Dell Latitude 6430u offers high quality throughout

Whatever happens to Dell in the near future, let’s hope that the company keeps making notebooks as nice as the Latitude 6430u. In a world of cheap-feeling merchandise, it stands apart. It’s sedately handsome, ruggedized, remarkably stable in your hand and on the table, and a tactile joy to use. It’s also fast and available with a wide variety of warranty and support options, as a good corporate computer should be.
Why on earth would anyone start a review by talking about a laptop’s physical stability and feel? Partly because it’s better than talking about the 6430u’s 4-pound bulk, but also because there’s palpable pleasure in handling a well-balanced unit sporting a silky, soft-to-the-touch feel. The unusually uniform weight distribution comes courtesy of the flat battery pack that occupies the lower front quarter of the unit. That balance makes the unit feel lighter than it actually is.

The 6430u’s heft also makes it a very stable typing platform, which accentuates the already nice feel of the Chiclet-style keyboard. The keyboard response is a little lighter than a Lenovo’s, but combined with the solidity of the 6430u, the overall experience might actually be a wee bit better—high praise in my book. The keyboard is backlit, and you can control the lighting intensity via a function-key combination. The unit’s touchpad has silky-smooth response, and buttons on the top and bottom reduce hand travel when clicks are required. Even the eraserhead pointing device is well adjusted. Someone at Dell obviously spent considerable time designing the ergonomics.

Our test configuration of the 6430u sported an Intel Core i5-3427u processor, 8GB of DDR3 memory, and a 128GB Samsung PM830 solid-state drive, which helped the unit earn a very capable score of 78 on PCWorld’s WorldBench 8 test suite. The integrated Intel HD 4000 GPU’s game play is mediocre but doable at 800 by 600 or so. There’s no discrete-GPU option, but this is a business machine first and foremost.
The 6430u’s startup time is a mere 10 seconds, and battery life is a very nice 6 hours, 18 minutes. That’s enough to get you coast to coast, at least with the jet stream at your back. Our test unit shipped with Windows 8. Given that the Latitude is sold primarily as a business-fleet model, a Start Menu replacement, such as IObit’s free Start Menu 8 or Stardock’s $5 Start8, might be welcome. All the flavors of the more business-friendly Windows 7 are available as well.

One might quibble with a pricey laptop whose 14-inch display tops out at a 1366-by-768-pixel resolution. (A 1600 by 900 option is available for an additional $52.) But unless you’re adamant about having 1080p video, the display looks great. No touchscreen model is available, but that could be a good thing when you consider the impression that a fingerprint-filled screen would make in the meeting room.
The 6430u’s port array is a nice blend of legacy and modern ports. The unit’s left side sports VGA output, a USB 3.0 port, a Wi-Fi switch, the headset jack, and the power cord jack. The right side is home to a powered USB 3.0 port, the gigabit ethernet port, and a Kensington lock port for securing the unit. Another benefit of positioning the battery at the lower front is that Dell could center ports on the back of the unit, including a combo eSATA/USB 3.0 port and an HDMI output. Our test unit came with both dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Broadband (including LTE) and WiGig (60GHz) cards are available as well.

The unit we tested costs $1279 (as of March 27, 2013). Besides the already mentioned options, you can provision the 6430u with faster or slower CPUs, more memory, a larger hard drive, a smart-card reader, and the modular external USB drive enclosure that in our model came fitted with a DVD drive. Pricing starts at around $900 for an entry-level model and rises to a little under $2100 for a fully loaded system. A three-year warranty is standard, but you can opt for a 4- or 5-year option, as well as onsite service.
I rarely get this enthusiastic over a corporate product of any sort, but I’m a sucker for products that are tactilely and ergonomically superior. The Latitude 6430u is expensive, but most truly superb things are. Even consumers should seriously consider this ultrabook, since the entry-level configuration is more than adequate for most purposes, and the three-year warranty makes a big-box store’s extended warranty unnecessary.
Editor's note: This review was corrected for a factual error. All the USB ports on the Latitude 6430u are USB 3.0. PCWorld regrets the error.

