Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

A lot of laptops we’ve seen recently are trying to be as “portable” as possible whether that being the thinnest, the smallest or the less weighty but usually when you steer down that path the goods that are produced are very limited. Samsung has recently issued the Q series laptop. Its not looking for the worlds thinnest laptop title nor are we looking at a gaming powerhouse with a half hour battery life. It’s just a standard sized laptop with a good spec and above all a nice price range.

Coming in a fabulous 3 sizes, 13.3”(Q330), 14”(Q430) and the 15.6”(Q530) are certainly aesthetically pleasing with a brushed metal look. Running Windows 7  you’ll get a choice of Core i3 or Core i5 chipsets to power the lappy. One can also get an HDD up to the size of 640GB. The 13.3” laptop has the option of GeForce 310M GPU whereas the larger two laptops an get GeForce 330M although what is slightly disappointing is the screen resolutions on all will only get to 1366x768. Also with 3 HDMI ports, N-standard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0 it attends to the rest of your needs.

Available this month Samsung say the prices will start at £599.

As we touch on the portable computing seen quite a bit, you can see an obvious regular trend. If you want a power house of a machine running top spec applications and games then you have to buy a big bulky power hungry (rubbish battery life) laptop. If you want portability with good battery life you have to get an under specced netbook only capable of browsing the net and sending the odd email. Now obviously computer technology improves at quite a vast rate and it may seem obvious that eventually the low end technology will catch up to the high spec, which in turn will advance further etc……anyway Toshiba have developed a laptop that kinda incorporates both……

The Portege R700 is a 13.3” Windows 7 operated laptop that weighs a mere 1.3Kg. The picture we found courtesy of Electricpig shows that it can be held with one hand at one side and the weight distribution is so spread out it doesn’t feel heavier at one side than it does another.

Spec wise you can choose between Core i3, i5 or i7, up to 4GB of DDR3 and a choice of 320GB HDD or 128GB SSD. It also has 3 USB ports and an HDMI out socket. It’s available with built in WiFi like most machines but also comes with optional 3G connectivity. Now whats also interesting for an ultra light, ultra thin laptop like this is that it has an optical DVD drive. Now what is also surprising, with all that spec, Toshiba claims it’ll do 9 hours of use on a full battery charge.

As per we don’t have a release price but we do know it should be with us next month sometime so if you’re after a lightweight, portable but powerful lappy, this could be for you.

With smartphone tech getting so good one often doesn’t need a PC to do his/her job or social networking, your phone will pretty much be able to cope with everything. It appears Sony are trying to grab some attention from the market with its new ultra-portable, small and light(only 600g) P Series notebook.

Firstly the basic specs. Now obviously with a lot more power than that of any phone, the Vaio P runs with an Intel Atom processor and 2GB of RAM. With an 8” screen running Windows 7 the Vaio P also has 64GB of Flash memory to keep it light and power-use friendly. Now what they’ve added to the Vaio P to give it smartphone-esque functionality is touchpad, GPS and an accelerometer. You can flick the pad through images and also turn it into portrait mode for easy viewing of things like ebooks. It’s also packing Everywair 3G allowing 7.2Mbps internet use wherever you are.

Available in an assortment of colours (green, pink, orange, black or white) it should be availbale around June time. No price details are available now but when the last P series came out they started at £849 for the lowest specced model. Expect extortion again.

Well almost!! The Dell Latitude E6410 is a laptop designed for the adventurous types amongst us or maybe the military enthusiast. This is down to its “military grade/standard” STF 810G(“tailoring an equipment's environmental design and test limits to the conditions that it will experience throughout its service life” – thanks wikipedia). What that means is it’ll take more flak than your average laptop when coming to shocks(drops or vibrations), humidity, pressure, temperature and altitude. If you have a good working set of eyes you can probably guess that from its bodywork in the picture

Despite it’s rugged looks and abilities Dell have still packed it to the nine’s with top notch gear. Available with the latest Corei5 or i7 processors, up to 8GB of RAM and the option of a 500GB HDD or 256MB solid state drive. It also comes with an option for battery size , allowing the intrepid traveller to go mains free for the maximum time. Despite all the high spec though it doesn’t have dedicated graphics but I’m sure you can do without games or extensive HD viewing out in the Jungle or up a mountain.

