The first round of Ultrabooks were mostly underwhelming. It shouldn't be a surprise, but many of the efforts were just half hearted at best. Of the companies who shipped the first Ultrabooks however, it was ASUS who came the closest to perfection with the Zenbook.

ASUS' Zenbook embodied the form factor, portability and overall concept of an Ultrabook. Where it failed to deliver was with its keyboard, display and, at least initially, with its trackpad. The first Zenbook was an amazing effort given the short period of time that it was conceived and developed in, but it was too rough around the edges.

Despite only being introduced 7 months ago, the Zenbook is old news. This is the Zenbook Prime:

The Zenbook Prime is ASUS' second generation Ultrabook, built around Ivy Bridge silicon. Unlike most silicon updates to notebooks however, the Zenbook Prime takes an almost Apple-like approach to renovating the tangibles rather than just relying on a faster chip to do the heavy lifting.

I don't know that I've ever seen a faster turn around on implementing reviewer and user feedback into a product. The Zenbook Prime fixes nearly every issue I had with the original Zenbook. From keyboard to display, it's all significantly better with the Zenbook Prime.

Read on for our full review!

AMD’s microprocessor history goes way back, predating even the now venerable x86 architecture. Their first foray into x86 territory came as a subcontractor to Intel, and from there AMD cut the ties and began making x86 compatible chips of their own design, starting in 1991 with the Am386. AMD went on to make the Am486 and Am5x86 before ditching the “86” part of the name with the launch of the K5. That’s where most of us started paying closer attention, and the K6/K6-2/K6-III and K7 were quite popular in their day. The real deal however came with the K8/Hammer family of processors—chips that not only competed with Intel offerings (Pentium 4 mostly) but actually outperformed them in the vast majority of benchmarks, and did so while using less power. It was a double whammy of performance and efficiency, and for several years AMD chips were the enthusiast’s CPU of choice.

Unfortunately for AMD, they’ve never quite managed to reclaim the glory of the Athlon 64/Opteron launch. It took Intel a few years—and a scrapped Tejas architecture—but when they finally got things straightened out they struck back with a vengeance. Intel’s Conroe (Core 2) architecture turned the tables on AMD with the same double whammy of increased performance and reduced power, and since the launch in mid-2006, Intel has managed to hold onto the CPU performance crown. In fact, earlier this year AMD almost seemed to throw in the towel as far a high-performance CPUs are concerned, with their future strategy focusing on mainstream and value-oriented APUs. We’ve already seen some of that with their first APUs, Brazos and Llano, and today AMD brings out their third APU architecture: Trinity.

If you’re hoping to see a repeat of the Hammer launch back in 2003 with Trinity today, you’re going to be disappointed. AMD has made no claims or even hints that Trinity is going to go toe-to-toe with Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge-E in processor benchmarks. Instead, the marketing material and reviewer’s guides are more about telling a story of good performance, balance, and flexibility with a price point that won’t have you looking for a loan. Sometimes the best way to take down a massive empire isn’t by lining up your heavy guns and trading blows until one side capitulates—in such battles, the larger/wealthier corporation almost always wins. Instead, it’s the plucky little ships that can outmaneuver the big guns that can sometimes come out ahead. Will Trinity be AMD’s X-wing to Intel’s Ivy Bridge death star? Read on for our full analysis.

Intel is firing a massive artillery barrage at its competition today with the release of desktop and mobile Ivy Bridge processors. Last year’s Sandy Bridge gave Intel a huge lead in the performance segment of the market, a lead that AMD has yet to overcome, but Intel isn’t ready to rest on their laurels. We felt Sandy Bridge was a revolution for mobile users when it came out last year, but here we are just over a year later getting ready for its successor. Will Ivy Bridge do to Sandy Bridge what Sandy Bridge did to Arrandale and Clarksfield? That’s what we’re here to find out.

And for those of you who aren’t as concerned with code names and the competition between AMD and Intel, we’ve also got a pre-release ASUS N56VM laptop for our tests. While some of the specs won’t quite match up with the shipping product, we have enough that we can provide a detailed review of ASUS’ first Ivy Bridge laptop. Should the N56VM be on your short list of laptop upgrades? We’ll find out what makes it tick and have recommendations in our detailed preview, so read on to find out what Intel’s 3^rd Generation Core i-Series brings to the computing world.

The initial bum rush of ultrabooks resulted in, with limited exception, a lot of designs that took most of their cues from Apple's MacBook Air. Even Dell's XPS 13, otherwise very different from what came before it, still maintained that wedge shape. Yet HP went a bit of a different route with their Folio 13 and demonstrated the same kind of outside the box thinking that many of the larger vendors are demonstrating these days.

HP's engineers took a look at Intel's ultrabook spec and, rather than see how small they could get their design, opted to see just how much they could pack into the spec. The result is the Folio 13, an ultrabook designed to bridge their consumer and business lines and offer the best an ultrabook can offer. Read on to see where it succeeds and where it could still use some help.

While the launch of Trinity isn't too far away, it's important to remember there are still plenty of Llano notebooks available today with a lot to offer on their own. AMD's APU may be weak on the processor performance side, but the GPU side achieves something Intel historically couldn't touch: decent gaming performance at a budget price.

