Personal Computing

Thunderbolt definitely seems to be gaining momentum with another peripheral for the high-speed interface rearing its head. Spotted by DailyTech at this week's 2011 Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, the Thunderbolt Express Dock from Belkin connects with a Thunderbolt-equipped Mac to provide the same docking station capabilities found on Apple's recently announced Apple Thunderbolt Display (but without the 27-inch monitor). Read More

Apple released its Magic Trackpad in July 2010 but it wasn’t until the release of Lion a year later with its support for multi-touch gestures borrowed from iOS that the device really came into its own. With Windows 8 also set to embrace touch in a big way Logitech has provided a way for Windows 7 users to get is some early Windows touch experience with the Logitech Wireless Touchpad. Read More

It wasn't that long ago that putting aside enough cash for a laptop would entail an extended period of penny pinching for most people. As is the nature of technological change, as the years have gone by the computing power of the average laptop has increased while their size and cost has decreased. Data released by Intel at its 2011 Investor Meeting shows just how much more affordable the average laptop is these days for people in various parts of the world. Read More

Aside from moving around large backup files in a spritely fashion, one of the areas most likely to benefit from the new Thunderbolt interface is video editing. Which is why it's not all that surprising to see that one of the first Thunderbolt-equipped peripherals to appear following a number of external HDDs that have started to trickle onto the market is the EUR209 Intensity Extreme video capture and playback device. The unit from Blackmagic Design offers 10-bit HDMI and analog video editing in SD and HD, with its 10 Gb/s Thunderbolt port providing data transfer speeds up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and up to 11.5 times faster than FireWire 800. Read More

On Wednesday, Seagate announced it was shipping the world’s first 4TB external hard drive in the form of the 4TB GoFlex Desk Drive, which offers a high speed USB 3.0 interface. Obviously looking to steal a bit of Seagate’s thunder – or should that be Thunderbolt – the very next day Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST) demoed its own 4TB external hard drives at IBC 2011 in Amsterdam in a two-drive, 8TB, RAID 0, G-RAID unit with Thunderbolt, FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 ports. Read More

Although E FUN may have just released its APEN, Wacom today introduced its very similar – yet different – Inkling digital sketch pen. Like the APEN, Inkling is a ballpoint pen that writes in ink on regular paper, and is combined with a small receiver that users clip to the top of the page. That receiver logs the location of the pen on the paper. When that data is transferred to a computer, a digital image of whatever was written or drawn is the result. Inkling is unique, however, in that it also incorporates pressure-sensing technology. This means that the relative line weights of the inked content will be transferred to the digital images, which makes it particularly well-suited to artwork. Read More

Computer styluses are certainly handy, but it can be kind of tricky when you're writing or drawing on a stylus pad, yet you can only see what you're doing up on the screen. The resulting scrawls often have ... shall we say, a child-like appeal. Writing on paper with ink is definitely easier, but how do you get what you've done into a computer? Scan it, page by page? Well, yes you could, but now - in the spirit of Livescribe's Pulse smartpen - you could also use E FUN's APEN A3. Read More

In what was not an entirely surprising move, Steve Jobs announced yesterday that he has resigned as Chief Executive Officer of Apple. While neither Jobs nor Apple gave a reason for his resignation, it is widely suspected that his ongoing health problems played a major part in his decision. He will remain with the company as Chairman of the Board, while former Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook has taken over as CEO, in accordance with Jobs’ recommendation. Read More

The miniaturization of electronics has meant that the inner workings of a mouse can be crammed inside a package that is much smaller than is ergonomically recommended for such a device. This has freed up mouse manufacturers to put some of that wasted space to good use by extending the capabilities of the ubiquitous pointing peripheral. We recently looked at the Canon Mark I that combines a mouse, keyboard and calculator and now LG is getting in on the multi-capable mouse action with what strikes us as a very good idea - a mouse that doubles as a handheld scanner. Read More