Here I am, typing on a Toshiba Z830 in a quiet environment. What can I hear? Nothing!

If you haven’t read my review of the Toshiba Z830, you might want to go through it because the only major problem with the Z830 was the fan noise. Toshiba have now fixed the fan noise and turned the Z830 into the best gen-1 Ultrabook. At least in my opinion!

I’m testing the BIOS 1.6 fix (a simple automated download via the Toshiba Service Station application) on a Z830 that Intel has given me as a long-term test device and it’s been on for about 20 minutes now while I type in eco mode. It’s still silent.

Time for some web browsing….. I’m expecting to be able to spin the fan up after a few minutes of browsing in eco mode….

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Ugly? Practical? Heavy? Flexible? The HP Folio 13 is a strange Ultrabook in that while it doesn’t follow fashion in terms of looks and weight, it’s possibly a good thing because it also packs ports, features and battery capacity that other Ultrabooks don’t.  The HP Folio 13 could turn out to be the sensible choice among Ultrabooks in the first half of 2012

Video overview below. Full specifications, gallery, links to videos and reviews available in the HP Folio information page.

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It looks like Intel got themselves a nice little mod done on the Acer S3 and having seen it, we think there’s going to be more of this going on next year. Personalisation was always an important aspect for car manufacturers, why not with Ultrabooks? The casing paint-job is based on a CPU design and there’s an interesting I keyktop too.

The modded Acer S3 appeared at a mini review by Design Milk and you can check out their thoughts on the Acer S3 here.

We’ll have a full review of the Acer S3 up tomorrow. It’s been better than expected and has turned out to be an honest Ultrabook with no showstoppers. Meanwhile, this article is being typed on a Toshiba Z830 and although its packed with specs, there’s an issue with fan noise that means we’re likely to switch to the S3 for the next article! Join us on Friday 16th at 2100 CET for a live review of the Toshiba Z830.