LAS VEGAS--The Google Chromebook will live on with a fresh chip upgrade, according to Samsung.

The next-gen Samsung Series 5 Chromebook gains a dual-core Intel Celeron processor and loses the slower Atom silicon, a Samsung representative on the CES show floor told CNET.

Other specs (see photo below) remain pretty much the same, including a 16GB solid-state drive.

Chromebooks aspire to run apps, documents, and settings in the cloud and thereby simplify the overall user experience. In practice, however, reviewers have found that cloud-based computing can be frustrating if the wireless connection is unreliable.

For that, and other reasons, the Chromebook has not sold in numbers comparable to mainstream Windows laptops.

The Series 5 is slated for release in the second quarter. Pricing has not been announced. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Don't think Lenovo Android phones are the end-game for Intel. The chipmaker is already showing off its next-generation tablet technology for Windows 8 at CES.

The tablet (see video) uses the Clover Trail Atom chip, due in the second half of this year. Clover Trail is Intel's platform for Windows 8 tablets--also due in the second half.

That chip distinguishes itself from the Medfield chip--which is inside Lenovo's and Motorola's upcoming smartphones--by adding another processing core (Medfield is single core) and improving the graphics engine.

… Read more

LAS VEGAS--Intel demonstrated today at CES a Lenovo tablet based on its new "Medfield" Atom processor and said a Windows 8 tablet based on a next-generation Atom was on the way.

The Lenovo IdeaTab K2110 tablet (see photo and video) is based on Intel's freshly-minted Medfield Atom processor--the same processor powering the Lenovo K800 smartphone announced today.

This Android Ice Cream Sandwich-based tablet is slated to appear sometime in the second quarter.

Intel and Lenovo are also demonstrating a more futuristic Lenovo tablet running Windows 8 and packing Intel's next-generation Atom chip, dubbed Clover Trail.

That … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Hewlett-Packard's Spectre high-end ultrabook--which debuted publicly for the first time Monday night--could be a leading indicator of where Apple is going with larger ultrathin MacBooks.

While Apple is expected to bring out larger, thinner MacBooks in the spirit of the MacBook Air, HP is leading the way here and now.

I had plenty of opportunity to handle the 20mm-thin Envy 14 Spectre Monday night and my initial impression is that this is a very high-quality ultrabook, albeit pricey at $1,399. That said, that's the same price range that Apple's larger MacBooks fall into. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Investment bank Piper Jaffray says Windows 8 running on ARM chips won't be anything to write home about. And neither will Intel's latest chip for smartphones.

Windows 8 is a milestone for Microsoft and the PC industry because it's the first mainstream Microsoft operating system to run on both ARM chips--typically found in smartphones and tablets--and Intel's X86 chip design.

"It is time once again for CES...we expect another dollop of hype and hyperbole coming out of CES this year," wrote analyst Gus Richard in a research note Monday morning.

Windows 8--not … Read more

Ultrabooks will come in two basic varieties at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas: present and future. The latter will incorporate Intel's Ivy Bridge processor, destined to populate all of the ultrabooks and hybrids coming out in the second half of the year.

Ivy Bridge follows the Sandy Bridge chip shipping in current and ultrabooks. While SB should be the chip of choice in ultrabooks until this summer, expect PC makers (and Apple) to make the switcheroo to Ivy Bridge after that.

PC manufacturing titans like Foxconn and Inventec were already hawking their Ivy Bridge wares in September. … Read more

Toshiba will introduce new USB 3.0 flash drives next week at the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Las Vegas, as products using the faster USB interface begin to trickle out.

"SuperSpeed" USB 3.0 is about 10 times faster than current USB technology and will become standard in virtually all laptops when Intel's Ivy Bridge silicon begins shipping this spring.

Toshiba says its TransMemory-EX flash drive will deliver speeds up to 22 times faster than previous models. That's read and write speeds of 220 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 94 MB/s, respectively. … Read more

The fate of ultrabooks is intimately linked to Windows 8, as CEO Paul Otellini has made clear in recent talks--and as he is expected to reiterate at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.

Ostensibly, CES for Intel and the PC crowd is about the crush of new Windows 7 ultrabooks hitting the market. But internally, Intel is keen on Windows 8 as a vehicle to close the yawning gap with Apple's mobile devices, particularly the iPad.

Otellini got a rude reminder of how important ultramobile devices are in 2012 and beyond when an analyst at a … Read more

Hard disk drive supplier Seagate Technology provided a financial update today, reiterating that demand for HDD units will exceed supply in 2012 in the wake of flooding last year in Thailand.

Seagate updated its financial outlook for fiscal second quarter 2012 on Wednesday afternoon, stating it shipped approximately 47 million disk drives, which included approximately 700,000 Samsung disk drives.

Revenue is expected to be between $3.1 billion and $3.2 billion, the company said. Analysts had projected revenue of $2.79 billion on average, according to Bloomberg. Seagate completed the acquisition of Samsung's hard disk drive business … Read more