iPhone 6 to Sport Blazing Quad-Core A8 Processor (Report)

Apple was the first smartphone maker to pack a 64-bit processor inside a smartphone with the iPhone 5s, and it looks like the iPhone 6 will kick things up a notch. According to a new report, Apple’s big-screen sequel will have a quad-core CPU under the hood (up from dual core) along with quad core graphics.

According to the Commercial Times of Taiwan, Apple is working with chipmaker TSMC, which means the company could be dumping Samsung as its primary supplier. It’s no secret that Apple and Samsung’s relationship has been damaged by ongoing copyright court battles, and this could be one way Apple is distancing itself from its main rival.

MORE: iPhone 6 Rumors: Inside Apple’s Next Big Thing

The A7 processor inside the iPhone 5s is already quite fast, beating the Samsung Galaxy S4's Snapdragon 600 CPU by a wide margin in the Geekbench 3 performance test. Apple’s device notched 2,556, compared to 1,880 for the S4. However, the Galaxy Note 3's new Snapdragon 800 chip scored an even higher 2,979.

The iPhone 5s was also in between the S4 and Note 3 in terms of graphics performance, registering 13,795 on the 3DMark Icestorm Unlimited Test. The S4 yielded 10,393 and the Note 3 reached 18,808. Keep in mind, however, that Samsung had been artificially boosting its devices for better benchmark results, a practice it has apparently halted with the latest KitKat devices.

The new Galaxy S5 sports a newer Snapdragon 801 chip, which has a quad-core Krait 400 CPU with speeds up to 2.5 GHz per core. There’s also an Adreno 330 GPU. This processor promises much faster camera performance (thus the S5's speedy auto-focus claim), in addition to 28 percent faster graphics and 17 percent faster memory than the Snapdragon 800.

However, the Snapdragon 801 CPU doesn’t benefit from 64-bit architecture as the A7 does and A8 will. iOS 7 and its apps are built on 64-bit, which supposedly delivers desktop-class performance. 64-bit also paves the way for smartphones with memory capacity that exceeds 4GB. Today the highest-end smartphones have 3GB of RAM. It remains to be seen how much system memory the A8 chip might support.

The biggest advantage for the iPhone has been apps, so it will be very interesting to see which game developers and app makers vouch their support for the A8 chip when it’s announced.

via Apple Insider, AFP

Responsible for the editorial vision for Laptopmag.com, Mark Spoonauer has been Editor in Chief of LAPTOP since 2003 and has covered technology for nearly 15 years. Mark speaks at key tech industry events and makes regular media appearances on CNBC, Fox and CNN. Mark was previously reviews editor at Mobile Computing, and his work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc.

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Lenovo Refreshes Flex Laptops With AMD Processor, Same Design

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Review: LyX is an advanced but easy-to-use document processor based on LaTeX typesetting

When one thinks of document editors, it's usually Microsoft Word and Google Docs that come to mind. But in the world of word processors there are marquee names, and then there are some worthies not yet in the limelight. Advanced cross-platform document processor LyX has its merits. LyX is free and Open Source. LyX's workflow is something of an adjustment from Microsoft Word, but learning it can pay off. The results are similar to professional typesetting.

Creating our first document on LyX is as simple as any other: Go to File – New. You can copy-paste or type your first text without bothering about any formatting. To start with formatting, we will say LyX uses Environments. Environments are lot like Microsoft Word and its use of Styles to format documents with consistency. But Environments give far greater control across a variety of document types.

Document processors are usually WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). LyX is WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean), though the frontend does not differ much from any other document editor. The way LyX controls the layout of the document lies in the background, where it uses powerful typesetting markup language LaTeX.

The default Environment is Standard. LyX has different Environments for typesetting sections, lists, sub-lists, verses, quotations, bibliography etc. Expanding the dropdown, we can choose to apply the appropriate ones and within a few clicks, our basic document now starts looking more professional. Different Text Styles can be used on the text. It can be previewed with a PDF reader.

The idea is to separate the content from its presentation. Precise control over layout is a must for academic and scientific authoring. This is where LyX comes into its own. LaTeX is complicated. LyX is the friendly GUI. The program handles the final presentation, leaving the writer with only the business of writing the content. The end result is a more attractive and consistent document.

