Periodically the Compal NBLB2 (and its predecessors) has popped up on our comments as an alternative 15.6" notebook with a 1080p screen, and people have been asking for a review of it for a while. As an OEM machine, the NBLB2 is only available from mail-order outlets, and unlike the Clevo units we frequently review, Compal's build is a much lesser known quantity. So today we're happy to bring you a review of the NBLB2 courtesy of CyberpowerPC, packing an AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5650, a 1080p screen and a fast Core i7 dual-core processor. Is this another midrange notebook we can recommend, or does it cut a few corners in attempting to keep prices down?

So I have a confession to make. Before we posted our Tegra 2 performance preview, I ran the Quake 3 demo on the Viewsonic G Tablet and the Samsung Galaxy Tab three times each, ran the averages, and ended up with 49.1 fps for the Viewsonic and 32.1 fps for the Galaxy. Based on some input from Imagination and other Galaxy Tab users, we decided to retest the Galaxy Tab, since our results were a good bit lower than what they were reporting.

And on re-running the Quake 3 benchmark, I got results in the 44.9 - 46.0 range. I ran it over 50 times trying to replicate the previous scores, but under no conditions (settings, background applications, etc) could I get anywhere near my previous result. I know for a fact that the settings were all correct and that there were no previously running applications, so I really have no idea why I got a framerate that low, much less why it was repeatable.

In addition to retesting Quake 3 on the Galaxy Tab, I also ran both slates through GLBenchmark 2.0, which we recently added to our benchmark suite. The combination of the two gave me enough reason to write up an update to our Tegra 2 performance preview from two weeks ago.

Netbooks are all so similar in terms of performance that it’s difficult to get excited about reviewing “yet another netbook”. Aesthetics and build quality may change, but outside of features like NG-ION or the use of an SSD, there’s not much new under the sun. However, one Atom variant that we haven’t had a chance to actually test in house is the dual-core Atom N550. With support for DDR3 memory and a second Hyper-Threaded core, can this “high-end” Atom change our feelings? As an added bonus, we also ran a few benchmarks on a six-year-old IBM ThinkPad T42 just to see where it falls in relation to Atom.

Besides being our first look at a dual-core Atom N550 netbook, HP’s Mini 5103 packs in just about every other extra you can imagine. The test unit includes a multi-touch 1366x768 display, 2GB DDR3, and a Broadcom Crystal HD decoder—just in case you want to watch a 1080p H.264 movie on your 10.1” LCD. As with the Mini 5102, the 5103 is also one of the best looking and well-built netbooks to hit our labs. Unfortunately, the pricing puts it into the realm of much faster ultraportables, but if you want the combination of features HP provides—and your company is willing to foot the bill—it’s a decent little machine.

You demanded them, we listened, and finally some fruit fell from HP's tree. We have an Envy 14 in house getting tested right now, and today we bring you the results of the Envy 17. HP—and to an extent the rest of you—have posited the Envy line as PC-based alternatives to Apple's MacBook Pro notebooks. Today we're testing that theory with the big daddy, the Envy 17. An Intel quad-core, AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5850 graphics, and a splashy 1080p screen. Does it get the job done?

In 2009 AMD launched the highly successful Radeon HD 5800 series to great fanfare and even greater shortages. With a 6 month lead on NVIDIA, AMD had the high-end market locked up tight, and in spite of recurring GPU shortages was able to make the best of the situation. Ultimately their one-sided dominance did come to an end with NVIDIA's GTX 400 series launch, but it's not until the past month with the GTX 500 series that NVIDIA gained a clear upper-hand over AMD's long-lived 5800 series.

Hot on the heels of the Radeon HD 6800 series launch and NVIDIA's GTX 500 series launch, AMD is making a truly fresh start in the high-end market. Launching today is the Radeon HD 6900 series, marking the launch of not just AMD's competitor for the GTX 500 series, but also the start of the company's future. With the launch of a new GPU architecture premiering with the Cayman GPU, this is anything but a typical GPU launch.

The Nexus S, spiritual successor to the Nexus One, is finally here. The Nexus One was supposed revolutionize in the way people buy mobile phones stateside, effectively decoupling phone upgrade schedules from the slow march of two-year contracts - thus allowing Android to evolve rapidly. Though the success of Google selling unlocked hardware directly to consumers turned out to be less than a smash hit, the Nexus One became the best place to get the unadulterated, pure Google version of Android, and moreover the place updates always appeared first. Though the Nexus One has aged gracefully and kept feeling relatively fresh with speedy platform updates, it’s hardware is definitely starting to look dated.

The Nexus S includes a host of definite improvements over the Nexus One, the question is whether it’s better than competition that already is moving incredibly fast. The Nexus S also launches Android 2.3 “Gingerbread,” which includes changes such as a revamped UI with GPU accelerated animations, better stock keyboard, better power management controls, and a bunch more. We’ve been playing with the Nexus S since Friday - read on for our full review of both the Nexus S and Android 2.3.

For better or worse, new user interfaces are all the rage right now in the console gaming scene. Nintendo was first to the block in 2006 with 3D motion-controlled user interfaces, leveraging a unique combination of IR sensors and 6-axis MEMS accelerometers in a handheld remote. The motion-controlled Wii has enjoyed a nice long run being the sole platform for motion-assisted gaming. Flash forward to late 2010, and Microsoft and Sony both have readied their response to the Wii - the Microsoft Kinect and Sony Move, respectively. 

