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The long wait ends: Canon 5D Mark III (hands on)

I've found that photographers fall into two camps: those who use their camera till it drops dead of exhaustion before considering a new model, and those who feel the need to update as often as possible.

I think the wait for the Canon EOS 5D Mark III has been killing both those groups. It's been so long that a lot of hard-used 3-plus-year-old 5D Mark IIs are ready to surrender, and the frequent updaters have been buffeted on a sea of rumors and delays. But the 5DM3 is almost here--shipping within a few weeks, in theory--and it looks like it will have what it takes to please them both.

While the 5DM3 is obviously big news, Canon's intent to drop of the price of the 5DM2 (to what, I don't know yet) and keep it on the market is pretty important, too: $3,500 is pretty steep for a lot of people who want to go full-frame, and it helps keeps Canon in competition with the newly price-reduced Nikon D700.

As you'd expect, the 5DM3 consists of a combination of technologies, features, and design updates rolled out in the EOS 7D and the more recent 1D X. The result is a camera that looks similar to its predecessor but that's otherwise almost completely different. … Read more

A peek inside a new HP Netbook and ultrathin

Small laptops aren't necessarily getting any smaller, but they are getting more powerful. Here's a quick look at the power-efficient engines purring inside the latest laptops from Hewlett-Packard.

The newest welterweight laptops from HP, introduced on Wednesday, offer more than flashy new skins. Inside is Intel's newest chip technology that offers more performance without a significant hit to battery life.

First up is the 3-pound Mini 210. This Netbook offers, for the first time, a dual-core Atom processor, a break from a long line of single-core-only Atom Netbook processors. Dual-core processors are better at handling multiple data streams than single-core processors and thus boost performance significantly for certain applications.

Despite having two cores, Intel's 1.5GHz Atom N550 has a thermal envelope of only 8.5 watts, only two more watts than its single-core N455 cousin. And this thermal envelope is even more impressive when you consider the fact that it also includes the 200MHz graphics chip, which is built onto the same piece of silicon as the main processor.

HP claims up to 10.75 hours of battery life with a six-cell battery. That said, even if HP is overstating battery life, anything within the ball park of eight to ten hours is decent for a Windows dual-core laptop.

The HP Mini 210 is available in the United States with a starting price of $329.

Pavilion dm3 squeezes Intel's higher-performance mobile processors into a slim form factor

The just-announced HP Pavilion dm3 laptop boasts an Intel Core i series chip matched with a new design that keeps the laptop cooler.… Read more

New HP Pavilion laptops add optical drives, AMD processors

Remember "thin and light?" The idea almost seems like a 2009 concept nowadays, as many manufacturers seem to be shifting back to more old-fashioned mainstream machines that emphasize optical drives over system weight. The newly announced lineup of HP Pavilion laptops, covering a wide range of models, was notable for not offering anything slimmer than the Pavilion dm3 a sleek thin notebook we reviewed and liked quite a bit. That system had no optical drive, but the new HP Pavilion dm4 adds one back in despite being under an inch thin. An etched metal chassis and new wider … Read more

Netbook vs. iPhone: A better comparison

I'm going to break from the well-established tradition of comparing Netbooks to notebooks. This time my yardstick is going to be the smartphone. And no better yardstick than the Apple iPhone.

This post updates a year-old piece (which, by the way, at least one writer took exception to).

As the holiday-shopping season approaches, many consumers face an ostensible choice between an inexpensive Netbook or more expensive notebook. I personally face that choice (or, at least, I thought I did).

Let me state up front that though I have used Netbooks on a temporary basis, I have never owned one. … Read more

HP Pavilion dm3-1002

Editor's note: We're currently benchmarking and testing the HP Pavilion dm3. We'll update this page with a full review and test results when available.

If there's a burgeoning trend in laptops these days, it's not just inexpensive, low-voltage 12-inch ultraportables, but also 13-inch (and larger) notebooks dropping their optical drives and going ultra-low-voltage as well. The HP dm3 is categorized as a thin-and-light, but at first glance it doesn't appear to be significantly thinner than the new polycarbonate white MacBook. Clad in brushed aluminum inside and out, it definitely cuts a solid, professional profile. … Read more

Apple punts on lower-cost MacBook

By not coughing up a low-cost MacBook, as some had expected, Apple has ceded a potentially huge market to PC makers. But is this just all part of Apple's marketing genius?

The announcement Tuesday of the $999 white polycarbonate MacBook was pretty ho-hum as product refreshes go (same price, same color as before) but the implication was important: Apple is surrendering a large, emerging laptop market to Microsoft and its coterie of PC makers.

Not that it's necessarily a bad strategy. Market researcher Gartner said recently that Apple's shipments in the U.S. grew year-over-year by 6.8 percent to total 1.57 million during the third quarter, putting it right behind Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Acer. Comparatively, overall PC shipments in the U.S. grew by 3.5 percent from a year earlier.