The problem now is that with Ivy Bridge also due soon, Sandy Bridge-based notebooks are going at fire sale prices while any of NVIDIA's 500 series graphics that haven't been rebranded also need to be purged, resulting in a substantial number of notebooks with gaming potential hanging out in Llano's neighborhood. Toshiba's Satellite P755D features AMD's fastest 35-watt Llano processor and a Blu-ray drive at a reasonably low price, but is it still going to be competitive?

Yes, folks, we finally managed to get someone to send us a mainstream laptop with an IPS display. Not that there are many choices; besides the Sony SE reviewed here, the only other options for anywhere close to a grand are the Lenovo X220 (which starts at around $1250, give or take) and the HP Envy 15 (which costs $1250 with the same 1080p panel as the VAIO SE). Sony’s VAIO SE costs less for the basic model, always comes with a 1080p display, and it has plenty of other cool features as well. But are there other areas where the SE falls short, or does the sum of the parts create something awesome?

Sony shipped us a higher spec unit for this review, but outside of the CPU most of the changes are pretty tame. The short summary is that if you’re after a decent mainstream laptop with a good display that won’t break the bank, it’s very difficult to come up with better options. Everything isn’t perfect, unfortunately, but there are very few laptops that don’t have one or two glaring flaws. Read on to find out the good and the bad (or merely okay) with the Sony VAIO SE, and find out if this might be worthy of your next laptop purchase.

Razer is, first and foremost, a gaming company. From the company slogan (“By gamers, for gamers”), to partnerships with a number of the most popular game development studios, even the job title on the CEO’s business card (it reads Chief Gamer), nothing about Razer is shy about who the target market is. But it’s key to note that Razer is a gaming company which has focused on gaming-related peripherals and accessories—mice, keyboards, headsets, controllers, and limited edition peripherals for specific games. But that all changes as of now. 

The vessel of change in question: Razer’s new Blade, a 17” gaming laptop that bucks almost all of the common trends in gaming-focused desktop replacements. Heralded by Razer as the “World’s First True Gaming Laptop”, the Blade packs a 2.8GHz Core i7-2640M, NVIDIA’s GT 555M dGPU, 8GB of memory, a 256GB SSD, and a 17.3” 1080p display into an enclosure that’s just 0.88” thick and weighs 6.4lbs. If Intel were to extend the ultrabook hardware guidelines out to 17” notebooks, the Blade would hit them pretty dead on. It’s pretty clear right off the bat that Razer wasn’t aiming at the gargantuan six-core SLI notebooks out there—in fact, on paper the Blade looks a bit like the Windows answer to the 17” MacBook Pro.

This isn’t the first time that Razer has shown intent to play in the gaming hardware space, having shown off the impressive Switchblade concept system at CES 2011. The Switchblade design concept clearly had a major influence on the Blade as is evident from the Switchblade UI panel on the side of the keyboard, but what’s important to note with the Blade is that it shows just how serious Razer is about transitioning into PC hardware and gaming systems. Read on to see how it fared.

Recently Taiwanese vendor GeChic got in touch with us about a new product set to appear on American shores, the On-Lap 1301 laptop monitor. The concept? A portable 13" screen that affixes to the back of your notebook lid and swings out, extending your desktop space and powered by a USB 2.0 cable. The first inclination is to expect another DisplayLink peripheral, but the On-Lap 1301 actually uses the HDMI or VGA out of your notebook and thus dodges all of the pitfalls of using a USB-driven screen. So how effective is the On-Lap 1301? We took it for a test drive to find out if GeChic's screen is the productivity enhancer you were looking for.

Minecraft, the world building game from independent developer Mojang, finally came out of a lengthy beta last week. It's difficult to adequately review a game that has been playable for so long—sales passed four million recently—but this is an important game, not least because it demonstrates the continued health of the PC as a gaming platform. Read on for our thoughts on Minecraft 1.0.

The early 2011 MacBook Pro is honestly Apple's best effort to date. Only using quad-core CPUs on the 15 and 17-inch models, and offering an optional Thunderbolt Display that can act as a modern day dock makes this platform, particularly the 15-inch model, the perfect candidate for users who want the power and flexibility of a desktop with the portability of a notebook. Apple gets the mobile revolution in more ways than one, and its MacBook Pro/Thunderbolt Display combo is the perfect example of that.

It's this very combination that I've been using, partially since the introduction of the Sandy Bridge MacBook Pro earlier this year (the Thunderbolt Display didn't arrive until later). I've been quite happy with the setup. With the exception of lackluster Quick Sync adoption by Apple and obviously limited GPU options, I have very few major complaints.

Late last month, Apple updated its 2011 MacBook Pro lineup - likely the first and last update before Apple adopts Ivy Bridge in Q2 next year. We got our hands on the new base 15-inch MacBook Pro configuration, which received one of the more substantial upgrades over the previous model.

Read on for our review of the updated MacBook Pro!

It’s that time of year again, when thousands of wide-eyed 17- and 18-year-olds will be setting foot on college campuses for the first time. Many more students will be returning for their second, third, or fourth (or fifth or sixth or…) fall semester. Whether you’re a student yourself, parent, other relative, or friend, this guide covers many aspects of college computing. From DIY and retail desktops to laptops to peripherals to gadgets like ereaders to software, we discuss how students use technology and recommend many products, from budget offerings to more powerful gear that will hopefully make higher education more productive and enjoyable!