Stories by: Loyd Case

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First look: Windows 8 Release Preview 31 May, 2012 19:46:00

I'm sitting in my breakfast nook, my Samsung Series 9 sitting on the countertop. I check the news, and then look at how the markets are doing. After that, I fire up IE 10 to check my morning blogs, which kills another 15 minutes or so. At that point, I swipe the home page to the list of apps and open Word. It's a little disconcerting to be in the Metro-style interface--in what Microsoft calls the "Windows Home Page"--and then suddenly be in the desktop as Word launches. But cognitive dissonance is likely to be a common phenomenon among experienced Windows users.
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HP Envy 14 Spectre: Beefing up the Ultrabook 30 March, 2012 09:17:00

First impressions are important, and the HP Envy 14 Spectre makes a great one. The glossy, glass-topped display bezel and keyboard tray look elegant and understated, and the uniform, thin chassis gives the laptop a sleek appearance. Second impressions are a little less positive, though: When you pick up the Spectre, it seems heftier than you'd expect. That's because HP covered it in impact-resistant glass, similar to what you might see on a high-end smartphone. That pretty glass top is a fingerprint magnet, too.
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Analysis: Are netbooks dead? The prognosis is grim 22 February, 2012 01:57:00

Remember netbooks? Those inexpensive, highly portable, long-battery-life laptops made primarily for lightweight tasks like Web browsing? Netbook sales have declined. In the United States, sales have dropped precipitously since 2010, and the trend in the rest of the world is starting to follow.
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Dell XPS 14z: Just a little short of laptop perfection 10 November, 2011 12:18:00

Lost in all the hoopla over Intel's Ultrabook initiative are the more traditional, full-function thin-and-light laptops. The Dell XPS 14z borrows some lines from Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro and incorporates a slightly larger display and a better keyboard. On the other hand, the shell appears to be mostly plastic, so it lacks the rigidity of the Apple laptop. The net result represents something close to the state of the art in the all-purpose class of notebook PCs, but it falls a little short of laptop perfection.
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Guide: How to sync your PC, smartphone, and tablet 29 September, 2011 23:55:00

A few years ago businesspeople carried a laptop on the road, used a desktop PC in the office, and worked on another PC at home. Maybe they had a BlackBerry, too--but only if they were real big shots.
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Windows Home Server 2011: What it is and how to use it 27 May, 2011 00:31:00

Microsoft's original Windows Home Server was both crude and groundbreaking. When it debuted, it had limited hardware support, no 64-bit version, and weak built-in capabilities beyond file and app storage. On the other hand, it offered robust backup, reasonable security, and drive extender -- a feature that simplified the tasks of adding and pooling hard drives.
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Samsung SF510: Sleek design, ho-hum features 10 December, 2010 11:47:00

The Samsung SF510 undeniably looks good. Its sleek white exterior makes this all-purpose laptop look thinner than it really is, and the light weight doesn't hurt either. Flipping open the lid reveals an LED-backlit, 15.6-inch display and a nearly full size keyboard, complemented by a separate numeric keypad. The unit weighs just 5 pounds, 8 ounces without the power brick and 6 pounds, 3 ounces fully loaded.
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11 uses for an old PC 30 October, 2010 05:16:00

You've finally gone and bought a new PC. It has a boatload of memory, lots of cores, and a fast, modern graphics card. But now your old computer sits in a corner, and although you know it's just a machine, it seems to be sulking like a puppy that missed its morning biscuit. It's weird, but you feel guilty with the whole idea of throwing it out.
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Dell Latitude 13 09 October, 2010 09:15:00

The Dell Latitude 13 ultraportable laptop inspires technolust when you first pick it up. It's sleek, it has a great keyboard, and it weighs less than 3.5 pounds without the power brick. The LED-backlit display looks pretty good for most desktop chores. And all of this laptop-PC goodness comes in a package just 0.65 inch thick.
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Browser GPU acceleration: Navigating standards minefield 23 September, 2010 09:53:00

Once upon a time, in the distant past, there was VGA. VGA begat "Windows Accelerators" -- graphics chips that were slightly enhanced beyond dumb frame buffers in order to accelerate Windows-specific functions to paint small "w" windows on the screen faster. Later came 3D, along with a number of competing standards. That all settled out to mostly Direct3D on Windows and OpenGL everywhere else.
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Nvidia's CUDA to support x86 processors 23 September, 2010 06:53:00

On Tuesday, Nvidia announced it was going to support x86 processors as a target for CUDA applications. This means that apps that are currently written to support Nvidia's GPU line for compute applications will be able to run on standard x86 CPUs--no GPU needed.