HTC Desire 8 Reportedly Leaks With 5.5-inch Display, Mid-range Price

HTC may add a phablet to its mid-range smartphone lineup soon enough. A new leak provides a peek at the HTC Desire 8, a 5.5-inch device packing a 13-megapixel camera.

The leak comes courtesy of Chinese website MyDrivers, which also revealed that the dual-SIM phone will be available in white, red, yellow, orange and cyan. Like its flagship HTC One sibling, the Desire 8 is expected to come with front-facing stereo speakers. A 5-megapixel front-facing camera is also reportedly in tow according to Engadget, which claims to have received confirmation from unnamed sources.

MORE: Best Smartphones 2014

Judging by the leaked image, the device will sport a clean buttonless design. If the information turns out to be accurate, the Desire 8 would be  the largest non-flagship phone in HTC’s lineup.

There’s no word on pricing, availability or additional specs such as display resolution or processor just yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it debut at Mobile World Congress 2014. It’s also unclear if the Desire 8 will make it’s way to the US if, and when, it launches.

via Engadget

Lisa has been reporting on all things mobile for Laptopmag.com since early 2013. When she’s not reviewing gadgets, she’s usually browsing patent databases or interviewing experts to track down the hottest tech trends before they even happen. Lisa holds a B.A. in Journalism from SUNY Purchase and has contributed to The International Business Times, The New York Daily News and Guitar World Magazine.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Linksys WUSB6300 review: Mediocre performance doesn't jibe with higher price

Any number of reasons might explain why Linksys’s WUSB6300 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapter was so slow in most of the places I tested it, but its USB 3.0 interface can’t be one of them.

The adapter itself is nicely compact and will protrude from your PC by just 3 inches. Similar to most of the other adapters in my test group, it hides its two antennas inside its plastic shell, and it has a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button to simplify the initial connection to your router.

ROBERT CARDIN

Linksys was one of the first manufacturers to ship an 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapter. Now this model is one of the last I’d recommend buying (click to enlarge). 

But Linksys doesn’t provide a USB cradle, and the adapter itself is not hinged, so you don’t have much flexibility in positioning the adapter for optimal reception. Linksys doesn’t offer a software utility, either, but that’s no great loss (and some people might view that as a plus, since such utilities consume a negligible amount of a computer’s memory and CPU power).

Aside from its third-place finish in my home theater, 35 feet from the router, the WUSB6300 was a pretty mediocre performer. That’s unfortunate, because I’ve been using it to evaluate 802.11ac routers for the past year or so. Needless to say, I won’t be using it any longer.

As the purple bar shows, the Linksys WUSB6300 finished next to last in nearly all of my benchmarks. (Click to enlarge.)

The Linksys adapter finished dead last when the client was in the same room as the router, separated by 9 feet, producing TCP throughput of 230 megabits per second. The Asus USB-AC56, which came in first, delivered 404 mbps at this location, while the second-place Netgear A6200 posted a rate of 310 mbps. The WUSB6300 was slightly faster when I moved the client into the kitchen, registering TCP throughput of 232 mbps, but that’s a long way from the 347 mbps that the Asus adapter delivered.

The Linksys WUSB6300 finished third, fifth, or last in my tests, besting only Trendnet’s weak TEW-805UB. Combine that decidedly average performance with a $70 street price, and I find very little to recommend this adapter over four of the others I tested.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of six 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters. For more, read the introduction to the roundup.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Buffalo AirStation WI-U2-866D review: Decent performance for a low price

In our roundup of 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters, the best performances that Buffalo Technology’s AirStation WI-U2-866D turned in were good enough only for second-place finishes, and the device ended up in fourth place overall. But its $40 street price—$30 less than the cost of the top-performing Asus USB-AC56—renders it an attractive value.

The WI-UW-866D’s industrial design echoes that of Buffalo’s new 802.11ac routers, and it has the same charcoal-gray finish and silver accents. Its antennas are mounted internally. Buffalo doesn’t provide a cradle, but you will find a bendable USB 2.0 stub cable in the box. I didn’t find this accessory to be of much use, since it wasn’t strong enough to prevent the adapter from flopping over.

ROBERT CARDIN

I like how the hinged USB interface folds into a recess on the back of the adapter to protect it. (Click to zoom.)

The adapter’s hinged interface is much more useful and allows you to position the adapter either vertically or horizontally. The adapter is a little over 3.5 inches long, but it will protrude less than an inch from your computer when it’s vertically oriented (and that’s how I tested it). When you’re not using the adapter, its USB interface folds neatly into a recessed area on the back of the adapter to create a very compact package for travel.

