When it comes to hard work, however, the ATIV Book 9 Lite struggles. The A6-1450¡¯s four cores run at a slow 1GHz, boosting up to a maximum of 1.4GHz, and in our Real World Benchmarks it managed an overall score of just 0.35. That lags behind most budget laptops, and it¡¯s even a fair way off the pace of older Sandy Bridge low-voltage chips. Graphics performance is below par too ¨C an average of 24fps in our least taxing Crysis benchmark indicates that gaming potential is limited to the most undemanding titles.Microsoft has issued a detailed denial to accusations that Windows 7 is harming laptop batteries.Several blogs and forums have claimed that Windows 7 is having a detrimental effect on laptop batteries, with the operating system issuing repeated warnings that a previously healthy battery needs replacing.However, in a detailed blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 site, Microsoft claims that there's no fault with the OS.
Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this stateWindows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this stateTo the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky states. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement.Microsoft says the confusion has been caused by a new warning system in Windows 7, that's designed to warn users when a battery's nearing the end of its useful life.Windows 7 makes use of a feature of modern laptop batteries which have circuitry and firmware that can report to Windows the overall health of the battery, Sinofsky writes.This is reported in absolute terms as Watt-hours (W-hr) power capacity. Windows 7 then does a simple calculation to determine a percentage of degradation from the original design capacity. In Windows 7 we set a threshold of 60% degradation (that is the battery is performing at 40% of its designed capacity) and in reading this Windows 7 reports the status to you.
At this point, for example, a battery that originally delivered five hours of charge now delivers, on average, approximately two hours of charge. The Windows 7 notification is a battery meter icon and notification with a message 'Consider replacing your battery'. This notification is new to Windows 7 and not available in Windows Vista or Windows XP.Sinofsky claims Microsoft has thoroughly examined telemetry from Windows 7 customers and held lengthy discussions with key PC manufacturers to ensure that Windows 7 isn't harming batteries. Our OEM partners have utilised their telemetry (call center, support forums, etc.) and have let us know that they are seeing no activity beyond what they expect, he claims.
In laptop mode, the Fit 14A is refreshingly free from compromises. There¡¯s a full-sized, backlit keyboard and a wide, buttonless touchpad, and while we¡¯re not keen on the keyboard surround¡¯s sharp edges, the wristrest is deep and wide enough not to dig into your wrists in normal usage.The 14in touchscreen is a cut above. Both multitouch and pressure-sensitive stylus input are on the cards, and the Full HD resolution makes for pin-sharp clarity. Put to the test with our X-Rite colorimeter, the Sony¡¯s IPS panel provided a maximum brightness of 322cd/m[sup]2[/sup] and a contrast ratio of 685:1, and its palette of delicious, bold colours covered almost every corner of the sRGB gamut. If there¡¯s a criticism to be made it¡¯s a minor one: the crisscross pattern of the digitising layer is faintly visible.Thanks to the presence of Intel¡¯s Haswell processors, there¡¯s also ample power for most applications. While the cheapest ¡ê699 model makes do with a Haswell-based Pentium chip, the 1.7GHz Pentium 3556U, our review unit came equipped with a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-4200U, 8GB of DDR3L RAM and a 1TB hard disk ¨C a combination that scored a respectable 0.67 in our Real World Benchmarks. Should you so wish, though, it¡¯s possible to improve the performance ¨C and send the price soaring to ¡ê1,354 ¨C by equipping the Fit 14A with a 512GB SSD and Core i7 CPU.
Paul Butland, 32, is a hoarder. This being 2013, his hoarding takes up almost no physical space, but his digital home is stuffed to bursting with junk he never uses.I started by ripping my whole CD collection years ago, and I¡¯ve never really stopped, he explains. Right now, I have around 120GB of music on my hard disk, and ¨C I probably shouldn¡¯t say this ¨C thanks to BitTorrent, my movie and TV collection is about ten times that. I also keep all the raw photos I take, which I don¡¯t really need to do, and I¡¯ve no idea how big my games library is right now. It¡¯s pretty big.Paul might sit at the bulging end of the hoarder scale, but his situation isn¡¯t unusual. The rise of one-click downloads, fibre internet connections and hard disks with capacities in the terabytes have combined to make us blas¨¦ about what we accumulate on our PCs. This was fine until SSDs came along and forced us to think once more about what we¡¯re storing.I started by ripping my whole CD collection years ago, and I¡¯ve never really stoppedI started by ripping my whole CD collection years ago, and I¡¯ve never really stopped
A new laptop purchase can induce a headache. A MacBook Pro with 768GB of flash storage will set you back ¡ê560 more than the 256GB model. Back in the real world, most people¡¯s budget for an Ultrabook is unlikely to stretch beyond a 256GB or even a 128GB SSD, which isn¡¯t nearly enough for someone like Paul.His headache worsens in mobile, where every tablet and smartphone comes with its own bundled dilemma: how do you decide which parts of your music collection you¡¯ll want to listen to?While we wait for SSD capacities to catch up with our excesses, there are ways around the problem. In this feature, we¡¯ll look at the pros and cons of a variety of alternative storage options, from the simplicity of an external hard disk to the always-on convenience of the many cloud services set up for just this kind of scenario. So, don¡¯t bin that back catalogue just yet.An external hard disk is the most basic storage solution. It can sit in a drawer and gather dust before being whipped out and plugged in when a file is needed. It¡¯s most suitable for bulk-storing a single user¡¯s media collection, and for a straightforward dump of excess data, it¡¯s hard to beat.
