series

For those who have been craving a more affordable Samsung ultrabook, here's your savior: the Series 5 Ultra.

Last year, the Samsung Series 9 nearly stole the show as one of the must-have laptops at CES, but the thin 13-incher--an ultrabook before the name ultrabook was coined--cost more than a MacBook Air.

This year, the Series 9 survives, in an even sleeker yet still expensive iteration. The Series 5 Ultra, which comes in both 13 and 14-inch varieties, starts at $899. That's the price we've come to expect from a Windows ultrabook, and surprisingly enough, the Series 5 Ultra looks like it hasn't made too many concessions to get there.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--New for 2012, Samsung says it will include two pairs of active 3D glasses with its 2012 3D-compatible HDTVs, and the least-expensive such LED will be the UNES6500 series.

Available in six screen sizes, the UNES6500's major step-up over the 2012 UNES6100 models will be 3D compatibility. Otherwise both will feature the company's Smart Hub interactive TV suite as well as a thin 0.5-inch-wide bezel around the screen.

All of Samsung's 2012 3D TVs will utilize active 3D technology, as opposed to the passive variety employed by LG and others (more info).

Its features peg … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Although Samsung continues to focus most of its marketing efforts on LED TVs, we think its plasmas offer better picture quality and much better value.

The PNE8000, the company's highest-end plasma series for 2012, could be another big winner for the company. We really liked the picture quality of its predecessor, the PND8000, and now Samsung says it has improved black-level performance--a key ingredient to a good picture--by another 10 percent for 2012. The PNE8000 will share this better black level with the step-down PNE7000- and PNE6500-series 2012 plasmas. Considering that the 2011 models also had the best color accuracy I'd tested on any TV, the PNE8000 is already a strong contender for best picture quality of 2012.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--If you have a Thunderbolt-enabled computer but just can't afford Thunderbolt storage, LaCie has something that will ease the pain.

The company showed off at the start of CES the first Thunderbolt hub that also supports an eSATA connection, called the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series.

This is a device about the size of a portable external drive that comes with two Thunderbolt ports and two eSATA ports. Users can connect up to two eSATA drives to the hub and it will instantly make them work with a host computer via one Thunderbolt port. With the other port, you … Read more

One of the added benefits to the next generation of Intel Ivy Bridge processors coming later this year is its native support of Thunderbolt. The newly announced high-end ThinkPad Edge S430 will feature Thunderbolt as one of a bevy of extra features aimed at taking this middle-range small business line of laptops up a notch.

It's unclear whether it will feature Ivy Bridge, but considering that the new CPUs will release in June, coinciding with the S430's release, we can guess that it's likely that the S430 will feature the new Intel processors.

The Edge S430 doesn't look particularly striking, but Lenovo promises metal accents and a soft-touch finish that might make holding it more impressive. Besides having "the latest Intel Core processors," additional options will include an optical drive or, alternatively, a second hard drive, and Nvidia Optimus graphics. The Edge S430 will start at $749. … Read more

2012 promises to be a watershed year for laptops. Really thin will be in and internal optical drives out, while some designs venture into hybrid territory.

Apple: Apple is expected to incorporate the MacBook Air design theme into more models, including a 15-incher sans optical drive. And since Apple popularized the really-thin aesthetic with the January 2008 introduction of the MacBook Air, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the company will continue to be a trendsetter.

Trendsetting may include a rumored 2,880-by-1,800-pixel display. That would be a remarkable feat as workstation-class 15-inch Windows laptops, such as … Read more

USB 3.0 has gotten the green light for becoming a standard offering on Intel-based Windows PCs next year.

The USB Implementers Forum announced this week that the upcoming "Ivy Bridge" 7 Series Chipset and other Intel chipsets have achieved USB 3.0 certification. Chipsets are support silicon that work in tandem with the main processor.

USB 3.0, aka SuperSpeed USB, delivers up to 10 times the data transfer rate of USB 2.0, as well as improved power efficiency.

Intel's Ivy Bridge silicon, due to ship in Windows PCs in the April-June time frame, will … Read more

Sick of living in the cloud?

The new Pogoplug Series 4 is a device that looks to take the best of cloud computing and home network-attached storage and combine the two into a seamless experience. Available today, it certainly seems like a perfectly timed idea in the wake of seemingly daily frustrations with services like Apple's own iCloud and iTunes Match.

Maybe the fourth time's a charm: I've reviewed multiple Pogoplugs before, but none of them came close to what this new version offers. The Pogoplug is a NAS drive without the complications, and it's finally hit a sweet spot for price, size, and feature set. The newly released Pogoplug Series 4 is a latecomer to the holiday shopping season, but if you're getting fed up with iCloud and what other cloud services have to offer, then this $99 device might be what you're looking for.… Read more

The Hipstamatic D-Series camera app announced today offers a new way to tie photos and social networking together.

Synthetic, developer of the popular retro-image iPhone app Hipstamatic, have enjoyed plenty of success in the iTunes App Store since the app was released two years ago. Now, the company aims to make the retro-image-taking experience more social with its new D-Series camera app, available December 15.

The Hipstamatic D-Series app lets you connect with a group of friends via Facebook and snap pictures that all go to a common "film roll." Made for parties, concerts, and any other event, … Read more