Buffalo’s model was the only adapter in the test group not to have a WPS button, so you’ll need to remember your router’s passphrase to establish a wireless connection. Like Asus, Buffalo provides a software utility that reports connection status, signal strength, and other details. You can use the utility with either Buffalo’s adapter or your laptop’s built-in adapter.

Buffalo’s adapter took strong second-place finishes at longer distances (look at the dark blue bars). (Click to zoom.) 

Buffalo’s adapter performed much better than most of its competitors when the client was in my home theater (35 feet from the router), delivering TCP throughput of 227 megabits per second. It delivered the second-fastest throughput when the client was in my home office, which is 65 feet from the router. Curiously, the WI-UW-866D was the second-slowest at close range, when the client was only 9 feet from the router. And it was 96 mbps slower than the Asus USB-AC56 when the client was in the kitchen, which is 20 feet from the router.

The WI-UW-866D is a good value, but the absence of a WPS button is a bit of a downer.

Note: This review is part of a roundup of six 802.11ac Wi-Fi client USB adapters. For more, read the introduction to the roundup.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
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Acer Aspire M5 review: A big display, terrific battery life, and a moderate price tag

Acer Aspire M (model M5-583P-6428) $700.00 Fans of large laptop touchscreens will appreciate the Aspire M’s roomy display, slim profile, and excellent battery life. The price-to-performance isn't bad either.

Despite being just 0.7 inch thick, Acer’s Aspire M5 (model M5-583P-6428) weighs a hefty 4.9 pounds. So it’s fortunate for Acer that Intel’s Ultrabook definition includes only a height limit: 0.9 inch. More important, the Aspire M delivers a big display, great battery life, and good performance for a moderate $700.

Outfitted with an Intel Core i5-4200U (one of the lower-end entries in Intel’s current Haswell lineup of mobile CPUs), a generous 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, Intel’s integrated HD4400 graphics, and a 500GB hard disk that spins its platters at 5400 rpm, the Aspire M scored a respectable Notebook WorldBench 8.1 score of 143. That’s almost 50 percent better than our reference unit, the Asus VivoBook S550CA, but we’ve seen a few laptops in this price range perform even higher.

Acer's Aspire M performed well on our benchmarks, but it's not a barn-burner.

It’s easy to see where the Aspire M falls behind in performance: With any tasks involving storage retrieval, its slow hard drive can’t compete against solid-state drives (or SSD caches), which are becoming increasingly common. But its Haswell architecture clearly helped Acer's machine hold its own in tasks involving number crunching (image editing, for example), and contributed to its impressive battery life of more than 7 hours. That’s one of the best running times we’ve seen from any laptop this year.

ROBERT CARDINThe 15.6-inch display allowed Acer to fit a full-size keyboard, including a numeric keypad, into the Aspire M's chassis.

The Aspire M's design makes a good first impression, with its pewter-colored brushed metal lid and black soft-touch underbelly. The plastic interior matches the color of the lid, contrasting nicely with the black island-style keyboard—a standard-size backlit model that includes a numeric keypad. But good luck landing on the correct key if you’re a touch typist: They’re flat and slippery, and it can be difficult to find keys that are normally on or near the right edge (backspace and delete, for example). A little sculpting on the keys and perhaps some extra spacing between the standard keyboard and the keypad would have helped.

The touch controls—a multitouch touchpad (with mechanical corners for right and left mouse clicks) and the Aspire M's 10-point touchscreen display are responsive and fun to use. The display itself is bright and pleasing; still, I was a bit surprised by Acer’s decision to go with a resolution of only 1366 by 768 pixels on its 15.6-inch screen. Acer didn’t include an optical drive, but when you’re streaming video, 1080p resolution looks so much better—especially when you’re up close to the screen. The Aspire M’s audio subsystem, on the other hand, is very good, thanks to a strong amplifier, four bottom-mounted speakers, and Dolby Home Theater.

ROBERT CARDINAlthough the Acer Aspire M is ultraslim, measuring just 0.7 inch thick, it weighs almost 5 pounds.

Connectivity and port options are basic: Two USB 2.0 ports (but just one USB 3.0 port), an SD card slot, headset jack, gigabit ethernet, HDMI, and an Acer Converter Port (for dongles, such as VGA). The Aspire M also supports dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi. The built-in high-def webcam was fairly typical, producing decent if not great video in Skype calls.

If you’re looking for a notebook with a large touchscreen and respectable performance, Acer’s Aspire M is a good choice at a price that won’t instill sticker shock. It’s not that easy to find all these attributes in a single product. And Acer has done a good job of balancing price and performance.

