Microsoft launches Windows 8 on Oct. 26. A dramatic shift from past operating systems, Microsoft has said that the interface previously known as Metro, with its bold, modern look and feel and emphasis on side-scrolling, has been designed for the tablet and mobile computing market.

Naturally, Microsoft’s hardware partners are poised to take advantage of the new OS. Initially, the design consensus seemed to be on those that took advantage of the ultrabook form factor, thin and light, with a foldable screen that allowed it to be operated in a tablet mode as well as take advantage of the keyboard.

Of late, however, the pendulum seems to have swung to convertible tablets that can be detached, with the keyboard serving as both an I/O hub as well as an extension of the notebook battery to allow true all-day computing. (Note that this represents a distinct divergence in design from Microsoft, which has used its Touch Cover as its equivalent of the iPad’s Smart Cover (but without the keyboard). Microsoft sees its Surface tablet as just that, while the traditional notebook manufacturers are moving from their position of strength.

PCMag will have a review of the Surface at a later date, but for now we’ve focused on five devices that you’ll probably want to explore when evaluating your own Windows 8 purchasing decisions. Windows 8 obviously will run fine on most PCs, but the touch interface, widgets, and side-scrolling UI may encourage upgrades to new devices. (That’s the hope, anyway – Microsoft isn’t talking much about Windows 8, at least to Wall Street.)

With that said, which form factor do you prefer? Which design has caught your eye? Check out our slideshow over the next few pages, then tell us in the comments below which device has you reaching for your credit card.

HP Envy X2

Maybe the neatest thing about this product is that HP has cleverly used magnets to make docking the slate into its base that much easier. HP has also fixed it so the keyboard section’s battery drains first, which means the Envy x2 tablet will stay fully powered up more of the time.

Specs include: 11.6-inch, 1,366-by-768 capacitive touch screen, Wi-Fi, 2GB standard memory, up to 64GB onboard storage.

Asus Vivo Tab

Despite the enviable amount of screen real estate, the Vivo Tab is one of the slimmest (8.7 mm) of the upcoming Windows 8 slates we’ve seen. With its Android-based Transformer series of products, Asus pioneered the hybrid form factor that looks poised to take off over the next several quarters, so it certainly has more experience than most in building such devices.

Specs include an 11.6-inch, 1,366-by-768 capacitive touch screen, Wi-Fi, 2GB standard memory, up to 64GB onboard storage.

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13

The IdeaPad Yoga 13 is a convertible Windows 8 ultrabook that uses a “multi-mode” hinge to open up into a laptop, and then open further, with the screen moving 360 degrees to become a tablet-style device. The 13.6-inch screen offers 10 points of touch tracking on a 1,600-by-900 resolution IPS display.

The $1,099 Yoga 13′s 256GB solid-state drive (SSD) and an estimated seven-hour battery are par for the course among ultrabooks, but the Yoga brings plenty of new features as well, like an Intel Ivy Bridge processor and a whopping 8GB of RAM.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2

Another convertible tablet/laptop hybrid, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 will be outfitted with an Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB solid-state drive (SSD) and a 10.1-inch display with 1,366-by-768 resolution and touch support for fingers and stylus. Front- and rear-facing cameras can be used for Skype and taking photos, and integrated storage means you’ll never have to remember where you set your stylus. It won’t be available until November, however. It will be priced at $649 and up.

Inside Secure has collaborated with TazTag to make the world’s first NFC-enabled, ZigBee-supporting mobile device, which runs on trusty Android 4 ICS but which can be used for stock management, payment systems, and mobile banking and trading. What distinguishes the TazPad V2 is that it packs an INSIDE Secure SecuRead NFC module, certified by EMVCo, and a fingerprint scanner, so unauthorized users can be locked out of the device. Those security credentials have won the TazPad certification from Visa, MasterCard and American Express. The ZigBee tech lets users manipulate home automation systems – from simple auto-booting desktop systems to full-on lighting, electrical networking get-ups.

