LAPTOP Magazine: The Pulse of Mobile Technology

Top Reviews of May 2012

The products awarded 4-stars or above this month include three stacked gaming notebooks, the latest HTC smartphones (the AT&T One X and Sprint’s Evo 4G LTE), the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, a social network-enabled fitness device called the Fitbit Ultra, and the ASUS Zenbook Prime ultrabook.

Cricket to Offer Pre-Paid iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S

Leap Wireless, parent company of Cricket, has announced that it will be the first mainland U.S. carrier to sell the iPhone on a prepaid, no-contract basis, offering “unlimited” talk, text, and data for $55 per month. A company called Open Mobile has been selling no-contract iPhones in Puerto Rico for a while now. Users have [...]

Report: Facebook, Google Competing For A Stake In Vevo

Who says the twos have to be terrible? Vevo’s second birthday came and went this past December, but the music video site’s biggest presents may yet be forthcoming, as New York Post sources say that both Google and Facebook are vying for an equity stake and an advertising deal with the up-and-coming company. Vevo is [...]

Windows 8 Release Preview Hands-on: Better Gestures, Surfing and Apps

Marking another milestone on the road to launch, today Microsoft unveiled the latest beta version of its coming OS, Windows 8 Release Preview, for free download. Though consumers have been able to test a pre-release version of Windows 8 since the Consumer Preview launched in February the new iteration has some subtle, but important improvements [...]

TechMama: Web Safety is the New Sex Talk

When I was a teenager, my parents dreaded the “birds and the bees” discussion, a tacit reminder that I was getting older and needed guidance and warning of the adult road ahead. Fast forward to 2012. Kids have access to multiple devices with browsers, providing access to the Internet, where they are establishing permanent digital [...]

How to Replace Your Laptop with an iPad

Have you ever wanted to jet off on a business trip or head home for the weekend with just your iPad? Now you can. When it first emerged, Apple’s tablet wasn’t meant to be a PC replacement. But a slew of new apps and accessories for the device make it possible to accomplish everything from [...]

Amazon’s Trade-In Program Now Accepts Netbooks and Macbooks

Amazon’s Trade-In Program began accepting used electronics just over a year ago, but while the company would gladly accept MP3 players, cameras, tablets, smartphones and more in exchange for an Amazon gift card, it wouldn’t take used laptops. That changes today: due to popular demand, Amazon has announced that Apple notebooks and non-Apple netbooks have [...]

Report: iPhone 5 Chassis Appears with Larger Display, Smaller Connector Port

Another day another iPhone 5 rumor. This one comes to us from the folks over at 9to5Mac who claim they have photographic evidence of the next iPhone’s design. If the photos prove to be the genuine article, they would confirm rumors that the newest iPhone will have a larger display size (3.9 inches) than previous generations. [...]

Dell Revamps its Latitude Line: Ivy Bridge, Nvidia Graphics, and More

Dell today announced a major refresh of its Latitude line of business-class notebooks including complete redesigns of its E6430s and E6430 ATG laptops. Weighing 3.75-pounds and measuring 13.19 x 8.8 x 1.22 inches, the E6430s offers users a 13-inch display in a 13.3-inch chassis. It comes wrapped in a Tri-Metal casing with an anodized aluminum [...]

Intel Ivy Bridge Benchmarked on ASUS Zenbook UX31A, Lenovo ThinkPad X230: Thinner and Faster Than Ever

Intel just announced the second half of its new Ivy Bridge CPU lineup, processors that are smaller, more powerful, and more power efficient than ever before. This new set of CPUs is designed expressly for ultrabooks and other thin-and-light systems. We recently put a quad-core Ivy Bridge processor to the test (The ASUS N56V), and now, [...]