budget

Toshiba used to have just one ultrabook line: the Portege Z835. Toshiba's added to its ultrabooks arsenal with a new pair of Satellite models: one's an affordable mainstream $749 model, the other's a wide-screen 14-incher that feels like it escaped the concept lab. And as for that Portege, it's been upgraded to Ivy Bridge processors and renamed the Portege Z935. We took a look at all of Toshiba's latest ultrabooks up close; here are our impressions and details on the ultrabook trio.

All three of Toshiba's new ultrabooks sail under $1,000: the Satellite … Read more

When it comes to picking out a smartphone that'll cost you less than $100, there's plenty of good news to go around. Constant sales on older-model phones mean that carriers are giving away great handsets in exchange for your two-year contract commitment.

Thanks to pitched smartphone and carrier competition, more excellent handsets launch at less than $100, too, and I'm not talking about phones labeled $99.99, even though many of those, like the Nokia Lumia 900, offer great value in their own right.

Here's my current crop of favorites, in no particular order.… Read more

We all struggle with our priorities daily.

Who, therefore, cannot hold loving hands with the fine, struggling minds at the University of Florida? For they have searched their souls and deduced that quite a lot of its Computer And Information Science and Engineering Department might be surplus to requirements.

I was initially grateful to Forbes for offering this disturbing information.

Forbes said that the school -- faced with the need to cut budgets -- sees insufficient use for teaching assistants in computer science, so it intends to chop them out. The graduate and research programs? Oh, what can they possibly … Read more

When it comes to Bluetooth speakers, small is hot. We have Jawbone and all the marketing it put behind its Jambox partially to thank for that. With its rechargeable battery and impressive sound for its size, the Jambox showed how you could take a tiny portable speaker and pair it with your smartphone, tablet, or laptop to create a mini wireless stereo system just about anywhere you were.

But some folks don't want to drop $150 to $175 on a portable speaker, which is why I've put together this list of less expensive alternatives. We'll be reviewing more inexpensive portable Bluetooth speakers as the year goes along and we'll continue to update this list as we listen to new products and earlier models we might have missed.… Read more

Products like the Amazon Kindle Fire have proven that you don't have to spend $500 to have a useful, fun tablet computer.

In the wake of Amazon's success, manufacturers have been paying a lot of attention to the $200-$300 tablet market. Unfortunately, there has been a huge influx of generic, substandard tablets swooping in that promise better features, but only deliver disappointment.

If you're shopping around for a cheap tablet, but you're wary of buying a piece of junk, I've created this video along with a slideshow buying guide that breaks down your options … Read more

Headphones are among the most popular products on CNET, and, not surprisingly, many of you are looking for a pair that delivers a lot of bang for the buck.

With that in mind, I've put together a list of our favorite headphones that offer good -- and sometimes excellent -- performance for the money. It's a bit of a hodgepodge of products, with a mix of in-ear, on-ear, and over-the-ear headphones, and even a few Bluetooth models.

Since there are literally thousands of models available, we've most likely missed some great deals, but we're determined to find as many headphone bargains as we can, so feel free to offer up your own nominations in the comments section below. We'll be reviewing additional headphones throughout the year and will be updating this list as we go along. … Read more

The demand for dirt-cheap alternatives to the iPad 2 is undeniable. At the outset of the tablet wars, the majority of sub-$300 tablets being sold were pretty awful. Their bad screens and slow processors fundamentally crippled the entire tablet experience and had us begging for our laptops, or even a decent smartphone.

Fortunately, there's now an abundance of tablets that are both cheap and worthwhile. Sure, their screens are not as big as the iPad's or a 10-inch Honeycomb tablet, and their Internet connections may be limited to Wi-Fi. But through all their skimping, they still preserve the fundamentals of what a good tablet should deliver: Web, e-mail, and fun.

To give these wallet-friendly slates their due, we've created an ongoing feature that rounds up our top budget tablets. … Read more

Score one for old-school aircraft against the upstart drones.

Perhaps it's just a brief respite from the seemingly inevitable winds of change propelling unmanned aircraft ever higher in the Pentagon's airpower depth charts, but the venerable U-2 spy plane has won a key vote of confidence over the unmanned RQ-4 Global Hawk. That victory came not in a head-to-head aerial dogfight, but in a more bureaucratic conveyance: the draft of the federal budget for the U.S. government's fiscal 2013.

"The Administration proposes to end production of the Global Hawk unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle," says … Read more

President Obama plans to increase U.S. funding by 5 percent next year for research and development of a broad swath of technologies, according to his proposed fiscal 2013 budget, which was released today.

The president's budget (see below) has earmarked $140.8 billion for overall R&D, specifically focusing on those areas that will "directly contribute to the creation of transformational technologies that can create the businesses and jobs of the future."

To further research of clean energy, smart infrastructure, wireless communications, and cybersecurity, Obama plans to divide $13.1 billion among the National Science … Read more