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One of the things that puts some people off desktop PCs is that they can take up a lot of space and look messy doing it. In this scenario, many will prefer a notebook, but for those who just like that desktop PC feel or want a bit more screen real estate than most notebooks can provide, your best bet is an all-in-one system. The last one we looked at was the HP TouchSmart IQ810, which had a Full HD screen and touch functionality, but came in at close to £1,500, putting it out of reach for many. So today, we’re looking at Sony’s VGC-JS1E, an attractive-looking and more affordable solution.

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As it often does, Falcon Northwest has provided with an ultra-high-end PC as a showcase for Intel’s latest high-end desktop CPU. This $8,028 Mach V comes with the latest and greatest of everything and provides a useful benchmark of the performance we can expect to see from boutique gaming PCs for the next few months. At press time, neither Falcon Northwest nor its competition is taking orders for Core i7-based PCs, so you’ll have to wait a few weeks to make a purchase. Were you to invest in a PC such as this one when it does go on sale, you can expect it to provide a near limitless PC gaming experience.

Typically we review Falcon Northwest’s Mach V desktops unpainted, but this system showed up in our lab with a glimmering red automotive paint job. That’s typically a $500 option, so if your PC budget just has to stay under that $8,000 mark, losing the paint is a good way to shave costs. Otherwise, this system bears Falcon Northwest’s typically immaculate interior. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve known for some time that Dell was working on a Netbook-style laptop–the same kind of small, low-power, inexpensive system made popular by Asus and the Eee PC line. And even though there are not many surprises in the new Inspiron Mini 9, it’s still an excellent example of the form, without any of the deal-breakers (older CPU, not enough storage space, hard-to-use touch pad) that have kept other Netbooks from being more universally useful.

While component-wise, the Mini 9 is similar to other recent Netbooks, such as the Eee PC 901 and the Acer Aspire One (which all use Intel’s Atom CPU), in typical Dell fashion, there are more customization options than we’ve seen other Netbooks. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been impressed by the Asus Eee PC line from the very first 7-inch model in the fall of 2007, and it seems as if every time we turn around, there’s a new version hitting store shelves. This 9-inch version, the Eee PC 901, comes mere months after the substantially similar Eee PC 900, adding a few items to features list, another $50 to the price, and, most notably, Intel’s new Netbook-focused Atom CPU. Read the rest of this entry »

HP will be the first laptop maker to offer a new battery designed to maintain its energy capacity over the life of a laptop, according to an announcement from the battery maker, Boston-Power, based in Westborough, MA. The battery will be available as an option for some HP laptops starting next year.

The capacity of most batteries fades markedly after just a few months, making it hard to predict how long a laptop will last between charges. Boston-Power says that the new battery will last three years without fading and that it charges to 80 percent capacity in just 30 minutes. Read the rest of this entry »