Christmas time is coming and perhaps you want to give your significant other a new PSU. "Hey honey, check out this awesome new power supply I got you so you can... um...." Anyway, we gathered up several high-end power supplies from manufacturers all over the world, and we're here to see which one comes out on top. When you're looking at 1kW and larger power supplies, determining the "best" product isn't easy, as the manufacturers have different opinions on what is important. Some will go for pure efficiency, others for lower noise, or better cooling, etc. You'll have to decide which features are the most important, but let's look at this quintet and see if any can clearly rise above the rest.

The slate computing market is about to explode, with a literal flood of new tablets releasing over the coming months. Many of them will be Android based, running NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 SoC. NVIDIA made a big deal about Tegra 2 back at CES 2010, but for some reason, it’s taken quite a bit of time for anything running the platform to hit the market. Finally, we have one - the Viewsonic G Tablet. The G Tablet is a 10" slate running Android 2.2 on top of Tegra 2 and a $399 pricetag. For the money, it's packing a lot of power and features. But the real question is how Tegra 2 stacks up against Hummingbird and Snapdragon, along with how much faster the dual-core A9 is than the A8-based SoCs.

So, what's the performance like? Read on to see our impressions and benchmarks.

Fifteen years ago if you wanted to write an application that would run on over 90% of the world’s personal computers, you only needed to target one OS. Today, to do the same, you’d need to develop for ten - Windows, Linux, OS X, Android, iOS, webOS, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, MeeGo and of course, the web. 

You don’t get order without first having chaos and you don’t end up with consolidation without first going through fragmentation. The PC era was dominated by Microsoft and Intel. The transition to ubiquitous computing allowed for many more competitors, which results in a great deal of fragmentation up front.

The goal however, is the same. Every player in this space wants to be what Microsoft was during the PC era. Even the actions are the same. There’s no interoperability between platforms, there are closed door negotiations and exclusivity agreements resulting in a number of alliances that are not easily broken. 

Read on for our take on Google's second attempt to capture a piece of the new pie: Chrome OS.

The search for a notebook with a quality screen, at least in the mainstream sector, can often feel like a futile one. Outside of Jarred's recent love affair with the Dell XPS 15 and the respectable Clevo B1530M, most screens we've dealt with have been subpar at best. But make the journey to enterprise-class notebooks and things start to brighten up. On the bench today we have HP's EliteBook 8740w, sporting the vaunted DreamColor IPS notebook screen. The upgrade costs a pretty penny on top of what is already a respectably powerful workstation, so how does the whole package fare?

As a vocal proponent of improving laptop LCD quality—and LCD quality for desktops as well—the past few years have been painful. True, laptop LCDs have never been at the level of their desktop counterparts, but once upon a time there were at least a few laptops that didn't use TN panels. One of those is the vaunted IBM ThinkPad T42, launched way back in 2004. Besides coming before virtually everything migrated to widescreen displays, the T42 is one of the few laptops to use an IPS panel. As luck would have it, I recently had a chance to use a T42, and I took the opportunity to run it through our standard set of LCD tests. Mostly I was curious to see the results, but I figured some of our readers would enjoy getting our impressions of this archeological find as well. Find out just how little has improved after six years of LCD "updates".

NVIDIA can be a very predictable company at times. It’s almost unheard of for them to release only a single product based on a high-end GPU, so when they released the excellent GeForce GTX 580 last month we knew it was only a matter of time until additional GTX 500 series cards would join their product lineup.

Now less than a month after the launch of the GTX 580 that time has come. Today NVIDIA is launching the GeForce GTX 570, the second card to utilize their new GF110 GPU. As the spiritual successor to the GTX 470 and very much the literal successor to the GTX 480, the GTX 570 brings the GTX 580’s improvements to a lower priced, lower performing card. Furthermore at $350 it serves to fill in the sizable gap between NVIDIA’s existing GTX 580 and GTX 470 cards.

So how does NVIDIA’s latest and second greatest stack up, and is it a worthy sibling to the GTX 580? Let’s find out.

AMD is usually pretty aggressive with turning process tweaks and yield improvements into new products. Just two months ago AMD gave us the Athlon II X3 450 and the Phenom II X2 560, today we're getting speed bumps of both of those parts. The Athlon II X3 455 runs at 3.3GHz, up from 3.2GHz and costs the same $87. You get an additional 100MHz for free. The chip hasn't changed otherwise. You get a quad-core die with one core disabled, no L3 cache and a 512KB L2 per core.

The Phenom II X2 565 is an unlocked Black Edition part, also identical to its predecessors. Here you have a quad-core die with two cores disabled, a 512KB L2 per core and a shared 6MB L3. The 565 runs at 3.4GHz, up from 3.3GHz, but the clock increase comes with a $10 price increase.

The six-core Phenom II X6 gets a speed bump as well. The 1100T increases default clock speeds from 3.2GHz to 3.3GHz, and increases Turbo Core frequency from 3.6GHz to 3.7GHz. Turbo Core is only supported on Thuban based processors (currently only Phenom II X6s) and increases operating frequency if half or fewer cores are actively in use. 

Read on for our full review.