Components

By Darren Allan HP is switching its ink cartridges on new PageWide and OfficeJet Pro printers so they use a proprietary type of ink in order to improve print quality among other factors – and also to ensure users can’t purchase cheap cartridges from third-party suppliers. As PC World reports, the so-called pigment ink has…

By Darren Allan HP is switching its ink cartridges on new PageWide and OfficeJet Pro printers so they use a proprietary type of ink in order to improve print quality among other factors – and also to ensure users can’t purchase cheap cartridges from third-party suppliers. As PC World reports, the so-called pigment ink has…

By Darren Allan AMD is aiming to simplify the process of beefing up laptops by connecting them to external graphics card enclosures, something that could prove popular this year if CES 2016 was anything to go by. It’s being done through the company’s new XConnect tech, which goes live with the release of AMD’s latest…

By Darren Allan AMD is aiming to simplify the process of beefing up laptops by connecting them to external graphics card enclosures, something that could prove popular this year if CES 2016 was anything to go by. It’s being done through the company’s new XConnect tech, which goes live with the release of AMD’s latest…

By Darren Allan Asus has announced a pair of new VivoMini PCs, compact desktop computers driven by Intel’s sixth-generation Skylake processors. The two new sub-2-litre computers are the VM65 and VM65N, with the latter being the higher-end model. With both PCs, you get a Skylake CPU and up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and some…

By Darren Allan Asus has announced a pair of new VivoMini PCs, compact desktop computers driven by Intel’s sixth-generation Skylake processors. The two new sub-2-litre computers are the VM65 and VM65N, with the latter being the higher-end model. With both PCs, you get a Skylake CPU and up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and some…

By Darren Allan So, you want to boost your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro Retina’s storage with minimal fuss? Before the new solid-state drive (SSD) upgrade kits from Other World Computing (OWC), this would’ve been a tall order. But, with OWC’s Aura SSD kits – which come in two sizes: 480GB or a mighty 1TB…

By Darren Allan So, you want to boost your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro Retina’s storage with minimal fuss? Before the new solid-state drive (SSD) upgrade kits from Other World Computing (OWC), this would’ve been a tall order. But, with OWC’s Aura SSD kits – which come in two sizes: 480GB or a mighty 1TB…

By Darren Allan Seagate is claiming the title of the world’s fastest SSD, and says it has “rewritten the rules for performance” with a new drive which is now production-ready. The NVMe SSD (the above image is Seagate’s drawing of the demo unit) offers a blazing 10GBps, meaning it’s way faster than the previous wearer…

By Darren Allan Seagate is claiming the title of the world’s fastest SSD, and says it has “rewritten the rules for performance” with a new drive which is now production-ready. The NVMe SSD (the above image is Seagate’s drawing of the demo unit) offers a blazing 10GBps, meaning it’s way faster than the previous wearer…

By Darren Allan Mechanical gaming keyboards are growing increasingly popular, and so makers are employing new tricks to differentiate their products. The latest idea? Make a 100%, fully modular keyboard (modularity is also very “on-trend”, natch). EpicGear’s Defiant mechanical gaming keyboard lets you change individual keys to mix different types of mechanical switches, and also…

By Darren Allan The price of SSDs is continuing to drop, and they’re becoming an ever-more tempting proposition compared to traditional spinning disks, according to a new report. DRAMeXchange, which is a division of analyst firm TrendForce, produces a quarterly report detailing the prices PC vendors pay for SSDs, and it showed that both MLC-based…

By Darren Allan The price of SSDs is continuing to drop, and they’re becoming an ever-more tempting proposition compared to traditional spinning disks, according to a new report. DRAMeXchange, which is a division of analyst firm TrendForce, produces a quarterly report detailing the prices PC vendors pay for SSDs, and it showed that both MLC-based…

By David Howell Introduction and protecting data Note: Our USB data security feature has been fully updated. This article was first published in November 2012. At this year’s CES Samsung showed off its 2TB T3 portable SSD drive (following on from the T1). This solid state drive with its massive storage capability, fast read/write speeds…

By Darren Allan There’s some good news for those of you who have previously been eyeing up the fancier keyboard with added fingerprint sensor for Microsoft’s Surface Pro 4, as the accessory is now available to pre-order in the UK (and other European countries). The Surface Pro 4 Type Cover with Fingerprint ID (in black,…