Tablet Crazy
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2011, The first thing I’ve noticed this year is the amount 
of tablets on the market, is it just me or does it seem like the whole world has gone tablet mad, we’ve got the iPad, the Kindle (although not strictly the same thing, still along the same vein) plus a large amount of manufactures releasing their own tablets utilizing Google’s Android operating system, not to mention companies such as Blackberry releasing there own ones soon.
With prices ranging from around $100 to $1200 there are models to suit all pockets.
Could this be the end of the laptop? No but one thing is for sure it will make a huge dent in this market, after all what do we mostly use our laptops for? Email, Internet, general apps, all of which a tablet can handle with ease, plus they are more portable, are more in fashion currently and are more convenient to just grab and use.
The big move at the moment is with Android based tablets, which offer good specs and value and a large choice of everything from budget to designer, every screen size and extra option.
Find out what to look for in a good Android tablet.
Android Tablet Review : Mini Laptops : Small Gaming Laptops : Choosing a Laptop
Windows XP, Microsoft’s Cash Cow to Thorne
Microsoft has now extended its downgrade to XP policy for OEM installed Windows 7 machines for 10 years; who will be running Windows XP in 10 years time?
This is the second time I’ve seen people openly shun operating systems, first we had Vista which did have teething problems, then Windows 7 which is bigger and slower than XP, come on Microsoft give us speed not bigger and bigger operating systems.
If its not broken don’t replace
Computer Speed-up : Repairing XP : Making Vista Look Like XP : Replacing Vista With XP
Who makes the fastest mobile processor Intel or AMD?
We’ve seen the introduction of laptops with dual core processor, and now we are seeing more and more quad core laptops hitting the market as this becomes the next standard.
| Intel Core i7 | AMD Phenom II | |
| Cores | 4 | 4 |
| Cache | 8mb | 6mb |
| Clock Speed | 2.3-3.4ghz | 3.1g |
Intel and AMD are of course the two main companies pushing the core race along.
AMD’s offering is the Phenom II 970 Quad Core CPU
Intel’s is the Core i7 2820QM Quad core CPU.
As you can see on paper the i7 does offer better specification, with faster clock speed and more cache, but this is only the half of the story.
After reading as much material as possible on processor performance differences its seems that the Phenom although a quad core on the surface does not seem to offer much better performance than an Intel Core i5 processor, which is only a dual core.
The Fastest Mobile Processor : Dual Core Processor Performance : What is the Best Laptop CPU
Getting a Performance Boost, Solid State Drives
One of the easiest ways to significantly boost the speed of your computer is with an SSD or Solid State Drive.
Not only are the newer solid state drives much faster than just about all other hard disks, they also require less power (useful for laptops), are more resilient as there are no moving parts, boot up faster again as there is no moving parts to speed up, never need defragmenting (defragmenting an SSD can actually reduce its performance)
If you want to speed up your laptop of desktop computer an SSD is the way to go.
Solid State Drives : Speeding up Your Laptop : Laptop Upgrades : Laptop Care