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Apple iPhone 5c Price Cut in Half at Best Buy

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Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder review: Organize your playlists—for a price

You're an audiophile and a neat freak. Years of burning CDs onto your computer have left your digital music library a tattered mess of unnamed tracks by unknown artists—and it's driving you nuts.

You can go through and name them one by one, but that would be an annoying slog, and it wouldn't solve the blank album cover problem. Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder to the rescue!

Adding songs to the program is an easy process using one of the five options.

MP3 Cover Finder works well, there's no doubt about that. It found art for every obscure song I could throw at it, pulling from sources including Amazon, Bing, Google, and iTunes to find the correct cover art and track information. If it couldn't use its fingerprint technology to identify the MP3 via metadata and file names, it still came up with the best match from all the information provided.

In my cruelest test, I used an unreleased song for which the artist is presumed but not confirmed and the title is just a rumor. It managed to find some generic cover art of the presumed band photos as well as some fan-made art for the song. The service works great.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder couldn't be simpler to use, either. Clicking the "Add" button brings up five different ways to add songs: a single file, a whole folder, your dedicated music folder, drag and drop, or from your iTunes. The songs load up, and the software asks if you'd prefer to find the covers immediately or later. The process could take anywhere from two to ten minutes depending on how many songs you choose: It's off scouring the Internet and file data for the correct information, and these things take time.

The program will load up the songs and scour the internet for the proper covers and data. Be patient!

Hitting the Optimize button lets you select which tracks to change and which options to apply. It automatically clears any manual data and selects the highest rated cover to apply, so you don't have to manually select data for each song.

Despite its usefulness and simplicity, there are major drawbacks. The initial price is $30 for a one-year license. After that you'll have to extend it, presumably by paying for another year, to continue using the product. That's a hefty subscription just to organize your music library. The changes stay in effect, of course, so any improvements made remain after your subscription expires.

Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder lets you store only 1000 songs at one time as well. Throwing your entire library into the fray takes a few steps. You can load all your songs, optimize them and find the covers, and then clear them out to make room for others. It's a hassle for those with huge libraries, but won't likely affect the majority.

Vendor Ashampoo doesn't bill the program as a music player by any means, and other than quick preview of the song it shouldn't be used as such. Double-clicking a song begins to play it, but there's no way to queue up more. You can click around while a song is playing to review and edit metadata, but the music player doesn't display the current song that's playing. This makes editing a song manually frustrating and confusing, since you can't be sure if the song you're listening to is the song you have selected without double-clicking again and restarting the song.

The user interface is simple and easy to use. Your songs are on the left, available covers are on the right and all the song's information is in the center.

Those who can't stand the blank covers and mislabeled songs when setting up playlists on a phone or MP3 player will get a kick out of Ashampoo MP3 Cover Finder and will make the steep price tag worth it. However, anyone short of being a music organization freak won't get the same value. You'll get a good one-time use for the initial 20-30 songs that have been evading your labeling and then sit dormant until it's time to renew.

Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry.
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Razer Tartarus Review: Half a keyboard for the exact same price

Razer Tartarus $80.00 Razer's new gaming keypad is a well-made piece of hardware you almost certainly don’t need.

There are two ways to evaluate the Razer Tartarus, Razer’s new gaming keypad. The first is as a piece of high-end gaming hardware for its own sake, and that’s where the Tartarus excels; it’s a well-made piece of hardware that feels good in your hand, especially when you adjust the palmrest to fit your needs. The Tartarus' 25 keys are all programmable using Razer’s Synapse software. Sure, Razer’s cheating a little bit here by counting the keypad's eight-way thumbpad as 8 separate buttons, but you can map command functions to each of the eight directions pretty easily so we’ll let it slide. It’s also highly portable and quick to set up, making it ideal for professional gamers or anyone who finds themselves moving between machines a lot.

The second way to evaluate the Tartarus is as a piece of gaming hardware somebody might choose to buy, and from that perspective it seems a bit pointless. I’m not entirely certain who would actually benefit significantly from learning to use the Tartarus.

Smooth design with a rough learning curveAll high-end gaming hardware comes with a learning curve; it's difficult to rewire your brain to activate your 1-9 keys with an MMO gaming mouse like Razer’s Naga, for instance. However, that initial time investment usually pays off with a big performance improvement once you’ve adjusted. The problem with the Tartarus is that even after you take the time to adjust to using it, I’m not convinced you see a meaningful benefit. Even when used to maximum effect, the Tartarus is still half a keyboard.