The TazPad V2 runs on a monocore ARM Coretex-A8 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz and assisted by Mali-400 onboard graphics. The screen is a 7-inch 800 x 480 pixel panel, and there’s 512MB RAM and the rather unusual denomination of 24GB of storage space. That can be expanded by a further 32GB using the microSD card reader.

A decent pair of cameras feature on the TazPad V2, making enterprise-level face recognition possible – 2MP webcam out front and 5MP auto-focusing rear camera. WiFi-n and BlueTooth 2.1 pop up, but more importantly there’s a 3G module for go-anywhere connectivity options. A GPS sensor also adds to the corporate appeal, not only opening up access to various geo-location and mapping apps, but also making tracking the device that bit easier in the eyes of insurers.

The 5500mAh HP Business notebook 6730b Battery ensures the TazPad V2 lasts the very longest of workdays. The V2 weighs in at just 450 grams and is bang on 10mm thick, so despite its enterprise-ready internals it hasn’t come in particularly chunky. Final release date is as yet unknown, and we know absolutely nothing about the price point at this stage.

Here we’ll do our best to explain nine mysteries, as well as to provide context on why you should care.

How will users sync their media with phones, including Windows Phone devices?

Until now, Windows Phone users have relied on a Zune desktop app to sync their media files from a PC to the phone. With Windows 8, the Zune brand will disappear, and we haven’t yet received official word on what will replace it.

The Verge has posted a leaked screenshot of a Windows Phone companion app, but that provides only a glimpse at how syncing might work. In addition, it doesn’t answer the question of whether a desktop sync application will remain available.

On a related note, we don’t know whether Apple will release a version of iTunes for the Windows Store. It seems unlikely, but that would be the only way for Windows RT users to sync their content to an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Will Apple ignore these users because they dared to choose an RT tablet over an iPad? Only time will tell.

What are the details on Xbox Music?

Although Microsoft announced Xbox Music in June, details remain murky. The service is expected to be a competitor to Pandora and Spotify, with free radio-style streaming and subscription-based music on demand, but the official word is to wait and see about specifics on pricing and packaging.

The biggest remaining question about the service is whether it will be an answer to Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud, which acts as an online repository for all the music you already own. Whether Xbox Music will have a similar music-locker element is unclear. We expect answers soon, but as of press time Xbox Music remains quite mysterious.

What are the specifics on SmartGlass?

SmartGlass is a companion app for Windows 8 tablets—and eventually other mobile devices—that lets users control and send content to the Xbox 360. It can also show additional content on the small screen while a video is playing on the television.

That sounds great, except we don’t know exactly how content selection will work for third-party apps, such as Netflix. We’re also uncertain about how many apps will offer second-screen content for SmartGlass. To date, Microsoft has demonstrated HBO GO and shown concepts of what Halo 4 on Smartglass might look like, but the company has released little hard information.

Will other Microsoft apps, such as Paint and Movie Maker, go modern?

Microsoft will preload Windows 8 with several of its own tablet-optimized apps, such as Bing, Sports, Finance, and Weather. Even Solitaire received a makeover for the new touch interface in Windows 8.

Still, some apps, including Paint and Movie Maker, haven’t crossed over from the desktop. This is somewhat surprising, considering that Apple’s content-creation apps, such as iPhoto and iMovie, have become big selling points for the iPad.

Will Microsoft port its own apps, or will it rely on third parties to fill in the gaps? That’s a critical question, considering that the Windows Store, Microsoft’s app portal, is woefully understocked. If Microsoft really wants consumers to take its app ecosystem seriously, it should ensure that all of its key, legacy desktop software products come in modern-style touch versions too.

What’s the future for version upgrades?

By fusing tablet and desktop into a single operating system, Microsoft has created a dilemma for future upgrades: Will they be free, as they are on iOS and Android, or paid, as they have been with past versions of Windows and with Apple’s OS X? And for that matter, how often will Microsoft deliver upgrades with new features, rather than simple bug fixes?

The pace of software innovation has sped up in recent years, so Microsoft’s tradition of issuing three-year upgrades for Windows may no longer suffice. Is this the last of the showstopping updates for Windows, as Microsoft moves toward yearly iterations? The answer has important ramifications for anyone considering the upgrade-or-wait question with respect to Windows 8.

