laptops

Crave presents the week's laptop news, in digest form.

Intel got mobile gamers talking with the announcement of the first Extreme Edition processor for laptops. The 2.6GHz Core 2 Extreme X7800 features 4MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz front-side bus, plus the overspeed protection has been removed. And you thought the era of flaming laptops was over...

Actually, flaming laptops never left the headlines, as evidenced by reports that Toshiba is recalling 5,100 more Sony laptop batteries due to fire risk. And Mac users need not be smug: the head writer for The Late Show with … Read more

Now that we are breaking down the digital divide by getting computers to children in impoverished regions of the world, let's take a look at what the kids are doing with their new laptops. It turns out they are using them the same way most of the people surfing the Net use them: searching for pornography.

A reporter for the official News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) found that pornographic images were stored on many of the laptops donated by the One Laptop Per Child project.

"Efforts to promote learning with laptops in a primary school in Abuja have … Read more

A hand-delivered box containing a new Sony Vaio TZ laptop just arrived, temporarily holding the CNET Labs staff transfixed with its ultra-slim design. The spell was only broken by a quick inquiry about the system's price ("How much is that? $3,000? Oh...")

Our review unit is actually one of the lower-end TZ models, clocking in at a more reasonable $2,299, meaning it has only 1GB of RAM, a slightly slower CPU than the more expensive models, and a standard hard drive, instead of the 32GB solid-state option in the higher-end TZ configurations (those get up … Read more

Sure we've seen it in Japan for months, and you can actually order one from gadget importer Dynamism.com, but we're still pretty excited that Sony is finally releasing the Vaio TZ laptop here in the good ol' U. S. of A.

Last night, at the event space on top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza (known as the Top of the Rock), Sony showed off what the company calls a "new line of richly designed, high-performance ultraportable notebooks." For once we pretty much agree--even with an 11.1-inch LED backlit display, Web cam, carbon-fiber casing, and a … Read more

Mobile gaming just got sweeter: today, Intel announced the Core 2 Extreme X7800, its first laptop CPU under the Extreme Edition brand. The 2.6GHz dual-core processor features 4MB of L2 cache and an 800MHz front-side bus, making it the highest-end chip in Intel's mobile lineup. Of greater interest to gamers, though, is the fact that the chip's overspeed protection has been removed, meaning laptop manufacturers and users will be able to overclock the X7800 for even more performance (Intel, of course, denies any responsibility for the consequences of overclocking).

Like Intel's other mobile product offerings, the … Read more

Considering how quickly Lenovo's Olympics laptop came out--it was shown just one day after its first public mention--the company has taken a fairly long time to release any details.

But Electronista says the "Xiang" notebook, which bears the distinctive "Cloud of Promise" design created specifically for the 2008 Beijing Games, has made an appearance at a Southeast Asian trade show and sported a 12-inch widescreen, a 1.66 GHz Core Duo processor, a multi-card reader and three USB ports, among other features.

Unfortunately, the most important specs--where and when we can get one, and for … Read more

HP is far from the only shovelware offender, but it's certainly among the worst. Buy a PC from any large manufacturer, and you'll likely find the desktop littered with icons for free software trials. Software companies pay hardware manufacturers to get their apps (or links to their apps) preloaded on systems so that their products sit in front of a captive audience as it powers up a new PC for the first time. This arrangement helps the software companies acquire more paying customers, and it helps the hardware manufacturers' bottom line, particularly with low-end systems where margins are … Read more

Actually, we're declaring the color-laptop trend to be no longer a trend, but rather a standard feature. A few weeks ago, Dell, not exactly known for its cutting-edge designs, announced that it would offer a fleet of new Inspirons in a range of color choices. And now even Gateway has launched two new notebook lines--the 14.1-inch T series and the 15.4-inch M series--available in three colors.

Inside the red, blue, or gray exterior (subtly pattered with a series of dissolving spheres), you'll find a computer that's classic Gateway: plenty of configuration options ranging from inexpensive … Read more

As colleagues Will Greenwald and Neha Tiwari have noted, the new Transformers movie will mean big bucks in the toy and games market. But not everyone can get away with wearing an "Optimus Prime Voice Changer Helmet" to work, let alone past most conscious security guards.

So Haier is making it possible for so-called mature adults to show their allegience to bot culture with a laptop. Granted, it's basically a G70 notebook with a decal, as Engadget notes, though it does have a 17-inch screen, 2GB of memory and a 120GB hard drive. It also looks kind … Read more