A week or two ago I got a Lenovo IdeaPad U160 , a sharp looking little bright red, brushed aluminum 12” ultraportable packed with a Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM. It looks great, feels great and performs great – effectively a performance PC disguised as a netbook. That’s why when Lenovo gave me the...

The first-ever Windows PC Holiday Showcase was a huge success! Over 40 press, analysts, enthusiasts and contest winners joined me , Brandon , Ryan and dozens of the season’s hottest Windows PCs for a night of great food, cool music, and fun gadget talk. Rather than make you to read a long, wordy post...

Last week our colleagues in the UK launched The Collection , a hand-picked group of best-in-class Windows 7 PCs. The Collection is a way for customers in the UK to find the perfect PC, regardless of what they love to do or how much they’re looking to spend. There’s a great online tool to help you choose...

A few weeks ago I got a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad X220 . It’s a 12.5” PC loaded with a second-gen Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 160GB Intel SSD. It also comes with a big 9-cell battery, as well as an additional 9-cell “battery slice” that clips to the PC’s underside. Together, Lenovo claims that...

‘Tis the season for travel and as a parent this means you often dread long hours in the car or on a plane, anticipating the inevitable moment when your children start to wine, cry or pick fights with each other out of sheer boredom. Everywhere I go I take my PC and while it comes in handy for checking...

The Round Rock crew just refreshed the venerable, budget-friendly, Inspiron line with the Inspiron R series , and from what I’ve seen they look like very capable everyday laptops. The Inspiron R is available in 14”, 15” and 17” sizes to fit any need – or level of eyesight – and all feature a redesigned...

I’m sitting here in on my in-laws’ deck overlooking beautiful Lake Chelan . Evan sleeping by my side, Audrey is down for a nap and the house is otherwise empty, so I thought I’d take my mother-in-law’s HP G62 out for a test drive. Yes, this is the same one I was conscripted to configure just a few weeks...

This is the next in the series of “PC Snapshots” - short 2-3 minute overview of PCs that Ryan and I think are awesome. If there’s a PC that you’d like to see us cover, hit me on Twitter , send me mail , or leave a comment. We’ll try to get to it ASAP! Today’s PC is the Toshiba Portege r705 .  It...

Last week I got my hands on a brand new ASUS VX7 Lamborghini gaming laptop.  It’s a beautiful PC, as I noted in my unboxing photo gallery blog , so I wanted to devote this piece to the PC’s performance, which looks to be seriously impressive.  What’s inside My VX7 is loaded with a second-generation...

Here on the Windows Experience Blog we spend most of our time talking about consumer PCs. But there’s a whole world of commercial grade hardware out there that are used by business professionals worldwide. Lee Sabow, a colleague of mine who works on the commercial side of the Windows business, and I...

When I say “ Lenovo ” to most PC users, their immediate response is “Oh, the guys who make ThinkPads ?”  That’s to be expected; Lenovo is world-famous for building some of the best business PCs on the market.  What most people don’t know is that they also make some really beautiful consumer...

One of the most common misconceptions about PCs is that the bigger the screen, the more items you’ll be able to pack on it. After all, bigger is better, right? Well, sort of. There’s a big difference between screen size and screen resolution, and that’s what Ryan and I are talking...

It’s summer! Well maybe not so much up here in Seattle, where we’re still dealing with 60-degree temps and cloudy skies, but definitely in other parts of the country. That means it’s time to get out of the house and enjoy the sunshine with a few days away from the office. If you’re like me, your PC comes...

Yesterday I walked through the booth with my buddy Larry Larsen from Microsoft’s Channel 9 so I could show him some of my favorite’s from the show.  If you caught my roundup video with Jessica Corbin you’ll find several of these PCs familiar, but Larry and I get more technical here, so it’s a good...

For those of you who are regular readers of my posts, you know that I’ve waxed poetic about the ASUS UL30vt a few times. Those mentions generated a lot of questions, so I wanted to dig a little deeper into the machine that I said I loved so much, I felt like I was cheating on my wife . The ASUS UL series...

Most PCs are built to last. They can take the occasional bump and bruise, a bit of water spilled across the keyboard, and some jostling in a backpack. But what if you need something sturdier? Something that can be dropped, soaked, or dragged through the mud? Then you need a ruggedized PC. These things...

Unless you were on Mars, living in a cave with your eyes shut and fingers in your ears , you know that yesterday was kind of a big day for the Windows Phone team . Along with the Phone team, we were there (as were our friends from Xbox , Microsoft Hardware and Office ), focusing on great holiday PCs...

Last night I had the chance to attend Samsung’s UK launch of the 900x , the same groundbreaking, breathtaking, game-changing ultrathin that I covered in both the unboxing video that I shot in my office , and in the video tour of the Miami PC showcase .  The 900x is a seriously impressive PC – it...

This morning I took part in 21 (yes, 21) live TV and radio interviews with stations from all around the country showing off some of the latest and greatest Windows PCs for the back-to-school season. Not all of the stations made their clips available online, but luckily the Microsoft News Center did....

You’ve probably heard the saying “the clothes make the man (or woman).”   It’s true; clothes aren’t there to simply shield us from the elements, they are the front-line of self expression.  Today’s Windows PCs are the same way.  They are not just tools to get work done, connect and...

Last week I got word that online technology mega-retailer Newegg.com launched a really sweet back-to-school deal – they’re selling the very capable, surprisingly sharp Gateway NC5929u for only $549.99 ! That price includes the PC, *and* a $25 Newegg.com gift card to use towards your next...

I’ve had the privilege of working with a loaded Dell Studio XPS 16 – the same machine that we partnered with Dell and Darek Mazzone to deliver to some of the world’s hottest DJs . I’ve been using the Dell Studio XPS 16 as my main laptop in my office (I use it pretty much like a desktop, it very rarely...

When you think business-class PCs, you think functional. Durable. Powerful. Boring. Dell, however, wants you to think “beautiful”. That’s the vision behind the strikingly thin, surprisingly gorgeous Dell Vostro v130 . Part of Dell’s “Vostro” small business lineup of PCs, the Vostro v130 is powerful ...

This is the next in the series of “PC Snapshots” - short 2-3 minute overview of PCs that Ryan and I think are awesome. If there’s a PC that you’d like to see us cover, hit me on Twitter , send me mail , or leave a comment. We’ll try to get to it ASAP! Today we’re talking about two of our favorite consumer...

Answer:  Probably yes.  Next question:  How did such a weird topic ever come up? Well, one of the questions I get the most from friends who are PC shopping is “Do you think that my new PC can power my TV/monitor?” It’s a good question – if you’re going to drop a few hundred bucks on a...