Dell Inspiron range refreshed with new laptops and AIO PCs

Dell has refreshed its Inspiron range of laptops and PCs with new models for 2013, which are all Windows 8 touchscreen devices.

The Inspiron 7000 series laptops are thinner than before, Inspiron 11 3000 are 11-inch portable laptops and the Inspiron 23 is the latest all-in-one PC with a “razor-thin” design.

Currently, specs for all models are a little thin on the ground, but we’ll tell you what we know so far.

“Consumers today are looking for PCs that are not only dependable and easy to use, but are packed with all of the features they want in a thin, upscale design”, said Ray Wah, Vice President of the Dell Consumer PC Group. “We think this is our best Inspiron line-up ever, and we’re really proud of the tremendous value that we can provide to our customers.”



Inspiron 7000 Series Features

All the new Inspiron 7000 Series laptops feature diamond-cut bevelled edges and an aluminium design. Offered in 14- and 15-inch displays that can be upgraded to Full HD resolutions, the Inspiron 14 and 15 have backlit keyboards too.

Both the Inspiron 14 and 15 can be fitted with Intel Haswell Core i5 or Core i7 processor as well as SSD options for the Inspiron 15 and 17.

Available from September 26, the Inspiron 7000 Series price start at £519 for the Inspiron 15 and £769 for the Inspiron 17.

Inspiron 11 3000 Series Features

The Dell Inspiron 11 features an 11.6-inch screen and is designed to be portable and light. It weighs just 1.43kg and is 21.2mm thick, despite an 8 hour battery life.

It features a 10-point capacitive touch screen and packs noise-cancelling, dual-array microphones for video calls.

Pricing and availability details have yet to be released.

Inspiron 23 Features

The Inspiron 23 is the latest all-in-one PC from Dell, offering a touchscreen Windows 8 desktop PC with a Full HD 10-finger capacitive touch display. The monitor can be laid flat or tilted for easier touch screen access.

Available from October 31, Dell has yet to release any pricing details.

Next, read our pick of the best Windows 8 laptops, tablets, convertibles and PCs.

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Apple iMacs refreshed with Intel Haswell processors

Apple has announced it will be giving its iMac range a 2013 refresh, complete with new Intel Haswell processors.

Both the 21.5-inch and 27-inch models will receive the Intel i5 processors that are more energy efficient and powerful than their predecessors.

The iMac update follows a similar update given to the Apple MacBook Air range earlier this year.

“iMac continues to be the example that proves how beautiful, fast and fun a desktop computer can be”, said Philip Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. “Inside its ultra-thin aluminium enclosure, the new iMac has the latest Intel processors, faster graphics, next generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi and faster PCIe flash storage.”

New iMac Features

The new iMac desktop Macs will come with support for the next-gen 802.11ac Wi-Fi, offering performance three times faster than the average wireless broadband connection.

There is also support for PCI3-based flash storage that is 50 per cent faster than the previous generation. The standard iMac configuration comes with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard-drive, but this can be boosted to 32GB of RAM and a 3TB hard drive.

As standard, the iMac 2013 range comes with two Thunderbolt and four USB 3.0 ports as well.

The entry-level 21.5-inch iMAc will have a 2.7GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 processor and Iris Pro graphics, while the high-end 21.5-inch model and basic 27-inch model will have the quad-core Intel i5 up to 3.4GHz and Nvidia GeForce 700 series graphics.

Anyone wanting higher specs can upgrade to the quad-core Intel Core i7 processor that clock at speeds up to 3.5GHz or choose Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M graphics with 4GB of dedicated video memory.



New iMac Price and Release Date

Available now from the Apple Store, prices start at £1,149 for the basic 21.5-inch model, with the 2.9GHz Intel Core i5 version priced at £1,299.

The basic 27-inch iMac is £1,599, while the 3.4GHz Intel i5 will retail for £1,749.

Next, read our pick of the best laptops of 2013.

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E4 and Film4 live channels added to Sky Go lineup

Sky has announced that customers can now watch live E4 and Film4 content using its Sky Go service on the move.

Customers can now enjoy content from E4 and Film4 via the Sky Go app, meaning all the Channel 4 group channels are available on the service following the addition of Channel 4 and More4 earlier in the year.

