back-to-school

When it comes to laptops in 2011, "thinner is better" seems to be a consistent trend. The MacBook Air and Samsung Series 9 head the pack in that regard, but laptops such as the Sony Vaio SE and Dell XPS 15z have followed suit. It's no surprise, then, that the mainstream Dell Inspiron line has gotten its own thinned-out model in the Inspiron 14z. If the name rings a bell, that's because there was a previous Inspiron 14z released in 2009, with a Core 2 Duo processor, but that "thin" laptop was inferior to … Read more

Heading off to class with a shiny new laptop is one of the best things about the back-to-school season, but we have yet to find a laptop that's perfectly set up out of the box. The typical first-time-use experience for a new laptop owner can be a frustrating one, with pop-up warnings from your free antivirus trial software; annoying settings to go through the first time you launch Internet Explorer (likely the only browser preinstalled on your machine); and missing or crippled apps for burning DVDs, opening ZIP files, or playing videos.

Unboxing and setting up a couple of … Read more

Though budget and surprisingly affordable laptops are all the rage lately, there are still quite a few high-end models out there that aren't exactly cheap. Even so, many of these "high-end" laptops offer far more for the money than ever before, making for potentially compelling buys for people looking for big screens and superpowered processors offering desktop-replacement-level performance.

Our high-end laptops from this year's 2010 back-to-school retail roundup are actually a pretty affordable bunch, including an $829 Toshiba Portege R705-P25 that offers an executive feel for less than the white Apple MacBook. In fact, only one of these laptops breaks $1,000: the $1,349 Sony Vaio F126FM/B. In fact, the two Vaio models here are virtually identical, designwise. The more-expensive version has a faster CPU and better graphics card, but the $999 Vaio F12A may be a better overall deal, offering a big screen, Blu-ray, and mainstream/casual gaming graphics for $350 less than its big brother.

Editors' note: See our roundup of retail laptops in all price ranges.

Check out details of each system below:… Read more

Blu-ray, Intel Wireless Display, HDMI--there are a lot of ways laptops can make themselves killer TV-friendly media machines. In fact, for a reasonable price, there are a lot of options out there. Between Blu-ray playback and wireless streaming of online video, it's easier than ever to get your laptop to effortlessly play nicely with a big-screen HDTV. The trick is knowing which machines have these features. While Blu-ray laptops are often heavily plastered with stickers, Intel's Wireless Display technology is often invisible, and sometimes not even mentioned as a feature at all.

For your convenience, we've rounded up notable media laptops from our back-to-school 2010 retail laptop guide, focusing on the features in each. We've also noted whether these laptops have discrete graphics for gaming (it's not always a given). Whether or not they're gaming friendly, they're all well suited for video. Our roundup came up with several laptops from Sony and Toshiba, including a Sony Vaio EA24FM/W that offers an affordable Blu-ray/Wi-Di one-two punch for $799.

Note: we've seen some other compelling Blu-ray and Wi-Di laptops recently, including the Gateway NV5933u, but our list below focuses on retail configurations from our recent guide.

Editors' note: See our roundup of retail laptops in all price ranges.

Check out details of each system below:… Read more

In our back-to-school 2010 roundup of retail-specific laptops, we've divided our 25-plus systems into four different price categories. We already took a look at Netbooks, and now it's time to take a peek at mainstream machines with a little more juice.

When we say "mainstream," for the purposes of this roundup we mean any laptop costing roughly between $600 and $900. That's a range that fits what most people are generally willing to spend for a full-featured computer. It turns out that some pretty great all-around laptops slot into this category, too, with very few compromises to be made.

Though we tend to find one or two most-deserving retail laptops in previous roundups, we found several winners in this back-to-school batch. To change things up a little, we listed our favorite features of each machine. Our favorite laptops were the Blu-ray/WiDi-enabled Sony Vaio EA24FM/W, the beautifully built and full-featured Samsung Q430-11, the slim and powerful HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx, and the Toshiba Satellite A665-S605.

Editors' note: See our roundup of retail laptops in all price ranges.

Check out details of each system below:

Top laptops:

Sony Vaio EA24FM/W (4 stars) The bottom line: Comfortable, feature-packed, and boasting an eye-catching design, the Sony Vaio EA24FM/W and its combination of Blu-ray and Intel Wireless Display make it an affordable multimedia winner. Read the full review.

Samsung Q430-11 (4 stars) The bottom line: An impressively designed surprise, the Samsung Q430-11 is a feature-packed, fast laptop that looks more expensive than it is. Read the full review.

Toshiba Satellite A665-S6050 (4 stars) The bottom line: The Toshiba Satellite A665-S6050 is a smart choice for home use thanks to its outstanding audio output, Intel Wireless Display, and roomy 16-inch display. Read the full review.

HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx (4 stars) The bottom line: HP's slick and powerful Pavilion dm4-1065dx offers great core performance, long battery life, and an eye-catching design at a very competitive price, making it a very attractive back-to-school laptop. Read the full review.

Other very good laptop bets:… Read more

It's true what they say: You don't always know what you've got until it's gone. The object of mourning in this case is the yearly spectacle of summer break, when kids (and their instructors) flood shopping malls, ice cream shops, amusement parks, and beaches for a blissful two and a half months of freedom (apart from that pesky summer job.)

But I'm just a 9-to-5-er, waxing nostalgic in my air-conditioned cubicle. I don't really yearn for those inevitable spells of boredom, bad sunburns, or the dread of returning to deeply regimented days after weeks … Read more

Just in time for the fall semester, we've gone and reviewed more than two dozen new back-to-school laptops. For this particular roundup, we stuck to relatively recent configurations that were available on the shelves of big consumer electronics stores (so, for example, you'll find the in-store version of Dell's 1525, rather than the configurable version available on Dell's Web site).

You can peruse the entire collection of 27 back-to-school reviews, but we've gone ahead and picked our favorites in four different price ranges.

For the Entry Level category, which is laptops from $600 to $700, … Read more

This week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco kept us all busy this week, with plenty of new components and products that use them. We'll start off with the event host, Intel, which announced small-form-factor versions of its Centrino 2 processors (that should ignite plenty of rumors about a Centrino 2-based MacBook Air). Intel also broke out a SATA solid-state drive and announced a dual-core version of its Atom processor, due next month. The company also showed off an update to its tiny Classmate PC, which will include a touch screen.

There were plenty of other manufacturers' Netbooks … Read more

You might be enjoying the dog days of summer now, but look out! The school year is just around the corner, and teachers, books, classes, and winter will be here before you know it. Get a jump on the upcoming school year with a collection of downloadable software for communicating with classmates, managing your homework, learning new study skills, or harnessing the reference power of the Internet. You can even find software to let you call your parents free from college. (Seriously, your mom wants a call.)

Digsby

Facebook profiles, instant-messaging networks, various Web mail accounts...who can track them … Read more