T’S no secret among our circle of friends that we had bugged our contact at Xiaomi just to buy the Mi Notebook Air on the first day it went on sale in China. Long story short, we were able to get one of the few units available at Mi Home in Shenzhen. So these days, we’re using three PCs: Xiaomi’s first-ever laptop and Apple’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.
Buckle up, buying many gadgets and appliances may soon be taxed
HEY are not stopping with the vanity tax. After a controversial Philippine bill proposing to tax beauty and cosmetic products was filed January 11, here comes another plan that may end up being contentious, too.
Apple is PC industry’s biggest loser in 2016
HE latest report of market-research firm IDC did not surprise us; we had already expected the PC industry to shrink in 2016. Based on the data, worldwide shipments of traditional PCs — desktops, notebooks, and workstations combined — fell to 260 million units, down 5.7 percent from 2015. It was the fifth straight year that the industry shrank. And Apple took the biggest hit.
Laptop with 3 screens is the gaming rig we’ve always wanted
EHOLD, the world’s first laptop with three (yes, three!) screens! This future case of technological wizardry comes courtesy of Razer — which, if you haven’t heard, is essentially the Apple of the PC gaming community.
Who needs a hard drive or SSD? Kingston has a 2TB USB flash drive
UST how much space can a thumb drive accommodate before it is maxed out? Kingston set out to find the answer and came up with 2 terabytes (not a typo).
8 of the best Great Christmas Sale deals on Lazada
ALL us Santa’s little helpers. With Lazada Philippines holding its Grand Christmas Sale promo till December 12, 2016, as part of its Online Revolution activity, we scoured the site to look for the best gadget deals, so you won’t have to.
Starmobile’s MacBook clone sells for only P7,990 on Lazada
UNNY, but the latest Starmobile product that has caught our attention is not a smartphone. It’s a silver Windows 10 laptop the company calls the Starmobile Engage Aura. And it looks a lot like the Apple MacBook but sells for only P7,990 on Lazada Philippines starting today, December 7, until the 12th to coincide with the online store’s Grand Christmas Sale.
HP Philippines renews push for 2-in-1 devices, unveils Pavilion x360, x2 refresh
here’s no sales frenzy to speak of yet, but HP Philippines believes the future of portable computing is here. It comes in different sizes, configurations, and prices — but all considerably sleeker, lighter, and more functional than the notebooks we’re familiar with.
IFA 2016: Behold the world’s first curved laptop
aiwanese manufacturer Acer seems to have pulled out all the stops for the gaming laptop that it just unveiled at this year’s IFA consumer-electronics show in Berlin, Germany. Called the Acer Predator 21X, the notebook will go down in history as the world’s first laptop with a curved screen, if you’ve been searching for gaming laptops and hardware to maximise your gaming experience then look no more your search is over.
Remix OS, an Android OS for computers, is here; run it on your PC
Remix OS wowed at CES 2016, and Jide, the developer behind the Android-based operating system that runs on PC and Mac (with little work on your end, I might add), has made the alpha version of the software available for download at no cost from their website.
Dell Precision 15 is a near-bezel-less MacBook Pro killer
Dell had proved its mettle in the PC business and has been one of the most enduring brands in the industry. And while I haven’t found its previous notebook designs to be prettier or better than the MacBook’s aluminum unibody, Dell’s Precision 15 refresh looks the part of a MacBook Pro killer, or a mobile workstation that people would want to own.
Dell’s Power Companion battery packs can charge laptops, phones
Running short on battery life when least expected is a popular concern of notebook owners, and for good reason: external battery packs for laptops are hard to find, and there aren’t as many for sale. You’d be hard-pressed to find one from a big manufacturer, let alone something that’s fully compatible with your machine. Dell is aware of these challenges, and hence the company’s first venture into the world of portable power.
