CES 2012: Computers and Hardware- Page 2

Intel smartphone chip No. 1 in some benchmarks, says report

Intel's new chip for smartphones handily beats some of the fastest phones on the market, according to chip review site Anandtech.

Intel's Atom Z2460 "Medfield" delivers "tablet-like scores" on the BrowserMark benchmark, wrote Anand Shimpi. "The Galaxy Nexus running ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) comes close, but once again Intel expects that on the same OS Medfield should be faster than any of the currently available SoCs (system-on-a-chip)," he said.

Intel announced the Medfield chip Tuesday at CES. The system-on-a-chip will be used in upcoming smartphones--and presumably other devices--from Lenovo and Motorola.

And … Read more

Plextor bumps SSD speed with M3 Pro line

Relatively expensive flash memory keeps the cost of SSDs much higher than I'd prefer, but competition keeps everyone honest, so I'm glad to see Plextor announce its M3 Pro line of solid-state drives.

These 2.5-inch models, with a slim 7mm height suitable for thin notebooks, will ship in February in capacities of 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB, the Japanese component maker said at CES this week. It didn't disclose pricing.

The new models step up from the existing MS3 products in data-transfer speed, the prime reason most folks pay the price premium and sacrifice the capacity compared … Read more

Synology NAS OS 4.0 gone beta, Cloud Station revealed

LAS VEGAS -- Synology, the makers of the most robust and feature-rich NAS servers on the market, now looks to the sky, too.

Despite the fact that by the end of 2011, most NAS vendors used the "Cloud" designation for certain features of their products , Synology has refused to use it for its NAS servers which in fact have many Internet-based features. The company changed its mind today at CES 2012.

It showed off that the show the latest build of its Linux-based operating system for its DiskStation NAS servers, called Disk Station Manager (DSM). Version 3.2 … Read more

Samsung Chromebook makes CES cut, but Atom does not

LAS VEGAS--The Google Chromebook will live on with a fresh chip upgrade, according to Samsung.

The next-gen Samsung Series 5 Chromebook gains a dual-core Intel Celeron processor and loses the slower Atom silicon, a Samsung representative on the CES show floor told CNET.

Other specs (see photo below) remain pretty much the same, including a 16GB solid-state drive.

Chromebooks aspire to run apps, documents, and settings in the cloud and thereby simplify the overall user experience. In practice, however, reviewers have found that cloud-based computing can be frustrating if the wireless connection is unreliable.

For that, and other reasons, the Chromebook has not sold in numbers comparable to mainstream Windows laptops.

The Series 5 is slated for release in the second quarter. Pricing has not been announced. … Read more

Toshiba plans to bring 13.3-inch tablet to U.S. market

LAS VEGAS--Get ready for jumbo tablets. Toshiba plans to bring a 13.3-inch tablet to the U.S. market later this year.

The oversize device--by tablet standards--will likely first emerge in Japan, where it can double, because of its screen size, as a portable TV in the home, a Toshiba representative on the CES show floor told CNET.

The target market for the U.S. would be customers looking for a larger tablet, according to the representative. Though he wasn't more specific, there was a demo screen (see photo below) showing a home automation control interface.

Toshiba is not revealing timing or pricing at this time. … Read more