Dave Altavilla
Recent posts
There are a lot of really great smartphones on the market today. With various manufacturers competing for their slice of the smartphone market, there are a lot of factors to consider when shopping for one of these high-end phones. Although some consumers may find the myriad of options confusing or overwhelming, we find it exciting. After all,...
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Samsung has been aggressively bolstering its solid state drive line-up for the last couple of years. While some of Samsung’s earliest drives may not have particularly stood-out versus the competition at the time, the company’s 830 series and more recently the 840 series of solid state...
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Mainstream All-In-One PCs have become increasingly more popular in recent years, but AIO workstations remain a rare breed. After all, workstations typically require more horsepower than your average AIO, and IT folks demand better access to a computer’s internals than most ordinary AIOs allow. That makes HP’s Z1 workstation all...
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Considering just how much we all rely on smartphones every day, they’re shockingly fragile. All it takes is one quick drop or spilled drink to end in disaster for your expensive gadget. For as quickly as phone technology is advancing, durability for many smartphones has remained a problem. That’s where...
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Nokia's battle in the global smartphone race is an intriguing one, and those who follow technology have long wondered if the company's decision to hitch its wagon to Microsoft was a wise one. When Stephen Elop came in as CEO, Nokia was in a rare position: it could choose which platform it wanted to support for the foreseeable future. Of course,...
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We have a confession to make (well, several actually, but all the rest date back to our college days, and some secrets are best left untold). Reviewing monitors isn't as fun as it once was. It's not that we've grown jaded over the years, but plain and simple, the monitor market has become stale, lacking the kind of 'gee-whiz' innovations that...
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It's true, whether you like it or not, we're back! In this latest episode of HotHardware's Two and a Half Geeks, Iyaz, Dave and Marco return to ride again in full high tech geekery. This week we discuss Apple's new MacBook Air 13 powered by Intel's 4th generation Haswell Core processor, EVGA's overclocked...
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Nokia, perhaps more-so than any other smartphone manufacturer in the game right now, needed to find a way to make something special. The new Nokia Lumia 1020, though it sports essentially the same internals and display as Nokia's Lumia 920, most definitely is different, and perhaps even a very attractive alternative, depending on your specific...
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Nokia has been trying hard to play catch-up in the smartphone race for a long time now, and as Microsoft's strategic partner with the Windows Phone operating system and ecosystem, they've got their work cut out for them, with a gridiron full of Android and iOS devices offering compelling and powerful solutions. And so, Nokia, perhaps...
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The folks at iFixit had their way, tearing down Google's latest media streaming invention and now it seems the team at the GTVHacker blog has exploited the little fella known as Google Chromecast and rooted it with shell access on port 23 of the device. Google is known for stopping well short of locking things down, almost tempting developers...
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Intel's roll-out of their 4th generation Haswell-based Core series processors has been a little pokey, quite frankly, when you compare this launch to the deluge of products that hit the market when Ivy Bridge broke cover last year. Regardless, Apple always seems to have an inside track on Intel's latest technology and so, as it turns...
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Intel's roll-out of their 4th generation Haswell-based Core series processors has been a little pokey, quite frankly, when you compare this launch to the deluge of products that hit the market when Ivy Bridge broke cover last year. Regardless, Apple always seems to have an inside track on Intel's latest technology and so, as it...
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Once in a while there's a sort of early confluence in technology, where the writing is on the wall for all to see and the opportunity so obvious that the big guns turn their sites to it. Back in the heyday of 3D graphics there were more manufacturers clamoring over each other in the space than you could shake a dynamically-lit, bump-mapped...
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When it comes to the web business, you might say you know you've "arrived" when the spammers show up. Instagram, the blazingly hot photo and video-sharing service owned by Facebook and now topping 130 million monthly active users, definitely seems to have crossed that threshold. You might say Instagram is where all the cool kids...
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The latest in the Bond film series, "Skyfall," was certainly one to remember. And not all of those memories were pleasant. The head villain's island lair was a particularly spooky place, and sure enough, it's roots are grown from a real place. The decaying wasteland depicted in the film was a shadow of Hashima off the coast of Nagasaki Prefecture...
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Have any major plans for August? Looking to find some, particularly in the gaming space? GameStop is hoping to lure lots of you to Las Vegas in August for its annual GameStop Expo, but this year will obviously be different than years in the past. Why? Xbox One and PlayStation 4, both of which will be on display...
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With the KIRAbook 13 I7, Toshiba is flexing its muscles and taking on the likes of Apple, Asus, and Lenovo in the ultrabook arena. And you know what? Toshiba seems to be on the right track. With clean lines, a 2560 x 1440 resolution display and a slick magnesium alloy body, the KIRAbook is anything but a typical laptop. Hitting a home run...
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There are a slew of new features reportedly coming to Windows 8.1, formerly codenamed Windows "Blue." From the passionately requested Start/Boot to Desktop, to simple things like additional Live Tile sizes, to universal Bing search from within any app in Windows, Microsoft is planning a major-league update with this...
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When it comes to wireless Internet, fast enough never truly is. And while it took a good amount of time to graduate from 3G to 4G, the next leap may happen sooner than any of us expected. SK Telecom has this week launched the world's first commercial LTE-Advance network, and Samsung has launched a new Galaxy S4...
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Now that Intel’s 4th-generation Core processors are flowing in the market, all your favorite boutique builders are churning out new systems based around those Haswell chips. The new Intel processors require a new socket (LGA 1150), and the associated motherboards have the new Z87 chipset. If you’re as excited as we are to see how...
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George Carlin said it best, we all "need a place to put our stuff." Carlin likened the entire meaning of life as just finding a place to put your stuff. Well it seems the folks at Google understand this age old wisdom as well and as such will be launching a new service. Google Mine will soon be integrated with...
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Google and many tech manufacturers for that matter lately, have been evangelizing the mantra that technology is here to enhance and improve our lives, not get in the way; in the truest sense to "serve humanity." Recent events and breakthroughs in the healthcare industry, which make use of leading-edge technology...
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