The best way to configure the thumbpad's eight directions is to set each one up as a "toggle" that changes the bindings on the other keys. When I first set up the Tartarus I thought the thumbpad and extra keys would be useful as a means of controlling my character's movement in games like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft, essentially freeing up my Q, W, E, A, S, D keys and the space bar to be bound to something else. The problem with that plan, besides how awkward it is to adjust to steering my MMORPG characters with my thumb, is that it leaves only 15 keys within easy reach of my hands. I went back and forth between playing games with and without the Tartarus, realizing that I could actually reach more keys by focusing on just a traditional keyboard and mouse control scheme. These tests helped me understand that, in addition to having to relearn how to use my keybinds, using the Tartarus requires me to accept a net loss in the number of keys I have access to.

Razer might argue that the ability to program the Tartarus makes up for its lack of keys, and in a sense they would be right: configuration options abound as the Tartarus, like most Razer products, is customizable with Razer's Synapse software.

Some customization requiredIf you’ve ever used a Razer product in the past you’re probably already familiar with Synapse’s pros and cons. The app is flashier than it needs to be but highly customizable— letting you bind any key to a macro and letting those macros and keybinds talk to other Razer products so that you could, for example, press a key on your Razer mouse and swap key configurations on your Tartarus. If that sounds a little intimidating, it is; the customization options can get confusing, and it takes time to learn to use them properly.

Thankfully, customizing the Tartarus is a breeze in the Synapse interface. The best and worst feature of Synapse is that using it requires you to register an account with Razer. It’s the best feature because you only have to configure your Razer products once; those configurations are automatically saved to the cloud and downloaded automatically when you install Synapse on other computers, so you never have to configure a product twice no matter how many computers you hook it up to.

It’s the worst feature because the registration isn’t optional; if you want to use Synapse to configure a Razer product or take advantage of advanced product features like illumination controls or programmable macros, you have to register with Razer.

Since the Tartarus is a little bit outside of my gaming hardware comfort zone I tried to make the learning process easier by using Razer's Tartarus WoW addon. This lets you customize your keybinds in-game rather than swapping back and forth from Synapse to WoW which, in theory, should speed things up. Doing so taught me a few things about how Razer envisions players using the Tartarus; most importantly, Razer actually wants you to use the middle six buttons for movement, just like a regular keyboard configuration, and then use the thumbpad to swap between four key configurations on the fly, letting you multiply the 9 remaining buttons to 36 potential commands.

This alternate keybind configuration didn’t really help matters though. Besides it being an awkward play-style to adjust to (where did I put my taunt again? Oh right, it’s thumbstick down + key 9), the WoW Tartarus addon simply isn’t very good. It doesn’t play that nicely with other WoW addons, and it took me ten minutes to figure out I had to turn off another user interface element to even find the configuration button.

There's a Tartarus addon for WoW, but it's not very useful or attractive at this point. Once I had that working I learned that the Tartarus' WoW addon user interface wasn’t particularly customizable. There was no option I could find to turn off only part of the add-on’s display, so I was stuck looking at the useless bottom half of the overlay. Worse, there was no way I could find to use the addon to map buttons to basic WoW functions like, say, opening up menus, so I ended up needing to exit out of the program and configure with Synapse directly anyway.

My colleague Nate Ralph reviewed the Higher-End Razer Orbweaver earlier this year and came away feeling it too was a solid, if unnecessary, addition to Razer’s line-up of gaming peripherals. All of his critiques apply here as well, and they're exacerbated by the Tartarus' comparative lack of features. Even with access to the Orbweaver's 20 keys, Nate had trouble mapping all the things he needed.

Instead of just lopping off the right half of the keyboard, the Tartarus goes one step further and effectively does away with the 1-5 keys to boot. With just 3 rows of buttons on the keypad, I found myself constantly gravitating back to my traditional keyboard every time I was out of combat. It was the only way I could access enough buttons to open my bags, hop on my mount, or chat with my friends without any difficulty.

RazerThese keys aren't mechanical, and that's to be expected given the Tartarus' low price, but it's still kind of a bummer. A smaller nitpick that most userse won’t notice: the Tartarus also lacks the Orbweaver’s mechanical keys. It’s a subtle difference, but if you’re a mechanical keyboard user like me, it’s there.

Bottom lineOf course, with missing features comes a much lower price tag: the Tartarus knocks $60 dollars off of the Orbweaver’s $130 price. The problem is that $70 is still a lot to ask for an extraneous piece of hardware you’ll essentially have to use in concert with a regular keyboard. The paucity of keys on the Tartarus can be ameliorated somewhat by using an MMO gaming mouse festooned with buttons, but that requires you to spend even more money on hardware.

Still, if you’ve become accustomed to this style of play by using earlier gaming keypads like the Nostromo, upgrading to the Tartarus is a worthwhile investment. I’ve used a Nostromo in the past, and the new Tartarus is both more comfortable and more functional. In the end though, I’ve never found a reason to use either for very long; you’re better off with a highly configurable keyboard. Hey, doesn’t Razer sell a few of those?