What will Windows 8 cost in six months?

Until January 31, upgrades to Windows 8 Professional will cost $40 for users of Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7. After that, Microsoft hasn’t said what the price of Windows 8 upgrades will be. Will users have to pay for a full retail copy, rumored to cost $100 and up, or will a cheaper upgrade option remain available?

How much will Surface cost? And what are its display resolution and battery life?

Four months ago, Microsoft shocked the tech world by announcing its own Windows tablets, known as Surface. These tablets are unlike anything other manufacturers have shown so far, with integrated kickstands and magnetized screen covers that double as ultrathin keyboards.

Since the announcement, however, Microsoft has been less than forthcoming about some key Surface details, such as exact pricing, display resolution, and what type of Asus a32-f3 battery life to expect.

On the pricing front, the company did say that the Windows RT version of Surface would have a price comparable to that of other tablets, while the Windows 8 Pro version would cost about the same as Ultrabooks. So that’s the official word. As far as the unofficial word, at least one estimate for the full bill-of-materials cost suggests that Surface RT’s actual cost is a little over $300, while Surface Pro could cost as much as $640 to build. From there, you could hazard a guess at the final retail pricing, but no one knows how much margin Microsoft wants to make on its first in-house tablet adventure.

Adding to the mystery is a rumor, reported by Engadget, that Microsoft will sell the Surface RT for just $200. Microsoft may reach that price by bundling a subscription service, such as the new Office software, as a subsidy. And as far as display specs go, Microsoft has said that the RT version will have an “HD display,” while the Pro version will have a “full HD display”—but those labels are just marketing terms that don’t correlate to standard resolution specs. Conventional wisdom suggests that the RT version will be 1366 by 768 pixels, and that the Pro version will be 1920 by 1080, but who really knows?

The RT version of Surface is slated to launch on October 26, right alongside Windows 8, so these mysteries can’t last forever. Still, Surface is a highly anticipated product, and the sooner Microsoft can answer questions, the less anxious we tech enthusiasts will be.

How will Microsoft explain the difference between Windows 8 and RT to consumers?

Techies who have followed the development of Windows 8 and Windows RT know the difference by now. The former will run on x86-based processors and will support legacy software, while the latter will run on ARM-based chips, which won’t support legacy software but are likely to foster cheaper, slimmer, and lighter devices.

The challenge for Microsoft’s marketing team will be to communicate this difference clearly to the average consumer, who doesn’t care about processor architecture and just wants everything to work. At the moment, it’s unclear how Microsoft will define Windows 8 versus Windows RT for the layperson.

How many apps will be available at or around launch?

As of October 10, Microsoft’s U.S. Windows Store contained about 2400 apps. That’s certainly short of the five-digit goal that Microsoft has reportedly set for itself, and we don’t know whether the situation will change by the time Windows 8 ships. Only time will tell whether Microsoft can get developers on board with the Windows Store and persuade them not to merely stick with the desktop.

Hewlett-Packard adds ultraportables, stylish notebooks, and two desktop PC to its Windows 8 lineup. The new gear, announced Wednesday, adds to HP’s growing family of Windows 8 hardware first announced in August that included a tablet-laptop hybrid device.

HP is tight lipped when it comes to specifics on its new gear, so we’ll be covering the basics for what the company has said about the new PCs announce this week.

HP will refresh its Pavilion Sleekbook notebook line with a new Sleekbook 14 and 15 models that feature a 14-inch and 15.6-inch display respectively, Webcam, and ports for HDMI, USB 3.0 and 2.0. You can also choose up to one terabyte of storage, and an optional Nvidia discrete graphics card. The Sleekbook 14 lineup will feature AMD accelerated processors and the 15.6-inch version will have Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core processors. Specifics such as screen resolution, RAM, and specific processor options have not been announced. Sleekbook 14 pricing starts at $500 and Sleekbook 15 pricing starts at $600, both lines are expected to start shipping on October 26, the same day that Windows 8 launches. The notebooks come in either black or red.

