Mobile workstations are an exemplary study of engineering. They stuff the latest technology and mounds of features into a chassis not much larger than your “lowly” consumer PC. Often the chassis themselves are designed with more robust materials, great heat dissipation capacity, and of course room for the plethora of ports and expansion cards you’ll usually find in a workstation. HP, Dell, and Lenovo are the biggest players in the mobile workstation market and all are extremely competitive in both the 15-inch and 17-inch form factors.Dell’s Precision M4600 is a stout contender, with its mil-spec resistance to the elements and aluminum-magnesium alloy chassis. Of course you have the latest Intel Sandy Bridge platform, with Core i5 processors...

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Google’s Chromebooks are different from traditional laptops in a number of ways. For starters, they all run the company’s speedy, browser-centric Chrome OS. They’re also tightly integrated with Google’s numerous cloud services like Gmail and Google Docs — and that cloud focus is one reason Chromebooks include solid state drives with comparatively small capacities.That shouldn’t be a problem, of course, if you’re storing files in the cloud the way Google thinks you should if you’re using a Chromebook. Still, with an in-built media player and photo viewer, there’s a decent chance that you might want to load a movie or two, some music, and some of your favorite photos onto your Samsung Series 5 or Acer AC700. If you do, you’d...

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While the market is already flush with 10-inch Android tablets, a new generation of scaled-down models have been looming for quite some time. Following in the footsteps of the BlackBerry PlayBook, these new Android tablets will arrive bearing 7 and 8-inch displays and Android 3.2, the Honeycomb update designed to make the tablet experience resolution-agnostic en route to Ice Cream Sandwich’s promised land of complete screen size independence. One of the first you’ll find on retail shelves in the U.S. is the brand new Acer Iconia Tab A100, a 7-incher sporting Android 3.2.So what else has Acer packed inside the slightly smaller A100? Pretty well the same internals you’d find in a 10″ Android tablet: a dual-core NVidia Tegra 2...

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The iPhone 5 is coming. Maybe it’ll land in September, maybe October, maybe some time after that, but sooner or later Apple is going to release a sequel to the wildly successful iPhone 4. That successor might have a larger screen, NFC, a slimmer design, or any number of other features… if the rumors are to be believed. Before every launch we hear all sorts of rumors/leaks and some of them inevitably end up being true, so while we take everything we hear with a healthy dose of skepticism, it’s still worthing pay attention.With that in mind, and anticipation of the iPhone 5 building, let’s review the rumors we’ve heard over the past months.New Design vs. Old designThough most tech pundits believe the iPhone 5 will feature an updated...

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The two mobile OS juggernauts, Android and iOS, are not going anywhere anytime soon. They’ve both simply gotten too large to be “killed” by anything. Now, there are some pretty strong feelings shared amongst Android and iOS users towards the “other guys”. Typically negative, almost insulting at times, the platform war is a brutal one. Is this just brand or team loyalty, though, or is this really just a fundamental difference in personalities? A recent infographic suggests that Android users might be different from iPhone users in way more ways than just their choice of smartphone. Bloomworlds, a company primed to soon launch a family-friendly app market for Android, sought to collect as much data as possible regarding the typical Android user....

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If you follow the laptop industry closely, you’ve probably noticed that 2009-2010 saw a surprising number of higher end, luxury-esque machines hit the market. Prior efforts like the ThinkPad X300, (original) MacBook Air, and Dell’s Adamo did teach the companies a lot about what kinds of high end PCs sell and how to build one that would sell more volume with a better margin. HP joined this game more recently with their Envy lineup, launched in 2009 from the scraps of boutique PC company Voodoo that the firm swallowed up in 2006. All Envy models share the same basic DNA: solid metal chassis, thin design, and high end features. I reviewed an Envy 17 once upon a time and the machine oozes quality in your hands. The chassis is robust and precise...

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A number of set-top boxes allow for all sorts of wonderful things on a television. Games and applications abound, but typically not for the Apple TV, at least not until now. Games are indeed possible on Apple’s oft-forgotten device, but not through the App Store. The game that proves this is blackjack, and much to Jobs’ delight, it is HTML5-based. Given the breadth of Apple’s App Store, it is strange that the first game for Apple TV comes to the general public through a jailbroken device. Granted, it’s only one game, if a relatively simple one, but it shows the potential of Cupertino’s set-top box. HTML5 is the latest generation of HTML, hypertext markup language in long form. It introduces a range of features that make creating games without...

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Of the many things HTC announced this year better support for the developer community was one of the most interesting. This would come in the form of web portal, complete with all the resources needed to work with their devices. This promise came alongside their agreement to offer users tools to unlock their bootloaders, an issue that caused significant controversy within the modder community. Today, that promise has come true with the website HTCDev.com. HTC touts the website as being a “central, online location to host content while also serving as an outlet for developer engagement and growth”, so we decided to take a quick look at their initial offerings.HTCDev.com is, at first glance, everything you could ever want from HTC if you are...