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Review: Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y500 offers excellent gaming specs for the price

At first glance, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 doesn’t look like anything special.

This thick, heavy (6.2-pound), 15.6-inch laptop is encased in a plain, sturdy chassis with a brushed-aluminum cover. It’s sleek-looking, though strangely prone to fingerprints. Lenovo’s logo is subtly appliquéd in the upper left corner, and the edges of the corner taper ever so slightly.

Nothing would indicate that this is actually a rather powerful—and surprisingly affordable—gaming-oriented machine with a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM, and not one but two Nvidia GeForce GT 650M graphics cards under the hood. (The second graphics card is wedged into the laptop’s “Ultrabay,” which is Lenovo’s term for the swappable drive bay that replaces the DVD drive.)

Of course, our review model, in all its spec’d out glory—it’s also got a 1TB hard drive, a 16GB SSD boot drive, a glossy full HD display, and a full-sized backlit keyboard with a 10-key numberpad—starts at around $1150. That’s a bit pricier than the $800 base model of the Y500, but it’s still a great price for a gaming laptop.

Performance-wise, this build of the Y500 is very good, though it can’t quite hold its own with the more intense gaming models. It received a score of 70 (out of 100) on our WorldBench 8 benchmark tests, which puts it well above most mainstream laptops, but still below behemoths like the $3785 Origin EON17-SLX (which scored 115 out of 100). Still, this is one of the better laptops we’ve tested, and its graphics performance is comparable to that of the EON17-SLX. In our Dirt Showdown graphics test, the Y500 managed 116.1 frames per second (fps), while the EON17-SLX managed 139.5 fps.

In other words: If you’re a gamer, this is a viable, and much more affordable, alternative to an Origin desktop replacement.

The Y500 looks good, too, and offers sturdily-built, comfortable components. The full-sized keyboard has chiclet-style, red-rimmed keys set against a shiny black background. The keyboard is extremely comfortable to type on, with great tactile feedback and nice, evenly-spaced keys. The red backlight gives it a pop of color, though I have one minor complaint, as a gamer: The keys are so evenly-spaced (and the numberpad is right next to the keyboard) that a multi-color backlight would be helpful. It’s hard to distinguish where keys are, quickly, with an all-red keyboard.

The Y500’s touchpad is large and easy to use, but nobody really cares. This is a gaming machine, which means you’re most likely going to use an external mouse. The touchpad was a tad jumpy and oversensitive, in my opinion, but it can be disabled with a quick function keystroke.

The Y500’s screen is one of its biggest assets, even though when you tap it—and you will, this is Windows 8, after all—you’ll discover that it’s not a touchscreen. The screen itself looks great: It’s big, bright, and crisp, colors look accurate, and off-axis viewing angles are pretty good. It’s got a full HD resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, and high-motion content looks excellent in playback. But it’s still…not a touchscreen. Of course, this isn’t quite as big of a deal because it’s a gaming machine—touchscreens aren’t really the gamer’s instrument of choice. But since it does have Windows 8, it’s a bit frustrating to realize that you can’t take advantage of all the awesome swipe gestures that Windows 8 has to offer. That said, it’s important to remember that even the uber-pricey Origin EON17-SLX doesn’t have a touchscreen either.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 is a great choice as a gaming laptop that’s lighter and cheaper than your typical desktop-replacement monstrosity. Despite a few minor drawbacks, overall it’s a great machine that offers excellent performance and specs for the price.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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Digital Storm Bolt review: small package, small price, big performance

Digital Storm's Bolt doesn't look as intimidating as those ginormous gaming PCs that glow and take up a third of your desk, but don't let this machine's slender profile fool you. This little monster is brimming with powerful components and stands ready to crush any game that gets in its way.

Measuring just 3.6 inches wide, 14 inches tall, and 15 inches deep, the Bolt is the Micro Machine of performance systems.

This sleek rig isn't plastered with decals, and it doesn't boast a fancy paint job or bright LEDs that can double as a nightlight. It's available in just two colors: white or gunmetal gray. The only decoration aside from the stylishly functional black air vents is the Digital Storm and Bolt logos. The design is fetchingly minimalist.

The front of the system houses only the DVD drive, and that's about all that would fit. Two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and the microphone and speaker jacks are inconveniently located on the bottom right-hand side of the case, which means you'll be dropping to your hands and knees each time you need to plug in a thumb drive or your headphones.

ROBERT CARDINThe rear of the system has plenty of ports and video options.

