The words ‘affordable’ and ‘Alienware’ don’t usually go together but with the new Alienware X51, Dell intends to change that. It is the smallest Alienware desktop gaming system so far and also the cheapest. But despite the starting price of ‘just’ $699, the new Alienware X51 packs in decent hardware.

For starters you get a 3.3GHz Core i3-2120 processor as standard with the option to upgrade to a Core i5 or i7. You also get a full-size Nvidia GeForce GT545 with 1GB GDDR5 memory with an option to choose the GT555. Read more »

The first proper Android tablet is finally getting its long overdue serving of Ice Cream Sandwich. Users in the US with the Wi-Fi-only model have reported the presence of an over the air update that upgrades their Xooms to the latest version of Android.

Unfortunately, it seems those are the only people who have got the update for now, with the 3G and international models still rocking the same old Honeycomb update. Read more »

ASUS has put up a post on their official blog asking their users to return their Transformer Prime TF201 for a full refund in case they are not satisfied with the GPS performance. For those who have decided to stick with it, they will be offering an extended warranty, taking it up to 18 months.

As you may have heard by now or experienced first hand if you’re an owner, the Transfomer Prime has some pretty serious GPS issues. Read more »

LG has announced a new tablet for its homeland called the Optimus Pad LTE. Compared to the regular Optimus Pad, there are quite a few differences, other than the inclusion of LTE.

For starters, the design is new. The Optimus Pad LTE is thinner at just 9.34mm compared to the 12.7mm thickness of the non-LTE version. It’s also lighter at just 497g compared to the 621g of the Optimus Pad. Other changes include a larger 6,800mAh battery, which is up by 400mAh over the standard version despite the reduced thickness and weight, dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm processor that replaces the Nvidia Tegra 2 processor on the non-LTE model and a simpler 8 megapixel camera instead of the dual 5 megapixel 3D camera on the back. Read more »

When Apple announced that they will be having an education announcement on Thursday in New York, the general consensus was that they will be announcing digital textbooks for their iOS devices, particularly the iPad, which is becoming increasingly popular in schools and colleges.

However, according to some new information from Ars Technica, that may not be the only thing that they will be announcing on Thursday. According to their sources, Apple will also be releasing tools for creation of ebooks, which Ars dubs it as the “GarageBand for books”. Read more »

Smart watches that pair with your phone and let you view and access select functions of your phone seem to be the coolest thing in the world of mobile accessories at the moment. Motorola recently launched the Android-powered MOTOACTV that works as your music player and also logs your workout sessions.

Now Sony too has joined the fray with their smart watch called, well, SmartWatch. It has a 1.3-inch multi-touch OLED display that lets you access your phone functions such as calls, messages, music as well as social networking applications such as Twitter and Facebook. Read more »

After a slow start Intel’s Thunderbolt (also known as Light Peak) technology is starting to gain popularity among the OEMs, with Apple being the first and biggest proponent of the technology so far. Now it seems AMD wants a piece of this action as well, so they have come up with their own variant of the technology, called Lightning Bolt.

Yes, Lightning Bolt. Like the technology itself the name takes heavy inspiration from Intel’s Thunderbolt. But AMD is not aiming at simply merging various outputs into one port. Their main goal with Lightning Bolt is to reduce the cost of the whole set up. Read more »

The Nokia Lumia 900 was officially announced at CES this year among those who attended the event but now it’s time for Nokia to reach out to a wider audience, which means making some new ads for the phone, which they have. Also being advertised is the Lumia 710 which has gone on sale in the US on T-Mobile’s network for $49.99.

The ads, especially for the Lumia 900, aren’t particularly new and are similar to the ones for the Lumia 800 but there will be a lot of people in North America who haven’t seen these and it makes little sense to create a completely different ad when the products themselves aren’t all that different. Read more »

Ever since Monster and Beats Audio decided to collaborate and get into the headphones business back in 2009 the two have met with incredible success. Most of this was due to some fantastic marketing, helped no doubt by big names like Lady Gaga, P.Diddy, Justin Bieber, LeBron James and the co-founder of Beats Audio, Dr. Dre, along with some excellent designs and an audio signature that was tuned to what most people like to hear instead of what they should be hearing.

Businessweek is now reporting that the two companies won’t be renewing their 5-year contract once it ends later this year. The reason for this is due to financial conflicts between the two companies, with Beats wanting a greater share of the revenue along with conflicts over who should get more credit for their success. Read more »

Not sure if developers suddenly found out about the existence of the PlayBook or if the recent fire sale (and the resultant rise in user base) has finally made them take interest in the device but the troubled tablet has finally started getting some popular titles.

Following the trio of Angry Birds released last month, developer ZeptoLab has released their highly popular Cut the Rope HD for the PlayBook. Read more »

Last week ASUS announced that the original Transformer TF101 will be receiving the ICS update shortly after the Transformer Prime got it. They even confirmed it later on their Facebook page that the update will, in fact, be released today.

Later however that update was pulled down from the account and replaced with a proper statement saying that the original Transformer will in fact be getting the ICS update around end of this month, along with an apology for giving the wrong date earlier and invariably getting everyone’s hopes up. Read more »

Looks like Cooler Master is out to do some ‘Heatsinkception’, with a computer built-into a heat sink, which will then go inside another computer.

The Cooler Master Hyper 212+ CPU heatsink comes with a AMD E-350 Brazos APU on a micro motherboard built-in, along with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. Read more »

It’s common knowledge that the PenTile matrix layout is something you should ideally avoid if you want the absolute best image quality. Unfortunately, a large number of devices do ship with this display technology on-board, with Nokia’s Lumia 800 being one of them.

So when Nokia announced the Lumia 900, naturally everyone was curious as to whether the 900 carries over the same RGBG layout of the 800′s display. If it did, things would have gotten worse because the Lumia 900 has a larger display but with the same number of pixels, which means lower pixel density, where PenTile’s shortcomings become glaringly obvious. Read more »

Razer piqued our interest a few days ago when they talked about the Project Fiona, promising a “PC gaming on an all-new form factor”. Little did we know it was going to be a tablet with controllers attached to it.

Razer’s Project Fiona is essentially that, a tablet with two PlayStation Move like controllers on the side. The controllers are fixed and so even when you’re not gaming you will still have them around. Each of the controller has a joystick on it with four buttons on the front and two shoulder buttons. The device includes force feedback, 3-axis gyro, magnetometer and an accelerometer. Read more »

If you love rangefinder-style cameras, you’re going to love this one. The X-Pro1 is a gorgeous new camera from Fujifilm that uses a 16.3 megapixel APS-C “X-Trans CMOS” sensor. It uses a new optical low-pass filter array, which promises to reduce the moire pattern that occurs while shooting patterns while maintaining image sharpness.

The X-Pro1 comes with a new lens mount called the X Mount that supports the new range of XF Lenses from Fujifilm. There are only three lenses available at the moment and all are fixed focus but Fujifilm promises enhanced resolution and light volume in image edge areas as well as reduced chromatic aberration with these. Read more »