CartDesk is a travelling cart for laptops owners
Alexandra | 2:57 am | March 17, 2010 | Laptop Accessories
This device is likely to appeal to those who often travel with laptops and spend lots of time in crowded airport departure lounges. It is a cart that is easily transformed into a comfortable notebook table.
The whole system weighs about 9.5 pounds but can carry a load of up to 20 pounds. The extension tray is big enough for a 17-inch notebook.
For only $130 you can have your own ‘pocket’ office, and forget what it feels like to worry about finding a vacant seat in a busy café. The only thing you have to do is find some space to sit down (the system comes without a chair) and here you are – you can start working.
Although CartDesk was recommended by the American Airlines as one of the world’s top travel products, the value of the given invention is quite doubtful. At the end of the day, it is not a convenient and compact wheeled suitcase, but quite a bulky and cumbersome contraption instead. Maybe it’s wiser to buy a standard laptop desk?
Source: Comfort Home
Alex PC – the simplest laptop for your grandparents or children
Alexandra | 4:44 pm | March 5, 2010 | New Laptops
Almost all of us sooner or later are faced with the need of purchasing the first computer for grandparents (parents) or children. In this case you think about price and simplicity much more than about technical characteristics. So, meet Alex PC, the simplest laptop for those who are baffled by modern day technology. It was developed by the Broadband Computer Company in the UK and is based on the upgraded version of the 15-inch Clevo M760T laptop.
Alex PC uses the Linux operating system, but access to all the necessary functions is simplified as much as possible. To run a player client, a text or graphics editor just press one of the large icons tightly pinned to the desktop. All the new software versions will be downloaded to your laptop without asking any annoying questions (this point can be also considered as a problem for those who pay for internet traffic).
Users will not find usual user accounts with logins and passwords on Alex PC, instead of them each family member can use a personal password protected USB flash drive with desktop settings, personal files and other useful stuff.
The laptop is based on Intel Celeron T1600, has a 1 GB RAM, a hard disk of 120 GB, a Wi-Fi module, 1.3 megapixel webcam and a DVD-drive. All this user friendliness will set you back about 620 dollars.
Dell starts sales of the world slimmest laptop with 13 inch screen
Alexandra | 1:23 pm | February 25, 2010 | Laptop News
Dell starts sales of its ultra-slim business laptop — Dell Latitude 13. The company representatives state that it’s the thinnest laptop in the world with 13-inch-diagonal screen.
Dell Latitude 13 can be used as a good helper by those who travel a lot. This gizmo is based on Intel CULV Celeron or the Core 2 Duo processor and offers a DVD-drive, which may be replaced by Blu-Ray. Also users can choose between a hard drive or SSD-drive. In any case the user data will be protected by Computrace, a special program that sends information about stolen and lost laptops to the special website via the Internet.
The notebook’s dimensions are 330 × 230 × 19.7 mm, weight is about 1.5 kg.
P.S. Acer is also going to release its new ultra-slim laptop that will be a strong rival for similar laptops from Apple and HP. This gadget will be only 19 mm thick, which is less than Apple MacBook Air and, of course, it’s much less than the size of similar models from HP.
12 concept laptops and PC that will strike your imagination
Alexandra | 10:40 pm | February 12, 2010 | Concept Laptops
Concepts… They are amazing, aren’t they? On the one hand, they inspire us, give us ideas for the future, push forward innovations. On the other hand, concepts disappoint, since we cannot have them right now. The only thing we can do is start saving money, and wait until they become a reality.
1. ARM Tablet
This concept from Sébastien Maleville can be used as a usual laptop or as a portable tablet. You can transform it by separating the keyboard from the monitor.
2. Asus Bookshelf PC
This PC from Asus consists of interchangeable modules, which allows to upgrade or downgrade your computer. You can do it by replacing or adding required modules.
3. B-membrane
This UFO-like computer with a projected keyboard uses a projector instead of a monitor.
4. Canvas
This concept was developed for designers and artists by Kyle Cherry. It was equipped with some built-in digital devices for easy drawing.
5. Horizon
Concept desktop from Japanese designer Mac Funamizu has a flexible OLED monitor, which can change its size!
6. HP LiM (by Jeffrey S. Engelhardt)
HP LiM (it means “Less is More”) consists from a 19” transparent touch screen, a wireless keyboard and a virtual touchpad.
7. Nuno Teixeira MAINGEAR
It’s a powerful gaming machine with improved cooling system.
8. Paper Laptop — eco-computer
This concept (designed by Je Sung Park) was made from recycled paper.
9. Philco PC
Although in the majority of cases concept computers show us the future, Dave Schultze’s creation carries us back.
10. Portable PC Theater
Jinwoo Han, a talented designer from the South Korea, created a concept of portable PC with a special bonus, a built-in projector for entertainment.
11. Prime Gaming Laptop
Prime Gaming Concept Laptop was designed by Kyle Cherry. He tries to solve such problem as limited size of laptop screens. Behold a powerful portable gaming computer!
12. Zafiro
Zafiro PC with transparent screen can be controlled by movements of your hands and body!
