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
Sony's New Year's resolution must have been to sell a more affordable tablet, as evidenced by the Tablet S receiving a much needed price cut. The 9.4-inch tablet now sells for $400 on Sony's website for the 16GB model, and $500 for the 32GB version, down from $500 and $600 respectively (though both were recently selling for $50 off MSRP)....
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Acer's Aspire One D270 netbook will be one of the first to hit the ground running around Intel's Cedar Trail platform, and if the number of impatient vendors who have started listing the netbook ahead of its official release are any indication, we can surmise the D270 will land very soon. Notebook Italia spotted a whole bunch of European vendors...
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Back in the days of old, overclocking used to require setting DIP switches and chanting prayers to the gods of clockspeed and stability. There was a good chance you could burn something up, and if you did, the motherboard vendor would simply shrug. And today? Some of them will still shrug with indifference if you kill...
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When an advance copy of Crysis 2 leaked to the Internet a full month before the game's scheduled release, Crytek and Electronic Arts (EA) were understandably miffed and, as it turns out, justified in their fears of mass piracy. As 2011 comes to a close, Crysis 2 holds rank as the most pirated game of the year on any platform, according to...
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Typically where there's smoke you'll find fire, but as it relates to the rash of iPad 3 rumors the past few days, things are getting a little bit silly. Many of the rumors trace back to DigiTimes, which is reporting all kinds of news based on what it's hearing from sources behind the trenches in Apple's supply chain, one of them being that...
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There are different levels of overclocking. On the bottom end, a person might choose to crank things up a few MHz for a modest performance boost without really taxing their cooling setup or complimentary components. A few levels up you have the folks who invest in high end cooling and cherry components to handle...
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Microsoft came ever-so-close to ending the year without a single unscheduled patch outside of its monthly Patch Tuesday routine, but in the end, three "Critical" vulnerabilities found in its .NET Framework prompted the Redmond software giant to take action immediately. Left unpatched, the flaws could allow for the...
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Biostar this week rolled out its new TPOWER X79 motherboard, which is apparently "the most powerful motherboard on the planet" (Biostar's words, not ours). Part of the reason Biostar is marketing its motherboard as such is due to its "extreme overclocking" capabilities, a notion that might have seemed silly coming from Biostar a few short...
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Whoever keeps tripping over the 4G LTE power cord over at Verizon struck again this week, the third time it's happened in December and raising questions about Verizon's reliability going into 2012. Customers coast-to-coast reported having no 4G data access, and in some cases, 3G was taken offline as well, though Verizon claims the outage was...
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Hewlett-Packard spent the majority of 2011 chasing its tail and getting nowhere in the process. Maybe 2012 will be better, and in some respects, it almost has to be. On the fail scale, it's hard to top shopping your PC division when it's the biggest in the world, buying a British software firm for $12 billion as part of a shift in strategy...
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Toshiba's Surveillance & IP Video business unit sent us a note introducing its new IK-WD14A dome camera, the company's first such model to sport a Full HD 1080p resolution so you can see what the bad guys are up to in sharp detail. According to Toshiba, it's new HD surveillance camera will make it far easier to make out facial features...
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If you fancy yourself a betting man, head over to Las Vegas and see if you can find anyone willing to wager which will happen first: the world will end, or Google+ will top 400 million members. Both are predicted to happen in the 2012, the former by the Mayans, and the latter by Paul Allen (stat guy, not the co-founder of Microsoft). Is either...
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Microsoft's Windows Phone platform has a long way to go before it truly challenges Android and iOS for mobile dominance, but after a bit of a rocky start, it might be starting to hit its stride. According to All About Windows Phone (AAWP), one of the go-to blogs for Windows Phone app statistics, the Windows Phone Marketplace now has more than...
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Overclocking used to be a dark art reserved for a power users who didn't mind taking potentially catastrophic risks in order to squeeze a few more ounces of free performance out of their components. Things have changed dramatically in recent years, but lest anyone forget, overclocking can still be dangerous, even with...
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We've been hearing rumors of an Apple branded television (not to be confused with Apple TV, a streaming media player) for quite some time now, and if the latest online chatter proves correct, we'll finally see a shipping product by the third quarter of 2012. Two products, actually, Citing un-named "industry sources," DigiTimes reports Apple's...
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Conspiracy theorists will have you believe the reason why Intel is taking so long to natively support the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 transfer spec is because the Santa Clara chip maker is much more interested in promoting its Thunderbolt technology. The only problem with that theory (well, one of several, actually) is that Thunderbolt is still exclusive...
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CTL probably isn't on your short list of laptop makers if you're in the market for a new notebook, but if you're specifically looking for an Ubuntu-powered machine, perhaps the Oregon-based outfit should be. The 14.1-inch MB40U is CTL's first Ubuntu compatible notebook, and the company's pretty excited about it. So much, in fact, that it's...
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ASRock recently posted a pair of pictures on its Facebook page that are sure to appeal to Transformers fans. One is of an X79 Optimus Prime motherboard and the other is themed after Bumblebee, also based Intel's X79 chipset. As far as we can tell, these are concept shots and not actual boards, though if they are real, there's a good chance...
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If you managed to survive Christmas, give yourself a pat on the back. And if you survived the holiday while spending time with the in-laws, figure out a way to reward yourself. One way you can do that is by grabbing some free tunes and other content from Apple as part of its annual "12 Days of Christmas" promotion, which starts today. From...
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Netbook sales aren't what they used to be. A combination of factors ended the netbook craze that existed not all that long ago, including the rising popularity of tablet PCs, lower cost notebooks, and the recent introduction of highly portable Ultrabooks. Underscoring this point is the fact that Intel's Atom processor and chipset revenue fell...
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Fans of Google's Android platform are proving to be a patient lot. It hasn't been easy pulling for Android in the tablet space, which for a period of time was limited to a few overpriced and underwhelming Gingerbread slates. Things began to change when Honeycomb came out, the first version of Android designed specifically for tablets, but...
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Internet domain registrar GoDaddy isn't afraid to ruffle a few feathers, because if it was, it would never run all those sexually suggestive ads during the Super Bowl and at other times during the year. But what really got GoDaddy in hot water was the fact that it was supporting the "Stop Online Piracy Act," or SOPA. When word got out that...
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