Technologizer

Dell’s Adamo XPS: Incredibly Thin! Unexpectedly Odd!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Okay, now we know why Dell was being so secretive about its new Adamo XPS laptop: It’s not only remarkably thin (9.99mm) but also uses a design which is unique, as far as I know. The keyboard hinges to the display not at its edge but part way up,so the keyboard is angled upwards. As [...]

5Words: Dell Continues Adamo Tease

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

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Dell, enough Adamo teasing already. Disney Stores mimic Apple Stores. Apple: Snow Leopard loses data. How should iPhones handle multitasking? Blockbuster lands on TiVo boxes. Tim Berners-Lee: // superfluous. iPhone: it’s a car key! Plastic Logic: no color e-reader. Nokia’s Booklet: $299 with subsidy. Best Buy sells PCs aplenty. ________________________ Like 5Words? Subscribe via RSS.

Laptops: Are More Screens Ever Better?

Monday, September 28, 2009

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When it comes to laptop CPU speed, RAM, hard-drive capacity, and USB ports, more is definitely better. With screens, however, the ideal number may well be one. Many inventors have come up with multi-screen laptop designs; few have reached the market and none have been major hits. (Even Microsoft’s mundane and useful-sounding Windows Sideshow technology [...]

Intel Unveils the Mobile Core i7 Processor

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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While I’ve been at DEMOfall in San Diego, Intel has been holding its equally newsworthy Intel Developer Forum conference back in San Francisco. Today’s big announcement was the mobile version of the Core i7 quad-core CPU (code-named Clarksfield),as seen in such new laptops as Toshiba’s latest Qosmio. Laptop Magazine has benchmarked a Core i7 notebook [...]

Toshiba’s Qosmio Gets Blu-Ray

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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Toshiba’s Qosmio is one of those laptops that’s pretty much an all-in-one desktop PC in disguise: With its 18.4-inch screen and beefy specs, it’s more transportable than portable–and with its emphasis on entertainment, it’s like a Windows Media Center you can fold up and move from room to room. The company announced the newest Qosmio model [...]

A Guide to Laptop Accessories, and the Avoidance Thereof

Monday, September 21, 2009

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I’ve guestblogged again over at WePC.com–my latest topic is notebook accessories and my preference for traveling light. I try not to carry many of ‘em and have a preference for ones that are easy to tote. I also admire the thinking behind such innovations as Compaq’s built-in AC adapter, HP’s built-in mouse, and Canon’s built-in [...]

A 20th Anniversary Tribute to a Misunderstood Machine

Sunday, September 20, 2009

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On September 20th 1989, Apple announced its first true portable computer, which it called–logically enough–the Macintosh Portable. And ever since, folks have been tearing it down: It was too big and heavy, the screen was hard to read, and it offered too little for too much money. Whenever anyone starts to list Apple’s worst flops, [...]

Macintosh Portable (1989) vs. MacBook Air (2009)

Sunday, September 20, 2009

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Today, September 20th, marks the twentieth anniversary of the first truly mobile Mac, the Macintosh Portable. (For 1980s computers, all the compact Macs were surprisingly portable–they even sported convenient handles–but they couldn’t run off batteries.) When you hear the Portable mentioned at all these days, it’s mostly to mock its size–rather hefty even by late 1980s [...]

Inside the Macintosh Portable

Sunday, September 20, 2009

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A Misunderstood Machine On September 20th, 1989, Apple released the Macintosh Portable, the first true mobile Mac and a much-maligned machine. It didn’t sell well and is very rare today–not due to any particular design failure, but because the original price was a whopping $6,500-$7,300 ($11,288 to $12,677 in 2009 dollars). It wasn’t the only Mac to [...]

HP’s Windows 7 PC Extravaganza

Monday, September 14, 2009

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We’re a little over a month away from the launch of Windows 7–which means that a lot of new PCs are also imminent. Tonight, HP is announcing a bunch of new laptops, along with one desktop. I had a chance to see them recently; herewith, some thoughts. I was most taken with two new notebooks called [...]

HP Envy13 Image Gallery

Monday, September 14, 2009

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HP’s new high-end laptop in its aluminum/magnesium case. Front, closed.

New Dell Adamo: How Thin Can You Go?

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

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Dell has a teaser site up for the Adamo XPS, a new laptop in its luxury Adamo line. It has nothing to say about the system except that it’s 9.99mm thick–presumably at its thinnest point. That’s compared to the original Adamo’s thickness of 16.5mm, and the MacBook Air’s 4mm-19.4mm. (Unlike Apple, Dell quotes only one [...]

Would You Buy a Touch PC?

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

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I’ve guestblogged again at WePC.com–this time about touchscreen PCs, which are apparently a trend that’s set to explode (or try to, anyhow) once Windows 7 ships. I think that Windows 7 will help–it’s the first version of Windows with built-in support for touch input–but that a lot more has to happen before touch computers have [...]

Twenty-One Peculiar Portables

Monday, September 7, 2009

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With laptops outselling desktops, the majority of today’s computers share the same design: They’ve got an LCD display and a keyboard, and a hinge in the middle, and they’re small enough to take just about anywhere. It just works. But that hasn’t stopped a lot of inventors from trying to top it. I’ve collected some [...]

Laptopia! The World’s Weirdest Portable Computers

Monday, September 7, 2009

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There aren’t many pieces of technological design that simply can’t be improved upon, but the clamshell-style laptop computer case–introduced by Grid Systems in 1982–may be one of them. That’s why the vast majority of the portable computers built ever since have used it. But for more than a quarter-century now, inventors have been trying to [...]

Nokia Does a Netbook

Monday, August 24, 2009

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Nokia, which has made some PC-like devices in its day, is finally making…a PC. The company has announced the Booklet 3G, a device that it’s calling a mini-laptop. I’m calling it a netbook, but a pretty fancy one: It’s got an aluminum case, built-in 3G (with swappable SIM card) and GPS, and HDMI output. Nokia [...]