Laptop

The upgrades for the new Spin 3 14-inch convertibles include an almost complete Intel Whiskey Lake CPU lineup ranging from the Pentium Gold 5405U to the Core i7-8565U, plus discrete graphics solutions up to the new GeForce MX230 GPUs. Standard RAM capacity is 8 GB, but users can add up to 24 GB, and the new notebooks come with up to 512 GB NVMe + up to 1 TB HDD storage combos.

The future of Microsoft PCs such as the Surface Pro may yet be Qualcomm-based. A new report on the development of Windows on ARM includes references to several prototypes from this line with Snapdragon processors rather than those from Intel. Therefore, this prospect may now be more feasible than ever.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, or PUBG for short, is one of the Korean studio Bluehole's biggest success stories. However, some state regulators seem not to like it as much as its millions of players do. Nepal is the latest country to ban the game, citing detrimental effects on children and teenagers.

The NexDock 2 takes the power of your smartphone or Raspberry Pi and creates a laptop experience with a Full HD display, a plethora of ports including a headphone jack, four USB ports and a HDMI port. The NexDock 2 is currently available for US$199 on Kickstarter and ships in September.

The latest GeForce Game Ready Driver from Nvidia enables a limited set of ray tracing features for the GTX 1000-series. Compared to the new RTX 2000 cards, the Pascal ones are clearly slower and Nvidia provides a set of graphs to reflect the performance gap. The green team also provides three tech demos where Pascal users can play around with the settings.

The new Disney+ streaming service will entail a mixture of old and new shows from all of the studios under its umbrella. This, therefore, includes Lucasfilm, 21st Century Fox, Pixar and Marvel. Therefore, Netflix may indeed forfeit several lucrative series-length titles as Disney parts company with it in 2019. This year should also see much more granular detail on what this new subscription has to offer.

The VAIO A12 is the latest convertible laptop from the Japanese OEM. The A12 offers a bevy of ports and decent specifications, but the high price (€2300/£2000) may be prohibitive to many consumers. The VAIO A12 is available in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Acer is kicking off its New York event this week with a gaming laptop that integrates a forward-sliding RGB keyboard launching later this month. The unique design promises better airflow in a similar manner to the Asus Zephyrus and Samsung Odyssey laptops.

Acer's mid-range gaming laptop is launching later this month with unannounced Intel 9th gen CPUs, up to GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics, and a 144 Hz FHD IPS display for a starting price of $1200 USD.

Acer is staying silent on the exact Nvidia GPU options for the entry-level Nitro 7. It will very likely carry the GTX 1660 as the pricier Helios 300 will carry the RTX 2060 and higher. The official reveals of both the mobile Intel 9th gen Core H series and the inevitable Nvidia GTX 1660/1650 look closer than ever.

Leaked promotional material for a new MSI GL63 laptop sporting an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU and an Intel Core i7-9750H has provided numerous performance details. The images show scores for benchmarks that put the 9th Gen Intel CPU way ahead of the i7-8750H and i7-7700HQ, while the purported mobile GTX 1650 outpaces both the GTX 1050 Ti and the GTX 1050.

YouTube has amassed a 265 million-stong user based in the Indian market. Speaking at a recent Google conference, the service's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, projected that this number would grow further to 500 million by next year. The executive attributed this to the availability of 4G in this country.

Canon has launched the EOS Rebel SL3, the latest in this line of compact DLSRs. This model is capable of 4K reconding, a first for the EOS Rebel series. It does so with its 24.1 megapixel (MP) APS-C sensor, which is compatible with EF and EF-S lenses. The EOS Rebel is capable of various autofocus settings, and has a completely adjustable LCD touchscreen.

Two new Intel Whiskey Lake-U SKUs, the Core i7-8665U and the Core i5-8365U, were spotted in leaked ThinkPad X390 specifications. These new CPUs are almost identical to the existing Core i7 and Core i5 options except for the fact that the single-core Turbo Boost has been increased by 200 MHz. It is possible that these new processors would continue to co-exist alongside current Whiskey Lake-U options and bring vPro support for enterprise management.

A 2019 refresh of the 14-inch Honor MagicBook is going to be released on April 17, according to a Chinese retailer. The main difference between the upcoming version and the 2018 laptop is a processor upgrade: Last year’s AMD MagicBook variant came with a Ryzen 5 2500U, whereas the 2019 model will be fitted with a Ryzen 5 3500U APU.

2019 is already shaping up to be a good year for AMD. The 7 nm chips are currently manufactured by TSMC on the new EUV lithography, and the red team has considerably increased its chip orders, as the launch dates are looming. Intel, on the other hand, is faced with weakened investor confidence and could lose important market share in the mainstream CPU and server sectors.

Razer issued fixes for all the models launched from 2016 onward, but owners of the Blade and Blade Pro models released prior to 2016 will have to wait for a few more weeks to get the fixes. The vulnerability is identical to the early 2018 CVE-2018-251 backdoor that affected Apple's MacBooks, which were sold with the Manufacturing Mode still enabled.

A benchmark score for the upcoming Intel Coffee Lake H Refresh mobile chip i7-9750H has appeared on the PassMark database. The test used for the processor was the PerformanceTest Version 9.0.1030. Apparently, the 9th Gen chip managed to achieve a score of 14,118 points, which puts it way ahead of the predecessor i7-8750H.

For better gaming performance, the Asus Zephyrus S GX701 should be your top option over the MSI GS75. For everything else outside of gaming, however, the MSI has a fairly long list of advantages that shouldn't be ignored.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) vice-president of research Maria Zuber has stated that the university will discontinue its new and existing partnerships with the OEMs ZTE and Huawei. This decision is reportedly connected to suspicions that the two companies have violated US sanctions.