This rugged portable SSD is smaller, thinner than your phone
That is, unless you’re rocking a ridiculously thin phone like the OPPO R5, or something else almost equally devoid of edges. I mean, just take a gander at it. Tell me that isn’t one of the tiniest, if not the tiniest, portable drives you’ve laid eyes on. Tell me that isn’t a true achievement in design that provides a glimpse of the future today. The portable-storage device in question is the SanDisk Extreme 500, which has an insanely compact footprint. It’s compact enough to carry around or to fit in your jeans pocket, even more so than your phone, and without …
10 things you should know about DOST’s free WiFi project
There’s hope for a connected Philippines yet. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) held a press conference today to discuss the upcoming rollout of its P1.4-billion public WiFi project and to clarify certain aspects of the landmark service that will connect millions of Filipinos to the Internet at no cost. The internet is now a vital component of every day, be it in public or at home. This has spawned a competitive industry of internet companies trying to provide the best deals for customers. Although there are those who prefer using an office cell signal booster to get the …
What does DOST’s 50MB of free Internet get you?
Image via The Verge Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has already begun installing Internet access points in the Quezon City Circle. This is in anticipation of a P1.4-billion project that plans to deploy 7,000 public WiFi hotspots across the Philippines before the end of 2015. Its initial rollout is slated on July 24, and according to DOST, it will offer free Internet access to anyone with a WiFi-capable device, albeit with certain restrictions — chief of which is a 50MB daily data cap. You can’t use it to download stuff from torrent sites, …
Lenovo unveils 4 new laptops, price starts at P14,495
Hoping to maintain its competitive advantage in the PC and tablet industries, Lenovo today unveiled 4 new consumer laptops for the local market. The company’s latest offering includes the Lenovo Yoga 300 and 500, Ideapad 100, and Z51 laptop, which is by design a multimedia workstation aimed at music and movie lovers. The Lenovo Z51 is a 15-inch laptop equipped with a full-HD display and AMD Radeon graphics. Other internals include up to an Intel Core i7 processor and up to 1TB of built-in storage. Its base price starts at P42,995. Lenovo Ideapad 100 Image 1 of 17 The entry-level Ideapad …
We’re breaking the rules of online publishing…
Who are crazy enough to soft-launch a site that’s so bare? My writing partner since my Mega Publishing days, Ramon Lopez, and I are. We have disregarded the first, second, and third rules of online publishing: You do not launch a website unless it’s packed with articles, or as my former boss, Summit Media president Lisa Gokongwei-Cheng, would call it, puno. Surprisingly, we’re okay with breaking “those rules.” First, we already bought two phones so we could write about and take videos of them. Second, we couldn’t bear to watch our clips just sitting on our computer for weeks. Sayang. Third, it’s …
This is ASUS’ answer to Apple’s 2015 MacBook
(UPDATED) Sure, Apple’s all-new MacBook dropped the bomb on us with its stunning design and typing-focused engineering, but Mac users aren’t the only ones getting an ultra-portable notebook this year. Meet the ASUS Transformer Book T300 Chi, one of the latest entries into the burgeoning category of convertible PCs that function as a laptop and tablet depending on how you use it. It is set to launch in the Philippines on April 7, with a nationwide release planned after that. It doesn’t come cheap, though, as you’ll have to pony up between P40,000 and P50,000 for the 4GB RAM and 8GB …
With MacBook, Apple to redefine gold standard for notebooks?
Via Forbes (UPDATED) We didn’t think that the MacBook would steal the Apple Watch‘s limelight at the Cupertino-based company’s March 10 (March 9 in the U.S.) Spring Forward event. But it did. It’s the first to get gold and space-gray variants. It’s the first to have a 12-inch display — and a Retina one at that. It’s the first after 4 years to chuck “Air” and “Pro” and simply go by the name “MacBook” again. It’s the first to go fanless. And it’s the lightest and thinnest Apple laptop yet, weighing a mere 2lbs and measuring only 13.1mm at its …