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y500 offers excellent gaming specs for the price

At first glance, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 doesn’t look like anything special.
This thick, heavy (6.2-pound), 15.6-inch laptop is encased in a plain, sturdy chassis with a brushed-aluminum cover. It’s sleek-looking, though strangely prone to fingerprints. Lenovo’s logo is subtly appliquéd in the upper left corner, and the edges of the corner taper ever so slightly.

Beneath this mild-mannered design lies a surprisingly good gaming machine

Nothing would indicate that this is actually a rather powerful—and surprisingly affordable—gaming-oriented machine with a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and not one but two Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics cards under the hood. (The second graphics card is wedged into the laptop’s “Ultrabay,” which is Lenovo’s term for the swappable drive bay that replaces the DVD drive.)
Of course, our review model, in all its spec’d out glory—it’s also got a 1TB hard drive, a 16GB SSD boot drive, a glossy full HD display, and a full-sized backlit keyboard with a 10-key numberpad—starts at around $1150. That’s a bit pricier than the $800 base model of the Y500, but it’s still a great price for a gaming laptop.

It's also a surprisingly affordable gaming machine

Performance-wise, this build of the Y500 is very good, though it can’t quite hold its own with the more intense gaming models. It received a score of 70 (out of 100) on our WorldBench 8 benchmark tests, which puts it well above most mainstream laptops, but still below behemoths like the $3785 Origin EON17-SLX (which scored 115 out of 100). Still, this is one of the better laptops we’ve tested, and its graphics performance is comparable to that of the EON17-SLX. In our Dirt Showdown graphics test, the Y500 managed 116.1 frames per second (fps), while the EON17-SLX managed 139.5 fps.
In other words: If you’re a gamer, this is a viable, and much more affordable, alternative to an Origin desktop replacement.

Red-rimmed keys are so dazzling, they're a bit hard to navigate

The Y500 looks good, too, and offers sturdily-built, comfortable components. The full-sized keyboard has chiclet-style, red-rimmed keys set against a shiny black background. The keyboard is extremely comfortable to type on, with great tactile feedback and nice, evenly-spaced keys. The red backlight gives it a pop of color, though I have one minor complaint, as a gamer: The keys are so evenly-spaced (and the numberpad is right next to the keyboard) that a multi-color backlight would be helpful. It’s hard to distinguish where keys are, quickly, with an all-red keyboard.
The Y500’s touchpad is large and easy to use, but nobody really cares. This is a gaming machine, which means you’re most likely going to use an external mouse. The touchpad was a tad jumpy and oversensitive, in my opinion, but it can be disabled with a quick function keystroke.

Great-looking display, but no touch?

The Y500’s screen is one of its biggest assets, even though when you tap it—and you will, this is Windows 8, after all—you’ll discover that it’s not a touchscreen. The screen itself looks great: It’s big, bright, and crisp, colors look accurate, and off-axis viewing angles are pretty good. It’s got a full HD resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and high-motion content looks excellent in playback. But it’s still…not a touchscreen. Of course, this isn’t quite as big of a deal because it’s a gaming machine—touchscreens aren’t really the gamer’s instrument of choice. But since it does have Windows 8, it’s a bit frustrating to realize that you can’t take advantage of all the awesome swipe gestures that Windows 8 has to offer. That said, it’s important to remember that even the uber-pricey Origin EON17-SLX doesn’t have a touchscreen either.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 is a great choice as a gaming laptop that’s lighter and cheaper than your typical desktop-replacement monstrosity. Despite a few minor drawbacks, overall it’s a great machine that offers excellent performance and specs for the price.

Asus VivoBook S550CA offers Windows 8 and touchscreen in mainstream package

Attractive, touchscreen-equipped laptops running a full version of Windows 8 are getting cheaper than you might think. Some newly announced Sony touchscreen-equipped laptops start around $600 for 14-inch and 15-inch models. But for just a little more money, Asus’ 15.6-inch VivoBook S550CA has an MSRP of $750—and you can find our review model online for as low as $630.