With the addition of E4 and Film4 to Sky Go, customers will be able to watch their favourite shows like How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory live, with other programmes like Peep Show, Misfits and Black Books available to watch on demand.

Now, Sky Go customers can watch up to 49 live channels using the service. This already includes Sky Atlantic, Sky Living, Fox, Syfy and the Disney Channel.

Sky Go is available on PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices as well as other platforms like the Xbox 360.

It currently has around 3.3 million users and any Sky customer can register two devices for Sky Go for free.

Sky Customers can also choose to upgrade to Sky Go Extra for an additional £5 per month on top of their usual subscription fees.

This bumps up the number of registered devices up to four per customer and allows user to download TV programmes and movies (if they have the relevant subscription) to their devices for offline viewing.

The Sky Go app is free to download, or desktop users can go to skygo.com.



Next, read our pick of the best TVs of 2013.

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Microsoft Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 UK prices revealed

Microsoft has revealed the UK pricing details for its Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets ahead of their release next month.

With both the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 available on October 22, Microsoft has revealed how much you’ll have to pay for the new Windows 8.1 slates.

The 32GB Surface 2 model, you’ll have to pay £359, while the 64GB model is £439.

For the Surface Pro 2 there are several options available, with prices ranging from £719 to £1439.

The 64GB internal storage Surface Pro 2 option with 4GB of RAM will cost £719, but bumping the internal storage up to 128GB jumps the price to £799.

If you opt for 8GB of RAM, you can either spend £1039 on 256GB of internal storage or £1439 for 512GB.

Microsoft Surface 2 Features

Replacing the rather unsuccessful Surface RT, the Surface 2 runs Windows 8.1 RT on a 10.6-inch ClearType HD display with a Full 1080p HD resolution.

Under the hood there’s a Nvidia Tegra 4 processor and a battery offering around 10 hours battery life.

There’s a 5-megapixel rear camera and an additional 3.5-megapixel snapper in the front, both of which are capable of recording 1080p video.

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Features

Running the full Windows 8.1 Pro, the Surface Pro 2 is powered by a fourth generation Intel Core i5 processor.

Microsoft is keeping quiet on exact figures for the Surface Pro 2 battery life, but states it is up to 60 per cent longer lasting than the previous Surface Pro.

It comes bundled with a Pro Pen stylus and adds a new dual-angle kickstand for a new way to view the Surface Pro 2. There’s a trio of USB 2.0 ports and a single USB 3.0 connection as well as Ehternet and mini DisplayPort.



Next, read our pick of the best Windows 8 laptops, tablets, convertibles and PCs.

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BBM for Android and iPhone won’t arrive this week

BBM for iPhone and Android

BlackBerry has announced that BlackBerry Messenger for Android and iPhone won’t be launching this week.

Following complications with an unreleased, older version of the BBM for Android app leaking onto the Google Play Store over the weekend, BlackBerry has to delay the official launch of the multiplatform BBM app.

Android and iPhone users eager to get BBM on their devices will now have to wait even longer to see the official app appear in the App Store and Google Play.

“We attempted to address the problems caused by the unreleased version throughout the day on Saturday, but as active users of the unreleased app neared a million – and accelerated – it became clear that the only way to address the issue was to pause the rollout for both Android and iPhone,” said Andrew Bocking, EVP of BBM, in an official blog post.

The app launch was delayed at the weekend, but BlackBerry was very vague about the readjusted release date for BBM. Now, it seems that it won’t be happening this week at all.

“The team is now focused on adjusting the system to completely block this unreleased version of the Android app when we go live with the official BBM for Android app. We are also making sure that the system is reinforced to handle this kind of scenario in the future. While this may sound like a simple task it’s not. This will take some time and I do not anticipate launching this week.”

This news will be yet another blow for the struggling Canadian smartphone manufacturer, especially following the news that BlackBerry has agreed to a $4.7 billion sale to Fairfax Financial consortium.

Prior to that, the company announced that it had to cut 40 per cent of its workforce following $1 billion Q2 losses.



Read more – BlackBerry Fairfax sale: RIP BlackBerry, your time is still up.

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TomTom GO 600 Sat Nav Review

What is the TomTom GO 600?

The TomTom GO 600 is a fully featured 6-inch widescreen sat-nav with lifetime traffic and map updates. Its arrival coincides with a new version of TomTom Traffic, the sophisticated jam detection system that was recently renamed from TomTom HD Traffic. Although this will be available for all new LIVE-enabled TomTom devices, the GO 600 is the first we have seen with the updated service.

