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The term "thin and light" has a flexible meaning in the laptop world. Currently, to be truly thin, a PC must be in the same range as the MacBook Air. Still, plenty of thicker 13-inch laptops still exist that would have been considered thin a few years ago, but seem merely normal today. The Asus U31SD-A1 is just that sort of laptop. Its thickness is more akin to a 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro, but Asus' laptop lacks an optical drive. We reviewed a nearly identical Asus U31JG laptop a few months ago, noting that it was a solid … Read more

There are a lot of minicamcorders on the market, but not all of them can withstand a 5-foot drop or a dunk in a pool. And actually, last year you really couldn't find any that could survive those things. This year, though, you can pick from models from Kodak, Panasonic, Toshiba, JVC, GE, and Samsung.

The leaders here are Kodak's PlaySport Zx5 and Panasonic's HM-TA20. The Panasonic is more expensive than and isn't as full featured as the PlaySport, but it's still less than $200 and does just enough. It also seems better designed for … Read more

General Electric plans to double down on LED home lighting over the next 16 months.

In November, GE plans to start selling a 13-watt LED lightbulb that matches the light emission of a 60-watt incandescent bulb. That option will be followed by 75- and 100-watt-equivalent LED bulbs by fall 2012, the company said. The bulbs can deliver light "for over two decades" if consumers use them for no more than three hours each day, GE claims.

LED lightbulbs are widely considered the next big thing in home lighting. And for good reason. Aside from lasting an extraordinarily long … Read more

GE took an if-ain't-broke approach with the Power Pro X500. Almost nothing changes from its predecessor, the X5. There's just a bump in resolution from 14 to 16 megapixels and some new scene modes. Otherwise, it retains all the same things that made the X5 a popular camera: a wide-angle lens with a 15x zoom; an electronic viewfinder (EVF); semimanual and manual shooting modes; and power from AA-size batteries--all for a very reasonable sub-$150 price.

It's that price and its feature set that helped earn the camera its above average rating. The X500 is capable of … Read more

Royal Philips Electronics' new 75-watt-equivalent LED bulb is now available for sale online.

The 17-watt LED bulb is equal to a 75-watt incandescent but uses 80 percent less electricity and lasts 24 times longer than the average incandescent, according to Philips.

The bulb has a lifespan of 25,000 hours, roughly the equivalent of 17 years of daily four-hour use, and a color temperature of 2,700, which is a warm yellow light similar to that of an incandescent bulb, according to company specs.

Philips first unveiled the bulb, which is compatible to fit into any 75-watt incandescent socket, in … Read more

A few years ago, the Acer TimelineX was one of the first of what we then called "thin and light" laptops, 13-inchers with sleeker, lighter frames, long battery life, and a more easily portable design than a standard notebook.

The TimelineX series still exists, and Acer's latest version features newer Intel second-gen Core i-series processors and impressive Nvidia graphics. Still, the landscape has expanded to include many thin laptops: the Sony Vaio S and Toshiba Portege R835, and the extremely thin Apple MacBook Air and Samsung Series 9. The $779 TimelineX 3830TG-6431 is thin, but not as … Read more

The high-end notebook graphics war is on for 2011. Nvidia was first to fire a shot a few weeks ago, unveiling the GeForce GTX 580M.

AMD has since counterpunched with the AMD Radeon HD 6990M, its new, most high-end laptop graphics card, which the company now claims, as Nvidia did weeks ago, is the "fastest notebook GPU." This time, the edge indeed seems to belong to AMD. The company boasts a 25 percent improvement over the next-fastest notebook GPU. According to slides from AMD showing head-to-head performance benchmarks versus the GeForce GTX 580M, that statement seems to hold … Read more

General Electric, NRG Energy, and ConocoPhillips, through their joint venture firm, have invested in a new kind of wastewater treatment technology.

They're backing Israel-based Emefcy, developer of the Megawatter System, which uses bacteria to turn a regular wastewater treatment plant into an electricity-producing bioreactor that produces both clean water and electricity.

The electrogenic bioreactor draws on organic matter in the wastewater to supply microbial fuel cells (MFCs). It uses the electrogenic bacteria Shewanella, Geobacter, and Rhodoferax as catalysts to decompose the glutens in the water.

The Megawatter System is not built as a standalone plant, but is actually a … Read more

Today Nvidia unveiled its latest high-end laptop GPUs, the GTX 570M and 580M. That's not a huge surprise: the new GTX cards round out the "500 series" of GT and GTX graphics that have been available throughout the year. One feature Nvidia's particularly touting is the GTX 580's Optimus automatic switching, which should offer up "5 hours of battery life in Facebook," in case you measure your juice through social networking.

Nvidia promises that the GTX 580M is the fastest laptop graphics card anywhere, ever--the benchmark comparisons were leveled against the AMD Radeon … Read more