Touchscreen laptop with Windows 8 costs less than a high-end iPad

That’s right—the VivoBook S550CA costs just as much as a souped-up 16GB iPad, but it’s also got a full-size keyboard, an optical drive, and the touchscreen. If you’re looking for a deal, this is a pretty good one.
The VivoBook S550CA is the largest of Asus’ low-cost VivoBook line. It’s 0.86 inches thick, and it weighs 5.7 pounds. Asus calls it an Ultrabook, but, as we’ve already determined, Asus seems to be bandying that term about recklessly. The VivoBook S550CA isn’t even technically an Ultrabook—while it does have a 24GB SSD boot drive (alongside a 500GB hard drive), and it does start up in just under 15 seconds, the S550CA is 0.04 inches too thick to be an Ultrabook. Intel’s guidelines do state, after all, that Ultrabooks with screens larger than 14 inches have to be under 0.82 inches thick.

Plentiful features in fairly compact profile

That said, the S550CA cuts a slim profile for a 15.6-inch machine. Our review model is housed in a black and silver chassis, with brushed-aluminum detailing on the cover and wrist-rest and cheaper matte plastic on the bottom. The black cover is unfortunately prone to fingerprints, which sort of messes with the sleekness of the look.
Despite being just 0.86 inches thick, the S550CA does have a tray-loading optical drive—a Super-Multi DVD drive, to be exact—located on its right side. That may seem quaint, but many mainstream laptops still include it. It’s also got a couple of USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, HDMI and VGA outs, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. Connectivity is good (there’s also built-in Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0), but it would be nice to see two or three USB 3.0 ports, instead of just one. However, the full-sized HDMI out is a nice touch.
The S550CA’s input devices are a mixed bag. The touchscreen is very good—it’s responsive, accurate, and easy to use. The only minor issue I have is that the touch sensitivity doesn’t extend past the bezel of the screen (and it’s an edge-to-edge glass screen, so this could easily have been implemented), and that makes certain Windows 8 gestures, such as swiping from the right side of the screen, more difficult than necessary. Many of the higher-end laptops I’ve seen do extend the touch sensitivity just past the edge of the screen, which makes for a much smoother Windows 8 experience. However, it is an otherwise excellent touchscreen for the price, so I can’t complain too much.

Disappointingly shallow keyboard and touchpad

The laptop’s other input devices aren’t quite as impressive. The full-sized keyboard has black, island-style keys and a 10-key number pad. The keys are lightly textured and evenly spaced, but the keyboard is shallow—so shallow, in fact, that it’s almost impossible to type quickly and accurately. The large touchpad below the keyboard is a little better, but it also suffers from shallowness: It hardly depresses when you tap the built-in buttons, which means that right- and left-clicks are often disregarded. It is a touchpad, though, so you can tap to left-click, and Asus’ Smart Gesture technology (such as pinch to zoom and two-finger scrolling) works smoothly.
The S550CA is a good performer in our benchmarks, with a 1.7GHz core i7 CPU and 6GB of DDR3 memory. The exception is media playback, which is a little disappointing.
The S550CA has no discrete graphics card—just Intel integrated graphics. HD streaming video looks OK, but you will see a lot of artifacting and blurring in scenes with a lot of high-motion content. In other words, video playback on the S550CA is about as good as you can expect on a machine with integrated graphics and a low-res screen.

Display looks great, but resolution could be higher

Also, the screen has a paltry resolution of just 1366 by 768 pixels—par for the course on 11-, 13-, and even 14-inch notebooks, especially cheap ones, but definitely dated on a 15.6-inch screen. The low resolution is unfortunate, because the S550CA has an otherwise excellent-looking screen. Not only is it extremely bright, but colors look crisp and accurate, and off-axis viewing angles are good.

Mike Homnick

The 15.6-inch screen is bright and crisp-looking, with accurate colors, but the resolution is a disappointing 1366 by 768 pixels.

Battery life is mediocre, too: We clocked just under three and a half hours in our rundown tests. This is a laptop you could take around town with you, but not on a long airplane trip, without AC reinforcement.
Audio playback is a little better, however. The speakers, which are located primarily on the bottom of the laptop, produce loud, full sound. Asus’ SonicMaster sound-enhancing technology offers up a decent simulation of surround sound, though it’s certainly not the best sound I’ve ever heard. The only issue is that the main speakers are on the bottom of the laptop, and are situated so that sound gets muffled if you rest the laptop on anything, such as your lap or a desk.

