Computex 2011

You didn't think ASUS was going to leave it at a single Republic of Gamers motherboard and a clutch of tablets did you? The company's computing arm has brought a whole bevy of ROG-branded kit to Computex this week, including everything from video cards, gaming notebooks and desktops, 3D displays and more. Top of the tree is probably the ASUS ROG G53SX Naked Eye 3D gaming notebook, with a glasses-free 3D display paired with Sandy Bridge Core i7 processors and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M graphics.

Continue Reading

ViewSonic has outed its latest LCD monitor, and it has high hopes for the 24-inch ViewSonic V3D245wm-LED. Billed as "the ultimate 3D monitor" it offers an integrated 3D emitter for use with the bundled active shutter classes, as well as offering HDMI 1.4a input and Full HD 1080p resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate.

Continue Reading

Ultrabook may be the fancy branding, but Intel isn't relying solely on a swish name to make its Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge notebooks appealing. Later in 2011 will come various "responsiveness innovations" including a MacBook Air-style instant-resume feature called Rapid Start, which promises just 5-6 seconds between hibernation and being ready to use, along with Smart Connect, for streamlining social networking updates.

Continue Reading

It's not just Ultrabooks that Intel is pushing at Computex this year: the chip company also has Atom news to share. That concerns Cedar Trail and a Moore's Law outpacing shift to a yearly die-shrink schedule: Intel reckons Atom chips will shift through the 32nm of Cedar Trail, past 22nm, and hit 12nm within three successive years. Technically impressive, but for the consumer it should mean significant gains in power and battery life. Meanwhile, there's also Medfield news for tablets and smartphones.

Continue Reading

Intel isn't willing to let ARM grab all the ultraportable mindshare, and the chip behemoth has obviously decided that some judicious rebranding is what's needed. At Computex 2011 day one, Intel announced its new Ultrabook segment, initially using second-gen Sandy Bridge Core processors (before graduating to 22nm Ivy Bridge chips in early 2012) in sub-0.8-inch thick chassis and with "mainstream price points" that come in under $1,000. Intel expects Ultrabooks to account for 40-percent of consumer laptop sales by the end of 2012, with the first models on the market in time for the 2011 holiday season.

Continue Reading

ASUS has brought motherboards to Computex as well as tablets and notebooks, with several new AMD 9 Series models offering things like AMD CrossFireX, NVIDIA SLI and Intel ThunderBolt connectivity depending on 'board. The ASUS M5A99/97 Series, the TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX and the ROG Crosshair V Formula all support 990FX/990X/970 chipsets and AM3+ CPUs, with the Republic of Gamers 'board having a ThunderBolt audio/LAN combo expansion card.

Continue Reading

Maybe it was too many Transformers toys when I was younger, or because I have a frustrated engineer inside me, but I - like plenty of others - can't take my eyes off the ASUS Padfone. The new tablet/smartphone hybrid, fresh (after a leak or two) to Computex 2011 this morning, taps into a geeky, childish "slot this gadget into that gadget and make it better overall" mindset that also left us jonesing for an ATRIX after CES. Question is, after the lust fades, does the reality the Padfone offers actually bear up?

Continue Reading

All of a sudden, ViewSonic's new ViewPad 10Pro tablet is looking a lot more interesting. Although billed as a dual-OS slate, which led us to believe it would switch between Windows 7 and Android in the same way as the older ViewPad 10, in fact the 10Pro uses BlueStacks, the clever Parallels-but-for-Android-apps-on-Windows software we first mentioned back in April. Rather than demanding that you switch wholesale between Microsoft's OS and Google's, you'll be able to use Android apps alongside Windows software.

Continue Reading

Did you dream about a hybrid smartphone/tablet? It's only morning in North America, but already the Computex 2011 pre-show presentations have been and gone, ahead of the show-proper opening on Tuesday. There's plenty to see, too, with the East Asian companies bringing out their take on tablets and attempting to find a gap in the iPad's armor, among other things. Read on for the full SlashGear Computex Day Zero wrap-up.

Continue Reading

NVIDIA has offered up the new GTX 560M GPU for notebook computers at Computex bringing the first of the 500M series of GPUs to market. NVIDIA says that the GTX 560M will hit the "sweet spot" for gaming notebooks with the ability to play games in 1080p resolution with support for DirectX 11. This GPU is also the first to offer GTX gaming GPU combined with Optimus technology. That means that the notebooks using the GTX 560M will be able to change between that integrated GPU of their notebook and the GTX GPU for power or battery life depending on their needs.

Continue Reading

Linaro and Samsung have announced that they have collaborated to bring developers of open source devices a new development tool packing some of the best Samsung hardware around. The new tool is a developers board called the Origen board that runs the Samsung Exynos 4210 chipset that lives inside some of the most popular Android devices on the market like the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone. The chipset uses the multi-core Cortex-A9 CPU inside along with DDR3 RAM.

Continue Reading

Generally, with any tech show we see a lot of new products that are talked up to the point where we are tired of hearing about them from some manufacturers at the show. Then we get other products that have interesting features that are never mentioned and you only find if you happen to wander around the company's booth and see the gear sitting there on display. That seems to be the case with LG and this P220 notebook that has turned up at Computex 2011.

Continue Reading