But among those unimpressive overall PC numbers (HP's third-quarter shipments grew only 2.7 percent), was an impressive statistic for Acer: buoyed by Netbooks, Acer's shipments grew by 61.4 percent year-over-year, and it blew past Dell to become the No. 2 PC maker worldwide based on this growth.

Granted, Netbooks are a relatively low-profit segment (i.e., profit on a $400 Netbook is going to be a lot less than that on a $999 laptop). Nevertheless, they're a hot market. Intel CEO Paul Otellini has stated numerous times that Intel was able to create a market that grew faster than either the iPhone or Nintendo Wii. Case in point: Windows 7-based Acer Netbooks are now big on the Home Shopping Network--which claims to have sold more than 5,000 in one segment on Saturday.

And that's not the only market Apple is punting on. A new category of inexpensive, thin laptops has emerged with the roll-out of Windows 7 on Thursday. Like Netbooks, these laptops are light (typically 4 pounds) and don't include an optical drive. But they are relatively powerful and full featured. The 15.6-inch Acer Aspire Timeline, for example, with a 320GB hard disk drive and dual-core Intel processor is fairly well-endowed at only $500.

Apple is not receiving a lot kudos in the mainstream business press… Read more

Low-cost Windows 7 laptops hit retail

Windows 7 has spawned a new breed of inexpensive laptops at retailers like Best Buy and Frys.

At many stores on Thursday, Best Buy refreshed almost its entire stock of laptops: all running Windows 7 and all sporting new model numbers. Frys--a megastore electronics retailer with locations throughout California, Arizona, and Texas--also refreshed many of its laptops with new Windows 7 models.

One of the most inexpensive Windows 7 arrivals is the Gateway model EC1410U. This tiny laptop is distinctly Netbook-like in appearance but uses a more powerful Celeron M ULV 743 processor (1.3GHz, 1MB cache) than the Atom-chip fare found in Netbooks. In addition to the Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 64-bit version, other features include 2GB of memory and a 250GB hard disk drive.

Many seductive Windows 7 newcomers are categorized as "ultrathins." These slim designs are typically discernibly bigger than Netbooks (though, as evidenced by the Gateway above, it's now always clear-cut) and pack more processor horsepower. The Toshiba Satellite T-135 (model: T135-S1309), which falls into this category, is priced at $549 at Best Buy and comes with Windows 7 Home Premium Edition 32-bit operating system, a 13.3-inch display, a dual-core power-efficient Pentium processor, 3GB of memory, a 320GB hard disk drive (5400RPM), and built-in Web cam.

The HP dm3 (model: dm3-1035dx), also an ultrathin and also priced at $549, packs 3GB of memory… Read more

Windows 7 to usher in crush of cheap laptops

Call it the Netbook halo effect: small and cheap is infectious. A quick peek at the lineups of new laptops slated for the Windows 7 (October 22) roll-out make it clear that the prices of mainstream and higher-end laptops are diving, even as the technology gets better.

"There's a new reality in laptop pricing," said Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at market-researcher IDC. "It's getting harder and harder to sell anything over $800." O'Donnell cited a data point that showed the average selling price of notebooks falling below desktops briefly in retail. "That may have been an anomaly, but the fact that's it's even close is indicative of this phenomenon."

That said, let's start with HP, the world's largest PC supplier. Svelte, well-built business laptops have historically been priced at a premium--starting at more than $1,000. Not anymore. On October 22, HP will begin selling the 13-inch ProBook 5310m that is about 0.9 inches thin, less than four pounds, and clad in an aluminum display enclosure and a magnesium alloy bottom case for $699.

That's about $800 less than the HP EliteBook 2530p business notebook series introduced in August of last year (that started at about $1,500). The 5310m is priced at $699 with an Intel Celeron dual-core processor and $899 with Intel Core 2 Duo chip. Both come with the Windows 7 operating system.

That's what I call a sea change in pricing.

But it gets better. Then there's the 4-pound HP Pavilion dm3 notebook that starts at $549 (no, it's not a Netbook) and will likely range up to about $700 in price for a reasonable memory and hard drive configuration. The 13-inch laptop comes with power-efficient Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Neo dual-core processors and a standard 6-cell battery that delivers--so HP claims--up to 10 hours of battery life.

I was able to play with a dm3 at a function sponsored by Advanced Micro Devices recently in San Francisco. My immediate impression was that this was a light but solid design.

The Apple $999 MacBook is suddenly… Read more

Roundup: HP announces new laptops, PCs, network storage, and monitors

HP announced its fall lineup today, which included new Windows 7 laptops, an Ion-powered Netbook, SmartMedia network storage products, an all-in-one desktop, and an assortment of business-centric monitors.

HP gets an Ion-powered HD Netbook With a Nvidia Ion processor and a 1,366x768 11.6-inch screen, the HP Mini 311 looks to be the type of souped-up HD Netbook we've been waiting for. (Posted in Crave by Scott Stein) September 14, 2009, 9:06 p.m. PDT

HP 13-inch laptops bring on aluminum and affordability Just in time for Windows 7 comes HP's new Windows 7-preinstalled 13-inch thin-and-lights. (… Read more