From the Editors

If you're still enjoying the dog days of summer, sitting by the pool drinking lemonade (hard or otherwise), good for you. But here in CNET-land, we're already gearing up for the fall rush. This week, we've had our noses to the grindstone reviewing Samsung's most lovely laptop, as well as do-it-all NAS drives, among other tech products. We had a little fun too, though, with an iPhone case you can use in that pool should you decide you absolutely have to surf the Web while you surf the waves. (You don't by the way, but … Read more

commentary I am going to make you uncomfortable. I'm going to make myself uncomfortable. I'm going to talk about the intersection of leadership, gender, motherhood, and personality. More specifically, I'd like to talk about Marissa Mayer, who is a new breed of woman in technology and business and -- as a pregnant CEO -- a role model of the highest order.

I've been lucky enough to meet Mayer, the newly appointed Yahoo CEO and hopeful savior, twice. The first time made a lasting impression. I had just been promoted to editor-in-chief of CNET Reviews, and I … Read more

All this week in the pouring British rain, people in suits have been gathering at a biennial trade show in Farnborough, England, to ogle the latest aircraft -- and sometimes buy a few. There's plenty on display for aviation geeks to get excited about, such as the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, but I was mainly there to take a look at the tech that BAE Systems is hawking out to its mostly military customers.

The main attraction was the first public showing of a plane that flies itself -- a 1983 Jetstream once used by a Scottish distillery that's … Read more

It's not often you meet someone in the tech industry for whom the only way is up, but Intel's Michael A. Bell is one of those people. His job is to break Intel into the smartphone market -- and whatever he does, he can't end up reducing its market share.

Previously a vice president on the Mac side at Apple and then in charge of product development at Palm (the Pre and the Pixi were his handsets), Bell is now vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile and Communications Group. His job is to take … Read more

What a week for Panasonic. Of all the products CNET reviewed this week, the company scored the best ratings for both the most expensive gadget and the cheapest. There must be some sort of award for that. (Actually, there isn't, but there should be.)

The Panasonic TC-P65VT50 (affectionately known around these parts as the "VT50") is a 65-inch plasma TV that nabbed the hardest-won praise of all: A glowing review from our own David Katzmaier. Katzmaier gets right to the point in his review, explaining that the whole line of TVs in the VT50's series have &… Read more

We at CNET are very pleased to announce the launch of our Facebook Timeline app.

What is a Timeline app? It's a way of sharing the best stuff you're reading on CNET with your Facebook friends. When you connect with the app, the articles you read on CNET will appear in your friends' Facebook Ticker and occasionally in their News Feeds.

We know many of our readers have strong feelings about these types of Facebook apps (and yes, we've seen the Oatmeal comic). We've even ranted about the intrusiveness of some of these apps ourselves. Seriously, … Read more

Nothing is as fascinating as the thing you can't have yet. Between Windows 8 Release Preview and a deafening cavalcade of iPhone 5 rumors, the current gadget crop didn't stand a chance this week.

This week's roundup of top-rated gear includes everything we've awarded three-and-a-half stars or above in our rating scale, and you can browse all of them in our slideshow. But first, read through our unrated Windows 8 Release Preview, written by Seth Rosenblatt. Seth has spent a lot of time with the new Windows preview, and he's played with the two-screen, app-centric … Read more

Memorial Day is considered the traditional start of summer here in the U.S., and we noticed the streets, subways, and elevators getting less and less populated as the week wore on. But it was another full week for the CNET Reviews team, who cranked out more than 20 tech product reviews -- including a few items that are beyond our usual purview.

Hot cameras We sampled only two cameras this week, but both were four-star winners.

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX30V is camera royalty, of sorts: the compact megazoom model is the successor to 2011's DSC-HX9V, an Editors' Choice … Read more

I'm not sure how well-known David Attenborough is in the U.S., but here in Britain, he has achieved a level of respect and admiration that is reserved for very few. Best known for making nature programs, from the relatively recent "Frozen Planet" and "Planet Earth" to the groundbreaking 1979 series "Life On Earth," he also had another career as a BBC executive.

He was responsible for introducing color television programs to the U.K. in 1967, and commissioned "Monty Python's Flying Circus." He probably could have risen to become … Read more