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Samsung P580 business laptop hands-on
Boy, Samsung's been keeping us busy today -- in addition to the Q330 and Q530, the company was also showing the P580 business laptop at the British Museum today. The particular unit we played with had a vibrant 15.6-inch 1,366 x 768 matte screen, although a higher resolution and greater viewing angle would've made it a prettier package. To our further disappointment, the keyboard was nowhere as good as the Q-series' chiclet offering -- we kept pressing neighboring keys by accident, and the spacebar's right-hand side often failed to pick up our input. An isolated issue? Only time will tell -- you guys might have better luck when this bad boy eventually arrives in the stores.%Gallery-92795%
Samsung Q330, Q430 and Q530 slim laptops to invade Britain in July
Okay, so we can't say we're exactly enthralled about the styling of this here laptop trio -- Q330, Q430 and Q530 (Q430 not pictured) -- that Samsung announced in London today, but let's see if their specs can win us over. For starters, all three machines share the same 27mm thickness, anti-scratch chassis technology, and 1,366 x 768 screen resolution (but across the 13.3-, 14- and 15.6-inch screens). Similarly, you're limited to a Core i3-350M (2.26GHz), DVD burner, 6-cell battery, three USB ports and the same black / silver paint job across all three models. The differences? Look no further than the GPU options and weight -- you get an integrated Intel GMA HD and five-hour battery life on the 1.96kg (4.32 pounds) Q330; the slightly stronger NVIDIA GeForce 310M on the 2.05kg (4.52 pounds) Q430; and the GeForce GT 330M on the 2.33kg (5.14 pounds) Q530. Nothing too thrilling here to be honest, plus the faux brushed metal texture gave a weird touch to the trackpads, but the keyboards were surprisingly nice to type on. Anyhow, we'll hold our final judgment until the prices come out in two months' time.%Gallery-92771%
Samsung announces P580 business notebook with Core i3 / i5 and matte screen
Laptops with anti-glare screens are hard to come by these days, so it's nice to see Samsung adding a new option for us all. What you're looking at here is the P580 notebook, sporting a 15.6-inch 1,366 x 768 LED-lit screen and keyboard with numeric keypad. Underneath the hood you'll find a Core i3 or i5 CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M (1GB GDDR3) graphics, Trusted Platform Module security, Bluetooth 2.1, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and 2GB to 4GB of RAM. If you feel that the four chargeable USB 2.0 jacks (one of which is also eSATA) aren't adequate, then there's always the docking port that offers plenty more for your socket fetish. Not bad for a 2.5kg (5.51 pounds) package, and let's hope this workhorse trots in before long with appropriately alluring pricing. Full PR after the break.%Gallery-92739%
MacBook Pros with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics get (unofficial) discrete switching utility
We've lamented the way Apple's latest MacBook Pros switch between their integrated Intel graphics and the NVIDIA-sourced, power-sapping discrete silicon pretty much since day one (we're sorry, but Tweetie just doesn't need all the horsepower our systems have to offer). Apple has yet to pony up an official solution, but a neat little utility -- Cody Krieger's gfxCardStatus -- has been quietly evolving over the past few weeks into a decent substitute. Originally designed simply to let you know which chipset's currently in use, the latest version, 1.6.1, now allows you to toggle amongst them by hand. It's said to still be a little bit on the buggy side, but we're delighted (and not really surprised) to see that the community came to the rescue in short order when Cupertino didn't. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Adobe's Flash Player 'Gala' OS X preview tested: results may vary
Gala1 Flash 101 2.40GHz Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256MB2 Safari 4.0.5 95.4 - 152.8 74.2 - 123.5 Firefox 3.6.4 83.5 - 148.4 89.4 - 130.5 2.66GHz Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 512MB2 Safari 4.0.5 59 - 64 96 - 132 Firefox 3.6.4 69 - 79 111 - 140 So we just put a few minutes aside to put Adobe's new "Gala" build of Flash 10.1 through its paces on our latest-generation Core i5 and i7 15-inch MacBook Pros here, and the results are a little confusing to say the least. On our i7 equipped with the high-res display and 512MB GeForce GT 330M, processor utilization playing a 1080p sample video on YouTube dropped by a third to a half on average -- not bad -- with Safari 4.0.5 besting Firefox 3.6.4 by a smidge. Our i5 saw strangely different numbers, though, with Gala actually increasing the load on the CPU by as much as about 20 percent. Adobe is quick to note that this is nothing more than a rough preview release; Apple just unlocked access to the necessary hardware a few days ago, after all, and we're sure the company still has plenty of optimization to do. Ultimately, if our i7 figures are realistic, it should make high-def Hulu a decidedly less drama-packed experience down the road. Notes: 1 Performance measured by processor utilization (note that numbers greater than 100 are possible on multi-core machines). 2 15.4-inch high resolution display, 256GB SSD, 4GB RAM
MacBook Pros with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M silicon making questionable graphics switching decisions
"With every choice you make, ask yourself: is this a good choice, or is this a bad choice?" That's the sage advice we were constantly given as tykes -- and it's advice that replays in our feeble brains every day as we write news. Turns out it's also a piece of wisdom Apple's latest round of MacBook Pros would be wise to heed, because currently, they're making some awful decisions about when to turn on that power-sapping NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M discrete chipset. Read on to see what we mean. [Thanks, Tom]
