Rob Williams
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
With all the hustle and bustle of CES surrounding us, let's take a moment for a feel-good story. The Chelsea district in New York is comprised of both rich and poor; the rich can undoubtedly afford Internet, while the poor may not. It's easy for a lot of us to take Internet for granted, but just imagine not having it. Some of us go insane...
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Just when you thought that tablet resolutions couldn't get any more ridiculous, here comes Panasonic with the unveiling of a 4K resolution model. Yes, 4K. But that's not all that makes this tablet unique: it comes in at a staggering 20-inches in size. Clearly, this isn't meant to be something you toss into your backpack and use while on the...
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A humorous thing about CES is that every year, there's always a couple of buzzwords that you can't ignore. "3D" has been a big one in recent years, as has been "cloud", "ultrabooks", "superphones' and so on. This year, a major buzzword is one that really caught fire throughout 2012: "4K". We're of course talking about...
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If there's one company worth watching out for at any CES, it's Corsair. More often than not, the company unveils a slew of products that catch our attention for all the right reasons, and sometimes even cause us to want to rebuild our PCs using its latest collection of kit. Another stature from Corsair is the...
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One of the most active companies at CES in the announcements department is Intel, and it wasted no time in getting things kicked-off today. It's obvious that the company would love a much larger piece of the mobile pie, but to date, it's had a difficult time penetrating the North American market. However, it's been...
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CyberPowerPC has gone all out with its announcements at CES, unveiling not only a new notebook and small form-factor PC, but one of the beefiest and most robust water-cooling kits we've seen in a while. Let's take it from the top. It seems that lately, "console-sized" is all the rage, and that's exactly how...
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Sometimes the smallest additions to an app can offer the biggest gains. Case in point: Facebook, which has just received the ability to send and receive voice messages through its Android and iOS app. This is perfect for those times when you either don't feel like typing out a decently-written message on a small phone, or when you need to...
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One of the biggest things that has set Android apart from iOS all these years is its openness - and that alone is a major reason that many who seek out free (as in libre) software have appreciated it. In fact, this could be one of the biggest reasons Android got off the ground so quickly, as I vividly remember around the time all of the excitement...
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The antivirus market is enormous, responsible for billions in revenue each year. That being the case, it'd be easy to believe that current offerings are quite good, but not so claims a report (PDF) by security company iMPERVA. This report states a couple of alarming facts, including one that shows that less than...
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It feels like Windows 8 has hardly had time to breathe since being let loose by Microsoft in late October, but already the rumors for the company's next OS, "Windows 9", codenamed "Blue", are beginning to spread. On Chinese forum PCBeta, member and Microsoft alpha/beta tester Maxy has given some insight of where the OS currently stands....
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Datacenters are known for a lot of things. Their immense size, ultra-complex configurations, noise and sometimes, how futuristic some of them are. Noise is one of the biggest factors that tops most lists, however, and that noise is caused primarily by one thing: cooling. Even on our desktops and notebooks, efficient cooling is important....
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Where portable gaming systems are concerned, this has to be some sort of record. Tommo's just-released Neo Geo X handheld has found itself in the hands of its first customers this past week, and already people have figured out how to run custom ROMs on the device. To call it a "hack" is a little generous, however, as the process involves little...
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Years ago, 3D printing may have seemed like little more than a cool toy, but as we've seen things progress leading up to today, we can now see otherwise. Look no further than our recent roundup of three different consumer-level printer models. Sure - building miniature models is one thing, but others have even...
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Mobile devices cater to a multitude of needs, but one of the most important and perhaps interesting is learning. Even in a country like the United States, where education and learning content isn't hard to come by, many parents have begun introducing their children to tablets. It's a way they can learn...
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Own a Nexus 7 tablet and are left bored with the default Android OS? Want to wipe it clean and install Linux? If so, you're in luck, as a couple of developers behind the KDE-derived Plasma Active project have just issued the first release of their distro specifically designed for the tablet. "Wipe it clean" is...
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With Valve soon to launch its Steam client for Linux, the OS has its first real boon where gaming's concerned. Sure, there have always been games available for Linux if you've known where to look, and likewise, the Humble Bundle has been a definite help as well. But with Valve backing the OS for gaming, the future is very bright, and it may...
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At last check, Windows 8 has had a difficult time getting off the ground. Sure, it's selling millions of copies, but given the hype leading up to its launch, the reaction has been quite timid. Personally, I know very few people who've gone out of their way to upgrade, with most trying to actually avoid it. This is...
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The quest for a bullet-proof but human-usable CAPTCHA continues. A couple of months ago, we talked about a CAPTCHA implementation that relies on human empathy to bypass, but for a couple of reasons, it might not be ideal for a lot of people. Now, the folks at Minteye have given us yet another option: slide-to-fit. The idea is simple, and so...
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The transistor, the fundamental base to all of our electronic devices, turns 65-years-old today. Though the concept of a transistor had been worked on decades earlier, it was on December 16, 1947 when John Bardeen and Walter Brattain operated the first transistor based on a point-contact design. Gold sheets were used...
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Early last month, we learned about what Google had in store for its "App Verification Service" that comes bundled with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). The concept was simple; the app would gather bits of information about any app you are about to install, send that information to Google's servers, and then send back the...
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Following in the footsteps of Microsoft, which released a revamped Outlook.com a couple of months ago, Yahoo! has today begun rolling out updated Yahoo! Mail clients for the Web, Windows 8, iOS and Android. In a post made to Yahoo!'s corporate blog by CEO Marissa Mayer, she states that the company's users have long requested "fewer distractions"...
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Hot on the heels of news that Microsoft's Surface tablets haven't been selling too well thanks to "channel problems", we now have a developer speaking freely about its lack of success with selling its established game through the Windows RT Store. Rubicon's Great Big War Game has been available for Android and iOS for...
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