Decent performer for a great price

Getting the full Windows 8 experience—touchscreen and all—doesn’t have to be expensive. The Asus VivoBook S550CA falls short in some performance areas and features, but for many mainstream users, it's still a decent computer for a great price.

AMD launches the Radeon 8970M, its new(ish) notebook graphics flagship

Attention mobile graphics fiends: AMD says its claiming the crown for the “world’s fastest notebook graphics card” with its newly unveiled Radeon HD 8970M.
The new GPU is targeted at desktop replacement gaming laptops, and it will be first found in the MSI GX70 gaming laptop, which starts at $1,100.
The Radeon HD 8970M GPU is powered by AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, built on a 28nm processor, and sports AMD's Enduro optimized power consumption technology for enhanced battery life. The GPU can power a 4K (four times the full HD resolution) display, or—if you have the ports—up to six traditional displays.
The 8970M GPU combines 1280 stream processors with a clock speed of 850 MHz (or 900 MHz with boost), which gives it a precision computer power of 2.3 TFLOPS. The GPU's memory speed is clocked at 1.2GHz. Basically, the new chip sports the same specs as its 7970M predecessor, but tosses in a new 900MHz clock boost.
While the Radeon 8970M is a beast, it's a beast we largely already know.

Playing with power

Anandtech.com

(Click to enlarge.)

That said, AMD claims the 8970M offers up to 50 percent faster game performance than Nvidia's beefiest mobile GPU—at least in games optimized for Radeon GPUs. If AMD can continue to convince triple-A game makers to ride the Radeon bandwagon, as it's trying to hard to do, this could be the start of something beautiful for the company's GPUs.
AMD is backing up its mildly stacked gaming results third-party benchmark results, however. The chipmaker says its new flagship showed higher average performance than Nvidia's GeForce GTX 680M in the 3DMark Fire Strike test, and AMD also claims the Radeon 8970M's computing performance chops blow away its competition.

Anandtech.com

(Click to enlarge.)

The 17.3-inch MSI GX70 Windows 8 laptop will be the first notebook to feature AMD’s latest flagship, pairing it with 2GB of graphics VRAM and an AMD Quad-Core A10 series APU. It'll also pack a 1TB 7200rpm hard drive, a Blu-ray and DVD combo drive, an SD card reader, Bluetooth 4.0, five USB ports (two USB 2.0 and three USB 3.0), one VGA port, and one HDMI port.

iPhone 5 Sales in Q4 Reinstated Apple as Top Smartphone Maker

The Samsung Galaxy S III was the best-selling smartphone in Q3. But during Q4 2012, the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S each outsold the Galaxy S III.

The Apple iPhone 5 became the world's best-selling smartphone worldwide during the fourth quarter of 2012—a distinction that Samsung's Galaxy S III held during the third quarter. Apple not only outsold Samsung's most popular Galaxy device with the iPhone 5, but it did it with the iPhone 4S, as well, research firm Strategy Analytics reported Feb. 20. Apple shipped 27.4 million iPhone 5 smartphones during the quarter and 17.4 million iPhone 4S models, compared with Samsung's 15.4 million Galaxy S III devices, according to Strategy Analytics. The iPhone 5 garnered 13 percent of the global smartphone market, and the iPhone 4S had 8 percent of the market. Together, the iPhones accounted for one in five of the smartphones that shipped worldwide during the quarter, Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics' executive director, said in a blog post.  "A rich touch-screen design, extensive distribution across dozens of countries and generous operator subsidies have been among the main causes of the iPhone 5's success," wrote Mawston. He added that, given the iPhone portfolio's "premium pricing," Apple's was "an impressive performance."

