convertible

It wasn't the first convertible crossover to reach production, but I was hoping that the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet would be the last. Unfortunately, Land Rover will also be peeling back the top of its own Range Rover Evoque crossover at the 2012 Geneva Auto Show next week.

The Range Rover Evoque Convertible will feature a power retractable cloth top with a glass rear window pane. A Roll Over Protection System (ROPS) protects passengers in the event of a rollover by instantaneously popping up roll hoops behind the rear passengers when the vehicle senses that it's about to roll. … Read more

A party on the patio is just not complete without a few pieces of furniture. Or at least one that tries harder.

Patio furniture is what you make of it. The rules of etiquette that we adhere to while dining inside do not always apply when eating out of doors. The relaxed atmosphere of the backyard enables us to kick back, put our feet up, and use tables as chairs and vice versa. Sometimes, the furniture can even bend to our wishes.

The Outdoor Convertible Coffee to Dining Table, from Hammacher Schlemmer, transforms the outdoor dining space--literally. Featuring four hinged … Read more

Windows 8 is stable on the ARM chip platform and will be seeded to developers soon, sources told CNET. Devices may be priced significantly less than their Intel counterparts, too.

Windows 8 on ARM should go to developers in February, said one source, who had some hands-on time with a high-profile device from a major PC maker, adding that Windows 8 was impressive and stable.

"In October of last year. [Windows 8 on ARM] scared the industry because it was unstable. But what we are seeing now is quite stable," said another source, who also confirmed an expected … Read more

Listening to Intel's CEO Paul Otellini over the last couple of months, one can't help but wonder whether Windows 8 isn't coming sooner rather than later.

Sooner as in not next year (as in October?) Next year being a scenario pitched by some analysts.

And I do mean Windows 8 on the tried and true Intel and Advanced Micro Devices X86 platform--not ARM necessarily--as that's all Otellini cares about.

Otellini's chipperness started back in November when he made a very upbeat presentation about how Windows 8 will transform laptops into tablets--or what is now being … Read more

Panasonic announced four converters at CES to make its Lumix G series lenses photograph subjects that are farther, closer, and wider.

The four converters increase the flexibility of the lenses--and of Panasonic's Lumix G series of Micro Four Thirds. These cameras, one of the early entrants and now strong players in the interchangeable lens camera (ILC) market, forsake SLRs' reflex mirrors for a smaller design. So far even relatively strong ILC companies like Panasonic can't match the range of lenses available to SLR leaders Canon and Nikon.

Enter the converters, which will ship sometime in 2012 for as-yet … Read more

Resizing images is one of those "quick and easy" tasks that can turn into a repetitive chore as you resize an image over and over again in an attempt to get it right. Is there a quicker, easier way? Absolutely, with Moo0's ImageSizer. This free tool quickly resizes images to a specified size, but it can also create multiple images in various sizes at once and save them to a new folder in your specified destination. You can quickly find just the right image and delete all the extras simply by deleting the folder.

ImageSizer has a … Read more

Using Windows with non-Western writing schemes is a lot like watching a bad movie: All too often, the wrong characters show up on the screen. You can set up Windows to work in a wide range of languages, fonts, and writing systems, but glitches are common, especially when it comes to different character sets. Many international users have discovered LangOver, a free tool that converts your text to the language and alphabet of your choice when you press F10 (it's customizable). With it, users who set Windows to display Arabic, Greek, Cyrillic, or Hebrew characters (for example) won't … Read more

There are plenty of tools that let users convert a variety of different document types into PDF files, but we're not sure we've ever seen one as comprehensive as PDFill PDF and Image Writer Free. This useful tool not only converts documents to PDFs, but also supports a number of different image formats and lets you adjust a wide variety of settings. If you need a way to take advantage of the characteristics of PDF files without investing in expensive software, give PDFill PDF and Image Writer Free a try.

The program can be accessed from virtually anywhere … Read more

Microsoft Word templates can be serious time savers; if you find yourself creating similar documents over and over again, using a template can let you save the basic format and then automatically open it as a new document every time you want to work with it. The problem with templates--also known as DOTX and DOTM files--is that Word 2007 is the oldest version of Word capable of opening them. If you need to access the contents of a DOTX or DOTM file but you're running an older version of Word, you're out of luck, unless you have a … Read more