For gamers there is the HP Envy Phoenix h9 desktop computer featuring an “armor-plated design,” three tool-less hard disk bays, Intel Core Ivy Bridge processors, and liquid cooling systems. This appears to be the first Phoenix desktop from HP using the Envy moniker, previous Phoenix desktops have rolled out as Pavilion HPE PCs. Pricing for the Envy Phoenix h9 starts at $900 and the computer is expected to be available on October 26.

Another upcoming desktop is the HP Compaq Pro 6305 featuring A10, A8, A6, or A4 AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), meant to improve performance for graphics processing. The 6350 will start at $539 and starts shipping pre-loaded with Windows 7 on October 8, so don’t forget to grab your $15 Windows 8 upgrade if you buy this PC.

HP also announced the upcoming Envy m4 notebook featuring a 14-inch display, Ivy Bridge Intel Core processor, Webcam, and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) to wirelessly stream content to an HDTV (adapter or built-in functionality required). The Envy m4 will start at $900 and is also expected to roll out October 26.

Beyond announcing some basic features for upcoming Windows 8 laptops, HP also said it will start offering U.S. customers up to 200MB of free data per month for two years when you purchase an HP Pavilion dm4 notebook. The data connection will be courtesy of T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. HP will start offering the deal to new dm1 owners on October 26.

Maintaining constant location information can be very demanding of a device’s battery power.

Skyhook’s SDK interprets information about the Wi-Fi access points and cellulari towers a smartphone has contacted and combines it with the phone’s GPS interface to plot the device’s current location. Skyhook has developed its own database of Wi-Fi and cellular locations.

Some location services query a server each time they update the user’s location. Skyhook downloads compressed information about Wi-Fi access points and cell towers in a five- to ten-mile radius the first time a smartphone registers a particular location. As long as the user remains in that radius, the device can determine location without calling a server. Fewer server calls means longer battery life.

The SDK version launched Wednesday also reduces power use by optimizing how the software interacts with the hardware, including how the directory of Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers is stored, said founder and CEO Ted Morgan. Morgan was coy on the details, but said Skyhook was able to apply what it had learned about hardware through recent work with Sony to enable constant location services on its gaming consoles.

Skyhook hopes its battery-life achievement “will open up a whole new class of location apps,” Morgan said in an email.

Gateway squ-412 battery brand new 5200mAh Only AU $64.11

Developers have been reluctant to build apps that rely on constant location information because of the battery-life problem, he said.

Yet apps have begun to emerge that use location in innovative ways. Social apps can use up-to-the-minute location data to inform users when people they know or might like to meet are nearby. They might also notify the user of a discount at a nearby restaurant. Or, like the iOS Reminders app, they might generate notifications based on the user’s location.

The latest SDK from Skyhook comes with one other novel feature: Constant location on a plane. Users who are connected to Wi-Fi on an airplane will now be able to track their own location rather than relying on the pilot. Skyhook had to tap different directories than those that work on land to be able to determine where a plane is, Morgan said.

Android Anycool is currently the only major operating system to make available to third-party developers the interfaces the SDK needs to work optimally, according to Morgan.

Are you getting the most out of your laptop? Even if you have an old machine there are a couple of cheap tricks you can do to squeeze the best performance possible out of your

Whether you have a 4-year-old notebook or a shiny new system you bought yesterday, you can dramatically improve your PC’s performance and productivity value for less than the cost of a nice dinner out. For less than $100, you can purchase your choice of significant hardware upgrades that will allow you to get more done in less time and put off buying a new system for several more years.

1. Upgrade to SSD ($80 to $100)

There is no single upgrade that will improve your digital life more than going from a standard hard drive to an Solid State Drive (SSD). If you’re still using a 7,200 rpm or (gasp) 5,400 rpm drive, you’re wasting precious seconds of your life every time you boot, open a file or a launch a program. Instead of twiddling your thumbs while the old-fashioned turnable-like head spins inside your hard drive, you can be up and running in your favorite programs, including heavy applications like Photoshop, in just a few seconds.