Different documents like a book, a thesis, a letter etc. need to be typeset differently. LyX uses Document classes which tell it how to typeset the document so that we don't have to bother about the distinctions. Each choice of a Document class also changes the Environments which go with it. Some are built-in but many Document classes and layout options are available online which allow us to extend LyX for all types of document processing needs.

LyX is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with unofficial ports for OS/2 and Haiku. For a fresh installation on Windows, opt for the 200MB bundle, which is fully functional and includes the complete LaTeX distribution (MiKTeX) and a bibliography manager. A 35MB update installation is available for older versions of LyX with LaTeX already installed on the system.

LyX shows why the program is geared for the scientific community with its versatile Math toolbar. The Math toolbar helps us to create complex mathematical formulas easily. LyX has a detailed Math manual that explains all the features.

Lyx uses MiKTeX, an up-to-date implementation of TeX/LaTeX. It is composed of packages (programs, styles, fonts etc.) that help to format and render documents. Many of the packages are optional. During the course of your text processing, the program might prompt you to update the packages if it finds that you need a custom package not available with the default installation. LyX You can search for relevant packages using the Package Manager and install them.

Remember, LyX is WYSIWYM. In its raw form, the document might look like a mish-mash of brackets and typesetting elements. When you have finished with your text, render it with the default PDF reader. You can save it and render it later, or export it in many different formats (HTML, Open Document, Plain Text).

On first launch, the GUI does not seem any different from a standard document processor (though it doesn't resemble Microsoft Word's Ribbon interface). If getting on the learning curve feels slightly overwhelming, you can avail yourself of very detailed instructions in LyX.org's Introduction, Tutorial, User Guide, and additional manuals in the Help menu.

If you have a long and cluttered document waiting to be prepared, try your hand on LyX. It costs no money, and for complex scientific documents, it could end up saving you time.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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New $250 Chromebook Brings ARM’s Biggest Processor to the Cloud

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Intel’s Ivy Bridge Processor Platform: What You Need to Know

This spring, Intel will roll out its latest generation of processors for laptops. Dutifully following Moore’s Law, these Ivy Bridge processors are smaller, faster, and more efficient than their predecessors. But what else are they capable of? Here’s a quick guide to their abilities.

Ivy Bridge is the code name for next generation of Intel processors. Most notably, Intel has shrunk the size of the die to 22 nanometers from 32 nm on the previous generation, known as Sandy Bridge.

The biggest advance is the introduction of a “3D” transistor design. Placing gates on three sides of the vertical fin on each transistor (as opposed to just one gate on a “2D” transistor) lets more current through when those transistors are in the active or “on” state and even less when it’s inactive. As a result, Intel says that these transistors will provide a 37-percent increase in speed while using less than half the power of traditional transistors. Basically, this means that Intel was able to cram more transistors into a smaller area, which means notebooks themselves can become smaller.

Other benefits of Ivy Bridge include native support for DirectX 11, Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, and Near-Field Communications technology.

Unlike Sandy Bridge, which saw Intel switch to an integrated CPU and GPU on a single chip, the new Ivy Bridge processor will only provide modest increases in both performance and power consumption. Intel expects that users should see up to a 20 percent improvement in CPU performance, and up to a 30 percent increase in the integrated GPU performance.

The first Ivy Bridge processors to ship will be Core i5 and Core i7 chips. Two chips—the 1.8-GHz Core i5 3427U and the 2.0-GHz Core i7-3667U—look like they will be destined for ultrabooks. Mainstream processors include the 2.6-GHz Core i5-3320M, the 2.8-GHz Core i5-3360M, and the 2.9-GHz Core i7-3520M chips. Performance CPUs will include six quad-core Core i7 chips, ranging from the 2.3-GHz 3610QM to the 2.9-GHz 3920XM processor.

The first notebooks with Ivy Bridge processors will start shipping in April 2012, and will generally be middle to higher-end systems. The first Ivy Bridge processors to ship will be Core i5 and Core i7 chips.

