The elusive company is back with the Ocosmos OCS9 — Ocosmos has tantalized us with awesome ultra mobile PC concepts for years, but the devices have always turned to vaporware seemingly just prior to release. Well, it seems Ocosmos is at it again, but this time, we’re certain that they’ll actually be bringing a product to market, thanks to the folks at Dynamism. Surprisingly, Ocosmos actually showed up at last month’s IDF, only after Chippy, Avram Piltch (of LaptopMag), and I chatted about how unlikely it would be! The Ocosmos OCS9 was on […]

The Ocosmos OCS9 is launching in the US on November 30th thanks to Dynamism, and while it comes pre-isntalled with Windows 7, I’m eager to see how it will handle Windows 8. There is an optional dock available which looks pretty slick (it has some USB ports and HDMI-out), and could provide some interesting hybrid usage. Windows 8 can easily go from your familiar Windows desktop to the touchscreen friendly Metro interface, making it useful even without a mouse and physical keyboard (one of my biggest gripes about Windows on […]

Did you take a look at the Samsung 900X1B and think hmm, 1.3Ghz with no Turbo = Not good enough? Take another look because there’s a 1.6Ghz Core i5 (2467M) version on its way. You’ll get turbo goodness to 2.3Ghz with the Samsung NP-900X1B-A03 The Series 9, available in 11″ and 13″ matt screen sizes, is not strictly an Ultrabook due to lack of Intel Anti Theft core but apart from that, it’s a close match to the Asus UX21 We reviewed the 13″ Series 9 here. On the minus side […]

In a detailed Windows 8 post last week I outlined some issues around Windows 8 and mobility. One of the biggest issues is the resolution requirements. 1366×768 is going to he expensive to implement on 10″ and smaller screens. I also found a lot of issues with portrait mode. The apps included in the developer edition weren’t optimised for portrait mode at all. Fortunately most ofbthe problems lie in the applications and not the operating system itself. In the video below, Microsoft talk directly about portrait mode. It’s very much […]

The Pantech Breakout is being billed by Verizon as a good choice for those looking to make their first step up from a dumbphone to a smartphone. Thanks to an impressive build-quality, built-in 4G LTE, and a tempting $99 on-contract price tag, it’s hard to argue. When I got the Pantech Breakout out of the its box, I was immediately impressed with the build-quality. This is my first experience with a Pantech handset, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting this level of hardware detail from a $99 phone. The […]

This low-light handheld test is important for me as it’s one of my most-used scenarios. I’m also interested in telephoto shots at on-stage press events and various types of video but for my first Panasonic Lumix Z150 test I wanted to see how much better it was than my old (5 year old) Canon S2IS 5MP bridge camera. Of course it’s a massive improvement. I’m estimating a total 8x quality improvement of sensitivity, stabiliser and definition through sensor pixel count and lens. That’s a massive 3 f-stops of usefulness. All […]

Following the discovery of two models of the Z830 in Europe yesterday we got a tip pointing us to the complete line-up at the Toshiba UK website. As we reported last week, the Z830 appears under both the Satellite and Portégé brands. Lets get straight to the details.

Here’s the unboxing and walk-round of the Panasonic Lumix FZ150 that I’m starting to test for my online photo and video work. The unboxing was done a few days ago so I’m already well into testing. In terms of sensor performance it’s doing what I expected. It’s completely trashing my 5-yr old Canon S2IS bridge camera. Interestingly though, it’s getting better results than the Nokia N8 in a handheld low-low-light test. It’s an important test for me and an important result because the Nokia N8 is a quality camera and […]