When we took a 5-year-old Dell Latitude D630 running Windows Vista on a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and tested it with both its original 7,200-rpm hard drive and a speedy Kingston HyperX SH100S3 SSD, it felt like we were using two different computers. On PCMark Vantage, a synthetic benchmark that measures system performance, upgrading to SSD raised the D630′s overall score from 3,210 to 4,693 and its HDD score from 2,666 to 16,715.

In real-world tests, the Latitude D630′s Vista boot time decreased by around 20 percent, falling from an average start time of 37.3 seconds to 31 seconds. When we tested the launch times for five popular applications (Photoshop CS5.1 opening to a 400MB TIF, Adobe Reader 10 opening to a 500 page PDF, Excel 2007 opening to a 20,000 row worksheet, Mozilla Firefox 14 and Word 2007 opening to a blank document), each program opened about three times faster after the SSD upgrade.

To see how much benefit an SSD provides on a new notebook, we opened some of the same applications and timed them on a 3rd Generation Intel Core i7 notebook, both with a 7,200 rpm 750GB hard drive and the same Kingston HyperX SH100S3 SSD. Even with a much newer, faster processor, launch times were 2 to 4 times faster after the upgrade.

Today, you can get a 120 or 128GB SSD for well under $100. A quick glance at popular retailers such as NewEgg, Tiger Direct and Amazon shows some budget-oriented SSDs like the OCZ Agility 3 selling for under $90 while the Samsung 830 Series, the winner of our Fall SSD roundup, can often be found on sale for $99 or less. If you require more capacity, you can find a 256GB drive for as little as $150.

2. Add more RAM ($20 to $40)

The more RAM your notebook has, the less time it must spend writing to the Windows paging file on your hard drive (or SSD) to help make up for a lack of a physical memory. Since physical memory is infinitely faster than even the fastest SSD, you want to avoid your system needing to use that paging file whenever possible. Even better, if you have some memory to spare, you can create a RAM disk which will load your favorite programs much faster than even a speedy SSD.

Most of today’s notebooks come with 4GB of RAM and moving from 4GB (or less) up to 8GB can provide significant performance gains. If you have DDR3 memory, the standard type since 2009, an 8GB kits (2 x 4GB DIMMs) will cost you $40 or less.

Since most notebooks have just two slots for RAM and come with both filled, you’ll probably have to remove your existing RAM. However, if you do have a free slot, the cost of a 4GB DIMM is around $20. To find out what kind of memory your notebook takes, either consult your owner’s manual or visit an online RAM configurator like the one on Crucial Memory’s home page. Removing and replacing RAM on most notebooks is as simple as unscrewing a door on the bottom of the system, popping out the old chips and popping the new ones in.

To show the benefit of increased memory, we ran PCMark 07, a leading synthetic benchmark, on an Intel 3rd Generation Core i7 CPU, with both 4GB and 8GB of RAM installed. With 8GB installed, the benchmark returned a score of 3,398, about 9 percent higher than the mark or 3,121 it provided with 4GB on board.

We also tried configuring 4 out of the 8GB as a RAM disk, using DataRAM’s free RAMDisk software. With some of our favorite programs installed on the RAM disk, we were able to cut open times in half from what they were on a 7,200 rpm hard drive and reduce them even further when we paired the RAM Disk with an SSD.

3. Get an external monitor ($80 to $100)

You can never be too rich, too thin or have too many pixels on your desktop. If you’re just relying on your laptop’s single screen, you’re slowing yourself down, because you can’t fit enough windows on the screen at once.

Just imagine this situation. You’re working on a PowerPoint presentation in one window while using data from an Excel sheet that’s in another window, looking up some facts on the Web in your browser and keeping track of your email in a fourth window. Every time you switch windows – either by hitting ALT tab or by navigating to the task bar – you’re wasting a good 2 seconds and taxing your short-term human memory because you have to remember the contents of a window that’s now covered over.

With an external monitor attached, you can add a whole second desktop, which can either show one full screen window or two half windows that are docked next to each other. These days, you can get an 18.5- or 20-inch monitor today for $80 to $100. A quick survey of online retail sites shows several 20-inch, 1600 x 900 monitors priced at just under $100 and 18.5-inchers with 1366 x 768 resolutions starting as low as $80. If you’re willing to splurge, you can find a 1080p, 22- or 23-inch monitor for well under $150.

