Paul Lilly
Paul is a seasoned geek who was first seduced into the world of computers and technology by the Commodore 64, and through the years he’s courted a number of OSes and platforms from DOS on up to the latest version of Windows. Having joined the HotHardware team in 2011, Paul is now a mainstay of the site covering the news beat and reviews, and resident wiseguy who keeps the mood light. He’s also an experienced freelance technology writer whose work has appeared in a number of online and print publications.
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
We like Dropbox because it's simple, effective, and up to this point, has been a reliable way to take advantage of cloud storage. If you're like us, you're a fan of Dropbox too. And if you've never used it, you should check it out, though your experience might be slightly different than those of us who are already using the service. "After...
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Good news for the AMD faithful who are attracted to Samsung's Series 5 thin and light notebooks. It appears Samsung has decided to play both sides of the processor ball field, including not only Intel Ivy Bridge configurations, but also a couple of models that boast AMD's Trinity-based accelerated processing units (APUs) inside. The Samsung...
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From the very moment Ultrabooks emerged, Intel always envisioned these lightweight, high-performance PCs striking a balance between cutting edge hardware, portability, and price. For the most part, Ultrabook makers have been able to juggle all three, but as far as Intel is concerned, these thin and light machines still need to come down in...
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It's said that a fool and his money are soon parted (just ask Nokia), but is Microsoft being foolish spending over a billion dollars to acquire Yammer, essentially a private social network for the enterprise? Time will tell, and while nothing has been officially announced yet by either Microsoft or Yammer, The Wall...
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If you're already a fan of Dropbox and own an iOS device, you're going to love the new version that's just been added to iTunes, which levels the playing field with the Android iteration. Among the handful of changes, Dropbox version 1.5 for iOS now automatically uploads photos and videos over Wi-Fi or your cellular...
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Another Foxconn employee decided to take his own life, the latest being a 23-year-old who jumped off his company-rented apartment outside of a plant in Chengdu where he worked prior to this death, Reuters reports. Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones, iPads, and tech devices for a number of high profile companies like Apple and Dell, suffered...
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The folks at Kingston Digital gave us a heads up that there's a new firmware update available for the 64GB and 128GB SSDNow V200 drives, one that increases performance and stomps out a few niggling bugs. On the performance front, Kingston claims the firmware update increases random write IOPS performance by up to 136...
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Nobody likes a cheater, and to keep a "small minority" of unscrupulous Max Payne 3 gamers from totally ruining the multiplayer experience, Rockstar said it will banish them to their own special area, one that's filled with other "miscreants" found to be using cheats, hacks, and other exploits. "Anyone found to have...
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Good luck if you ever need to service a new MacBook Pro model that isn't under warranty. The fine people over at iFixIt did what they do best with one of Apple's newly refreshed laptops, promptly gutting the device with a detailed walkthrough. What did they discover along the way? That's it's not so easy to repair. In fact, iFixIt gave the...
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A pair of Intel rivals are joining forces, though not to take on the chip giant and topple the leader. The technology partnership between Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and ARM is all about integrating the latter's TrustZone Security Technology found in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, into the former's...
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Look, we're not out to foster any hard feelings or spark a war of words between users of two very distinctive camps, but facts are facts, and the fact is, while legions of Android users are waiting patiently for their wireless carrier to roll out Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), the vast majority of iOS users are...
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It's said that good things come to those who wait, and if you've been waiting for Amazon to port its Cloud Player application over to Apple's App Store, you have a good thing waiting for you today. The Amazon Cloud Player app is now available in the App Store for iPhone and iPod touch users, which allows you to stream and download music stored...
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After months of anticipation, Verizon today finally and officially lifted the wraps on its Share Everything data plans, which are set to go into effect starting June 28, 2012 (a little over two weeks from now). The new plans allow subscribers to share a single data cap with up to 10 devices, negating the need to purchase separate data plans...
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As many suspected, Apple today unveiled refreshed MacBook Air models built around Intel's 3rd Generation Core i5 and i7 dual-core processor options (Ivy Bridge), giving the thin and light platform a serious shot in the arm. Available in 11-inch and 13-inch designs, Apple also updated the flash storage, which the...
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The next version of Apple's Mac OS X operating system is going to hit the streets well before Microsoft's Windows 8 OS. In fact, it's just around the corner. It's called Mountain Lion, the ninth major version of Mac OS X (Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and Lion are the other eight), and it will be available in...
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Move over Johnny, mom and pop want to use the Xbox, and they don't intend to play Call of Duty. In fact, they're not commandeering your console for any game in particular; they want to watch a movie on Netflix. Or maybe it's a Hulu Plus? It doesn't matter, the point is, your game console is much more capable than the...
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No matter what your opinion of Steve Jobs is, as a businessman and a human being, there's no denying the impact he's had on technology and, in particular, his ability to mass market high-tech items and permeate the mainstream audience, creating a consumer culture like we've never seen before. But how will he be remembered 50 years from now?...
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In the movie Gladiator, Proximo offers words of advice to Maximus, telling him "Win the crowd, and you will win your freedom." If Proximo was alive today and enjoyed a career as a market analyst, he'd tell tech firms, "Win the women, and you'll win profits for your investors." He might also be ignored and his advice dismissed, shrugged off...
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Job cuts in the tech industry has become an all too common theme in the past couple of years, and the latest round of redundancy reductions is set to take place at Logitech. The peripheral maker announced plans to restructure its operations and simplify its organization to "better align costs with its current business...
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Congratulations to anyone who owns a 17-inch MacBook Pro, it may just be a collector's item in a few months. Apple apparently feels as though the era of 17-inch laptops has run its course, and in a research note shared with AppleInsider, KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple is still planning to discontinue the 17-inch...
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Remember Hewlett-Packard's Envy Spectre XT, that sexy slab of Ultrabook that you could look at online but couldn't order? Now you can as HP starts taking orders on what looks to be a 13-inch beauty, provided you can cough up the requisite $1,000 asking price for a baseline configuration. Standard options include a...
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New data from Flurry Analytics highlights the disparity in developer support for Android and iOS, noting that developers pay more attention to the latter. Much more. In comparing developer support for the two mobile platforms, Flurry found that roughly 7 out of 10 (69 percent, to be exact) applications are developed for iOS, a trend the analytics...
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