notebook

Lenovo first introduced its new consumer notebook line, IdeaPad, back at CES in January. Now, the smallest--and arguably best-looking--of the bunch is set to ship to consumers very soon.

The U110, Lenovo's foray into consumer-oriented ultraportable notebooks, is now available on Lenovo.com, with other retailers soon to follow.

The U110 comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6-gigahertz processor, 120GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and comes loaded with Vista Home Premium.

The screen is 11 inches wide with no bezel and weighs in at a mere 2.4 pounds. The battery life with the original battery … Read more

My Vista laptop kept losing its Internet connection when it came out of sleep mode. It turns out that the problem was related to the Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) Client service, or dhcpcsvc.dll, which tried to rewrite routing information to the network store interface. This caused a failed write operation that deleted the routing information.

Microsoft released the fix for the problem last September, though the patch didn't find its way onto my notebook until several months later. The machine's network link still hiccups for a few seconds when it comes out of sleep mode, but … Read more

Believe it or not, my high-tech career began using punch cards and card readers to enter data into an IBM mainframe computer. When we got keyboards and monitors, we used them to enter what we called "card images."

As a chip designer in the '80s, I used GE Calma, Apollo, Daisy, Valid, and Mentor workstations. I had to know a whole smorgasbord of platforms and operating systems. I don't know how I did it. Guess I had a lot more brain cells back then. … Read more

On Monday, Hewlett-Packard's Japan arm introduced a raft of consumer PCs with plenty of offerings using processors from Advanced Micro Devices in addition to Intel chips.

In the v7000 small-form-factor tower series, HP deployed both the AMD triple-core Phenom X3 processor and quad-core Phenom X4 processors. Models are available with the X3 8400 (2.1GHz), low-power X4 9100e (1.8GHz, 65 watts), and X4 9500 (2.2GHz).

Interestingly, AMD-based models in the v7000 series come with Nvidia graphics, not AMD-ATI graphics, a synergy that AMD has had trouble realizing in some segments. Configurations are offered with either the NVIDIA … Read more

When shopping for a laptop, graphics are a thorny question. A little extra performance is always good, as it will probably come in handy someday. But the more advanced the graphics solution, the more likely that it will consume more power, and generate more heat, shortening battery life, and keeping you from actually putting it on your lap.

In the general case, integrated graphics solutions have come a long way, and are more than sufficient for most real uses. Let's face it, email, report writing, and browsing the web are not the most graphically intensive things in the world. … Read more

Most of the expert advice on extending the life of your notebook computer's battery boils down to common sense: turn off devices you don't need (CD drive, wireless adapter, Bluetooth, etc.); don't run AutoCAD and other graphics-intensive apps; don't run more apps than you need; turn down the brightness of your display (most laptops do this automatically); and set your system to hibernate after a shorter period of inactivity.

Quick aside: Lately whenever my notebook goes into hibernate mode I lose my wireless-network connection. I often have to restart the machine to get it to recognize … Read more

The U.S. PC market is beginning to have less influence on the global market, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker.

Though it had previously projected 7 percent growth for the U.S. market, shipments inched up 3.5 percent, half what IDC was anticipating.

"The main issue is the economic situation in the U.S.," said Doug Bell, PC analyst for IDC. "It was the only region really impacted by the recession scare." Corporate IT budgets are showing that cautious approach, he noted. Spending on IT hardware is being delayed to the second … Read more

Gizmodo got its hands on what appears to be a photo and detailed specs on Lenovo's lineup of new ThinkPad laptops.

See the photo here.

It looks as though both the T- and R-series of Lenovo laptops will be updated this fall, and even more interesting, the first laptop to come standard with a solid-state drive, super-slim X300, will be part of a larger family of notebooks, including an 12-inch X200, 14-inch X400, and 15-inch X500.

Apparently, there will also be a new notebook series introduced, the W-series, intended as a workstation replacement.

Gizmodo does appear to be hedging … Read more

Most desktop replacements (so named for having giant screens, full-size keyboards, and other desktop amenities) start at around $800-900, but Buy.com has the Acer Aspire 7720-6155 on sale for just $599.99 shipped. It's a factory-refurbished model, but it's also very nicely loaded.

Indeed, the Aspire 7720 features a 1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a 17-inch widescreen LCD. It also includes a dual-layer DVD burner, a Webcam, a 5-in-1 media card reader, and, well, just about everything else you'd find in a full-bore desktop. The only … Read more