If you want a monitor you can take with you on the road, you can find a portable, USB-powered monitor such as the 15.6-inch AOC e1649Fwu for under $100. However, we prefer the lighter, more portable, but more expensive $174 Lenovo ThinkVision LT1421.

4. Step up to 802.11n Wi-Fi ($10 to $20)

If your notebook is more than three years old, it may have an older 802.11g wireless radio, which is significantly slower and less reliable than the current 802.11n standard. With 802.11n, you move from a theoretical maximum of just 54 Mbps to 150 or 300 Mbps, depending on your router and radio.

While the stepping up from 54 to 150 Mbps probably won’t improve Web page loads, it will enable you to transfer files a lot faster within your home or office network. That means better streaming from your media center, better backups to connected storage drives and faster copying of photos to and from your family members’ PCs. If you have an extremely fast fiber optic broadband plan such as Verizion’s 300 Mbps FIOS Quantum, you’ll see a boost in video streaming and file downloads. No matter what you’re doing, you’ll also see an increase in range, making it easier to get a strong signal when you’re further away from the router.

The good news is that you can get an 802.11n Wi-Fi dongle that plugs into one of your USB ports for under $20. For just $10, Rosewill’s $9.99 RNX-MiniN1 802.11n dongle offers speeds up to 150 Mbps and is so tiny that it looks like one of those nano receivers that come with some wireless mice. The $16.99 Rosewill RNX-MiniN2 sticks out a little bit more, but offers up to 300 Mbps and is still short enough to stay attached to your notebook when you stick it in your bag. If you don’t already have an 802.11n router at home, you can purchase one for as little as $25 for a 150 Mbps unit or under $50 for a 300 Mbps model.

To see just how much additional throughput you get from upgrading to 802.11n, we used the Netperf benchmark to test an old Dell Latitude D630 laptop with its native 802.11g Wi-Fi, and then with the Rosewill RNX-MiniN1 and the faster Rosewill RNX-MiniN2. Though our results on the small file transfer were well below what’s theoretically possible even with 802.11g, there was a clear difference in performance between the three ac adapters.

5. Get an external battery ($70)

If your notebook provides over 12 hours of endurance, perhaps you can live without more battery life. Whether you’re sitting on an airplane or lying on the couch, you don’t want to have to worry about finding and tethering yourself to an outlet.

Unfortunately, in LAPTOP’s tests, the average mainstream notebook provides just five and a half hours of endurance at 40 percent brightness. Even worse, more and more new systems come with sealed batteries you can’t replace, so forget about buying an extended unit or carrying a spare.

However, for around $70, you can purchase an external notebook battery such as the $69 Veho Pebble Pro. I’ve been using the Pebble Pro for a couple of months now and found that the 13,200 mAH Dell Inspiron 6400 Battery provides another several hours of charge to my notebook while, at just 14 ounces, barely adding any weight to my bag. Because the battery comes with 10 different connectors, it works with nearly any brand of PC notebook on the market and is able to charge a phone or tablet pc at the same time.

Mac users can opt for pricier Hyperjuice Mini external battery, which retails for $169.

Those free apps like Angry Birds, Instagram and Tiny Wings may be loads of fun, but they suck the battery life out of your smartphone by tracking your geographical location, sending information about you to advertisers and downloading ads.

That was the major conclusion of research done by Y. Charlie Hu, a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering, who said, “It turns out the free apps aren’t really free because they contain the hidden cost of reduced Toshiba satellite a205 battery life.” Hu and other researchers on his team authored a paper, “Where is the energy spent inside my app?” which will be presented during the EuroSys 2012 conference on April 10-13 in Bern, Switzerland.

The researchers findings show that 65% to 75% of the energy used to run free apps is spent for advertising-related functions. The free Angry Birds app, for example, was shown to consume about 75% of its power running “advertisement modules” in the software code and only about 25% for actually playing the game. The modules perform marketing functions such as sharing user information and downloading ads, according to the researchers.

