Shawn Oliver
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Lenovo proved at the Consumer Electronics Show in January that it wasn't messing around when it comes to latest generation of notebook technologies. The company has a vast array of options, from tiny to huge, and they span the gamut from casual road warriors to hardcore business users. There's also a machine or two in there for the gaming...
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Google has their hands in quite a few things. Internet, Web searches, e-mail, mobile operating systems, netbook operating systems, social networking, and the list goes on and on. But we definitely didn't see this one coming. Google has just announced that their have been given clearance to buy and sell energy. Yes...
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If you have a tendency to be afraid of "The Man," you just might get jumpy after hearing this. It's one of the most two-sided, polarizing issues we've seen to date in the technology world, and no, we're not talking about Apple vs. Microsoft. It's over the battle to remove cell phones from the hands of prison inmates;...
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SDXC is the next generation of the long-standing Secure Digital memory card format, which has become quite popular and pervasive over the past few years. SDXC was initially announced at CES 2009, and it has taken over a year for the first cards (from Panasonic) to ship to consumers. Now, SanDisk is marching in as the second memory company...
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The CULV notebook market has been overloaded with options over the past few months, and this year's Consumer Electronics Show saw even more PC makers jump in with an abundance of new offerings. Asus and Acer seemed to be at the forefront of the CULV revolution, which--for those who don't know--are machines that split the divide...
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Seagate has just introduced a new hard drive that hits not one, but two sweet spots: it's 2TB in size, and it supports the new 6Gb/s interface. It's also an Enterprise drive, which means that it's extremely reliable and useful for always-on or server-based applications. The industry's first 2TB 6Gb/s SAS Enterprise Drive is now shipping, with...
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Smart cars are amongst the hottest out there. They're tiny, they're green and they get amazing gas mileage. They're hard to get of here in the United States, but if your order has come in, here's something to accessorize it. Daimler has announced that a new app for the iPhone will launch in Q2 2010, making the Smart...
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You knew that Samsung, Sony, FujiFilm, Canon and Nikon made cameras, but did you know that the same company that makes kitchen appliances and medical systems does as well? General Imaging, which is the exclusive licensee of GE digital cameras, has just debuted a slew of new compact cameras at the PMA 2010 camera expo in California, and all...
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Need more camera news? PMA has it. Samsung has remained a steady and solid competitor in the point and shoot market, and while they have thus far stayed an arm's length away from the highly competitive DSLR market, some of these new cameras could very well replace a low-end DSLR for someone who doesn't need the option of swapping out lenses....
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Mobile World Congress 2010 just wrapped up over in Spain, but with smartphones making such an impact these days, we don't expect the news flow surrounding them to subside anytime soon. One phone that wasn't talked about in Barcelona was LG's Arena, but it's definitely making itself known here in the U.S. It's one of...
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A few years ago, many were shocked that Sony was attempting to tread on the grounds that were so well dominated by the likes of Nikon, Canon, FujiFilm and Olympus. The alpha DSLR series has proven to be a worthy competitor to those other brands, and Sony has continually pushed to improve it year after year. At this...
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America's largest camera shown starts this week, and HP will be on-hand in order to showcase their latest additions to the photography world. In order to take on the likes of Canon and Nikon in the point and shoot sector, HP has launched five new handheld cameras and three camcorders, with the former being priced...
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A ground-breaking event is about to occur in Europe, and it's probably not something that most will expect. It's not some sort of UFO landing or global climate pattern; instead, it's a move by Microsoft that could very well change the browser world forever. Awhile back, the European Commission found it unlawful for...
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Solid State Drives may be the next big thing, but hard drives aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Not until everyone wins the lottery, anyway. Toshiba has this week introduced their newest 2.5" drive, a 600GB unit that marks the company's first SAS self-encrypting enterprise drive. For starters, 600GB is a lot of...
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Up until today, most every major home automation or A/V control application for phones was reserved for the iPhone. It felt like every major developer was only coding apps for controlling equipment for Apple's App Store, and so it's a breath of fresh air to see something like this. Verizon's FiOS service, which just...
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Sprint has been talking up the fact that they have "America's first and only 4G network" on their commercials for awhile now. It has actually been somewhat confusing; you see a Pre ad, then Sprint talks about 4G, yet the Pre cannot support WiMAX nor LTE signals. At any rate, Sprint actually is involved in America's only (at the moment) 4G...
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High up on the list of companies we never expected to make a cell phone is PUMA. Yes, that PUMA. The PUMA that you see on the bodies of athletes competing at the highest level in sports, and the PUMA that may be on something within your very closet right now. The clothing outfit has realized that the smartphone market...
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Active Media Products has been a slow but steady force in the solid state storage market, and while it has been months on end since the company has publicly introduced a new drive, they're making a big splash with this one.As USB 3.0 takes off in popularity, Active Media Products is making sure they're at the very...
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We've heard for quite some time that Hulu was considering pay-for-content subscription models, which is quite different from how things are today. Currently, users are able to watch anything on Hulu (which includes a vast majority of today's most popular television shows) for free so long as they watch advertisements. It certainly generates...
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Are you ready for this, AT&T users? And by "this," we mean "the carrier's first-ever Android phone." As Mobile World Congress winds down in Spain, AT&T has just announced some sort of backup plan for when they will (possibly) lose exclusivity on Apple's iPhone. We're halfway kidding, but having a Google-based phone on the network certainly...
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Kingston's DataTraveler 300 offered customers 256GB of flash storage on a single pen drive, but it was never officially offered in the United States. Today, Kingston is finally satisfying the capacity dreams of Americans with the introduction of the DataTraveler 310. What's wild is that 256GB is large even when you're...
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America's biggest camera show, PMA, is about to get going in Anaheim in just a few days, and it seems that Sony is looking to jump the proverbial gun a little bit with the introduction of the DSC-TX5 and DSC-H55. Both models are point and shoot cameras, and both offer improved speed and an "intelligent sweep panorama" mode. The TX5 is deemed...
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