notebooks

Will tablets eventually replace laptops?

For years, analysts have debated whether tablets will eventually replace laptops. Turns out that consumers largely believe they will--and the elderly are far more convinced of that fact than whippersnappers.

Polling company Poll Position, which surveyed 1,155 registered American voters last week, found that 46 percent of respondents believe tablets will eventually replace laptops. About 35 percent of those folks say that devices like Apple's iPad or the Amazon Kindle Fire won't replace notebooks. Nearly 20 percent of respondents had no opinion on the matter.

Although it's generally believed young people will drive the adoption of … Read more

HP and the great glass ultrabook: Envy 14 Spectre, hands-on

It takes a lot to stand out in the crowded world of ultrabooks, but HP is betting that a liberal dose of Gorilla Glass will do the trick.

The newly announced HP Spectre is the most glass-covered laptop we've ever seen. Is that a good thing? We've seen glass-heavy smartphones like the iPhone 4, but not so much in laptops...until now. At CES 2012, we got a good close-up look at HP's bold Envy redesign.

The Spectre is HP's first consumer-oriented ultrabook (the HP Folio 13 released last year was technically HP's first ultrabook, … Read more

Lenovo twists a tablet and laptop into the IdeaPad Yoga

Despite its reputation as a maker of buttoned-down business laptops, Lenovo can always be counted on to produce a couple of intriguing concept pieces at CES every year, such as the IdeaPad Yoga.

This Windows 8 prototype laptop is described as "the industry's first multimode notebook with a 360-degree flip-and-fold design." A 13.3-inch touch-screen laptop, the Yoga is a thin, light laptop, but perhaps not quite an ultrabook. It's 16.9mm thick and weighs 3.1 pounds.

The name Yoga in part gives away the system's big selling point, that the display flips fully over to become a tablet. In fact, it has four usable positions, which Lenovo calls notebook, tablet, stand, and tent.

Lenovo says the combination of a traditional laptop design and a tablet makes the Yoga ideal for both content creation and consumption. The 13-inch display has a 1,600x900-pixel native resolution, and 10-point capacitive touch.

We've seen similar ideas for years in what are called convertible laptops, which have a rotating center hinge to swivel into both laptop and tablet forms. The problem with those, traditionally, has been that the single center rotating hinge was a potential weak point in the design. Lenovo says the Yoga's full-length hinge has been rigorously tested and is stronger than the older rotating convertible design. … Read more

Samsung raises design bar with Series 9 laptop (just don't call it an 'ultrabook')

One of last year's most head-turning laptops, the Samsung Series 9, is back, with an even slimmer, sleeker look.

Just one year ago, at CES 2011, the term "ultrabook" was never uttered. Instead, we saw a handful of very thin Windows laptops looking to duplicate the aesthetic and commercial appeal of Apple's MacBook Air, but without the help of a new category name (or R&D fund) from Intel. Of those, the most eye-catching was the Samsung Series 9, a 13-inch thin laptop that had a lightweight duralumin case. At the time, we said it … Read more

Hands-on with the Samsung Series 5 Ultra: Like a Series 9, but affordable

For those who have been craving a more affordable Samsung ultrabook, here's your savior: the Series 5 Ultra.

Last year, the Samsung Series 9 nearly stole the show as one of the must-have laptops at CES, but the thin 13-incher--an ultrabook before the name ultrabook was coined--cost more than a MacBook Air.

This year, the Series 9 survives, in an even sleeker yet still expensive iteration. The Series 5 Ultra, which comes in both 13 and 14-inch varieties, starts at $899. That's the price we've come to expect from a Windows ultrabook, and surprisingly enough, the Series 5 Ultra looks like it hasn't made too many concessions to get there.… Read more

Why you won't want to buy the laptops of CES 2012

LAS VEGAS--The message of CES 2012 for laptops thus far: wait.

I'd love to tell you that one of the laptops of this year's Consumer Electronics Show is absolutely wonderful, a must-buy. However, I can't. I have a strong feeling that whatever we see at this show is only a half-step forward. Worse, there's a very good chance that it'll all be out of date by midyear.

The reasons are utterly simple, and made even clearer by this morning's Intel keynote presentation.… Read more

Asus revives the Netbook at CES 2012 with the Eee PC Flare

LAS VEGAS--As popular as ultrabook laptops currently are, the same could have been said of the Netbook a couple of years ago.

But over the past 24 months, with inexpensive 11- and 12-inch ultraportable systems and now 13-inch ultrabooks, the basic 10-inch Intel Atom Netbook has fallen on hard times. At CES 2012, the only new Netbook we've seen from a major PC maker is the new Asus Eee PC Flare.

This 10.1-inch model, also called the 1025C, uses Intel's 1.6GHz Atom N2600 dual-core CPU, but otherwise has familiar specs: 1GB of RAM and a 320GB … Read more

Toshiba teases a 14-inch ultrabook prototype, we go hands-on

LAS VEGAS--While Toshiba usually has a flood of new laptops every year, the company surprised us this CES by highlighting a single model.

Even more unusual, instead of a ready-to-ship product, it is a still-unnamed 14-inch ultrabook prototype. The unit we saw had a Satellite logo on it, rather than the Portege branding we saw in last year's Z835 (a 13-inch ultrabook currently available for a rock-bottom $799).

Otherwise, it looked very similar, with Toshiba's standard business/consumer crossover look of a gray brushed-metal lid, rounded corners, and an inset screen with a too-thick black plastic bezel.

The keyboard was a standard island-style design, with Toshiba's custom row of page navigation keys along the far right side. We haven't had a chance to use it more than briefly, but the large clickpad looked interesting, with small left and right clickzone indicators etched into it. … Read more

Lenovo IdeaPad Z, G, and Y series updates focus on better graphics, not much else

LAS VEGAS--Sometimes you just can't come up with a good angle on how to spin a laptop update.

In the case of the Lenovo IdeaPad Z, G, and Y series updates announced at CES, consider these more of the same, with better graphics.

That's not bad at all, but we expect little updates like these every year: these IdeaPads certainly aren't out to surprise. Because Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge mobile processors won't be available for laptops right away, these IdeaPad updates are indicative of what we're seeing on laptops that aren't ultrabooks: small tweaks, nothing fancy.… Read more

Lenovo ultrabooks add colors, larger hard drives, and a 14-inch version

LAS VEGAS--Ultrabooks are everywhere here at CES 2012. More importantly, a new class of ultrabook has emerged: the 14-incher.

Last year's Lenovo IdeaPad U300s was one of our favorites in an early first wave of ultrabooks. The new IdeaPad U310 and U410 alter the equation somewhat with the addition of standard hard drives instead of solid-state drives (SSDs), but that extra storage option could be exactly what attracts some buyers who might otherwise be turned off by the limitations of lower-capacity flash storage.… Read more