The key things to look for when choosing a drive are the capacity and the connection: we¡¯re dealing with huge amounts of data, so it¡¯s essential to get one with USB 3 for the best possible transfer speeds (provided you have a USB 3 port on your laptop, of course) and compatibility with a wide range of devices.We recently compared the performance of a LaCie Rugged drive using USB 3 and USB 2, and the results were emphatic. Copying a 5GB folder to the drive took 4mins 15secs over USB 2 and 1min 56secs over USB 3; reading a 1GB set of photos from the external drive took 42 seconds over USB 2 and 19 seconds via USB 3; and the maximum measured transfer speeds were 116MB/sec and 42MB/sec respectively.Switching to Thunderbolt only saw slight performance gains, so unless you use only MacBooks, we¡¯d recommend sticking with USB 3 drives ¨C particularly since they¡¯ll also work with USB 2 devices.
The days of needing desktop drives for large capacities of data are long gone. Today, you can buy 2.5in external disks that hold up to 2TB, and the prices are falling all the time. Our A-Listed 2TB Western Digital My Passport with USB 3 from Amazon will set you back ¡ê100 (all prices inc VAT), with 1TB drives dipping as low as ¡ê58. If you don¡¯t mind a bulkier 3.5in model, you can get a 3TB Seagate drive for only ¡ê84.It's shiny, it's small and it's very, very fast. The Alienware M11x promises to be the first ultraportable laptop that's also capable of gaming on the move. We take a closer look with a hands-on demo at Dell's suite at CES 2010.The HP Chromebook 11 has been pulled from shelves after complaints the laptop's charger was overheating.The Chromebook 11 is HP's second attempt at a budget laptop running Chrome's OS, and was priced at ¡ê229 at launch. It first arrived in October, and started to disappear from retailers' websites yesterday.
Google and HP are pausing sales of the HP Chromebook 11 after receiving a small number of user reports that some chargers included with the device have been damaged due to overheating during use, said Google's vice-president of product management, Caesar Sengupta.The companies are now working with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission to address the issue.In the meantime, customers who have purchased an HP Chromebook 11 should not use the original charger provided with the product, Sengupta said.In the interim they may continue using their HP Chromebook 11 with any other Underwriters Laboratories-listed micro-USB charger ¨C for example, one provided with a tablet or smartphone, he added.Panasonic's Toughpad FZ-G1 won our heart back in 2013, and now it has a little brother to keep it company - the 7in FZ-M1. Cut from the same ultra-tough, ruggedised cloth as its 10.1in stablemate, the FZ-M1 delivers Core i5 processing power, Windows 8.1 and a range of accessories that allow it to adapt to almost any situation.
As you'd expect from a Toughpad, this new model feels like an absolute bruiser. Slender and lightweight aren't words you'd use to describe the FZ-M1 - this 7in tablet measures 18mm thick and weighs 544g.
And you can try to twist or bend the chassis at your wrists' peril - to describe the build as rock-solid is something of an understatement. There is no tougher compact tablet out there.With a design that's certified to survive the range of US MIL-STD-810G tests, the FZ-M1 is capable of withstanding drop, shock, vibration, rain and dust, and both freezing and extremely hot temperatures. The sealed, fanless design also earns an IP65 rating for dust- and water-resistance.
Asz44444 strip of toughened rubber runs around the tablet's edges, elastomer inserts thickening it at the corners to provide extra protection from drops. The single USB 3 port and 3.5mm headset jack are sealed behind a waterproof flap, as is the tablet's 19v input.
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