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Downloads and streaming music can't touch physical media for sound quality, or the pleasures associated with truly deluxe packaging.

For a prime example of the state of the art of the box set, check out the extra-thick album sleeves and gorgeous slipcase on Pearl Jam's "vs. & Vitalogy Deluxe Edition" three-disc set. The third disc is a live show from Boston's Orpheum Theatre in 1994. The band is peaking, and it's great to hear this fierce, passionate music sounding this good. To get the full effect, you'll want to play it loud. The … Read more

The rising popularity of tablets has some people ditching their laptops and desktops for a more portable experience, but the benefits of a full keyboard can still come in handy. Here are our top recommendations for tablets with complementary keyboard options. We'll be focusing on ARM-based tablets only this time around. … Read more

Earlier this year, we were bombarded with news about Ultrabooks, a new category of laptop given a new name by Intel--these machines were meant to be improvements on the laptop as we've come to know it, with smartphone-like startup speed and wafer-thin, future-sexy designs.

So far, so good: the first few laptops we've seen that categorize themselves as Ultrabooks have all been excellent products. The Acer Aspire S3, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s, and the Asus Zenbook UX31 all lived up to expectations, and all provide valid alternatives to the MacBook Air.

And yet, there's a problem. In my eyes, at least. And it's a big one. … Read more

What's an 8-foot-tall Lego man doing on the beaches of Siesta Key Village, Florida? We don't have the answer, but it's the third one that's washed ashore in the last three years--similar occurances were reported three years ago in Brighton, England, and Zandvoort, Holland; each bearing the same cryptic messaging: "NO REAL THAN YOU ARE."

Yahoo News did the dirty work and inquired about the phenomenon to Lego's assistant brand relations manager, who vehemently denied, on record, any affiliation with the stunt, eliminating the possibility of it being a viral stunt. Who knows, maybe it was printed on a 3D imaging device by the folks at MakerBot!… Read more

Amid all the laptop news this week, much of it coming out of the IFA show, there were a few announcements that especially stood out: two major PC makers unveiled their entries in the new (and untested) Ultrabook category. Even better, we got a change to get our hands on working demo units of both models, the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and the Toshiba Portege Z830. Those two new models join previously announced Ultrabooks such as the Asus UX21.

The Toshiba Portege Z830 has a strong lineage as a successor of sorts to the very popular Portege R835, which is one … Read more

Lenovo is expected to announce an Ultrabook and a 7-inch Android tablet in the coming weeks, CNET has learned.

The IdeaPad U300s would be Lenovo's first portable tagged as an Ultrabook--a category of sub-0.8-inch-thick laptops that has many of the hallmarks of Apple's MacBook Air. That is, weighing typically 3 pounds or less, constructed from special materials like aluminum or carbon fiber, powered by Intel Sandy Bridge processors, and priced--at least some models--below $1,000.

During Lenovo's earnings conference call last week, Chief Operating Officer Rory Read said that Ultrabooks would "reach mainstream price points...that were only 18 months ago in premium segments."

"The Ultrabook, like the tablet, is a legitimate member of the high-mobility class of devices," said Roger Kay, the principal analyst at Endpoint Technologies. The initial iteration of the Ultrabook is expected to hew to the traditional clamshell laptop design. "So, it's a very portable device that comes in a very useful form factor," Kay said.

A video of the U300s appeared in late May from the Computex show floor. Cosmetically, it resembles the 0.7-inch-thick IdeaPad U260 announced last November.

But that's not all Lenovo has in store. The 7-inch IdeaPad A1 tablet is also expected to be rolled out. A similar tablet has already gone on sale in China, according to Netbook News. The tablet for the China market is spec'd with a 1,024x600 display, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 3622 processor, 512MB system memory, 16GB storage, and micro-USB and microSD slots. … Read more

TED Air gives you on-the-go access to video content from the one of the world's most popular platforms for idea-sharing--TED Conferences. Right from your Android mobile device, you can sift through and watch over 900 TED Talks, share them with friends, or even download them for offline access.

The TED Air interface is clean and simple--just the way we like it. It opens up to a chronological listing of TED Talks, each with title, speaker, topic, video length, and a thumbnail image. Along the bottom of the screen there is a scrolling dock that lets you search by Tag, … Read more

I now understand why girls are attracted to "bad boy" types. They're just more interesting. Sure, they can be erratic, impractical, self-absorbed, or just plain broken--but at least there's a story to tell your friends.

This insight hit me after finishing CNET's review of the Lenovo IdeaPad K1 Android 3.1 tablet ($499, 32GB). If there's a bad boy of tablets, this is not it. Nope, you're looking at the perfectly sensible "nice guy" tablet here. It does all the right things, has all the expected specs, comes from a good … Read more

KooBits 4.0 bills itself as "the place to shelve my e-books." This free e-book reader for Windows can store and display electronic book in the most common formats, such as PDF and EPUB, but it offers greater interactivity and enriched multimedia content such as games and video with the proprietary KBJ format. It even offers free books.

Koobits opens with a user interface spread out like the open pages of a book. We clicked the welcome screen, which took us to the My Library page. An animated tool tip quickly demonstrated how to create and add new … Read more