Approximately a year back, we reviewed the ASRock Core 100 HTPC which was a pioneer of sorts in the small form factor (SFF) HTPC space. Till that point, the pre-built SFF market was restricted to the anaemic Atom / ION based nettops. Core 100 was powerful enough to impress us and recommend it as a HTPC for buyers in the mid-range market.

Fast forward a year, and Intel has now moved forward from the Arrandales to the mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs for the notebook segment. ASRock has followed up their Arrandale based Core 100 with the mobile SNB based CoreHT series. In addition to the improvements that have been brought by the mobile SNB, we will also look at what ASRock has brought to the table in this review.

With the relaunch of their XPS branding, Dell has released quite a few interesting laptops during the past three quarters. Their latest addition to the line is the thin XPS 15z, and if you haven’t read or heard about it yet let’s be clear: it takes more than a few design cues from Apple’s MacBook Pro 15. We could also look at the HP Envy line and say that Dell borrows a few ideas there as well—though admittedly, "let's make a thin laptop with an aluminum exterior" isn't exactly a revolution in industrial design concepts. The result is still something different than what Apple and HP offer, but if imitation is a form of flattery, Apple in particular should be feeling quite pleased right now. When we get to the details, however, the outward similarities start to disappear.

The 15z might look something like a MacBook Pro 15, but the options are different from what you’ll get out of Cupertino. Some of the changes are for the better, some are merely a different take on what hardware works best, and others are for the worse. We also need to point out the major advantage Dell holds over the MBP15: the base model 15z starts at just $999; even with the 1080p upgrade, it’s only $1099. Pricing as usual isn’t somewhere that Apple competes. The result is a laptop that might just be everything you’ve been looking for as you prepare to head back to school, or it might leave you wanting more. Which category you fall into will depend on how you want to use your laptop, so join us as we dig into the 15z and find out what makes it tick.

We're taking our second excursion into enterprise-class desktop territory with the kind of machine that should be of interest both to IT management and enthusiasts alike: HP's Z210 SFF (small form factor) workstation. Desktop computers are capable of getting smaller and smaller these days, and with the Z210 SFF, HP is hoping to make serious number crunching power available in even the tightest of spaces. It's always interesting to see just how much performance can be crammed into a tiny computer, but did HP have to make any sacrifices to hit this target?

Just over ten months ago, we had a chance to take a look at a very big, reasonably impressive mobile workstation: HP's EliteBook 8740w. It sported HP's DreamColor IPS screen at a glorious 1920x1200 resolution and had fairly beefy hardware under the hood, including the at-the-time fastest mobile workstation GPU, the NVIDIA Quadro 5000M. But since HP unveiled the dramatic redesign of their enterprise notebooks earlier this year, we've been anxiously anticipating the 8740w's refresh. Today we have it, specced to kill with a shiny new DreamColor IPS screen, Sandy Bridge quad-core processor, and an even faster NVIDIA Quadro GPU.

Despite abandoning Pentium as a high end brand with the 2006 release of Intel's Core 2 Duo, Intel has kept the label around for use on its value mainstream parts. Last year we saw only two Pentium branded Clarkdale parts: the G6950 and G6960. This year, powered by Sandy Bridge, the Pentium brand is a bit more active.

The new Sandy Bridge based Pentiums fall into two lines at present: the G800 and G600. All SNB Pentiums have two cores (HT disabled) with 256KB L2 per core and a 3MB L3 cache. CPU core turbo is disabled across the entire Pentium line. From a performance standpoint, other than missing hyper threading and lower clocks - the Sandy Bridge Pentiums are very similar to Intel's Core i3.

Read on for our full review of these value Sandy Bridge CPUs.

The past year has seen the vast majority of mainstream notebooks with discrete graphics shift to NVIDIA's Optimus, and with the W150HR Clevo makes the move as well. Equipped with GT 555M DDR3 graphics and sporting an i7-2720QM and Intel 510 SSD, MYTHLOGIC's Pollux 1400 variant packs in a lot of performance. What's more, it has one of the best LCD's we've tested: a matte 1080p LCD with high color gamut and great viewing angles. If you've been looking for a laptop that can handle just about anything, this could be it.

Of course, there's more to a laptop than the raw specs, and build quality and keyboard layout have been issues on Clevo designs for as long as I've been testing them. They're not the worst in the business, but considering the cost and target market there are certainly other alternatives. So how does MYTHLOGIC's offering stack up to the competition? Let's find out.

Toshiba's flagship Qosmio line of notebooks have been, for the longest time, big, flashy, red and black beasts. These juggernauts sported 18" screens with high-end graphics and processing power, but at the same time they were...well, probably not the most attractive notebooks on the market. But Toshiba's success with the 13" Portege has led to some design changes, and the Qosmio has gone under the knife. It's still a substantial desktop replacement notebook, but it's shed a couple pounds, an inch off of the display, and some of the gloss. Is Toshiba's major redesign a success?

Last week we published our review of the new 2011 MacBook Air. Both the 11 and 13-inch models ship with ultra low-voltage (ULV) dual-core Sandy Bridge CPUs, a first for the lineup. Also another first for the lineup is the fact that you can now get equally specced CPUs in both models. In theory you'd be able to have the same performance regardless of chassis size.

The 1.8GHz Core i7 is offered as an upgrade to both the 11 and 13-inch MacBook Air. With much higher max turbo speeds and another megabyte of L3 cache, it's clear this is going to be a big upgrade over the standard 11-inch Air.

Last week we got our hands on one of these upgraded 11-inch models to find out just how much faster it is. We also wanted to find out what sort of an impact the faster CPU would have on the 11's thermals and battery life. It just so happens that our upgraded 11 gave us more than just that to investigate.

I've always liked ultraportables. Back when I was in college I kept buying increasingly more portable notebooks until I eventually ended up with something horribly unusable for actual work. When Apple introduced the first MacBook Air back in 2008 I fell in love. It finally stuck a fast enough CPU in a small enough chassis and gave me a full sized keyboard to type on. I was set.

Last year Apple introduced the first major update to the MacBook Air, bifurcating the lineup with the first ever 11-inch model in addition to the standard 13. With last year's update the MacBook Air did so well that it actually started outselling the base MacBook. Apple isn't a fan of large complicated lineups so it retired the MacBook. If you want a portable Mac you can buy a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro.

As the mainstream counterpart to the MacBook Pro, Apple had to do something about the performance of the MacBook Air. While last year's updates were great alternatives to cheap, underpowered netbooks, they weren't fast enough to be a mainstream computer in 2011. Last year's Air featured Intel's Core 2 Duo processors, based on an architecture that debuted in 2006. Intel has released two major architectures since then.

Just nine months after the release of the 2010 MacBook Air, Apple fixed the problem. Meet the new Air:

If these systems look identical to the ones they're replacing that's because they are, at least from the outside. With the exception of a backlit keyboard, some differences in the row of function keys and a Thunderbolt logo, these babies look identical to last year's models.

You shouldn't judge a (Mac)book by its cover, because the MacBook Air's internals are much improved.