laptops

Review: AViiQ Portable Laptop Stand

AViiQ – Portable Laptop StandThis is one of those no-batteries-needed ‘gadgets’ for your battery-hungry gadget, your laptop. I loved the AViiQ Laptop Stand the minute I saw it in a photo. It is just so sleek-looking with its European design sensibility. Of course, the fact that it folds up into a 1/4-inch thick board is what put me over the top. I took the AViiQ for a test drive and here’s what I found.

Winners Picked in the LAlarm Laptop Security Sweepstakes

Hey GfG readers – we’ve drawn the winners in our recently held giveaway of the LAlarm Laptop Security software and have sent out the e-mail notifications to the 30 lucky winners.

Congratulations to all of our winners! Stay tuned to the website and/or our RSS feed and/or our newsletter to find out the next time we have another sweepstakes.

The LAlarm Laptop Security Sweepstakes: WIN a FREE Business License

LAlarm - Laptop Security softwareYou can win a free LAlarm business license ($50 value) for further protecting your laptop and your data just by entering our sweepstakes.

LAlarm Systems has kindly agreed to sponsor 30 business licenses to their LAlarm laptop alarm security software. Yes, that’s right – not 1 winner, not 5, not 10, but 30!

All you need to do is sign up for the free Gizmos for Geeks newsletter (see the top right-hand corner of this page) and be a subscriber as of Sun 30 May 2010. If you’re already a subscriber, congrats, because you are already entered.

Read on for more details.

Altego Clear Laptop Cases

Altego Clear Laptop CaseHere’s another way to protect your laptop, a clear neoprene sleeve with a cushion cell lining for padding. Being clear, you also don’t need to remove your laptop when going through airport security checkpoints.

The neoprene is water resistant and the air cushion lining provides shock and impact protection.

Buy now!
Prices: start at $19.99
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Dell Adamo notebook – thin & lightweight

Today, Dell released the Adamo, a thin and lightweight notebook that also comes with a higher than usual amount of style, at least from the Dell ranks.

The Adamo which comes in 2 colors (Onyx and Pearl (black & white)) seems to fall into the MacBook Air category of notebooks. At 4lbs and a claimed industry thinnest 0.65″ (16.4mm) profile, there’s no question that it does.

Other notable features for the Adamo include almost a 5 hour runtime and scalloped keys (they’re concave) on the backlit full sized keyboard.

Interestingly, the Adamo, unlike most other Dell systems isn’t highly configurable. It comes in just 1 of 2 specs.

Tech spec include:

  • either a 1.2 or 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
  • either 2 or 4GB 800MHz DDR3 RAM
  • 13.4 WLED display (1366 x 768)
  • the screen is edge to edge glass like the Air
  • 1.3 Megapixel webcam
  • Wireless N WiFi
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mini Card for AT&T in the pricier model
  • 128GB solid state drive (SSD)
  • Windows Vista Home Premium

You can purchase your Adamo right now on the Dell site, although it won’t ship for a week or so.

Buy now!

Price: $1999 or $2699
(Please note prices are subject to change and the listed price is correct to the best of our knowledge at the time of posting)

Qualcomm’s Gobi platform – multi-carrier wireless card

Qualcomm’s Gobi platform will let you access multiple carriers’ wireless data services. With Gobi, you won’t need to have separate cards and/or built-in chips in your notebook to get online.

Qualcomm is already partnering with Sony to put Gobi chips into Vaio P notebooks. Currently, Gobi will work at speeds up to 5.7Mbps which is not shabby at all.

The big question is whether or not carriers like Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, etc will start offering pay as you go or smaller window plans as opposed to the monthly plans that you find today that typically also come with yearly lock-in agreements.

If Gobi gets into enough netbooks, then it should pressure the carriers to do just that.

CES 2009: Hyperspace – Instant On Computing Environment

Hyperspace by Phoenix Technologies Ltd (the BIOS folks) was represented at Digital Experience and the Geeks received a demo. Hyperspace provides instant-on/instant-off capabilities to use a limited number of “purpose-driven” applications including immediate access to the Internet (web browser), calendar, e-mail and a couple extra small apps.

