Laptop

The team over at iFixIt has published a complete teardown of the new MacBook Air Retina. While soldered storage and an integrated keyboard count heavily against the device, new pull tabs under the battery and a separate logic board for the dual Thunderbolt 3 ports make some components easy (well, easier) to repair. Overall, the MacBook Air Retina scored a 3 out of 10 for repairability.

Panasonic has revealed a cluster of upgrades for its Toughbook 31 device. The newly enhanced version of the fully ruggedized notebook will now come with an Intel Core i5-7300U and 16 GB RAM as standard, and it will also feature improved communication equipment and a second battery option. The device will be available in the US in December, at a price starting from around US$3,699.

Nvidia's entire mobile Pascal GeForce lineup has been Max-Q-ified conveniently before CES 2019. With seemingly no other major Pascal or Max-Q products to release for laptops, the time looks ripe for an official announcement about mobile Turing in the coming months.

Intel has released a new graphics driver for 6th Generation Core processors onwards that is available now to download for Windows 10 devices. The driver has been optimised for the release of Football Manager 2019, and brings performance improvements and fixes for several other games including Warhammer Vermintide 2 and Assassins Creed Odyssey among others.

Asus and AUO are leading the charge when it comes to narrow bezel 17.3-inch laptops. With the ROG GL704 and TUF FX705 now shipping, we can expect competing OEMs to expand their respective lineup of 17-inch laptops by next year at the earliest.

Frank Azor has just confirmed that the new top end hardware configurations for the Alienware m15 gaming notebook will arrive in about 60 days if everything goes as expected. This means that both the high- and low-end configurations will probably arrive at the same time, most likely by mid-January.

Not a fan of carbon fiber? Dell will begin offering brushed aluminum options for its top Latitude laptops later this month. The unexpected cosmetic feature is a tease for more Latitude announcements to come in January.

Hotter temperatures and slower clock rates are expected, but how much of a performance dip can we really expect? Early benchmark tests show the i9-9900K trailing by about 10 percent or more when on a laptop compared to a full-size desktop PC.

5G adoption should explode in 2019 and MediaTek is ready to capitalize on it both with standalone 5G modems and 5G-enabled SoCs. The Taiwanese company would supply big names like Apple with standalone chips, while Chinese phone-makers would benefit from 5G-enabled mid-range SoCs that will help reduce the integration costs.

A new CVE may enable yet another side-channel exploit in Intel processors. This vulnerability, known as CVE-2018-5407 (or "PortSmash"), targets Hyper-Threading (or simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)). It is confirmed as effective in Skylake and Kaby Lake chips, and could affect others.

Since some think that an Intel Core i5 processor would be enough for their new gaming notebook, it seems that Alienware's latest machine will soon get new hardware options. Frank Azor has just confirmed that an i5+ GeForce GTX 1060 configuration for the Alienware m15 should arrive in about two months.

Latest Geekbench results suggest that the A12X Bionic SoC is closer than ever to Intel's top mobility CPUs. The single-core scores are pretty tight, however, the gap in multi-core mode is more noticeable. Still the A12 only lags behind by around 3,000 points, which means upcoming mobile chips from Apple could finally match Intel's solutions in 1-2 years.

The Precision 7530 is a powerful and hefty workstation, but it's definitely not smaller than the XPS 15. Dell has confirmed a minor measurement error on its product page and will update the dimension from 337.6 mm to a more accurate 375.92 mm.

The shares of the company Spotify were down 11% at the start of today (November 1, 2018) due to a forecast that shows relatively poor fourth-quarter performance. In addition, Spotify is now reported to be committed to new investments to boost innovation and future-proofing in its products.

Apple announced the new MacBook Air right at the start of todays special event. Included in the new Apple MacBook Air 2018 is a Retina screen and a new processor. Also, Apple updated the design of this very successful device today for the first time in years.

In a discussion about the latest Alienware laptop that unfolded on Twitter less than a day ago, Frank Azor highlighted the amazingly low weight of this portable — a detail that many forget about and focus on the notebook's thin design instead — and confirmed that an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 configuration is on its way.

As expected, Apple has unveiled a new Mac mini, MacBook Air and new iPad Pro models. However, one device that missed out on getting a chipset refresh was the 12-inch MacBook, leaving it essentially unchanged since June 2017 barring a new gold hue.

The world's biggest name in retail wants a piece of the gaming pie. The 15-inch OP Laptop 15 will carry narrow bezels, an i7-8750U CPU, GTX 1060 GPU, 144 Hz 1080p display, 256 GB SSD, and 16 GB RAM for $1400 USD when it launches on November 13. The series consists of Walmart-branded Tongfang barebone laptops.

