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"hardware systems" news, interviews, and features

Features about hardware systems

  • Tablet buying guide 2013: How to pick the right tablet

    You might be looking to snag a tablet for yourself or for your loved one. But before you venture out to a brick and mortar store or get lost scouring for websites and looking for deals, take a step back. Like everything else in life, tablet shopping is easier if you have a plan.

  • Laptop buying guide 2013: How to find the right notebook for you

    Anyone in the market for a new laptop this year has a lot to consider before parting with some cold hard cash. You still have to weigh the usual choices--display type, CPU, memory, graphics, hard disk, battery life and weight/footprint. But entirely new form factors give you even more to choose from. New mobile CPUs from Intel and AMD have upped the ante, too--not only in terms of processor speed, but with graphics performance and battery life as well.

  • Gift Guide 2013: Phones, tablets and computers

    In the past, we used to separate out categories for cell phones, tablets and computers. In theory, we still could create separate guides just for those products - there are so many options to choose from and not a week goes by where another phone, tablet or computer hits the market.

  • First Look: iPad mini with Retina display

    The iPad mini with Retina display has arrived. As someone who dumped the full-sized iPad for the iPad mini a year ago, I've been excited to get my hands on this new model. Can its small size beat out the all-new, all-lightweight iPad Air for a place in my heart and my backpack? I've been using mine for half a day; here are some initial impressions ahead of my full review.

  • Vox technica: How Siri gets its voice

    In early October, CNN revealed that veteran voice actor, Susan Bennett, was the voice behind Siri until Apple changed it in iOS 7. Her utterances, she revealed in an interview, were being used by the tech giant (and its likely voice synthesis partner Nuance) to generate the digital assistant's own words.

  • iPad Air: The best tablet gets better

    It's right there in the name: The most important trait of the iPad Air is that it weighs only a pound. For a company that obsesses over making devices thinner and lighter, it must have been torture for Apple to spend nearly three years making a series of iPads that were better than their predecessors, but not smaller. Now it has.

  • iPad diary day 3: Case closed

    Sometimes it takes a while to get used to the iPad. I just finished up a FaceTime call with my mother, who got an iPad mini for Christmas last year. After a couple of months, she was still using her MacBook more than the iPad, and I was concerned that it was just a misbegotten purchase. But today she complained that the only reason she used her laptop anymore was to print, because her printer doesn't support AirPrint.

  • iPad Air diary, day 2: Fastest iOS device ever

    I'm still working away at the new iPad Air, not to mention loading it up with movies and TV shows for my cross-country flight. But in the meantime, Jim Galbraith of the Macworld Lab has run some speed tests on the new iPad Air compared to other recent(ish) iOS devices. The results are not shocking, but they're still impressive: The iPad Air is pretty much the fastest iOS device ever.

  • iPad Air diary, day 1: Portrait of a new orientation

    I got my iPad Air this morning a little after 9am., and while I tried to gather some first impressions about Apple's new, lighter full-sized tablet while at the office, I really needed to retreat home to put it to the most important test: How does it work when I'm sitting on the sofa in my living room?

  • Six reasons you still need a desktop PC

    Now that you've been liberated by the mobile age, you may be ready to consign your clunky desktop PC to the scrap heap. Not so fast. Though it's certainly past its prime, the desktop PC is far from useless. For some tasks, it's actually still the superior tool. Here are six compelling reasons to keep the old workhorse around.