SEE ALSO: Best satnav round-up

TomTom GO 600: Features

Like the TomTom GO 500 we looked at a couple of months ago, the GO 600 offers LIVE Services, but relies on your smartphone for the data connection. So in order to use them your iPhone must have the 'Personal Hotspot' feature or your Android phone the 'Tethering and portable hotspot' setting. You have to pair the TomTom with your phone and then share the latter's Internet connection.

We found this worked just fine with our test iPhone, though you do need to be on a network plan that allows tethering, something only a select few do. Current traffic incidents were then all visible in the map screen. You can tap on an incident to get more information, including the type of incident, its length along the road and the duration of the delay it is currently causing. But the new version of Traffic brings some extra capabilities, including one very overt one, although most are lurking under the surface.

You are now warned if you are approaching a traffic jam at too high a speed, the danger of which has been particularly underlined by the recent mass accident on the Sheppey crossing. The detection of road closures has been improved, too, alongside more accurate detection of road works, so you can avoid these. Earlier versions of Traffic could occasionally mistake a closed road for one with no jam at all, with potentially annoying results - for example, when the Hammersmith flyover was forced to close in December 2011 for emergency repairs.

The new Predictive Flow Feed more accurately figures out traffic speed on a route, for an improved estimated time of arrival, although we never had much issue with this aspect of TomTom sat-navs. As it is, TomTom Traffic reportedly uses data from 350 million vehicles around the world and covers 99 per cent of UK roads, compared to about 10 per cent for the venerable TMC alternative. So the accuracy is about ten times as much, with TomTom claiming jams are detected down to 10m accuracy compared to 100m for TMC. In our experience, this can make a noticeable difference in predicting delay duration.



The fact that you can now get this service without a subscription, with just the cost of a few megabytes of data a month (TomTom estimates 7MB for an average daily commute), means you don't have to be a regular commuter anymore to make it cost effective. It is hard to test the efficacy of the new TomTom Traffic features, although we did see the jam warning pop up at one point during testing. However, we have been impressed for some time just how accurately the TomTom service can represent traffic, with the beginning and end of gridlocked sections of road being almost exactly the same in real life as they are on the road.

You also get lifetime updates to the maps that came with the device - either UK or EU, depending on model. There are some downsides, however, particularly with the European mapping version of the GO 600 we tested. If you want to use the GO 600's Live Services abroad, you have to be prepared for the data roaming charges associated with this, which could be expensive even for just a few megabytes. Also, although the map updates and Traffic service are free for the lifetime of the device, speed camera information is only available for three months, after which a subscription costs £19.99 a year.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with flexible display launching as limited edition

Samsung has confirmed that there will be a limited edition Samsung Galaxy Note 3 launching next month with a flexible display.

Speaking to SohuIT, a Chinese news site, a Samsung spokesperson has confirmed there will be a flexible display Galaxy Note 3 available next month as a limited edition device.

However, before we all get excited about this next-generation technology, having a flexible display will not mean that the limited edition Galaxy Note 3 will be bendable.

Despite the existence of flexible screen technology, other components such as batteries, chips and logic boards haven’t been developed with the same malleable qualities as yet.

So, while it might be fun to have a twisting, flexing smartphone, the real benefit of having a flexible screen is its durability. For now at least.

Seeing as Samsung has a habit of launching shock proof and waterproof versions of their smartphones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, it would make sense for the South Korean company to launch a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Active, complete with unbreakable screen.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Features

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has a 5.7-inch Full 1080p HD AMOLED display and packs a 2.3GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor with 3GB of RAM under the hood.

In the rear there’s a 13-megapixel camera with an LED flash that is capable of recording 4k resolution videos. This is paired with a 2-megapixel snapper in the front for video calling and various selfies.

Running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, the Galaxy Note 3 has the latest version of Samsung’s TouchWiz UI but introduces new features related to its intelligent S-Pen stylus. A click on the button on the side of the S-Pen when hovering over the Galaxy Note 3 brings up the Air Command mini-menu that offers navigation and app controls unique to the phablet.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 release date has been set as September 25, with the flexible display version available in October.

Next, read our pick of the best smartphones of 2013.

Via: UnwiredView

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