Four more USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two ethernet ports, and two antenna connections are around the back, along with all the audio ports and more video outputs than you'll ever need. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 660Ti graphics card can drive up to four displays using any combination of DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort. However, given that there's no room inside the case for adding storage, it would have been nice to have an eSATA port here.

No matter what type of desktop rig you buy, you're going to crack it open from time to time. Whether you're swapping out components or just evicting dust bunnies, you'll need to be careful dismantling this intricate puzzle.

ROBERT CARDINThe inside of the Bolt is packed tight.

The cover is a pain to remove when cables are plugged into the back. Unlike the typical case, where the side panel comes off, the Bolt's entire shell slides off the back. Cables get caught up in the mix and snag along the way, so it's just easier to open it up when everything is unplugged.

Our eval unit came with a 120GB SSD and a 500GB 7200 RPM mechanical drive, and there was just enough space to accommodate one more SSD as an eventual upgrade. The setup can also be configured to house two full-sized drives if you opt out of SSDs.

Nearly the entire motherboard (a Gigabyte GA-Z77N-WIFI) is covered by the heat sink and a 120mm fan, which you'll need to remove in order to access the motherboard's single PCIe slot and its two DIMM slots.

Enough with the looks, this isn't a fashion show—so let's get to the number crunching. The Bolt's Intel Core i7 3770K and 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM managed to crank out a whopping 201 on our Worldbench 7 benchmark suite. That's more than double the score of our baseline system from a package nearly half its size. If that isn't enough performance for you, the CPU's multiplier is unlocked and begs to be overclocked.

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 660Ti also produced some impressive benchmarks: We ran both Crysis 2 and DiRT 3 at 2560-by-1600 pixel resolution with settings on ultra to really put the system to work. It averaged 54.1 frames per second on DiRT 3, and 28 frames per second on Crysis 2. DiRT 3 looked silky smooth and nearly hit that coveted 60 frames-per-second target. Crysis 2 struggled just a bit, but remained thoroughly playable. Taking the game's settings down to high produced an average 44.6 frames per second, while dropping the resolution to a much more common resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels with settings at high produced average frame rate of 80.6 frames per second.

When you put high-end components in a small package and run them hard, heat usually becomes an issue. But the Bolt is dressed to the nines in fans and vents and manages to stay both cool and quiet. I had it running right next to me, at ear level, for an entire day and barely noticed its noise signature.

Digital Storm's Bolt packs beefy power into a slim, sexy package. It's a bit of headache to get inside, but you shouldn't need to upgrade this machine for some time to come. This is a great choice for a PC gamer with a smaller room and a smaller budget. It will fit anywhere, play anything, and it's priced right at $1599.

Alex covers desktops, everything from fancy to practical. He's also an avid (addicted) gamer and loves following the industry.
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Steep Slate: Gigabyte S1185 Tablet Sports 1080p Screen, $1,000 Price Tag

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Review: F-Secure Internet Security 2013: First-rate protection and usability has a small performance price

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
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F-Secure Internet Security 2013 (about $73 for one year and one computer, as of 12/19/12) came in first in several of our malware detection, blocking, and removal tests. It successfully blocked attacks, detected and disabled infections, and proved adept at cleaning up all traces of malware, landing at the top of this year’s security suite roundup.

In our real-world attack test, F-Secure completely blocked 100 percent of attacks. This test indicates how well the product will successfully block new malware attacks as it encounters them in the wild. But F-Secure wasn’t unique: Of the nine security suites we tested, four others also managed to completely block all attacks: Bitdefender, G Data, Norton, and Trend Micro.

F-Secure also put up great scores in our malware-zoo detection test: The suite detected 99 percent of known malware samples. This score puts it in the top five of the security suites we tested, though it’s at the bottom of that group (G Data, McAfee, Norton, and Trend Micro all posted detection rates of 99.7 percent or higher). F-Secure flagged just two safe files (out of over 250,000) as malicious, which is a good false-positive rate overall. However, since four of the suites achieved a perfect score in false-positive testing, and two suites flagged only one safe file as malicious, on this measure F-Secure still ends up in the bottom half of the list.

In our system cleanup test, F-Secure performed very well. In fact, it’s at the top of the list (alongside Bitdefender) after detecting and disabling all infections on our test PC and completely removing 90 percent of infections. So F-Secure should effectively dispatch any malware it finds on your machine.

While F-Secure does an excellent job of detecting, disabling, blocking, and cleaning up malware, all of this power comes at a price (a small one, to be sure): F-Secure added 6 seconds to startup time (compared to a system with no antivirus software installed)—the worst showing out of all of the suites we tested. It also added 5 seconds to shutdown time. F-Secure performed well in the rest of our PC speed tests overall, but it significantly slowed application installation.