“Old books” will protect your laptop from theft
Alexandra | 5:13 pm | February 2, 2010 | Laptop Accessories
There is no need to buy a portable metal safe or a steel chain with a solid bracelet, in an attempt to prevent loss of your laptop and your data. Twelve South, the company that manufactures accessories for Apple computers, released BookBook, a new leather case for laptops. It looks a lot like an old book with a worn cover.
According to the information from the manufacturer, BookBook has sufficient rigidity to protect your notebook from mechanical damage, and soft interior finish to keep the laptop scratch-free.
Cover of this case is decorated with leather subjected to artificial aging, so each BookBook gets some exclusivity (it’s a vivid example of handicraft). The Twelve South Company offers two variants of its hardcover case for 13 and 15-inches Apple laptops. But nothing prevents you from using BookBook for any other mobile computer. You can check if your laptop fits it:
- 13-inch model – 330 x 232 x 28 mm,
- 15-inch model – 364 x 249 x 28 mm.
Moreover, by paying $ 80 for a new accessory for your MacBook or MacBook Pro you also get theft protection, because thieves don’t like books as much as modern laptops. 
Source: Twelve South
The near future of high-tech industry (your excursion to CES 2010)
Alexandra | 7:39 pm | January 26, 2010 | New Laptops
The last Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has become the main source of information about new technologies and products from the world’s largest product designer and manufacturers. The show was held in Las Vegas, and this place wasn’t chosen by chance. The U.S. market is traditionally considered as one of the most important for many large companies that design and produce electronics.
Judging by the general show trends, 2010 will be the year of Android smartphones, Tablet PCs, and rapid development of three-dimensional television. And like a year ago, at CES 2009, manufacturers introduced a lot of notebooks and netbooks in a classic form factor. Developers still believe that this market is very promising. For example, MSI management expects 50% growth of notebook shipments in 2010.
Lenovo attracted visitors by the unusual Ideapad U1 laptop. This device, which is actually a hybrid of tablet and netbook, has a 11.6″ display that can be disconnected from the keyboard and work independently as a Tablet PC. Ideapad U1 is expected in shops this summer at a price of about $ 1000.
You could see new netbooks based on Intel Pine Trail hardware platform from all major manufacturers at CES 2010. Most of those devices had similar characteristics and were running Windows 7. The Samsung N127 netbook based on OS Moblin can be mentioned as an exception.
One more piece of news from Intel. The company launched AppUpCenter, a new online store of applications for compact portable computers. All users of netbooks with OS Windows can join this service.
Among the huge number of laptops that were presented at CES 2010 there are some unusual ones. Samsung demonstrated a prototype laptop with a 14″ transparent OLED-display. It’s difficult to imagine who may need such a computer, but this invention of South Korean engineers may find application in other industries. Also Dell showed a workable concept of Studio with a 16″ OLED-display, which response time is 0,004 ms. And Asus amazed visitors by its new NX90 Bang & Olufsen edition laptop.
So CES 2010 gave us a general idea of what devices we should expect this year. Evidently experts expect the increase in sales of portable computers (both netbooks and notebooks). Marketing specialists pin hopes on tablet PCs, but demand for them will depend not only on technical specifications, but also on pricing policies.
Scientists can make laptop batteries from ink and paper
Alexandra | 5:15 am | January 19, 2010 | Laptop News
Scientists from Stanford University used nanotechnology to create ultra-lightweight, flexible batteries and supercapacitors from ordinary paper. They just covered a sheet of paper with ink comprising carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. And as a result they got a new storage device that can be used for production of innovative power supplies (laptop batteries, chargers for mobile phones, electric vehicles, etc.).
Capacitors can hold their charge for smaller period of time compared to batteries, but they can also be charged much faster. Professor Yi Cui (Stanford researcher) claims that used nanomaterials contain structures with a very small diameter, allowing ink to attach to fibrous paper. So it makes the paper batteries resistant to wear. Moreover, they can be recharged about 40,000 times (it’s incommensurably more than corresponding characteristics of lithium-ion batteries).
Yi Cui tried to create an analogous storage device form plastic earlier. But his new study shows that paper-based solution has greater prospects. This battery can be crumpled, placed into liquids (even acidic solutions!) without any damage to its performance.
Calculations show that paper with a kilogram of ink can power a 40-watt bulb for about an hour. It’s not an impressive result, but you should take into account that scientists are running their first experiments now. Be sure, after a couple of years your laptop battery will be much thinner and lighter in weight, allowing you to enjoy liаe without chargers and AC adapters for days, not hours.
Some of the most stylish laptops ever designed
Alexandra | 12:47 am | December 23, 2009 | Laptop Mods
For a laptop, design is not less important than its hardware insides, as any industrial designer will testify. People are ready to pay high premium for so-called “high-tech beauties”. That is why stylish and unusual laptops can be sold much faster than “standard” ones. Moreover, designers add some new features even in budget laptop models in a bid to attract additional buyers.
For example, Acer maintains this trend in such popular model like Ferrari, Fujitsu implements it in LifeBook, Toshiba surprises us with Qosmio, etc.
