electronics in northern China, Digitimes reported. …
Dell Inspiron 17R SE 17in Ivy Bridge notebook review
I’m currently mourning the demise of the 18-inch Dell XPS that I’ve been using as a TV/DVD player in my bedroom for the last five years. Hardly anyone seems to make 18-inch laptops anymore, but Dell has come up with a good alternative in the form of the new Inspiron 17R SE (Special Edition).
Dell Inspiron 17R 17in Core i7 …
Intel Skylake processor release date slipping: reports
Reports in Asia are suggesting that Intel's Skylake processors may be delayed, in spite of Chipzilla's September promise it would ship on time.
At IDF 2014, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said Skylake would land in devs' hands early 2015 ahead of shipping “by the second half of the year”.
If you take that to mean early in the third …
Storage snippets slither forth from San Fran analyst shindig
Western Digital is making more than five times as much money from flash than Seagate: $590m/quarter compared to $100m.
This came out at a Stifel Nicolaus Tech, Internet and Media conference held last week in San Francisco, where vendors gave presentations and answered questions.
Other highlights were:
Seagate thinks there …
Acer to deliver ARM notebook within nine days
Acer needs to hurry. Apparently, it's going to launch the first ever notebook based on an Nvidia Tegra 2 chip this month, and there only nine more days to go.
The - we suppose we have to say "smartbook", the moniker once given to ARM-based netbooks but sadly much out of favour in these tablet-centric times - will run Android 3.2 …
Acer TravelMate Timeline X TM8481T 14in Core i5 notebook
Review
As the name might suggest, Acer’s TravelMate family of notebooks are aimed at the mobile users, with an eye on business bods after something a little more stylish than the standard issue grey slab. A new addition to the range is the Timeline X TM8481T with just a couple of variants at present.
Acer TravelMate Timeline X TM8481T …
HP Pavilion dv6 15.6in quad-core notebook
Review
CES 2012 Week
Choosing an HP notebook isn’t an easy task, not because they are hard to find - far from it - it’s just the bewildering choice of notebooks you can find in a range. Take the recently refreshed Pavilion dv6-6b series, for example. There are currently a staggering 16 different options in this family alone.
HP …
Dell Latitude E6220 12.5in Core i7 notebook
Review
Dell's Latitude E6220 is a typical workhorse, designed to be solid, dependable and ever so slightly boring. However, Dell is aiming this compact model more at small businesses rather than large organisations. And the increasing numbers of people who, like myself, are self-employed. A touch of style and being just 1in thin and …
Brit enterprises still wolfing down PCs post-XP support death
Tech disties feasted on a relative PC sales banquet in Q2 as businesses and to a lesser extent consumers made a belated dash to rid themselves of systems running on Windows XP.
Abacus stroker Context collated the sale-out figures from wholesalers and found more than 844k desktops, notebook and PC workstations were adopted by UK …
Intel's Centrino notebook platform is 10 years old
Ten years ago, Intel decided notebook computers needed a boost. The technology wasn’t new, but while a fair few mobile workers had portable computers, and some even had modem cards or were using Bluetooth-connected phones to reach the internet, laptops weren’t seen as a truly mobile networkable device.
And so the chip maker …
Notebook price war slams Dell's revenues, slashes profits
A price war at the low-end of the notebook PC market where Dell has chosen not to participate plus a slump in PC sales where it is fighting to win buyers is wreaking havoc on Dell's financials.
In the company's third quarter of fiscal 2013 ended on November 2, consumer mobile PC revenues were down a staggering 30 per cent. The …
Dell XPS 14z 14in Core i5 notebook
Review
Don’t worry, the XPS 14z may be one of Dell’s new "thin and powerful" range, but it doesn’t fit into the superslim Ultrabook category so there’s absolutely no need whatsoever for a gratuitous comparison with Apple's MacBook Air.
Dell XPS 14z 14in notebook
It’s certainly a more stylish affair than the businesslike hardware I’m …
Toshiba: We'll STAY in PCs! We'll just axe a few bods
Toshiba is the latest vendor to sound the warning alarm that all is not well in its PC business across Europe after scaling back regional offices and axing swathes of the workforce – just as the green shoots emerge.
The UK and France ops, which have signed up as subsidiaries of the TEG corporation, will act purely as sales and …
Superfish: Lenovo? More like Lolnono – until they get real on privacy
Sysadmin blog
Everyone and their dog has an opinion on the Superfish debacle which has struck once mighty Lolnovo Lenovo a potentially critical public relations blow. The Register's own Ian Thomson had little nice to say on the subject, and both social media and anecdotal experience indicate to me that his feelings are reasonably widespread. …
WD embiggens Scorpio Black notebook drive
Western Digital has increased its fast notebook drive's capacity by half to reach 750GB, the same as Seagate's fast notebook drive.
WD's Scorpio Black 2.5-inch drive spins at 7,200rpm and has a 16MB cache and 3Gbit/s SATA interface. It is now also an Advanced Format Drive. Seagate's equivalent Momentus 7200 had its 750 gig …
You like that E Ink book, huh? How about an E Ink HOUSE
CES 2015
Digital paper maker E Ink is looking to take its business into a new field – architecture.
The company, best known for its ebook screens, demonstrated at CES in Las Vegas a new tile material that would allow buildings to change color.
E Ink tile close Each tile is comprised of smaller color-changing pieces
The tiles, made …
Samsung RV720 17in Core i3 notebook
Review
Desktop replacement laptops are a genre of portable computer apparently intent on chuntering on forever without ever truly succeeding or dying. By nature, they tend not to be petite, and Samsung's RV720 is no exception.
Samsung RV720 17in Core i3 notebook Desktop replacement on the cheap: Samsung's RV720
Weighing around 2.7kg …
Samsung Series 7 Chonos 15.6in Core i7 notebook
Review
Surely someone is having a laugh. Having read nothing but five-star reviews of this luxury notebook on other sources, I find myself surprised to be staring at a four-star product on my desk. Four stars is pretty good, you know, but that’s one less than five.
Samsung Series 7 Chonos Intel Core i7 notebook All in good time: …
'Twas the night before Christmas, and Rossi was OUT!
Beleaguered notebook maker Acer has split with its EMEA president after he'd spent less than six months in the role.
There’s never a better time to swap out top level execs than just before Chrimbo - or any other major holiday for that matter - and the Taiwanese firm did just this, parting company with Luca Rossi on 23 December …
Pssst. Want to buy a timeshare in the clouds?
Comment
Three questions: is baby turning into a monster? Are we desktop/notebook/tablet/smartphone users becoming the near-as-dammit slaves of social media and retail monopolists? Are these monopolists destroying jobs and impoverishing people faster than networked smart device and software technologies are creating jobs and enriching …
Eurocom Panther 2.0 Core i7, SLI notebook
Review
While currently every notebook manufacturer seems to offering the thinnest, lightest and easiest to carry around notebook ever, in a bizarre way, it’s quite refreshing to find a company wandering off message and offering notebooks at the other end of the scale. Enter Eurocom’s Panther 2.0, the heaviest, most amazingly specified …
