Ultrabook

At one point, Belkin was the go-to brand for third-party Apple accessories, not to mention USB power banks and cables. However, it had gone quiet for a good while following its amalgamation with Foxconn. This year, Belkin and its current international brands (Linksys, Wemo and Phyn) have made a comeback to CES this year to showcase their new products.

Featuring a generous selection of processor choices from Intel, the Asus ZenBook 14 UX431 integrates the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics adapter without being heavy or bulky. Its specs also include up to 16 GB of memory and 1 TB of internal storage, as well as a quad-speaker Harmon Kardon-certified audio system.

Powered by an Intel Whiskey Lake processor, the new ZenBook S13 is allegedly the thinnest laptop that features a discrete graphics solution. However, its main selling point is the impressive 97 percent screen-to-body ratio that has been achieved by placing the webcam in a notch that extends above the display area.

At CES 2019, Acer has announced the new Swift 7 notebook with an even more slimmer and lighter profile than last year while still offering improved 8th generation Intel CPUs, a 92% screen-to-body ratio, Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, and an all-alloy construction. The new Swift 7 will be available in North America in May 2019 starting from US$1,699 and in EMEA and China from April 2019.

Can the GeForce RTX 2080 fit in a chassis the size of a Dell XPS 15? Apparently so. Gigabyte has updated its most popular 15-inch laptop ever with CPU and GPU options normally reserved for thicker and larger gaming laptops. Day-to-day performance will also be boosted by Microsoft Azure AI.

The half-metal, half-leather laptop will be getting a second color option and a higher resolution display by the end of this month. Internal specifications are otherwise identical to the SKUs introduced last November. While the 4K UHD panel will cost extra, the new color will still start at $1300 USD.

The 1000-nit matte touchscreen will be significantly brighter than any consumer laptop or convertible in the market. In comparison, most Ultrabooks available today top out at just 300 nits or 400 nits for relatively poor outdoor visibility.

The 14.1-inch LapBook Pro will have bezels just 5.8 mm thick, 64 GB of soldered eMMC 5.1 storage, and an empty M.2 slot for expansion. Chuwi has also managed to include the webcam along the top edge of the screen unlike on the Huawei.

Acer's newest business laptop, the TravelMate X3410, is now available. Starting at US $900, the TravelMate X3410 is a thin-and-light business notebook powered by Intel's 8th generation U-series CPUs. As is the norm for business laptops, there are a bevy of ports and configuration options.

Do you still enjoy Steam on your Windows XP machine? Seems that's just too bad for you, then. Valve's prior announcement that it will cease support for Windows XP and Vista comes into effect today. Users still on these platforms were still able to play games, but lost access to all other Steam features, in 2018; now, they are losing access to the client as a whole.

Under normal circumstances, the most up-to-date version of Windows begins to drag in a majority of market share (defined as the percentage of PCs that run it) in the year of its release. Windows 10 1809 has not enjoyed this level of success so far. In fact, according to a new report by AdDuplex, it has only attained 6.6% of the total market share from 2016 to 2018.

Microsoft has reportedly begun to induce PCs to download and install the latest Windows 10 update, whether the user seeks for it or not. The company claims that this is necessary to protect devices against security threats. However, there are a number of workarounds for this situation.

Turbo Boost becomes the deciding factor that gives the Dell laptop a slight edge in CPU performance even though the Asus uses a newer Intel processor. Even so, the ZenBook carries a few other advantages to make it worth considering especially in regards to price and storage.

Epic Games is now sitting on US$3 billion in gross profits this year. According to a new article in TechCrunch based on the claims of a 'knowledgeable' source. This level of success is (somewhat obviously) made off the back of Epic's flagship, Fortnite. It is a particularly impressive claim, considering that this title's revenue is largely derived from in-game purchases.

Loose USB Type-C charging cable, electronic noise, discharging battery when gaming, and abnormally slow processor performance round up the list of issues we encountered during our review on the latest Blade Stealth laptop.

HP is currently holding a red tag sale and there are plenty of discounted laptops on offer for potential buyers. The sale includes high-end devices such as the HP Spectre X360 laptop with an i7-8705G and Radeon RX Vega M Graphics (4 GB) and the 15.6-inch Omen that comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060. At the other end of the scale, bargain-hunters can find the basic HP 14Z with 4 GB RAM for a price starting at US$199.99.

Microsoft has been fitting out its London flagship store for several months now, and it does not look like the store is close to opening. The store will remain under construction until at least the end of April 2019, according to planning notices recently placed around the storefront.

Lenovo ThinkPads are usually made for company buyers first and foremost, but there are some exceptions. The less expensive ThinkPad E series does target consumers more. A new leak reveals that the upcoming 14 inch model of this series will be released in a thinner variant.

The current Windows Insider Preview build (or Windows 10 19H1) has been updated to include support for the 'shruggie' and other emojis of its types in the OS' hotkeys. This may finally bring a welcome end to workarounds with keyboard shortcuts and so on. 19H1 should be available in early 2019.

The 2018 MacBook Air may be a good option for those who want the Apple-ultrabook looks for a more moderated price. B&H Is currently holding a sales event for this device, which takes between US$100 and $150 off most of its SKUs. However, these offers are only valid until December 22.

Tencent Games has asserted that it has drawn level with Epic Games' Fortnite in terms of mobile user numbers for its own game, PUBG. This means that PUBG has made it to about 200 million users. It is estimated that both games also have the same approximate number of users who play at least once a day (30 million).

Are you tired of using Photoshop to clear the background from your photos so you can replace it? The makers of remove.bg clearly thinks you are. It offers a service in which its AI identifies the main subject matter of any image, then makes the background around it transparent.

