Girl plans to marry her laptop

From Acer to Sony VAIO, we love laptops. But not quite like this girl….

Hermione, a 24-year-old Brit, is ditching sex drive for hard drive by planning to marry her Apple Macbook boyfriend, Alex.

With humour akin to ‘The Office’ we reckon this viral video is going to run and run.

Good luck Hermione and Alex!

Apple iSlate tablet to be unveiled

Apple is inviting reporters to an event next week to see what it calls “our latest creation,” which is thought to be a tablet-style touch-screen computer.

The company email offered no specifics about what it would display at the invitation-only January 27 event in San Francisco.

But it comes amid speculation that Apple is close to unveiling the gadget that is bigger than an iPhone but smaller than standard laptops.

Tablets are one-piece computers with big screens and no keyboards. Such devices have been around since the early 1990s, but haven’t seen much success in the mainstream.

The real questions will be asked after the launch, when focus will fall on who will be providing what types of content (music, magazines, video, games, books etc) for Apple’s new slate.

Recent rumours have suggested that Apple is currently in talks with HarperCollins and a number of other major book publishers suggesting the tablet will be looking to straddle the eReader market.

Laptop sales hit by recession, unless you’re Apple or Acer

Laptop sales in the UK dropped 2.4 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2009, according to latest data from Gartner.

This decline is less than in previous meltdown quarters, but principal analyst Ranjit Atwal warns that: “The return to growth will be slow and a difficult process.”

However, there are exceptions to the rule that the computing industry has had a poor year; sales of what Gartner calls “mini-notebooks” and the rest of the world calls netbooks or laptops boosted Acer’s sales by 35% in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008. Netbooks accounted for more than 40% of the total consumer notebook market in the same period.

Apple’s increase was also strong, jumping from a 3.8% market share in 2008’s third quarter to 5% in 2009’s – a 26.6% increase for the American tech giant.

Apple tweaks its best-selling Macbook laptop

Apple has revamped its best-selling Mac model – the economical, entry-level 13-inch MacBook laptop – in time for Christmas.  Oooh they don’t miss a trick, do they?!

To give the new MacBook laptops a more appealing appearance, Apple had molded the original polycarbonate plastic material into a more modern ‘Unibody’ enclosure. With no grayish surface implanted atop the laptop’s casing, the overhauled MacBook now boasts a consistent white color, and a smoother surface – minus the sharp edges of its predecessor.

Along with giving the MacBook a new look, Apple has also given it new innards; and has equipped it with a multi-touch glass touchpad, a non-detachable 60Wh battery.

Apple Tablet, the world’s first touch screen computer, to arrive in 2010

The launch date of the Apple Tablet has moved back and forwards like the old Arsenal back four under George Graham. The general consensus was that early 2010 is the time these little touch-screen mini laptop beauties will be hitting the shelves but a report in the Financial Times seemed to indicate that they will in fact be available in time for Christmas. Since then various authoritative reports have refuted this and put the date back to early 2010.

A couple of weeks ago, well-respected Apple analyst Gene Munster issued a report which said:

“Last week we spoke with an Asian component supplier that has received orders from Apple for a touch-screen device to be fulfilled by late [calendar year] 09. This data point underscores our thesis that a tablet will likely launch in early [2010].”

So in conclusion, you’re going to have to wait ’til next year to take your tablet.

Asus laptops gain top marks for reliability

Asus laptops were the most reliable notebook computers during Q2, a US repair specialist has claimed. Apple followed behind them whilst Lenovo picked up the inaugural bronze.

The three manufacturers scored 416, 394 and 314, respectively, on Rescuecom’s reliability index. Fourth-placed Toshiba scored 218. HP, which came in fifth place, rated 142 points. Notable absentees were Acer, Dell and Sony Vaio.

Rescuecom’s figures are based on the number of support and repair calls it receives – some 11,560 in all across the quarter.

WD unveils massive 1TB drive for Laptops

Western Digital has launched the first 1TB hard drive for notebook computers.

The WD Scorpio Blue SATA drive is a 2.5 inch HDD offering a huge 1TB of storage intended to meet the increasing storage demand of users with growing archives of date files generated by digital and video cameras.

The 12.5mm form factor drive also comes with 750 GB of storage. The two models are targeted at laptops and mini desktop PCs, such as the Apple Mini.