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If you’ve been waiting to get your hands on the HP TouchPad 4G, you might not have to wait for much longer. The TouchPad 4G has been spotted for pre-order on Amazon for $699.99. That’s roughly $100 more than the WiFi-only version available already. The 32GB TouchPad 4G offers a 9.7-inch LED multi-touch display. The tablet uses HP’s webOS 3.0, and runs on a fast 1.5 GHz processor, which is a step up from the 1.2GHz processor of the WiFi version. It also has integrated GPS and built-in AT&T wireless mobile broadband capabilities. The 4G tablet is HSPA+ (AT&T), not LTE, so don’t get too excited. And, unlike the iPad, the TouchPad offers Adobe Flash support. If $700 sounds like a lot to be spending on a tablet, you may want to wait a month...

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Due to the cost and space considerations, it’s unusual to see a tablet with more than 128GB of on-board storage. 16 or 32GB are more common, with anything above that being a premium option at a premium price. You can also argue that a tablet really doesn’t need storage beyond those levels. Archos disagrees though, and will be offering its G9 Android tablet with the option of a 250GB hybrid hard drive. It’s a hybrid because Archos wanted more than the performance of a standard hard drive, so they added a 4GB flash memory chip to speeds things up a little. This is a technique some hard drive manufacturers have experimented with in their standard drives, with Seagate even going so far as to say 80% of hard drives will by hybrids by 2015.  As...

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Still not sure exactly what happened at Google this week? It’s like someone accidentally delivered espresso for the decaf pots. Meanwhile, over in Redmond, Microsoft’s legal team discovered how to use Twitter, but not any of the complimentary services that allow you to put a single coherent thought into an extended tweet. If you haven’t been following the recent uproar following the acquisition of the Novell Patents, let’s catch you up. What started as a blog post from Googler David Drummond addressing why Google didn’t spend the money on the Novell patents. To say the the conversations have broken down into a schoolyard fashion is putting it mildly, but we remain ever vigilant in following the situation in the event that something...

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It seems that a whole mess of Motolora Droid Bionic images just turned up on the internet. Android blog Droid-Life has posted a number of shots of what looks to be the upcoming Verizon 4G superphone, including one very interesting one. That shot, pictured above, puts the Bionic next to the Samsung Droid Charge, a handset we know to have a 4.3-inch display. The Bionic’s screen is clearly larger, so unless there was some digital imaging trickery then the old information we have heard–which said the Bionic would also have a 4.3-inch screen–is incorrect. The images are available here and here. We can see some nice shots of the front and back of the Droid Bionic hardware, but no major reveals aside from display size. It’s worth noting that...

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Upstart mobile payment processing company Square has its sights set on shaking up the industry. Its iPhone-friendly card reader has been blessed with retail space in Apple stores, and it’s had no trouble securing funding for its efforts, either. Recently Square locked up more than $100 million in investment and scored a valuation of more than $1 billion. But there have been a couple of bumps in the road for Square. A few months back, Verifone (one of its key competitors) revealed that it was able to skim credit card data using the Square reader. Verifone noted that Square’s reader didn’t bother to encrypt data it transmitted to the app itself, an oversight that Verifone said meant any reasonably skilled coder could whip up a skimming application...

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Browser add-ons are, in general, a very good thing. They allow us to personalize our web experiences in hundreds of different ways with just a few simple clicks. There are, however, some cases where browser add-ons can be unwelcome, frustrating, and just plain bad. Add-ons that silently get bolted onto your browser by third-party software installers, for example, are rarely (if ever) a good thing. Mozilla has finally said enough is enough and has put together a plan to begin policing external add-on installs that attempt to modify your Firefox setup. Starting in Firefox 8, the add-on manager will display an in-browser alert whenever a program other than Firefox itself attempts to install an extension.  It’s a change that Mozilla has been...

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Deal-seeking geeks are surely aware of the deal-a-day site Woot.com. The site lists deeply discounted products that are sometimes too good of a deal to pass up. Today’s offer is the 16GB HP TouchPad, which we saw on sale earlier this week for $419.99. We thought that was a good deal, but today’s Woot deal is even better. Friday only, and while supplies last, you can get the tablet for just $379.99. The TouchPad features a 9.7-inch IPS display with 1024×768 pixels, similar to the iPad 2. It has a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor with 1GB of RAM. The tablet also has a nice 1.3-megapixel camera, as well as the standard features of Bluetooth, accelerometer, and 802.11n WiFi. It’s nice that the tablet is offered at a discount today, but...