Scanning speeds were better, though. F-Secure took second place in both on-demand (manual) scan tests (1 minute, 16 seconds) and on-access (automatic) scans (3 minutes, 50 seconds). Both results are better than average by a healthy margin.

The suite installs quickly and easily, with just four screens to click through and no restart required. It doesn’t install any extras (such as a toolbar), nor does it change any of your default settings. It does install a launcher, which is what you open when you double-click the program’s system tray icon. The launcher has three buttons to take you to different program screens: a computer-security screen, an online-safety screen, and a third for F-Secure’s website.

F-Secure’s user interface is sleek and easy to understand. It presents a large round checkmark (or X mark) that shows your protection status, as well as three modules for checking your security status, F-Secure’s extra tools and features, and statistics and reports. Below these modules is a scan button, an update button, and a settings button. The settings are fairly easy to get around, and each screen has a quick explanation of what the feature does and how it works.

With excellent protection and a user-friendly interface, F-Secure is definitely worth a look. This security package adds a little extra weight to your system, but if you can get past those performance issues, it’s a great program.

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Nikon Coolpix P310 Review: Premium Compact Camera at a Bargain Price

The Nikon Coolpix P310 is without peer at its price ($300 as of August 15, 2012). It's a premium compact camera priced more like your average point-and-shoot, with a fast F1.8 lens, manual exposure controls, very good image quality, and a pocket-size body. The Coolpix P310 offers the best bang for the buck you'll find in the premium-compact class, just as long as you don't need a long-zoom lens or a RAW mode.

Performance, Image Quality, and Video Quality

In PCWorld Labs jury evaluations for image quality, the Nikon Coolpix P310 largely lived up to its "premium compact" branding. It may not have the best overall image quality in the premium point-and-shoot realm, but it is among the best cameras we've tested this year.

The P310 earned scores of Very Good in three of the four testing categories (exposure quality, sharpness, and lack of distortion), and a Good score for color accuracy. Unlike most other cameras these days, the Coolpix P310 takes an understated approach to color reproduction; you don't see the punchy, oversaturated colors that you do in other cameras' pictures. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though skin tones do look a bit on the pale side.

You can see the larger-size images we used for our subjective tests by clicking the thumbnails to the left.

The Coolpix P310's scores in our video tests weren't as impressive. In our bright-light tests it produced noticeably less contrast, sharpness, and detail than some of the better video-capable point-and-shoot cameras. In our low-light tests, the P310's 1080p/30-fps test clips looked so dark that we had a hard time picking up what was happening in front of the lens. Overall, the Coolpix P310 earned a score of Fair for video capture; we rated its audio pickup as Good.

Here are the test videos we used for our subjective evaluations. Select 1080p from the menu in each player to see the highest-definition footage.

With a rating of 230 shots per charge in CIPA's standardized tests, the Coolpix P310's rechargeable lithium ion battery ranked at the high end of our Fair range for battery life.

Shooting Modes and Features

Macro modeEasy Panorama modeSelective Color filterThese days most cameras in this price range are loaded with bells and whistles such as in-camera GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities. Instead, the Nikon Coolpix P310 is somewhat refreshing in its straightforward features, which Nikon is aiming solely at traditional photography.

The Coolpix P310 is a very good performer in macro mode, with the ability to get within an inch of the subject and capture a crisp shot—at least in well-lit situations. I also found that the camera's close-up focusing capabilities are even better if you switch to manual focus; in Auto mode, the camera's minimum focus distance is about an inch, but if you jump into aperture-priority mode and use manual focus, you can get within half an inch. In either case, the depth of field is impressively shallow for a camera with a relatively small 1/2.3-inch-type sensor.

As you'd expect in a premium compact camera, the Coolpix P310 goes beyond Auto mode and Program Auto mode and offers manual exposure controls, aperture-priority mode, and shutter-priority mode. One notable omission is a RAW-shooting mode. In addition to those manual controls, you'll find a custom entry on the mode dial labeled with a "U" for "user." When you set the camera to User mode, diving into the menus allows you to pick your own default settings.

Another entry on the mode dial gives you quick access to the camera's Night Landscape mode, which employs exposure bracketing and image stacking to produce crisp, clear photos in low-light settings without using a flash. The results are outstanding, but the camera takes about 8 seconds to process your photo in this mode. It's great for one-off photos in low light, but your shot-to-shot times will suffer as you wait for your images to write to your storage card; you can't use the camera while it processes the photos. You'll encounter the same slow save speeds while shooting video, but at least you can use the camera while you're waiting for a video to save to your card.