“Stop waiting for Windows to boot or worrying about finding the best wireless connection. Instant-on computing with HyperSpace transforms the mobile experience by providing cell phone-like connectivity, ease-of-use and efficiency for key applications,” said Woody Hobbs, president and CEO of Phoenix Technologies. “In less than a few seconds, you’re up and running – browsing the Internet, emailing, instant messaging, and using other important applications. There’s no more waiting for Windows to boot or worrying about finding the best wireless connection. And by utilizing the power of virtualization technology, HyperSpace can run side-by-side with Windows Vista® on certain systems, making your computer far more power efficient, secure and frustration-free.”

Besides providing instant-on/instant-off computing, Hyperspace provides smart connectivity that activates the best network source (wired then wireless), longer battery life of 25%-35%, security due to a private operating system and applications can only be updated or added if approved and owner or audited by Phoenix and Phoenix mentions uptime as an additional benefit in case Vista fails.

The HyperSpace instant-on/instant-off experience for the consumer is immediately available for download in two versions at www.hyperspace.com. HyperSpace Hybridâ„¢ is available for $59.95 annual license or $149.95 for three years and allows the user to toggle back and forth between the two operating system environments reducing batter consumption by more than 25% when in the HyperSpace environment. HyperSpace Dualâ„¢ is available at $39.95 annual license or $99.95 for three years and is designed for both Windows Vista and Windows XP systems that do not have virtualization enabled at the chipset level by Intel and AMD. The difference between Dual and Hybrid is that Dual user can only being in one environment at a time (either Windows or HyperSpace).

While interesting if you want to be on the web within 10 seconds of boot, the Geeks have opted not to install this software…

Holiday Gift Ideas: Dell’s tech ideas sorted by price ranges

In case you didn’t know, Dell sells way more than just their computers, primarily electronics, gadgets, and computer accessories, but as you well know, that’s a ton of stuff! Anyway, they’ve done a nice job of putting together a nice collection of gadgets sorted by price.

There are 3 price ranges: under $100, under $200, under $300 and everything else above that which they are cheekily calling “Ultimate gifts”. Products include everything from USB Flash drives, cameras, monitors, printers, MP3 players, laptops, GPS all the way to high-end big screen TVs.

Dell’s Hot Gift Ideas

Holiday Gift Ideas 2008: Laptops and Notebooks

Considering the number of sub-$500 products there are in this category, it’s no wonder that these are still on people’s wishlists given the faltering economy. The 2 biggest splashes this year arguably came from Apple with their new MacBook and the brand-new MacBook Air, but Dell also joined the still hot mini-laptop/netbook field with their Inspiron Mini 9 and 12, and other makers improved upon their existing minis or jumped on the bandwagon as well.

We also liked the HP tx2z which is a tablet notebook with multi-touch. Here are some ideas and prices on a few of these laptops/notebooks/netbooks.

Apple MacBook Pro (unibody Aluminum case, 17″ TFT LCD, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz 4GB 320GB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT) – $3200
Apple MacBook Air (2nd gen. 13″ LCD, 1.6Hz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 120GB Serial ATA hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card) – $1700

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (Glossy 8.9″ LED screen, Intel® Atom Processor® N270 1.6GHz,Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950,Wireless 802.11g Mini Card, Win XP Home, 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 8GB SSD) – $399.
Dell Insprion Mini 12 (Intel®Atom®Processor Z530 1.6GHz, Windows® Vista Home, 40GB PATA Hard Drive, 12.1″ widescreen TrueLife® Display (1280×800), Intel®Graphics Media Accelerator 500, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM, Wireless 802.11g Mini Card, Bluetooth 2.1, Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam) – $599.
Dell Studio Laptops – starting around $1250

Asus Eee PCsstarting at $249!

HP tx2z tablet notebook – starting at $1150

Vaio CR Series – starting at $799

Scroll to Top