Intel will put its large spotlight on Ultrabook laptops and Windows 8, among other technologies, at its annual developer conference next week. In a keynote on September 14, Mooly Eden, general manager of the PC client group at Intel, will describe the “transformation of the PC” being driven by...

The good: Strong battery life and a clean design along with a fast processor and USB 3.0 make the $699 Gateway ID47H02u stand out; the laptop also manages to fit a 14-inch display into the body of a 13-incher. The bad: The Gateway ID47H02u lacks Bluetooth and dedicated graphics, and plenty of other 13- and...

I lean toward the latter. And analysts I’ve talked with are mystified. But the Wall Street Journal offers up one of the best quotes yet. Courtesy of Jayson Noland of Robert W. Baird & Co. It’s “like McDonald’s getting out of the hamburger business.” Or Boeing suddenly...

The PC world is buzzing lately about how laptop manufacturers are struggling to compete with Apple’s MacBook Air, which has exploded in popularity since the introduction of the third-gen model in 2010. This year’s fourth-gen update is proving to be the must-have laptop of the year. For every laptop...

The good: The Gateway NV55S05u is a budget laptop with more than average hard drive space and RAM, and the included AMD A8 APU has better graphics than similarly-priced laptops. The bad: No-frills features and a generic design, and the AMD A8 performed more slowly at everyday tasks than equivalently priced...