The 8-inch convertible is off to a good start as far as user interest is concerned. Nearly 400 backers have already pledged an average of $450 USD each for the device. We obtained an early sample of the unit and can vouch for its robust chassis quality and stable CPU performance with minimal throttling.

Apart from the thin bezels and the redesigned corners, the 2018 iPad Pro tablets are said to come with IPS LCD touchscreens plus the second-gen Apple Pencils, slimmer profiles (not including the rear camera), a USB-C port and a smart connector, True Depth camera setups with Face ID support, and, of course the latest 7 nm A12 Bionic SoC.

Narrow bezel gaming laptops are finally starting to drop in price. The new Asus TUF FX505 is smaller than the outgoing thick-bezel FX504 but otherwise very similar in weight and thickness. The system is now shipping with GTX 1050 Ti graphics and a 1 TB primary HDD for $1100 USD.

Razer has managed to make its higher-end configurations look way overpriced by upping their baseline specifications. Users can get the entry-level Base Model Blade 15 and still have the same Core i7-8750H CPU and GTX 1060 Max-Q GPU as the higher-end model plus a few extras to boot.

Yesterday, we reported on a catastrophic failure related to a setting in the UEFI-firmware of recent ThinkPads. Essentially, if the users changed a certain setting in the UEFI of their ThinkPad, there is a good chance that the machines is bricked in the process. Now, a user of an affected machine has managed to repair it. Doing so does however require some know-how, as well as the right tools.

The Santa Clara giant reported the best quarter in its entire 50-year history, even though the company was not able to meet the outstanding market demand. The 14 nm shortages will continue throughout the rest of the year and Intel expects this situation to worsen, as it is slowly shifting focus to the 10 nm node.

HP's best 12.5-inch convertible will be taking a hiatus in order to focus on the 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 1030 series. All of its features will be integrated into the EliteBook x360 1030 including Sure View and its super-bright backlight for outdoor viewing. HP says its 13.3-inch offering is small enough to fully replace the 12.5-inch model for the time being.

Some modern ThinkPad laptops apparently have an issue with the UEFI-BIOS. When a certain setting is activated, this action can potentially brick the laptop. The only fix in this situation: Exchanging the motherboard.

Rockstar Games has announced the Companion App for its upcoming release, Red Dead Redemption 2. This app connects an Android or iOS device to the console in question, and allows the player to view maps, stats and progress on their phone or tablet while gaming.

Although both were supposed to enter production in the second half of this year, it looks like the next-gen UFS storage solutions and LPDDR5 will not hit the market as soon as expected. While the UFS 3.0 memory will arrive in the first half of next year, the LPDDR5 DRAM chips will only roll out — if everything works as planned, obviously — in 2020.

With prices starting at just US$229, the Asus Chromebook C223 and C423 both use the Intel Celeron N3350 processor and feature USB Type-C connectivity, dual-band WiFi, a microSD slot, 4 GB of memory, and 32 GB eMMC internal storage. The 11.6-inch C223 is one of the thinnest Chromebooks on the market, but lacks a touchscreen option.

The 10 nm process gave Intel quite a bit of a headache in the past few years. It was supposed to arrive in 2017 initially, but the fabrication process had to be delayed because of design problems, and it looks like Intel may not be able to launch the 10 nm CPUs come 2H 2019 in large amounts either.

The new model will be 0.9 mm thicker than the previous generation with the promise of improved cooling, longer battery life, and reduced throttling for a 13 percent increase in 3DMark 11 performance. A new design inspired by professionally cut gems puts the charging port at a unique 45-degree angle on the rear corner of the chassis.

Talk about a short life cycle. While Kaby Lake-G is nowhere to be found, the chassis has been updated with even narrower bezels (5.55 mm vs. 6.3 mm) and a visually unique 45-degree USB Type-C port. A new configuration with an Intel Coffee Lake-H CPU and GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q graphics will supplant the experimental Core i7-8705G CPU and Radeon RX Vega M GL GPU configuration released earlier this year.

HP says it will be the smallest and lightest 14-inch business convertible with a quad-core processor and also the world's first with gigabit 4G LTE for its class. The convertible is set to directly supplant the Elitebook Folio 1040 G4 with many new features inspired by the successful 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 1030 G1.

The 13.3-inch Samsung Notebook Flash features a retro-looking keyboard, Gigabit WiFi connectivity, and has been optimized for the network of the South Korean carrier KT. Priced at the equivalent of US$715, this portable will probably not reach other markets, but this is something that remains to be seen.

The new Asus Chromebook C523 comes with a full HD display with a touchscreen option, Intel Celeron N3350 or Intel Pentium N4200, and 4 GB or 8 GB of memory. This portable has no price and release date yet, but it should hit the market soon for around US$400 (considering the prices of similar models by Acer that have been around for a while).