In a blog post yesterday, Microsoft confirmed the availability of the Surface Pro in Australia. The long-awaited Windows 8 tablet will be ready for purchase locally from Thursday 30 May, either from the Microsoft Store or from retailers Harvey Norman and JB Hi-Fi.
Taking photos with a full-frame camera is an amazing experience. Shots just look so much wider and more fulfilling thanks to the bigger sensor. It used to be that you had to pay big bucks to get yourself a full-frame camera, but thanks to Canon, you can now get a model like the EOS 6D for about $2400.
Deciding on which hybrid-style Windows 8 tablet to go for can be difficult. In this comparative article we pit three Intel Atom-based models from ASUS, HP and Samsung against each other to find out which is best.
Microsoft has created a wonderful tablet in the Surface RT. It feels well made, it's light, it's highly usable and it contains things that many tablet users have considered to be essential elements for a great overall user experience, such as a built-in stand and expansion ports.
With Windows 8, there is no denying the inevitable: you are going to have to learn some new tricks. The operating system comes furnished with a brand new Start screen interface, which replaces the Start Menu button as the go-to place for your program listing, and it's designed with touchscreens in mind. More than that though, the new Start screen is the native interface for Windows 8-style apps that can be downloaded from the Microsoft store.
The world's lightest Ultrabook is made by NEC and it's only available in Japan for the equivalent of about $2000. The LaVie is a super-light 13-incher that disturbs the scales significantly less than Toshiba's Satellite and Portege models. At only 875g, it's perfect for those who want extreme mobility, and it feels solid to hold despite being so light.
Intel today announced that the Dell XS 13 will be the first Ultrabook certified to run Nuance Dragon-based voice recognition software. The chip vendor said it will be working very closely with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to make sure that the technology is of “acceptable quality” and hopes to roll it out to other manufacturers soon.
Acer is the first vendor so far to come out with a 15in Ultrabook that also uses discrete graphics; and they're not just any old graphics either. The Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 uses a brand spanking new NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M graphics adapter that can even handle the likes of Battlefield 3. You could say it's a gamers Ultrabook!
The Acer TravelMate 8481G weighs only 1.6kg and is 25mm thick (with the lid closed). It's a 14in laptop with a low-voltage Intel Core i5 CPU, NVIDIA graphics, 4GB of RAM and a 120GB solid state drive. With this type of configuration, business tasks can be completed effortlessly, and that's the prime target market for this laptop as it also includes security features such as a fingerprint reader and a trusted platform module — not to mention it has a price tag of $1999.
The way we hoped Ultrabooks would materialise when we first heard about them is about as close as Toshiba has gotten with its design of the 13.3in Satellite Z830. It's a magnificent piece of work that fits necessary ports and slots into an almost impossibly thin and light chassis, a chassis that also houses speedy enough components to make everyday computing tasks a breeze. While most vendors talk of no-compromise thin-and-light computing when it comes to Ultrabooks, only Toshiba has walked the walk thus far.
HP's Mobile Workstation notebooks are beasts worthy of the professionals that they target. Solid build quality, plenty of features and fast performance are the hallmarks of these machines, but they also carry a hefty price tag.
HP's Folio 13-1008TU is an excellent Ultrabook. It's slim, well built, light and it has a good range of connectivity built in to it. Most importantly, it's a very comfortable laptop to use: it comes with a smooth and responsive Synaptics touchpad and its keyboard has soft, backlit keys that are a joy to hit.
The Lenovo ThinkCentre M71e is a mini tower PC with a classy design that's not at all boring for an office. Indeed, it has a little more flair than a typical business-class machine (although some may argue this) and, most importantly, it possesses good speed and adequate connectivity.
Fujitsu's LifeBook SH771 is a 13.3in laptop that's designed for business users who want something attractive, fully featured and powerful. It's almost as thin and light as an Ultrabook, but it contains a full-voltage Intel Core processor.
The Fujitsu LifeBook S761 is a 13.3in laptop that weighs only 1.7kg, yet it has a powerful configuration and a lot of features in its robust chassis — including a DVD burner. Being a business-oriented model, it also has lots of security features, some of which work well, some of which may require the help of Fujitsu's tech support set up.