The first thing that manufacturers use in such laptops is an unusual laptop body and well-chosen color combinations. They try to crack the access code into customers’ hearts, finding courageous colors, hues and nuances. They also try to replace standard plastic laptop bodies with titanium ones or use special mixtures to give them more shine and protect from mechanical damage. So, those who want to buy a stylish notebook and express their individuality always can find something special.
The world’s leading portable PC manufacturers experiment with new materials (processed plastic, precious wood, stones and metals). People want to stand out from the crowd, be different from each other and it plays into the hands of many companies. For example, one of the Arab sheikhs ordered a laptop with inlays from ivory. Just imagine how much it cost him!
Laptops have become a part of our everyday live; it’s not a surprise to anyone. But you can impress others, putting a high-tech gadget in an unusual body. So, let’s feast our eyes upon other stylish laptops:
A gorgeous case for amazing Sony Vaio P laptop
You can buy stylish leather case for Sony Vaio P choosing one of 30 different colors.
Lenovo Pocket Yoga. It’s an awesome laptop, but unfortunately it’s just a concept
Laptop market trends: forecasts for 2010
Alexandra | 7:27 pm | December 14, 2009 | Laptop News
What do we like in modern laptops? What do we want to improve in them? So, let’s discuss laptop market trends for the year 2010. Reading the text below, you will see how new technologies can make your live better.
Netbooks will continue its triumphal procession in 2010. These devices are positioned as complements of full-featured
notebooks, not as their substitutes. More than 5 million netbooks were sold in 2008, and experts think that sales will be estimated as 50 million in 2012! So, netbooks remains very attractive, easy and inexpensive gadgets for cheap and fast Internet connection.
It’s a remarkable fact that development of new laptop models will reduce growth of sales (now it’s 26% per year). By the way, stunted growth of desktop computers sales has already transformed into drop in sales in some European countries.
17-inch monitors will be replaced by 18″-20″ LED-backlit displays, because their price is gradually approaching the prices of conventional monitors.
External hard drives will be more and more popular, because new programs and games require more and more gigabytes.
There is no doubt that almost every notebook will be equipped with blu-ray-drive in the near future, it will happen closer to the end of 2010.
But forecasts for solid state drives are not so clear. They are faster, easier, but some expert believes that as buyers can buy a classic hard drive of bigger size at the same price, they prefer larger storage volume, rather than better technology of SSD. But, of course, leading specialists have no doubts that future is with this technology.
Laptop battery life extension can be considered as one of the most important target for manufacturers in 2010. Some of them have encouraging results. Hardware developers are working in two directions: on the one hand they try to reduce power consumption of laptops with conventional batteries and on the other hand they create new types of laptop batteries.
As for the first direction, designers plan “to teach” laptops turn off unused components. For example, laptop uses integrated graphics core working with simple office applications and turns on a discrete graphics card running 3D-games.
As for the second direction here we should tell about fuel cells and new promising lithium-polymer batteries, which allow to create slim laptops. Also OLED-displays and new HDD Seagate Momentus Thin will make laptops even more slimmer.
Stolen and lost laptops in the UK: do you want to be the next victim?
Alexandra | 9:53 pm | December 7, 2009 | Security
Every week thousands of people lose their laptops. According to the last study conducted by Dell, business travellers lose more than 15,500 laptops per week (in the EU). A researcher has found that London Heathrow has the highest number of missing or stolen laptops (900 gadgets a week).
Unfortunately, most of people in the United Kingdom don’t undertake any measures to ensure security of their personal information which they keep on their mobile computers. Lost or stolen laptop means not only loss of your device but also moral damage and loss of valuable information (not only your private letters and photos, collections of favourite videos and music). For most of businesspeople loss of information takes the form of unrecovered damages, loss of money and reputation. But nevertheless Dell statistic shows that the British don’t realize consequences of their carelessness:
- “My data is not backed up” – that was the answer of 43% of respondents in the UK.
- “I do not take steps to protect my confidential information” – 59%.
- “Sometimes I left my laptop under the supervision of my fellow passenger” – 42%.
- “I employ disk encryption” – only 12%.
- “I use biometric methods to secure my laptops” – only 6% (while fingerprint scanner systems prevent unauthorised access to Toshiba, IBM, Lenovo, ASUS and many other laptops).
There are lots of gadgets and software products that can help you reduce negative consequences of the loss of data. Firefound (add-on for Firefox and Fennec) is one such solution. It cleans your personal data in just a few simple clicks and enables you to find your stolen computer.
Firefound uses geolocation to determine your current position and sends this information to your laptop (using it like an internet server). If your mobile computer is lost then you can get into the web interface of Fifefound and get to know where your laptop is and remove all your personal data.
You can also configure levels of safety in such a way that you will receive a letter if your laptop is used more than a certain number of miles away from your location. Or Firefound will remove your personal information if criminal is not able to enter the correct password with the X number of attempts.
But remember that it’s much easier to prevent such problems than to fight them, by keeping your laptop from getting lost or stolen.
