How to Use Windows

The E525-901G16Mi from eMachines is suited to those after a no-nonsense portable solution. It boasts more power than the Elonex Sliver and Acer Aspire 1410-74G25n, and provides good competition for the Lenovo – which are other similarly specified rivals. The 15.6-inch screen isn’t as sharp as the Elonex’s, but still provides detailed images courtesy of the 1366 x 768-pixel resolution. As with all a lot of other laptops, a glossy Super-TFT screen coating is in place but it suppresses reflections in bright light well, and you won’t have a problem viewing it outdoors, for example. The laptop features a pleasantly inoffensive design that’s attractive enough in its own way, and build quality is good, meaning it will take a few light bumps and bashes on the road

The full story can be found on Tech Radar

The Sliver is an ultraportable laptop that offers the great style, but compromises have been made to achieve its tiny size. This is a visually pleasing laptop and the machine looks fantastic from all angles. The small form factor also makes it a very portable machine, ideal for those needing to work on the move a lot. The portability of the machine however is slightly let down by the very average battery life, at only 143 minutes you’ll need to carry the charger around with you on long trips.

The full story can be found on Tech Radar

Acer’s Aspire laptops represent the company’s consumer range, and the Aspire 1410-74G25n is a CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) laptop that offers fantastic value for money. Performance isn’t this laptop’s strong point, but it isn’t meant to be – the laptop offers superb portability instead. At only 1.4kg, it’s a pleasure to carry around. The small form factor makes it very easy to fit into almost any bag, but if you’re after the slimmest machine possible, go for the Elonex Sliver instead

The full story can be found on Tech Radar

Toshiba’s Portégé laptops are built for the business user, and the R600-13Z is a fantastic laptop which cements the Holy Trinity of portability, performance and usability under one roof, with very few concessions made – despite its small and very light form factor. The laptop boasts the inclusion of a dual-core Intel processor and 3072MB of memory. Running word processors, internet browsers and email clients simultaneously won’t prove an issue for this laptop, making it more suited to intensive work than the Sony VAIO VPC X11Z1E/X .

The full story can be found on Tech Radar

The perfect device for leprechauns The Sony Vaio P is a weird device. It’s much smaller than a netbook, but much better-equipped. It has wireless broadband access from Verizon, onboard GPS, a ThinkPad-style pointing stick, and an eye-straining high-resolution screen. It’s also incredibly expensive. So who exactly is the Vaio P for

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

Why Wipe Data Securely? Whether you are preparing to reuse a hard disk for another operating system, clear off your junk shelves by passing along outdated drives to a friend or relative, donate an old PC to a charity or school, discard a too-small USB drive or flash memory card, or repurpose an SSD, you don’t want to leave any information on the storage device. With stories abounding of identity theft aided by information lifted from discarded storage devices, you want devices you no longer plan to use to have no usable information when they head out the door. Why Erasing Files Is Not Enough Sure, you could erase the contents of the drive, but keep this in mind: the act of erasing a file does not remove it from a storage device.

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

Dell has just announced release of a new Vostro series, the 3000 , which will add some punch to Dell’s business laptop offerings. The 3000 series, which will range in size from 13-inches to 17-inches, will sport a range of Intel’s newer Core processors. The new Vostros are the 3300 , with a 13.3-inch display, the 3400 , with a 14-inch display, the 3500 , with a 15.6-inch display, and the 3700 , with a 17.3-inch display. All four Vostros have the Mobile Intel HM57 Express chipset, and are paired with i3 and i5 dual core processors, except for the 3700, which has the option of an i7 quad core processor

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

MSI on Monday announced the availability of its “2010 iF Product Design Award Winning” Wind U160 netbook. This is MSI’s second netbook built around Intel’s Pine Trail platform, and taking full advantage of the new spec, the company claims you can expect up to 15 hours of run time when in MSI’s exclusive ECO mode. Everything you’d expect from a modern netbook is included, such as a 10-inch backlit LED display, Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 6-cell battery, Bluetooth, Windows 7 Starter, and a 6-cell battery. It also comes with EasyFace facial recognition security software. Where MSI looks to separate the U160 from the spate of Pine Trail netbooks is in its physical design.

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

According to news and rumor site Fudzilla, Intel plans to beef up its entry-level Celeron notebook processor line with the introduction of its Celeron P4500 processor. Due out in the second quarter of this year, the P4500 will supplant the T3300. Unlike most other Celerons, however, the P4500 is built around Intel’s 32nm Arrandale platform. It will come clocked at 1.86GHz per core, while the graphics will cruise along at 500MHz.

For the full story, go to Maximum PC

Instead of cracking open your PC to add extra memory, how about plugging it into a docking station that also gives you a faster processor so you can run more demanding applications? Once PCs switch over to internal optical connections based on silicon photonics instead of the copper wires that run around today’s motherboards, “we’ll have a new way to design that gets rid of the distance limit,” says Sean Koehl, a technology evangelist in Intel Labs. “You can move the memory. Take a very mobile device like a netbook and imagine a docking station that also gives it a connection to faster processing and more memory.” That could help with cooling; your notebook could get more powerful without getting hotter. Memory on your PC is going to get faster as well, he says.

The full story can be found on Tech Radar