Computers-Plus

The Lenovo Skylight is one of the first smartbooks based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform. The little machine was on display at CES and it invoked considerable interest among the audience.

The Lenovo Skylight is an ultrathin machine. It has a fanless design, thanks to the ARM processor which doesn’t generate much heat. Lenovo says that the smartbook will offer 10 hours of uptime.

The Skylight has an HD display. The machine can easily decode 720p video locally, but playing high quality Flash videos, especially in full screen mode, is another story. Lenovo says that the company is working on resolving the issue. < Read more…

Samsung has just introduced several new notebooks in the R30 and R80 series, with versions that gamers, multimedia enthusiasts, and businesspeople should approve of.

There are or will be three 80 series notebooks, the R480, 580 and 780. The first two will feature a Blu-ray optical drive, while the last two will sport a NVidia GeForce GPU. All 80 series units can come with an Intel Core i5 450M CPU, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM, 802.11b/g/n and other features. They will have screen sizes of 14.0″, 15.6″ and 17.3″ respectively, with resolutions of 1366×768 in the first two and 1600×900 in the latter. Read more…

Lenovo has finally announced its business minded budget notebook called ThinkPad X100e. The device is powered by an AMD Neo processor.

The ThinkPad X100e has an 11.6 inch display with 1366 x 768 pixels. The notebook is available with all the three processors in the AMD Neo line. Lenovo, however, has no intention to offer the laptop with an Intel processor.

The X100e supports a variety of connectivity options including Wi-Fi, 3G and WiMAX wireless. Bluetooth is also offered as an optional feature. There are 3 USB ports, a 4-in-1 card reader and VGA. There is no HDMI. The touchpad supports multi-touch gestures. There is also a touchpoint pointing stick. Lenovo offers Windows 7 Pro/Home Premium or Windows XP Pro with the notebook. The base version starts at $449.

From open-source software to Web-based applications, there are so many free alternatives to Microsoft Office it’s a wonder anyone pays hundreds of dollars for a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation program anymore. But of all the freebie office suites out there, which is most worth the money you don’t have to spend? We break down the top five contenders in this buyers guide.

THE CONTENDERS

• Google Docs
• IBM Lotus Symphony 1.3
• OpenOffice 3.1
• ThinkFree Office Online Beta
• Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show

GRADING SCALE

In each of the following categories, the contending applications will be graded as the overall Winner, Pass, or Fail.

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