Games and applications that heavily use built-in phone features like GPS, the camera, compass and “proximity sensor” are the main culprits of inefficient power consumption, the researchers said.

“A particular source of power inefficiency is a phenomenon called ‘tails.’ In principle, after an application sends information to the Internet, the ‘networking unit’ that allows the phone to connect to the Internet should go to a lower power state within a fraction of a second. However, researchers found that after the advertising-related modules finish using the network, the networking unit continues draining power for about seven seconds. The tails are a phenomenon of several smartphone hardware components, including 3G, or third-generation wireless systems, GPS and Wi-Fi, not flaws within the app software itself. However, software developers could sidestep the problem by modifying apps to minimize the effect of tails,” Hu said.

Asus a32-s6 battery, brand new 4400mAh Only AU $64.85 - 

Toshiba satellite p200 battery, brand new 4400mAh Only AU $57.16

“Any time you use the 3G network, there will be a tail after the usage,” Hu said. “The ad module in Angry Birds obviously uses 3G for network uploading and downloading, while the game itself did not, which is why we blame the ad module for the tail.”

The ultimate goal is to develop an “energy debugger” that automatically pinpoints flaws in software and fixes them without the intervention of a human software developer, Hu said.

The researchers have developed a tool known as “Eprof” that maps how much energy comes from each software component, giving researchers or developers a way to see smartphone energy consumption without using a power meter, an expensive and cumbersome piece of laboratory equipment.

“We’ve seen around 1 million apps written since smartphones emerged roughly five years ago, but there has been no systematic way for the developer to see how much energy the different components consume. Using this tool, you can see what should be changed to improve energy efficiency,” the researchers said.

The power problem is palpable when it comes to smartphones.

“Despite the incredible market penetration of smartphones and exponential growth of app market, their utility has been and will remain severely limited by the Asus A42-a6 Battery Life. Today, energy is the single most important factor plaguing smartphones. Modern smartphones come with faster processors, latest sensors, incredible screen resolutions, faster network connectivity, and as such these factors together contribute to the ability of the smartphone to consume energy at much faster rate than the ability to produce/store energy, i.e., the battery capacity. For example, the CPU performance over the last 15 years has grown by 246 times while the battery energy density has only doubled during the same period,” wrote Abhinav Pathak, a Purdue doctoral student who was part of the research team.

The last several generations of the MacBook have had either a mini-DisplayPort or combo Thunderbolt/DisplayPort jack. HDMI has been on our most-wished-for lists for years, so Apple finally adding HDMI (which is found on pretty much every other current laptop) is a big move — especially when combined with a second Thunderbolt port.

Now that we’ve had a little extra time to spend with the MacBook Pro with Retina Display, we’ve a chance to look at some areas in more detail. One of the first questions we received was: “Can the Retina Pro do multiple video outputs?”

The easiest way to test that was to simply get a few monitors together and try hooking everything up. Step One was to connect a 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt display via that monitor’s built-in Thunderbolt cable. The second external monitor was a 30-inch Dell Ultrasharp U3011, which was connected via a DisplayPort to VGA adapter. Finally, I connected a second Dell U3011 to the MacBook’s HDMI port.

As you can probably guess from the headline, all three external monitors connected successfully. Along with the MacBook’s built-in Retina Display, that gave us four simultaneous working screens.

6-cell Asus a32-f3 battery brand new 1 year warranty Only AU $60.76 - 

6-cell Dell inspiron 9400 battery brand new 1 year warranty Only AU $55.07

Using the Display menu under System Preferences, I could set the three external monitors to either mirror or extend the main screen, and then arrange them in virtual space by dragging and dropping icons for each of the screens (to line up the tops or bottoms of the displays, for example). My extended desktop was a little awkward, as I was using different size displays with different resolutions. Interestingly, the Dell monitor, connected via DisplayPort/VGA, was able to display 1920×1200 pixels, while the exact same display, hooked up via HDMI, could display up to 2048×1280 pixels.

