$600

With 120Hz, 240Hz, and even 600Hz, refresh rate gets a lot of attention in the marketing of new HDTVs.

What it is and how it works is interesting, but why it exists is even more so. And it can have a profound effect on the picture quality of your HDTV.

Curious?

… Read more

With the Photokina show in Germany producing so many new high-end cameras, it's evidently been a busy season for Adobe Systems' Lightroom team.

That team just released Lightroom 4.2, which supports 22 new cameras, 43 new lenses, and lets people shoot with 11 new cameras tethered to a computer. It takes work to figure out how to decode each camera's proprietary raw format.

Here's the full list of new cameras supported, but note that the Nikon D600 support is "preliminary and there is a minor risk that the appearance of your images may change when … Read more

Not too long ago, a budget laptop was, by default, a big, ugly plastic box. It may have gotten the job done in terms of school or office work, but it wasn't going to turn any heads at the coffee shop, or fit comfortably onto an airline tray (with the exception of too-small Netbooks, which had their own list of problems).

We'll look back on 2012 as the first year when budget laptops really got a fair shake, with many models looking and acting much more like their expensive cousins than ever before.

Even at the very low end of budget -- laptops that are $600 or under -- you can get a slick-looking HP Envy Sleekbook, or a powerful Acer Aspire V5.

Here are a handful of recent favorites, from 11-inch ultraportables to 17-inch desktop replacements, each of which costs about half as much as a 13-inch MacBook Air.… Read more

Generally, for network storage needs, I would recommend getting a dedicated NAS server, such as the Synology DiskStation DS1511+. However, if your needs are limited to casual usage, such as sharing documents and streaming music and photos, then a router with built-in network storage capability -- one that comes with internal storage or can host an external storage device and shares that with the rest of the network -- fits the bill better.

While much inferior to a NAS server in terms of features and especially performance, some routers actually have more to offer, in terms of storage, than one might expect and may just be what you need. In any case, getting a router of this type plus an external hard drive is a lot cheaper than a dedicated NAS server.

Following is a list of five top routers with built-in support for network storage that I've reviewed in recent years. … Read more

N600 routers are the first true dual-band routers on the market, capable of delivering 300Mbps Wi-Fi speed -- based on the dual-stream (or 2-by-2) setup of the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard -- simultaneously on its two frequency bands, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. The marketing term "N600" basically means "Wireless-N standard with a combined bandwidth of 600Mbps."

In layman's terms, an N600 router comes with two built-in Wireless-N access points. Wireless clients connected to one of these access points (a client can only connect to one access point at a time) will have a ceiling speed of up to 300Mbps. In reality, the real-world sustained speeds of wireless routers vary a great deal, depending on the environment, distances between router and clients, and the frequency band.

In my experience, N600 routers generally offer about 60Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and about 140Mbps on the 5GHz band, within 75 feet or less. And while these seem much lower than the 300Mbps ceiling speed, they are more than fast enough for most applications, including high-definition media streaming. In fact, 140Mbps is about 50 percent faster than a wired Ethernet connection. Farther out, from 150 feet or more, a Wi-Fi connection is generally only good for accessing the Internet and mild networking needs. You can find out more about the basics of home networking here.

Since the dual stream is currently the most popular standard of Wi-Fi used in clients, getting an N600 router is probably the best value for your money. This is because the speed of a network connection is determined by the slowest speed of any party involved, so if you get a faster Wi-Fi router (such as an N900 router), you might not see any benefits at all if none of your clients support the higher tiers of Wi-Fi speeds.

Below are the top five N600 routers among those I have reviewed in recent years.… Read more

You might be familiar with the Razer Naga gaming mouse. Revised a few times since its 2010 debut, the Naga's core aim has always been helping gamers master the complex control schemes of online role-playing games like the World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Apparently feeling the absence of such a device in its own lineup, Logitech today announces the G600 MMO Gaming Mouse.

Like the Naga, the G600 has 12 programmable buttons along its left side. Logitech's take on the design adds a dedicated "G shift" button on the top of the mouse, which lets you swap button mappings on the fly. This effectively gives at-hand access to 24 separate in-game commands.… Read more

TAIPEI, Taiwan--Windows 8, we've been told, is going to move Microsoft into the post-PC era. And a bevy of new PC designs that Asus debuted here at the Computex trade show is bringing that vision to reality.

The Taiwanese PC manufacturer has take the wraps off three new product lines -- a dual-screen ultrabook, a semiportable all-in-one desktop, and a convertible laptop with a removable keyboard -- that build on the lessons of the company's Transformer line of Android tablets.

Taichi: Tablet, ultrabook, or both? First up from Asus was the Taichi hybrid notebook/tablet, which was … Read more

Lower-end ultrabooks equipped with hybrid disk drives could hit price points as low as $600, according to an Asia-based report.

Because hybrid HDDs--which combine a small-capacity solid-state drive with a standard hard disk drive--cost about 50 percent less than solid-state-only drives, PC makers will opt for hybrid drives in lower-end models, according to a report Wednesday in DigiTimes. This will send prices below $700.

Ultrabooks--skinny Windows 7 laptops that mimic the portability of tablets--currently bottom out at about $800. That includes the Toshiba Portege Z835, now priced as low as $799.99 at retail. The Z835 uses a 128GB SSD, … Read more

Traditional mice have flirted with touch-based scroll bars for at least four or five years, but we've only had full-surface touch-capable mice since Apple debuted the Magic Mouse in 2009. Microsoft followed with its own Touch Mouse last year. Logitech's M600 Touch Mouse is the latest contender.

None of these mice works as intuitively as a smartphone, and they all still rely on a traditional spring mechanism to register clicks. They're not bad, though, and with a few simple gesture systems, they're all easy enough to pick up. As the category matures, perhaps after touch-focused Windows … Read more