We have reviewed the Lenovo ThinkPad E485. Of this model, we received not only one, but two review samples. As in many cases, both review samples had different LCD panels. Unfortunately, one panel is much darker than the other one.

The new mobile Zen+ Ryzen 7 Pro 3700U (4.0/2.3 GHz) will be just marginally faster than the outgoing Zen Ryzen 7 2700U (3.8/2.2 GHz). When compared to the Intel Core i7-8650U, however, AMD is promising up to 258 percent faster graphics performance in certain applications. More significant gains in CPU performance are not expected until the "proper" third generation Zen 2 series refresh.

A picture of two MECHREVO Z2 laptops that apparently sport an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 and GTX 1660 Ti, respectively, has been leaked. Not only do the gaming notebooks allegedly come with these often-rumored mobile GPUs, but it is claimed they also feature a brand-new 9th Gen Coffee Lake H Refresh CPU, in this case the i7-9750H.

A potential launch date for Intel’s anticipated 9th Gen Coffee Lake H Refresh has been offered: April 21. Along with the date, the same source has offered full details of the six models that will make up the series of new Intel Core mobile processors. However, some of the information conflicts with previously rumored specifications, although it does offer an insight to expected clocks and TDP.

According to a new report by DigiTimes, the uptake of 7nm chips from TSMC was at its lowest 2019 ebb in the first quarter of this year (1Q2019). However, the company expects its orders to push its relevant processes to their full capacity in 3Q2019. The firm has also started using the improved EUV method for the production of 7nm dies.

Huawei is set to release its latest power bank for sale for the first time in China. This will take place in the coming week (on April 11, 2019). The OEM alleges that this power bank is compatible with devices that can charge at 40 watts. This includes the P30 line of smartphones, as well as some Matebooks.

Aukey, a common name in USB power and mobile-device accessories, has launched a new technology called Dynamic Detect. It allows a dual-port USB-Power Delivery (USB-PD) charger to recognize the number of devices connected to it and allocate its full wattage accordingly. This could allow an ultrabook to fast-charge at the full wattage it needs.

Numerous online retailers have started updating their product lists to include laptops from manufacturers like Lenovo and Asus that will feature the 9th Gen Intel Core i7-9750H processor. The i7-9750H is a member of the second tier of Coffee-Lake-H mobile processors that will be aimed at usage in high-performance laptops.

Initially scheduled for mid-2019, risk production for the upcoming 5 nm manufacturing process was already initiated at the end of March. TSMC also finalized the 5 nm design infrastructure and it is currently testing this process through multiple silicon test vehicles. Improvements over the current 7 nm process include 1.8X increased logic density and a 15% performance boost.

The saga of the XPS 15 9570's latency issues rumbles on. Frank Azor, the Vice President & General Manager of Alienware, Gaming and XPS at Dell, has tweeted that recently updated Realtek audio drivers should fix DPC-related issues for many XPS 15 9570 machines, while an upcoming BIOS revision should resolve its underlying causes.

Qualcomm has announced that George Davis, an executive who had served as the company's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the past 6 years, has left the firm. His immediate successor is David Wise, who also acts as senior vice-president and treasurer for the chipmaking giant. However, Qualcomm is also looking for a new CFO to replace him in the long term.

Acer is planning on fitting some of its upcoming Nitro laptops with GPUs from Nvidia’s Turing-based GeForce 16 series and 9th Gen Coffee Lake Intel Core processors. A leaked slide names the Acer Nitro AN515-54 and Acer Nitro AN517-51 models, with various display and GPU options for each one. The leak has seemingly confirmed mobile versions of the GTX 1660 Ti and GTX 1650.

In a new partnership announced today, Purism and Private Internet Access (PIA) have announced that the companies will develop a specialized VPN service for the Librem 13 and Librem 15 laptops as well as the Librem 5 smartphone. The VPN will be backed into PureOS and the Librem 5 out-of-the-box and aims to continue both Purism's and PIA's mission of protecting user data and privacy.

Beats has unveiled its new Powerbeats Pro on its website. These new earbuds are of the 'sports' variety, and thus have over-the-ear loops built into a completely wireless design. Like the new AirPods, they can activate Siri hands-free and have the new H1 chip for wearables.

A recent post made on Dell’s blog has revealed that the manufacturer has started to incorporate AMD’s Picasso range of mobile APUs into its Inspiron lineup. The Inspiron 15 5000 (5585) with a second-generation Ryzen CPU is now available to select on Dell’s online configurator, with shoppers being able to choose from three processor options.

Dell is offering some considerable discounts across its XPS 13 range at the moment. Some of the deals are time limited, so if you’re in the hunt for a handy-sized Ultrabook that can offer great performance with a small footprint, now is the time to act. Over US$400 can be saved on some SKUs.

Eurocom is refreshing its trade-in program this year now that Nvidia Turing options are available. Send in any MSI or Alienware laptop for an automatic 25 percent off a configurable Eurocom system. Other laptops may be accepted as well - dead or alive.

Our first benchmarks for the Nvidia MX230 show decent performance upgrades over the MX130 of up to 30 percent in 3DMark benchmarks. Shader count is identical to the MX110, but the newer Pascal architecture still manages to deliver faster performance.

The Kaby Lake G CPUs with integrated AMD RX Vega graphics seemed to be exactly what budget gaming laptops needed, but the initial supply and the 14 nm CPU shortages lead to very limited support from laptop OEMs. Surprisingly enough, when no one seemed to be giving these CPUs a chance anymore, the Kaby Lake G processors are now expected to make a return in select Acer Aspire 7 notebooks.

Effective immediately, the Toshiba America Client Solutions group (TACS) will become Dynabook Americas. The company will continue to develop and produce the familiar Portege, Tecra, and DynaEdge PCs for the U.S. market under the Sharp Corporation.