A spec sheet of the HP ZHAN 66 Pro 14 G2 has leaked online that lists the notebook sporting an NVIDIA GeForce MX250 GPU with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM. This is the first listing of the MX250 in the wild and from the information we have, it is just a rebranded MX150 with slightly higher clocks. So, while the RTX 2000 Turing GPUs will be getting mobile versions, NVIDIA could still continue to offer a rebranded Pascal GPU for entry-level notebooks and ultrabooks.

It's no secret that Cortana is losing favor with the PC-using public, and possibly also with Microsoft developers in some departments. A well-regarded Windows-focused leaker claims to have found evidence that the digital assistant may be replaceable in future versions of the OS. This is also somewhat corroborated by the fact Amazon's Alexa is now available in Windows' Store.

Lenovo announced the first ThinkPad laptops of the 2019 generation. The affordable ThinkPad L390 and its convertible brother ThinkPad L390 Yoga are the first ThinkPad laptops to sport the newer Whiskey Lake processors from Intel like the Core i5-8265U.

The most recent versions of Windows 10 has an option in settings that apparently prevent the OS sending your activity history to Microsoft. However, HowToGeek has reported that these options may be insufficient in the case of app-history tracking. This information may still be collected unless every relevant privacy setting possible is modified.

Facebook has informed its developers of "a photo API bug" that allowed third-party apps to access photos uploaded to the social media's servers, regardless of whether the user then chose to share these images on their timelines or not. The company has admitted that this new flaw had been in effect for eight days in September 2018 and may have affected as many as 6.8 million users who logged in on those dates.

NVIDIA has released a new Game Ready driver that is available to download for RTX and GeForce GPUs. The new driver adds Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) beta to Final Fantasy XV and brings updates to GeForce Experience too.

Want a Samsung laptop that perfectly matches your Samsung smartphone? Samsung has got you covered with its second-gen Notebook 9 that comes in the same contrasting color scheme as the Galaxy Note 9 that matches a bright yellow colored S-Pen with a gorgeous Ocean Blue finish.

The Gram 17 notebook is probably one of the lightest notebooks in its class thanks to the lightweight aluminum chassis and the 15.6-inch frame, while the Gram 2-in-1 is LG's first take at a convertible notebook. Both models come equipped with Intel's 8th gen Core ULV CPUs, 8 / 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and 256 / 512 GB of SSD storage.

Tum Apisak is back with a bunch of exciting leaks regarding the performance of Nvidia's mid-range and high-end mobility GPUs based on the Turing architecture. First off, the RTX 2060 will get a regular and a Max-Q version, and it looks like the regular version is a bit faster than the GTX 1070 Max-Q. Moreover, Apisak reveals benchmarks for laptops integrating the RTX 2070 Max-Q, the RTX 2080 and the RTX 2080 Ti.

Sales of laptops, traditional PCs, and mobile workstations are expected to remain relatively flat for the next few years. Even so, the fast decline of traditional slate tablets will allow laptops and PCs to regain lost market share. Detachable tablets will continue to grow and eat up sales of slate tablets.

The Helio M70 baseband chipset was showcased at the China Mobile Global Partner Conference in Guangzhou today. This modem, unlike the Snapdragon X50, is backwards-compatible with 4G to 2G. It is also 3GPP-compatible and rated for speeds of 5 gigabits per second.

The 4.9 mm bezels are 60 percent thinner than the last generation with a "retina-shattering" 13.3-inch 4K UHD display. Razer is promising 100 percent sRGB coverage, Whiskey Lake-U CPUs, and optional full-power GeForce MX150 graphics for a starting price of $1400 USD.

Razer’s first major laptop was the 14-inch Blade over five years ago in 2013. Ever since then, the Blade family has expanded to include 12.5-inch, 13.3-inch, 15.6-inch, and 17.3-inch models. The central 14-inch series, however, will be on hiatus for the time being.

The Korean electronics giant Samsung will reportedly debut a line of notebooks with 4K OLED panels at CES 2019. These devices will come in 13.3 inch, 14 inch, and 15.6 inch variants. However, don't expect the consumer models of these new machines to come cheap.

Scott Johnson, the Google manager in charge of the app Hangouts, has taken to Twitter in order to refute a report that the same app is to shut down shortly. Instead, Johnson asserts, its functions are to be split across two new services: Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meets. Those who still use "Hangouts Classic" will be "upgraded" to these new apps as they roll out.

Intel has announced that it will introduce a new medium called Universal Windows Drivers (UWD) to update the integrated graphics the company supplies to current Microsoft OS-running hardware. The institution of UWD will mean that all other methods to install updates for these graphics drivers may become invalid.

Huawei, in partnership with the New Zealand telecommunications company Spark, has had its proposal to provide 5G hardware for the country blocked. This action was taken by the NZ Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). The body stresses that this decision was not specifically related to any possible connection between Huawei and the Chinese government.

Fresh details about Microsoft's first store in the UK have emerged online. Published on the City of Westminster's planning portal, Microsoft has confirmed the size of its London store's retail floor space and offered more details about its layout.

Among the Windows 10 October update's many bugs, Apple's iCloud stopped working and could not be installed on the build. Microsoft and Apple had announced that they would collaborate to resolve this bug. With iCloud's newest update, it appears that this has been achieved.

Asus has announced a new addition to its VivoBook line-up: The VivoBook 14 (X420). The laptop has a reported 87% screen-to-body ratio, measures 322.4 x 210 x 17.77 mm and it weighs just 1.4 kg. The device can be supplied with up to an eighth-generation Intel Core i7 CPU and a SATA III SSD offering 128 GB to 512 GB of storage.