California could soon become the first US state to pass laws limiting the power consumption of computers sold within its borders. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the California Energy Commission (CEC) wants to, by the end of the year, require PCs and monitors sold in Cali to use way less energy. The report cites a …

The wheels have slowed on the distie juggernaut Exertis and mobile computing is to blame, Irish parent DCC confirmed today. In a trading update for Q1 covering the three months ended 30 June, DCC Technology which comprises Brit subs Exertis and Gem, revealed things aren’t quite going to plan. “Trading in DCC Technology was …

Apple has updated its MacBook Pro and iMac lines with improved hardware specs and sharper displays, and the usual four-figure price tag. "The response to the new MacBook and updated 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display has been amazing, and today we are thrilled to bring the new Force Touch trackpad, faster flash storage, …

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. …

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 …

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. …

French tablet, smartphone, soon-to-be-smartwatch, and "connected objects" maker Archos has announced an Android-powered netbook that will be available this June for the low, low price of "under $170" – and yes, as you might have guessed, that means $169.99. Archos ArcBook Modesty can be a virtue (click to enlarge) "Archos …

Dell has introduced an entry-level mobile workstation, the 15.6-inch Precision M2800, to fill the gap between business-level laptops and top-of-the-line mobile workstations such as the 17.3-inch Dell Precision M6800 and HP ZBook 17 Mobile Workstation. Dell Precision M2800 mobile workstation Yes, it's a Core i5 or i7 laptop …

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 …

It is a momentus day for ailing PC maker Acer: founder and former CEO Stan Shih has agreed to exit retirement, albeit temporarily, to try to dig the business out of a deepening hole. Just weeks after the resignation of CEO and chairman JT Wang - the man that replaced Shih in 2005 - the board at the Taiwanese firm elected the …

Review It’s true, as Rik Myslewski pointed out recently, that the two new MacBook Pro with Retina Display models aren’t drastically different from their predecessors. However, the eye-gasmic, 2880 x 1800 hi-res screen of the original 15-inch model helped it to win El Reg’s Laptop of the Year for 2012, so you could argue that it ain’t …

Thought the UK PC market was like a dead mule? Wrong. There's life yet in those age old desktop and notebook nags, according to distributor shipment data. Numbers from venerable analyst Context, the gentle purveyor of sales-out figures - the stuff that users are actually buying - showed Q3 was not bad, not bad at all. The …

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 …

If you read my comparison of the Asus C7 and Samsung Series 3 Chromebooks, you may well have come away thinking: "All well and good, but can I have something with a bigger screen for the same sort of money?" Now, thanks to HP, the answer to that question is yes. The latest entry into the Chromebook steeplechase is powered by …

AMD has released its latest A-Series laptop chips, codenamed "Richland" and replacing the "Trinity" chips released last spring. Is it a giant leap from Trinity to Richland? Well, no, but the new chips are clearly a step forward – if, in some cases, only incrementally. Before we dig into Richland's upgrades, a refresher course …

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 …

Bow down before the might of the tablet. If you were unsure who is the master now, look no further than numbers from the UK wing of GfK, a market watcher which tracks over-the-counter sales. According to its data, more tablets were sold in December 2012 - no doubt as Christmas prezzies - than notebooks purchased in October, …

It’s hard to see quite who Eurocom thinks will buy its Monster W110ER “gaming netbook”. Surely any gamer sufficiently hardcore to feel the need to be able to take a high-end gaming system around with them - and the W110ER is a high-end machine - will want to play on a larger screen than an 11.6-incher, especially when it’s …