The development of the 12.5mm form factor drive comes after research showed an increasing demand for storage. In response the drives have been designed for laptops and portable storage solutions, bringing three 333GB platters and  a 3Gb/s transfer rate.“The convergence of the growing mobile computing and digital media trends produces demand for desktop-like capacities in portable devices,” said WD’s Jim Morris.

“Our new WD Scorpio Blue drives enable people to take even more of their digital collections with them wherever they go and, realizing the value of their data, back up their notebooks on their My Passport drives.”

Apple Market Share Drop Creates Calls For A Cheaper Netbook

According to research firm IDC, Apple has dropped from No.4 in laptop sales to No.5. The firm estimates that Apple has shipped 12.5 percent fewer laptops than the same time last year, even as it maintained its 7.6 percent market share.

Leapfrogging Apple to take the No. 4 spot is Toshiba, now estimated to be shipping 7.7 percent of all laptops in the U.S., thanks to system such as the Mini NB205 Netbook. IDG estimates that Dell remains No. 1, with 26.3 percent of the market, closely followed by HP, with Acer showing strong year-over-year growth to hit 12.6 percent of the  market.

As the news broke, another set of analysts revealed that Apple’s laptop sales were in fact rising, tho IDC stand by their research. Whatever the figures, most agree that Apple’s lack of a netbook is causing the company some serious issues.

Apple has no product in the netbook category, a sin of omission in the minds of most financial analysts. Its lowest-priced notebook is the £749 MacBook, a machine priced double or triple that of most netbooks.

“There may be a little pressure here for Apple from Wall Street,” said Loren Loverde, director of IDC’s quarterly PC sales tracker, who is one of few industry experts that believe Apple will be just fine with their current offering. “Does Apple have to have a netbook? No, they don’t. Apple is a very unique company in a lot of ways, and if you look at their whole history, people are always saying they have to do this, have to do that, but they’ve struck their own path.”

MacBook Pro Family Enhanced

Apple has revealed the details of new MacBook Pro notebooks at the WWDC 2009. More features have been added to the MacBook Pro series and the price has been reduced too. The best thing that has been done to the new line of MacBook Pros is its enhanced battery life. The battery of the new Macbook Pro is a non-renewable lithium polymer with a reported 7 hours of power under “ideal” conditions which means a 40% longer battery backup than its predecessor. They have removed the ExpressCard Slot and added a SD card reader instead.

Three standard configuration models will be available for the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

• For $1699 you get a 2.53GHZ, 4GB RAM

• For $1999 you can have a 2.66GHz processor, 4GB RAM and a 320GB HD

• For $2299 you can grab a 2.8GHz processor, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HD

The 13-inch model of the Macbook Pro also boasts the new 7-hour battery life and it features the SD slot, Firewire 800 port, a backlit keyboard, 8GB of RAM and up to 500GB of storage.

Now about the price of the 13-inch MacBook, the 120GB HDD version retails for $1499 (1.86GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 120GB HDD) and the SSD version is going for $1799 (2.13GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 128GB SSD). The prices of 17-inch Macbook pro have also been slashed to $2499.

MAC Book

It speaks volumes that Apple have continued increasing its prices and yet still manage to rack up significant sales during a world hit with recession. Continually outdoing themselves year to year the 13-inch Macbook is no exception and looks to be the way forward with laptops. With a new design, technology and features this is certainly the one to beat. 

Until now all laptops were designed the same way, not any more. When you pick up the new Macbook you immediately notice the difference. It is thinner and lighter with a more sophisticated look. The up to date LED backlight technology creates instant maximum brightness and the edge to edge glass display causes less distraction from whatís on screen.

Many alternative laptops sacrifice graphics performance to get extended battery life. That’s not the case with the Macbook laptop. The NVIDIA Geforce 9400M graphics processer provides up to five times the performance of the previous model.

This enables you to encounter high performance graphics, ideal for those of you who enjoy playing 3-D games or for just watching videos. As with previous models there is no mouse button, instead you click the trackpad to select an item, so those of you moving from standard PCís may find it takes you a bit longer to get to grips with.

With 5 hours of battery life and wireless connection built in the web world is your oyster, whether itís simply surfing the net or sending e-mails. It even has a built in iSight camera for those all important video chats.

Macbook is iPod, iPhone , digital camera and external hard drive ready. The faster memory allows you to manoeuvre around large files and keep numerous applications open at once. 

For the environmentalists out there the Macbook laptop is also energy star compliant, meeting the government standard for energy efficiency. There are 3 models available ranging from £790-£1330 and they are available in stores and online now.