IBM's PureSystems Strides Past the One-Year Milestone

IBM's PureSystems celebrates its first birthday April 11. A year ago, IBM officials announced what they said was a major step forward in a simpler era of computing, introducing a new category of "expert integrated systems." Observers and IBM insiders said the PureSystems represented as big a move for the company as when it introduced the mainframe 50 years ago. Ambuj Goyal, general manager of development in IBM's Systems and Technology Group, told eWEEK the new family of systems is the first with built-in expertise based on IBM's decades of experience running IT operations for tens of thousands of clients in 170 countries. The PureSystems were the result of $2 billion in R&D and acquisitions over four years, an unprecedented move by IBM to integrate all IT elements, both physical and virtual. The acquisitions included Platform Computing and Blade Network Technologies. "From an IBM perspective, in my lifetime, I have not seen so much of IBM all behind one thing with software, hardware and services; it's like 50 years ago when we announced the mainframe," Goyal said. "In many ways, it is as big as that, but designed for a different world." That was April 2012. Now the PureSystems are out in the wild working hard for IBM clients. Here, eWEEK takes a look at how the systems are being used.

Office 365 Excel 2013 Customer Preview Reveals Easter Egg

Microsoft has added a smart “autofill” feature to the customer preview edition of Exel 2013, which was released Monday, July 16.
Excel 2013 is able to parse a table for like types of data and then autofill the values in the remaining columns. In the canned example provided with the preview version that I looked at in my review, the table was a list of email addresses. The empty column was a name field. Handily enough, the email addresses were in the form of firstname.lastname@examplecompany.com.
You can see my slide show of other Office 365/2013 customer preview features here.
After I typed in the first two first names, Excel found the rest of the first names and offered to fill them in for me.

While it’s true that this canned demo was designed to provide a nearly magical example of how Excel 2013 autofill works, there are a couple of points I should make.

The first is that I didn’t have to do anything to invoke the autofill function. Unlike well-established features like creating a list of sequential numbers--for example, by first entering 1, 2, 3, then selecting the cells, using the corner anchor drag to select a further range of cells and then letting Excel fill in the rest of the numbers--I didn’t have to invoke any Excel menus to start the autofill action. Microsoft has added processing capability to Excel 2013 so that it can do some basic data analysis to provide this convenience feature.
The second point I should make is that on several attempts, I was unable to provoke the autofill response. I have not yet ascertained why this happened, but it appears to have something to do with using the virtual on-screen touch keyboard. Occasionally, when I attempted the autofill example while using the virtual, on-screen touch keyboard, the autofill function did not kick off. If I toggled the keyboard into full width mode or used the physical keyboard, then the autofill function activated.

Most times, the autofill worked, so I’m willing to chalk my sometimes intermittent problems to stray finger taps on the virtual keyboard.
For IT pros who spend time crunching data in Excel, the autofill function will likely be a welcome find when the product goes into production at an as yet unspecified date.

Dell Grows Software Capabilities With SharePlex, Boomi Upgrades

Dell's SharePlex will now replicate data to databases like Netezza and Hadoop, while Boomi AtomSphere gets API management.

Dell officials continue to focus on software as a key part of the company's efforts to evolve into an enterprise IT solutions and services provider. The company has spent billions of dollars over the past few years buying dozens of businesses as it builds out its enterprise technology capabilities. Among the acquisitions have been Quest Software, Gale Technologies and Make Technologies, and Dell officials have promised to invest in and grow the businesses. The company now has a $1.5 billion software business, and in recent weeks has highlighted new software capabilities that are the fruit of such acquisitions. During a conference call with analysts and journalists in February to discuss quarterly financial results, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said the Quest unit—Dell bought the company last year for $2.4 billion—led strong results for the software business, bringing in more revenue than the $180 million to $200 million expected. "We also saw good sequential growth in our security software business, and continued to add customer-centric software solutions to address critical customer needs," Gladden said.

Intel's Krzanich pledges stronger mobile push in his first speech as CEO

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich admitted Thursday in his first speech in that role that the company has been weak in smartphones and tablets, but aims to improve by advancing chip and manufacturing technologies.

Intel's main focus is to produce more power-efficient chips, as it also adds features for connectivity and security, Krzanich said during a speech at the annual shareholder meeting in Santa Clara, Calif.
"We see that we've been a bit slow to move in the space," Krzanich said of the mobile market. "We're well positioned already and the base of assets we have will allow us to grow much faster in the area."

