While desktop PC sales have been steadily declining, sales of
laptops have continued to increase over the past few years. However,
although a PC can usually be given a new lease of life by easily
upgrading its core hardware, the same is not usually true of an old
laptop.
There are certain parts of a laptop that can be
upgraded, if your laptop is over a certain age, but it will be
difficult, and in many cases impossible, to do much with it to improve
its performance. As such, you may feel it's time to consign it to the
bin.
But wait, don't give up on it yet, as there are plenty of
ways you can turn your old laptop into something far more useful again.
The easiest way to get the most from your old system is to recycle the
internal hardware, such as the memory, hard drive and, in some cases,
even the processor.
However, this isn't the only thing you can
do, as your trusty portable can even find a new lease of life when used
alongside other devices in your home. It can bring improved usability
to games consoles in your living room, or even be used to enhance other
PCs that you or your family use. Whatever the case, there's no need to
get rid of your old laptop just yet.
The Eee PC 1008HA is the first member of the burgeoning "Seashell"
line, a family that already includes this machine and the
to-be-released 1005HA. The 1008HA
was originally unveiled in March at the CeBIT conference in Germany,
but the ultra-slim laptop has just now started filtering out to the US
market.
Hardware wise, there's both a lot and a little that differentiates this
from the pack of other netbooks out there. As for design, it's easy to
see that few alternatives can measure up, outside of maybe MSI's X-Slim X340.
The 1008HE is slimmer and more beautiful in almost every way than the
competition. Internally, however, you'll notice most of the same
specifications you see on practically every other netbook to emerge
within the past six months. Thus, we don't really anticipate its
performance being "off the charts."
Apple unveiled the iPhone 3G S, talked up its new iPhone 3.0 operating system as well as its Snow Leopard
desktop OS, and unleashed a slew of updated laptops. It even made two
of its MacBooks into MacBook Pro models (the only MacBook left is the
$999 white polycarbonate model that was updated a couple of weeks
back). It was a blizzard of announcements that had Mac fans in Apple heaven.
Then there was the big news: In a very un-Apple like manner, the company dropped its prices on those laptops, the surest sign yet that, yep, it's a recession.
In the past, Apple's M.O. has been to add features, bump up
processor speeds, and boost RAM and hard drives in its new hardware --
usually while holding the line on prices. This time it did all those and
cut the bottom line. The top-end 17-in. MacBook Pro dropped from $2,799
to $2,499, for instance, and the entry-level 15-in. model went from
$1,999 to $1,699. The price drops ranged from 6.3% to as much as 28%.
Now, that's a deflationary spiral I can appreciate -- almost
as much as I appreciate the new 15-in. MacBook Pro that Apple passed
along for review purposes.
As the first Android phone, T-Mobile’s G1 was a much welcomed entry
into the smartphone market. And it may have been considered the
must-have smartphone were it not for a certain device from Apple. The
reason is that while the Android platform itself has a lot of
possibility given its open nature, the G1 hardware simply was not great
when compared to something like the iPhone. But now T-Mobile is coming
back with another attempt at an Android phone in the U.S., which it is
calling the myTouch 3G — and it’s much better.
The EVGA X58 3X SLI
Classified is one hell of a motherboard. It is the most refined, most
feature packed, and most overclockable X58 motherboard we've seen to
date. The X58
Classified has a true 3X SLI PCI Express x16 configuration, utilizing
NVIDIA's NF200 PCI Express bridge chip, along with an additional PCI
Express slot that they claim is for dedicated PhysX. Overclocking features abound here as well,
including support for dual +12V connectors to pump more power to the
CPU, on-the-fly vCore alterations through a hardware control panel,
higher-grade capacitors, 10-phase digital PWM, and a monstrous custom
designed (passive) cooling system. These features are certainly
designed for an extremely small niche market of buyers, but those who
need these features are willing to pay for them. The EVGA X58 Classified motherboard is engineered for those who demand more than just the best!
We will show you some of the useful productivity enhancements that Compiz
has to offer, such as multiple desktops (workspaces), moving windows
between desktops, expo (preview and choose from all your desktops),
resizeable window previews, and scale (display and choose from all your
open windows at once).
