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Top five Cracking Open teardowns of 2012

From smartphones and tablets to a $7,000 desktop, we've cracked open a lot of tech this year. And as is the tradition at the end of each year, it's time to take a look at a few of our favorites. During this special episode of Cracking Open, I'm counting down my top five teardowns of 2012.

5. Nokia Lumia 900

First on our list is the Nokia Lumia 900. Released in the spring, this Windows Phone device was Nokia's attempt to recapture some of the American smartphone market.

Unfortunately, as we discovered during our teardown, the phone's hardware just wasn't up to par with the competition. I went so far as to call it mediocre. So why did I include our 900 teardown on this list? Because it's probably this year's best example of why knowing what's inside a device is an important factor in deciding whether to buy one.… Read more

HP to Apple: Hey, we already make PCs in the U.S.

If Made In USA is a feature, Hewlett-Packard's got Apple beat.

In effect, that's what HP said today. "Lots of noise...about Apple moving Mac production back to the U.S.... [We] wanted to offer HP's story," said an HP representative via e-mail Friday.

Part of that story was provided by way of a blog post.

"HP PCs have been assembled in the U.S. since the beginning," the post begins. "HP workstations and commercial desktop PCs are manufactured in Indianapolis, and HP servers are manufactured in Houston. These manufacturing facilities employ … Read more

Indaba updates online-recording app

Last year, Indaba Music became the first company to offer a full-fledged digital-audio workstation in the cloud. This is a pretty remarkable piece of programming: digital-audio workstations like ProTools and Cubase are the tools of the trade for professional recording, and free equivalents like Audacity and Apple's Garage Band offer beginners a simple way to get acquainted with the basic ideas of multitrack recording. But all of these programs run locally and rely on local computing resources, including storage.

Indaba takes the whole concept and moves it online, letting you record and manipulate files from a Java application in … Read more

HP EliteBook 8740w only has i's for you

In case you hadn't already read the leaks, HP's updated its 17-inch EliteBook mobile workstation with Intel Core i5 and i7 processors; three 1GB graphics card options; support for up to 16GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 memory; an option for a 256GB SSD; and mobile broadband with GPS for asset tracking, mapping, or navigation. Returning is the 17-inch LED-backlit WUXGA+ antiglare display with HP DreamColor technology for professional color reproduction.

The component offerings should allow for some serious desktop-like performance while still being mobile. The workstation measures 1.4 inches high by 15.6 inches wide by 11.… Read more

New Lenovo W701DS dual-screen specs leaked

(Update: See our report on Lenovo's official announcement of the W701DS.)

Way back at CES 2009, we were obsessed with Lenovo's somewhat absurd/impressive take on extreme laptopping, the W700DS. With dual displays--one 17-inch, and a second slide-out one at 10.6 inches--and a Wacom digitizer surface built in right next to the touch pad, the W700DS was the experimental supersize ThinkPad to satisfy the dreams of desktop replacement dual-monitor fetishists everywhere.

Not only does a revamped W700DS finally seem to be nearing a U.S. release, but these specs were leaked by Lenovo, according to ThinkPads.com. … Read more

Complete audio editor

We see a lot of audio conversion software, and the vast majority of these programs are quite limited in scope, allowing you to convert, for example, MP3 files to four or five other formats. But then there are programs like Audio Workstation. This program is so jam-packed with features that it's hard to imagine that the average non-professional user would ever need anything else.

Audio Workstation's interface could stand to be a little less cluttered and a little more intuitive, but overall, it's pretty easy to figure out. The program's major features are all arranged with … Read more

Windows 7 improvements to help audio recording

Most of the audio engineers I've met--both home and professional--are Mac people, and Avid's ProTools running on a Mac is often cited as the industry standard. But there are Windows loyalists out there.

In late 2007 I took an introductory audio production class taught by David Huber (who wrote one of the bibles on the subject, "Modern Recording Techniques") and Scott Colburn (who has produced albums by The Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, and Sun City Girls, among many others). Both of them used Nuendo from Steinberg (which is basically the upmarket version of Cubase) as their … Read more

TrekDesk hits the market, exhausts our soles

The TrekDesk press release is packed with all sorts of alarming statistics about adult obesity, as well as alluring statistics about the benefits of walking. The combination is designed to make you want one, and want one now, in spite of the product's $479-sans-treadmill price tag.

Why go for a lovely walk outside, or exercise on an ordinary treadmill inside, when you can walk at your desk--without even sweating? It is "Easy to Do" and "Requires No Extra Effort." (The All Caps mean they Really Mean It.)

TrekDesk is by no means the first attempt … Read more

iCore-driven Clevo D900F notebook a beast

Normally, when you're reading off specs for laptops, an Intel Core i7 quad-core processor isn't listed--for gaming laptops, desktop replacements, or otherwise--and with good reason. We've had a few quad-core systems in the past, like the Toshiba Qosmio X305, but those Q9000 CPUs were made for these notebooks. So, what do you get when you cram a desktop processor into a notebook? A beast.

AVADirect will be the first reseller in the U.S. to offer a notebook using the Intel Core i7 quad-core desktop processor. The Clevo D900F 17-inch gaming notebook can pack up to 12GB … Read more