By Q3 of 2012, nearly all new notebook models with Intel chips should use some form of Ivy Bridge, displacing the current Sandy Bridge platform we see today. In terms of hardware design, Ivy Bridge processors should help further the proliferation of inexpensive Ultrabooks—systems that are less than 0.8 inches thick, weigh less than 4 pounds, and cost less than $1,000—meaning it will be easier than ever to take your laptop with you.

Native support for Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 also means that, like current MacBook Air owners, consumers will be able to connect the latest high-speed peripherals, such as hard drives and external monitors.

NFC support could mean that users could pay for things online simply by tapping a PayPass-enabled credit card or phone to their laptop. However, there’s no confirmed partnerships yet.

Performance-wise, consumers should see slightly faster times when converting photos and videos, and, with the inclusion of DirectX 11 support, there is the potential for much greater detail when playing video games. However, titles that can best take advantage of DirectX 11 require much more powerful discrete GPUs to begin with, so it’s unlikely that the everyday consumers will benefit from this.

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Free, Cloud-Based Word Processor Zoho Writer Shows Promise

Zoho Writer is an online (with offline and syncing functionality) word processing application that offers a nice amount of functionality, especially given the limitations of the Web as a platform for productivity tools. After creating a free account with Zoho, you can access Zoho Writer. It looks a lot like most word processors, so if you've used any major program in this category, it will take no more than a few minutes of poking around to learn how to do things. This is good, because the "Help" is in the form of a FAQ, not a tutorial or index of functions.

Zoho Writer offers a clean, user-friendly interface that packs a lot of functionality for a Web app.The interface for Zoho Writer is well designed. Each button serves as both a tab which reveals a toolbar, and as a drop down menu. This is really, really, nice--you can have the Format toolbar showing, then click the "Insert" dropdown and choose a command, without the current toolbar being replace. There is no need to click back to your preferred "main" toolbar. On the other hand, if you prefer switching toolbars, just single-click the appropriate button, and there you go.

Overall, using Zoho Writer was simple and pleasant. I experienced a very slight mushiness or lag when typing, in terms of the time it took between hitting a key and seeing the screen update, as compared to using a non-Web application. The font selection is limited to the usual assortment of Web fonts. The most advanced and complex features of programs like Word, which border on layout/desktop publishing software, are not available, but a number of features that add real utility to document creation, such as the generation of a table of contents, are. Other features are available which would be useful if they worked.

Zoho Writer is listed as a beta, which means it can be forgiven some sins, but the last entry in the blog for Zoho Writer is almost a year old, as compared to other Zoho Apps with newer entries. This is unfortunate, as some useful features are currently broken. For example, footnotes are malformed (appearing with %20 instead of spaces). The ability to set multiple columns for your document is nice, but there are some oddities--you must save or print to see the columns, instead of working with them in the direct editing mode. This isn't too much of a problem, but during my initial tests, the columns did not appear in my saved document. Subsequent tests to confirm what I thought was a bug, though, did produce correctly saved documents. Zoho Writer exports in a variety of formats, including .doc, .docx, LaTeX, and HTML.

As compared to Google Docs, Zoho Writer is close. The Zoho Writer interface is less Spartan, and there are some features (such as columniation, or being able to highlight a word and add it to the table of contents, without styling it as a header) that Google Docs currently lacks. However, the beta state makes me a little hesitant to recommend it unconditionally for those happy with Google Docs. It's certainly worth checking out--it's free--and the offline save and accessibility means the risk of loss is small if you like it and decide to use it. I'd very much like to see Zoho move this product to their front burner and get it debugged and out of beta. I'd like to take a look at it when it's fully baked.

--Ian Harac

Easily share your documents online, with friends on an individual basis and in group. Collaborate on them in real time. ccess and edit existing documents even without an internet connection. Offline document edits will be synchronized when you are online. Make use of Zoho Writer's feature rich WYSIWYG editor for publishing your documents to blog. Upload documents from your desktop, Google Docs or anywhere on the Web. Download and save them to your computer too. Experience the joy of writing documents in a real paper like environment. Edit them the way you wish to see in print. Build your document by picking up from a collection of readymade templates from our template library.

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