But, before you go hooking up every spare monitor you can find, note that the frame rate on the Diablo III window, which we had running on the external Apple monitor, definitely started to slow down when all four screens were running at the same time (with Web browsers and iPhoto on the other screens).

Is this anything you’re likely to use? Perhaps not; but for those who regularly use two monitors, we can see this being useful for photo or video editing, or other MacBook-centric tasks. Either way, adding that HDMI output makes it much easier to get an external monitor connected to the Retina MacBook Pro.

Dell on Thursday announced Latitude business laptops with Intel’s latest Core processors that can provide around 33 hours of battery life, but only when combined with attached laptop battery packs.

The new Latitude E-series laptops will come with screens ranging in size from 12.5 to 15.6 inches. The company achieved 32.7 hours of Dell Latitude E6500 Battery life on a Latitude E6430, which is a business laptop with a 14-inch screen and Intel’s latest Core processor, code-named Ivy Bridge.

The long battery life was reached with a 9-cell Dell latitude d620 battery, and batteries that plug into the bay and under the laptop. The battery life was measured based on average usage of the laptop, company officials said during an interview.

Dell is trying to load up as much battery as it can on laptops, officials said. For example, users can remove an optical drive from a bay and replace it with a battery.

Some of the power-saving benefits also may have come from using solid-state drives, which are considered more power-efficient than hard drives that spin. Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors also are more power-efficient and help save power through features like the ability to shut down idle cores.

Intel provided more details on the Ivy Bridge processors on Thursday, saying the chips are more power-efficient and faster on applications and graphics than predecessors. The chips will be officially unveiled next week at the Computex trade show in Taipei.

Dell is getting consistent, if not slightly higher, results on Dell Latitude D630 Batterry Life as tests continue on other Latitude E-series laptops, said a Dell spokeswoman. Beyond the E6430, the company announced E6230 (12.5-inch screen), E6330 (13.3-inch), and E6530 (15.6-inch) laptops. Pricing on the laptops were not immediately available.

The new laptops also include the thin-and-light E6430S, which is a 14-inch laptop built into a frame typically used for laptops with 13.3-inch screens. The E6430S provides a glimpse of the company’s future thin-and-light laptops, which will be highly portable but also have strong security and remote management features.

Dell is also tuning its business laptops for enterprises by adding virtualization and device management capabilities, said David Lord, director of product planning and marketing. The key is to be able to provide the mobile tools capable for a worker to access data at any time, while reducing the cost of servicing the laptop. Some of the new laptops come with Intel’s VPro feature, which allows system administrators to remotely manage the laptop.

Dell also announced the ruggedized Latitude E6430 ATG laptop, which can withstand extreme temperatures and environments. The new laptops also have USB 3.0 ports, Ethernet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth options. Optical drives are also available depending on the model.

The company also introduced the OptiPlex 9010 all-in-one, and refreshed the other OptiPlex desktops with Intel’s new processors.

You can recycle your batteries at a local recycling center, but you also have the option of shipping them there as well. If this option interests you, this guide will walk you through the process of preparing your batteries the right way in order to ensure that they will be accepted when arriving at the recycling destination. These measures are taken in order to keep everyone involved in the transportation and recycling of the Dell Vostro 1710 Batteries safe.

Step 1: Separate your batteries by chemistry (Ni-Cd, Ni-MH, Li-Ion, Sealed Lead Acid, etc.)

Step 2: Wrap each individual battery in bubble wrap. The bubble wrap will ensure that the batteries do not become damaged during transport as leaks could occur. It also keeps the contacts from touching other contacts as it could cause a short circuit.

Step 3: Place each group of batteries in their own separate cardboard box.

Step 4: Label the outside of each box: “FOR RECYCLING” and then label each box according to the chemistry of the HP 484170-001 batteries within.

Step 5: Use packing-peanuts to ensure that the batteries will not move around inside the boxes while being transported.

Dell latitude d620 laptop battery

4400mAh 11.1V Only AU $55.91 - Australia Post Free Delivery

Step 6: Seal all the boxes with reinforced packing tape.

Step 7: Ship out the boxes to the designated recycling service center.