Krzanich was introduced as the company's new CEO at the meeting, replacing Paul Otellini, who announced last November that he would retire after four decades with the company, including eight years as CEO. Analysts have said Krzanich will be a steady, if not dynamic, leader for Intel. Krzanich has worked across units and has good knowledge of the company's operations, so he will be able to drive Intel's advances in mobile, manufacturing, PCs and the data center.

Krzanich, who was formerly Intel's chief operating officer and vice president, was chosen over a number of other candidates who were considered for the post. One of those candidates was Renee James, who took over as Intel president on Thursday. James was formerly senior vice president and general manager of software and services.

Intel was late to the mobile market under Otellini's watch, which gave processor designer ARM an insurmountable lead. While ARM's processors are used in most smartphones and tablets, Intel's mobile Atom chips are in just 12 smartphones and 15 tablets, but that number is expected to grow.
Chips based on the recently announced Silvermont architecture will be Intel's next step in Atom development. Silvermont is one of the biggest chip architecture advances in Intel's history, said Krzanich, who previously ran the company's Technology and Manufacturing Group, which with more than 50,000 employees is close to half of Intel's total 105,000 employees.

Chips based on Silvermont will be up to three times faster and five times more power efficient than their predecessors. The roster of upcoming Silvermont-based Atom chips includes Bay Trail, which will be in tablets late this year, and Merrifield, which will be in smartphones in the first half of next year.
Starting later this year, Intel will also integrate LTE into Atom chips, which would be a big boost for the mobile business, Krzanich said. The LTE chips will come from Intel's 2010 acquisition of Infineon's wireless assets.
"That really opens up the market for our phones and connected devices," Krzanich said.

Dell profit dives 79 percent on falling PC sales

Dell reported another weak quarter as its founder fights to make it a private company

Dell reported another quarter of declining profits and revenue Thursday as CEO Michael Dell continues his fight to take the company private.

Dell's profit for the quarter, ended May 3, was $130 million, down 79 percent from $635 million a year earlier. Revenue declined 2 percent to $14.07 billion.
Dell's PC division was particularly hard hit. Sales for the quarter were down 9 percent to $8.9 billion, Dell said, and the group's operating profit skidded 65 percent lower to $224 million. Laptop sales were hit especially hard.

Part of the problem is that Windows 8 has failed to drive PC sales. "Windows 8 has been, from our standpoint, not necessarily the catalyst to drive accelerated growth that we thought it would be," CFO Brian Gladden said on a conference call to discuss the results.
He expects PC demand to continue declining over the next few quarters, he said.
The battle to take Dell private has also weighed on its results. The company incurred $90 million in expenses last quarter related to that effort, Gladden said.

Dell's enterprise business showed mixed performance. Sales of servers and network gear were up 14 percent but storage was down 10 percent. Dell's services division reported a 2 percent increase in revenue.
Dell is trying hard to build an enterprise software business, which it hopes will eventually generate higher profits than its PC division. The software group reported an operating loss for the quarter, however, as Dell invested in new sales and R&D staff.

Dell's earnings for the quarter on a pro forma basis, which excludes one-time items, were $0.21 a share, well off the analyst forecast of $0.35 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. The revenue figure was better than expected, however; analysts had forecast $13.5 billion.
In a statement, Gladden said Dell's profits were affected by steps it took to improve its competitiveness. "We'll also continue to make important investments to support our strategy and drive long-term profitability," he said.

Like last quarter, Michael Dell was absent from the earnings call, and a Dell spokesman said the other executives would not take questions about Dell going private.
Michael Dell announced in February that he planned to take the company private in a deal with Silver Lake Partners valued at $24.4 billion. The company founder has said he wants some breathing room to focus on long term investments without the constant scrutiny from Wall Street.
The plan has run into serious opposition from big shareholders, who think the company is worth more than Michael Dell and his partners have offered to pay.
Shareholders may end up being asked to vote on the matter this summer. If a majority of shares are voted in favor of Michael Dell's plan to take the company private, Dell's biggest outside investor, Southeastern Asset Management, has indicated it might go to court to fight for a higher price.