Available now on Dell’s site the lappy starts at £1049 with varying options bumping up the price.

Sony recently debuted it’s latest line of Sony Vaio E series laptops, a general use laptop aimed at the working and multimedia market and for those not to great with the computing line of tech, but also maybe those who don’t like to wait for a computer to boot up when all you need to do is surf the web.

It’s coming in two sizes, 14” and 17” with LED backlit screens, and the 17” will pump out FullHD quality images whereas the 14” will give 1600x900.Both come with 500GB HDD which can be increased to 1TB if you wish and both pack Blu-Ray optical drives. The 17” is quite a powerhouse pacing a Core i5, 4GB of RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5650 with 1GB VRAM which will more than happily play the games of today. The 14” has a Core i3 and a lower spec ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5145 with 512MB VRAM GPU. They also both pack the usual gubbins of Wireless 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, Motion Eye Camera, HDMI out etc

Now the smart things this lappy does is its “assist” button, “giving one-touch access to VAIO Care to help maintain, diagnose and troubleshoot your VAIO with just a few clicks.”(from Sony) and for those impatient people out there who simply can’t sit through the short boot up of windows when all you need to do is check your Facebook or search for a cheap holiday, the Vaio E has a web button which when pressed fires up a web browser without having to boot up Windows.

Available in May, no prices are available yet but as shown it will be available in a variety of colours.

MSI seem to be going full steam ahead bringing out top spec PC’s and laptops recently and they don’t seem like stopping. Next month is the CeBit expo in Germany and it is expected that MSI will be showing off a few numbers but one in particular catching the eye is its All-in-One system.

Although specs are a bit vague at the moment MSI  have said "The combination of a 24” 120Hz 1080p LED panel and 3D shutter glasses brings the kind of 3D video experience into your home that you would normally only expect from a modern 3D movie theater." We are expecting the latest Intel Core i3/5/7 processors, ATi GPUs and the screen will display at 120Hz adopting the Active Shutter 3D system. This means when its firing 3D, each eye will see the image at 60Hz each, allowing a much clearer smoother 3D image. More info expected at CeBit.

We saw t’other day the mid/top-range gaming laptop MSI offered the GE600. At CeBit we’re expecting to see the GT660. Again we’ll be looking at Intel Quad-Core processing, GeForce GTX285 GPU and the possiblity of up to 12GB RAM and brand new USB 3.0 ports aplenty.

The GE600 is MSI’s new 16” gaming notebook bringing together Intel’s HM55 chipset with a Core i5 processor, offering the latest tech in computer spec. Unfortunately we can only fill you in with the spec details as MSI haven’t released prices or release dates yet. What we do know though is that MSI will be giving two “theatre class” speakers and its own ECO Engine Power with the laptop.

So what’s the spec for this new laptop that “enables customers to enter a new era of mobile video/audio enjoyment experiences," ?

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• 2 DDR3 RAM SO-DIMM slots
• 1920x1080 16” HD LCD screen
• ATI Radeon HD5730 1GB DDR3
• 250, 320 or 500GB SATA HDD
• 4 in 1 card reader
• Bluetooth
• 802.11 a/b/g/n
• HDMI out

The lappy also has a 720p HD webcam and features a built in sub woofer with SRS Premium Sound. Also customers can choose between a standard 6 cell battery and a more gaming orientated 9 cell.

Nvidia have announced that they’re updating they’re mobile series of graphics cards with five DirectX 10.1-capable chips(G210M, GT 230M, GT 240M, GTS 250M, GTS 260M) just in time for Windows 7 release, but disappointingly after the MacBook upgrade, which will contain the older series of GPU. Smaller(40Nm),  less demanding on power consumption, improved performance and more importantly to NVIDIA, cheaper to make.

Check the images for how they compare to the other cards.

Source : Gizmodo, Ubergizmo