books

The new glass trackpad introduced on the MacBooks unveiled by Apple last month appears to be giving some users fits.

The trackpad on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros does away with a separate button, turning the whole trackpad into the mouse button. It also supports several new multitouch gestures for rotating pictures or scrolling. But The Register notes that some users are running into problems where the MacBook doesn't register clicks on the trackpad.

Apple's discussion boards are seeing some activity related to this issue. It's not clear whether this is any kind of hardware or … Read more

After unveiling the LifeBook A1110 and LifeBook A6220 in October, Fujitsu is keeping the ball rolling with another addition to the LifeBook family. The LifeBook N7010, announced Tuesday, may not have the swappable lid panels of those previous models, but it does have a fresh new feature: a 4-inch touch-screen panel above the keyboard that can be used to control media playback, display quick-launch icons, or scroll through a photo slide show.

The second display can also help you multitask; instead of minimizing an application, you can drag it into the display below (the example from Fujitsu: you can work … Read more

On Tuesday morning, Fujitsu announced updates to two of its LifeBook lines, the UMPC-like U series and the tiny P-series tablet. Designed primarily for use in vertical markets (think health care and manufacturing), the systems are also sure to appeal to buyers who want something as portable as a Netbook but are willing to pay more for a more thorough feature set.

The 5.6-inch LifeBook U820 updates the U810 we reviewed last year, adding a GPS receiver, plus integrated Garmin Mobile PC software for driving directions and points of interest.

The U820 is built on a Z-series Intel Atom … Read more

In the Apple TV spots, actor Justin Long plays a comfortable and lucrative role. He is cool, slightly superior, but ultimately just clever enough.

In the new movie Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Long plays a role many actors might have turned down. Moreover, many clients, on hearing the character their main spokesperson had chosen to play, would have attempted to prevent him from appearing in the movie at all. They might even have threatened to cancel his contract.

After all, here we have the most recognizable film personification of one of the world's most recognizable brands, Apple. … Read more

Is the MacBook Air overpriced? Competitive offerings from Dell and Toshiba reveal that the MacBook Air may not be so extortionately expensive.

Of course, it all depends on your perspective: $2,499 for a laptop is a lot of money. But put the Air into the context of its product category--ultraportable laptop--and you see that, by comparison, it's not necessarily overpriced.

(Note: Here we're talking about the just-announced update to the MacBook Air.)

Let's start with Dell's recently announced ultraportable laptop (or 'subnotebook," choose your nomenclature). The 12.1-inch Latitude E4200 is priced at $2,… Read more

As klutzy Apple laptop users know, damage from spilled water, coffee, or other liquids is not covered under the standard warranty. To uncover any potential for warranty fraud, it's rumored the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has installed liquid sensors in its new line of MacBooks and MacBook Pros. CNET's Kara Tsuboi looks into the rumored move and the potential for false-positives.

Intel said Tuesday that solid-state drives can extend battery life up to 30 minutes compared to hard disk drives.

Add the speed advantage of solid state drives and that's two strikes against hard disks. Price parity--strike three--is still a ways off, however. That--and the fact that hard drives offer much larger capacities--will keep hard drives competitive next year.

For now, Intel is evangelizing the benefits of speed and power efficiency.

Most independent benchmarks show that solid state drives perform better than hard disk drives. In some cases, a lot better. That's a given now. One area, however, that … Read more

Users have noticed that the new MacBooks have some issues with the batteries. While they appear to run perfectly fine in most situations, when the computer is put to sleep the power seems to drain much faster than expected.

Apple Discussions poster madroberts writes:

"I have the 2.53Ghz, 4MB RAM, 320-7200RPM HD. The other night I unplugged it from the AC adapter and left it closed and supposedly in sleep mode for almost 24 hours. When I came back to use it the next night, the battery had drained all the way down and I couldn't restart … Read more

Reporter Ina Fried gives us the skinny on what Microsoft is cooking up for its next version of Windows and tells us how a Web-accessible version of Office will work.

Also in this podcast: the man behind the video game Doom wins the first level of the X Prize Foundation's lunar-lander contest; Google reaches a settlement with authors and publishers over its searchable online library of books; and MTV opens its vast archive of music videos--old and new--to people on the Web.

Today's stories:

Next version of Office heads to the browser… Read more