For high-speed shooting, you have other options. A Function button on the front of the camera provides access to burst-shooting settings: a 5-frames-per-second burst mode at full 16-megapixel resolution, a 120-fps high-speed mode at 640-by-480-pixel resolution, and a 60-fps mode at 1-megapixel resolution. The front-mounted Function button also provides access to a precapture buffer that starts taking 3-megapixel images once you half-press the shutter button, an interval timer that you can use for time-lapse photography, and a unique "Multi-shot 16" mode that creates a single mosaic of shots captured at high speed.

Since all of those options are available at the touch of the Function button, the rest of the settings menus stay clean, but there's a catch: Because the button is on the front of the camera, you sometimes forget it's there.

You access the camera's extensive array of scene modes in a more traditional way, via the mode dial; you'll find a single Scene position that brings up a menu of 20 scene-mode options. Along with mainstays such as portrait, fireworks, landscape, and sunset mode, the P310 has newfangled options such as a 3D capture mode (which records images as .MPO files) and two options for panoramic images: a motion-controlled panorama mode and a stitch-assist panorama mode that helps you compose up to six successive shots.

Some of the Coolpix P310's best features come into play after you take a picture. Like many of Nikon's cameras, the Coolpix P310 has excellent post-shot editing tools that you can apply to a copy of an original photo during playback. A few highlights among the post-shot tools are a Quick Retouch feature that brightens up colors and contrast in your images, a D-Lighting (dynamic lighting) option that brings out details in darker areas of a scene, a Miniature Effect filter that mimics a tilt-shift lens, and a Selective Color feature that lets you pick a single color to highlight in an otherwise black-and-white shot.

Although the P310 doesn't provide full manual exposure controls in video mode, it does put a couple of semimanual video options at your disposal. By pressing the left and right directions on the camera's control pad while capturing video, you can force the camera's autofocus system to readjust or lock the exposure settings for a particular scene. You can also trim down clips inside the camera.

Hardware and Design

Don't expect to find a long-zoom lens here; the Coolpix P310's 4.2X-optical-zoom lens reaches from 24mm to 100mm, making it a good option for wide-angle landscape shots, macro photography, and portraits. Its F1.8 maximum aperture at wide angle is the marquee feature of the lens; at full telephoto, that aperture stops down to a less-impressive maximum setting of F4.9.

The Coolpix P310 is a little black box that should fit in anyone's pocket, as its compact body measures 1.3 inches deep, 4.1 inches wide, and 2.3 inches tall. On the front of the camera is a small raised lip that acts more like a fingergrip than a handgrip. However, the camera has so many controls at its top-right corner that you'll probably be better off shooting with two hands; bracing the camera with your left hand gives your thumb more freedom to operate the camera's zoom, shutter-release, and shutter-speed controls in manual mode. Near the raised fingergrip is the aforementioned Function button.

The top of the P310 hosts a mechanical pop-up flash on the left side. You operate it by using a switch on the left side of the camera, and you can put the flash back into the body by pressing down on it with your finger. The top of the camera also has stereo microphones, as well as several controls over on the top right side. You'll find a traditional mode dial with eight options (auto, program auto, manual, aperture priority, shutter-priority, scene modes, Night Landscape, and the user-defined mode), the shutter/zoom control, the on/off button, and an unlabeled dial that you use to adjust shutter-speed settings in manual mode.

That unlabeled dial is a bit underutilized. For example, you can't use it to adjust manual focus or ISO settings in other shooting modes. It's functional only in manual mode, and it merely lets you adjust your shutter speed.

To the right of the 3-inch, 921,000-dot LCD on the back of the camera are four dedicated buttons and a scrolling directional pad. A dedicated record button and a playback button sit near the top of the camera, and a menu button and delete button reside near the bottom. In addition to menu navigation and one-touch access to flash settings, exposure compensation, macro mode, and the self-timer, the directional pad controls the P310's manual focus settings (when you press up and down), aperture values (when you scroll), and other in-camera settings depending on the mode the camera is in. A Mini HDMI port on the side and a Micro-USB port on the bottom round out the camera's hardware features.

Bottom Line

Other pocketable premium cameras are out there, but most of them cost at least $400. If you're looking for a pocketable point-and-shoot camera with manual controls and good low-light performance, you won't find a lower-priced option than the Nikon Coolpix P310. It requires you to make some compromises: You have to do without a RAW-shooting mode, a big sensor, and a long-zoom lens, and you'll have to wait for Night Landscape shots and high-definition videos to save. Nevertheless, the Coolpix P310 gives budget-minded photographers a nice F1.8 lens and manual exposure controls to work with, and it takes great-looking photos in most lighting conditions. In fact, even if you ignore its bargain price, this is one of the best pocket cameras available right now.

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