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If you’ve been on the fence about buying a new phone, perhaps today’s deal will persuade you. Best Buy is offering the Nexus S phone for free today only. Of course, the store isn’t just throwing free phones to any passersby; there’s a two-year contract that goes with the free phone. If you want just the phone without a contract, you’ll still have to pay at least $529.99. The good news is that you can choose between Sprint, T-Mobile, or AT&T as your service provider… sorry Verizon. Without today’s deal, the phone normally costs $99 or $199, depending on the carrier. The Nexus runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and is so far the only phone that works directly with Google Wallet and NFC. If you were hoping to see that sort of integration...

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Android seems to be just about everywhere these days. Devices big and small, fat and thin, with a variety of intended uses. At CES this year there was even a microwave running Android. So, when I discovered that HP was planning to make a printer running the mobile OS, I wasn’t so much shocked as curious. After all, thanks to HP’s Android app,  any of HP’s newer printers can be controlled using an app on your phone. So, what functionality does having Android bring to the printing experience? Well, for starters, HP didn’t just make a printer running Android. They made a printer that serves as a dock for an Android tablet that has complete control of the printer even when it is not docked. Curious? So were we! The Photosmart eStation C510a...

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On their developer site, developer.motorola.com, Motorola briefly posted what seem to be the specifications of the upcoming Droid Bionic. Supposing these are accurate they would be confirmation–straight from Motorola–of what the upcoming 4G dual-core handset will be running. Along with an official release date this is exactly what potential buyers have been wanting, though we already have compiled a pretty good idea of what to expect from the Bionic. Since the listing was discovered it has since been removed from the site, but screenshots were captured. Readers who have examined the image above, and who have been closely following that saga that has become the Droid Bionic release, will have noticed that the old model number was used....

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Internet Explorer users may have been a little hurt when a number of news organizations reported on a study that claimed IE users have a lower IQ than people who use other web browsers. Some IE users thought the data was pure poppycock, but users of other browsers obviously rejoiced at the news. Well, it turns out the whole thing was an sophisticated hoax. The study was reported by the BBC, Forbes, Mashable, CNN, and the Daily Mail, to name a few. However, many readers were skeptical of the whole thing after finding out that the company who put out the press release, AptiQuant, had only set up its website a month ago. The AptiQuant website says the Canadian company has been around since 2006, so it’s odd that it would have just recently...

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When the Chrome web browser appeared from Google it was notable for two reasons: the rate of development and the speed of the browser. Chrome continues to see regular releases that push forward with new/better functionality as well as continuing to get faster. It is one of, if not the fastest browser available at the moment. However, when you start to scale that performance Chrome apparently falls flat on its face. What we are talking about here is having multiple tabs open, which is a very common practice today due to the amount of content we like to look at. It’s not uncommon to have a tab open for your email, another for your social network, and another loading a YouTube video or showing your Twitter stream. The list goes on. Chrome is great...

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Today, RIM has announced 5 new BlackBerry smartphones running BlackBerry 7 OS. The line-up includes the BlackBerry Bold 9990 and 9930, the BlackBerry Torch 9810, and the BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860. RIM is shipping all 5 handsets with a 1.2GHz processor and dedicated GPU, the ability to record 720p HD video with a 5-megapixel camera, and augmeneted reality capabilities built-in. All will ship with the latest BlackBerry 7 operating system which RIM boasts offers 40% faster web browsing and optimized HTML5 performance. The premium version of Documents To Go is included for free, you get BlackBerry Protect for backups, and BlackBerry Balance for use of one handset as a work and leisure phone. Finally there’s a feature referred to as Liquid...

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In April news broke, to many iPhone owners’ dismay, that the phone was tracking the their location. The data, which is stored both on the iPhone and on any computer the phone was synced to, included a list of the locations you’ve been to, complete with time stamps. A lawsuit was filed by two plaintiffs in a Florida U.S. District Court less than a week after the discovery. A few months later, another lawsuit is in the works over in South Korea, although this one has 27,800 Koreans filing suit against Apple Korea, instead of just two people like the Florida case. The suit will be filed in the middle of August and alleges that Apple Korea violated domestic laws on privacy. According to the Korea Herald, 3 million people own iPhones in...

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The “connected” TV trend is booming. Every manufacturer out there is trying to get you to trade in your busted old HDTV for a new connected TV that will put web apps and media streaming at your fingertips. In such a competitive world, companies have to find a way to distinguish themselves, and Insignia, Best Buy’s in-house brand, figured out a way to do just that by teaming up with TiVo. Best Buy is releasing a new line of Insignia Connected TVs that aren’t necessarily anything special on the hardware end of things, but the software is where the TVs really shines. The TV’s interface appears to be extremely intuitive and user friendly thanks to TiVo’s software. There’s no TiVo subscription necessary with this TV, but there’s also no built-in...

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