Computer Overclocking, Customizing and Hardware

Most of Sony's VAIO laptops are nothing to write home about. Though they are fine laptops, they don't distinguish themselves from many other modern laptops.

They are, for lack of a better description, typical. But every so often, Sony bucks common trends with a product that is clearly ahead of the curve – and very expensive. These special laptops remind us of olden days when a Sony TV or music system carried a huge price premium but virtually guaranteed superior design and quality.

The new Sony VAIO Z is one of those rare, ahead-of-its-time, money-is-no-object Sony laptops.

The 13in Sony VAIO Z is ridiculously thin and light. At 0.7 inch when closed, the body is about as thick as the thickest point on the larger 13in Apple Macbook Air, though the VAIO Z doesn't taper as Apple's ultraportable does. It's even lighter than the 13in Air, too, at 2.5 pounds.

This is due in part to Sony's having made the body out of aluminum and featherweight, durable carbon fibre. It looks good, and it feels good.

 

The way we hoped Ultrabooks would materialise when we first heard about them is about as close as Toshiba has gotten with its design of the 13.3in Satellite Z830. It's a magnificent piece of work that fits necessary ports and slots into an almost impossibly thin and light chassis, a chassis that also houses speedy enough components to make everyday computing tasks a breeze. While most vendors talk of no-compromise thin-and-light computing when it comes to Ultrabooks, only Toshiba has walked the walk thus far.

This is what we expected from Toshiba. The company has a lot of experience building thin and light machines, with the company's Portege R500 and R600 models being marvels in the mobile computing field because of their truly ultra-light designs and full feature-sets. It's only natural then that Toshiba has used its prowess in this area of mobile computing to build an Ultrabook that is currently much better than the offerings from Acer and ASUS on the market.

 

ASUS K53SC review
There's nothing that immediately stands out about the ASUS K53SCC. It's a solid 15.6innotebook with good specs that can be purchased for under £500. You should consider this laptop if you're a student or home user who just wants something simple for everyday Web and office tasks, or even tougher media creation or file converting tasks. It's not the most comfortable notebook to use though, and some parts of its design are questionable, but with a Core i5-2410M under the hood, as well as 6GB of RAM, GeForce 520MX discrete graphics and a 640GB hard drive, you get plenty of value for your money.

 

Acer Aspire S3-951 review

The Acer Aspire S3-951 is the first of a new wave of Apple MacBook Air clones that have been announced by Windows PC manufacturers.

The new product category has been dubbed ultrabook by Intel, keen to keep its processor order-books filled as consumers abandon the netbook which previously propped up sales of its underpowered Intel Atom processor.

Intel is not only creating a slush fund to help incentivise this push into Apple’s ultraportable territory, it’s even handed out a blueprint notebook design for the likes of Acer, Asus and Toshiba to follow. 

Acer was quick to market with its Acer Aspire S3-951, a copy of the 13in version of the Apple MacBook Air. But in order to compete with the original, Acer needs to innovate with useful technology not found in Apple’s lightweight notebook; or match the quality and sell for a much lower price. Let’s see where it’s succeeded.