laptop News - Page 27 of 31 - CNX Software

November 10, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Allwinner A64 Datasheet and User Manual Released

Allwinner has two 64-bit ARM processors in the works: Allwinner H64 and Allwinner A64. Both are quad core Cortex A53 processors with a Mali-400MP2 GPU, H.265 4K video playback with basically the same interfaces and peripherals, but H64 also supports H.264 at 4K resolutions, while A64 is limited to H.264 @ 1080p, and H64 adds a TS interface. The first good news is that two boards are in development: Orange Pi Plus 3 with Allwinner H64 Olimex A64-OLinuXino update with Allwinner A64 Engineering samples have already been produced for the first board, but that’s about all the information we have now, as Shenzhen Xunlong has not built its reputation by releasing documentation early. One the other hand, A64-OLinuXino schematics have nearly been completed, but we already know more details, as not only Olimex boards are open source hardware, but the company defies conventional wisdom by involving the community in the […]

October 19, 2015October 19, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Add an SSD to Your Laptop with a $5 Optical Drive Caddy Adapter

Performance of computers are often limited by their hard drive performance, and if you’ve ever upgraded from a mechanical hard drive to a SSD, you’ll be fully aware of the massive boost achieved by that upgrade. Many laptops come with a hard drive and a DVD drive, and if you’re not using the DVD drive that much or at all, you could purchase an ultra cheap optical drive caddy adapter to install an SSD into your laptop, or just another 2.5″ hard drive if you need extra storage. You’ll need to insert the SSD into the caddy, and replace the CD/DVD drive by the caddy. I’ve been informed of this trick via a link on eBay taht’s for an optical caddy adapter specifically for Lenovo IdeaPad Z50-70 B50-30, but if you search for “hdd optical caddy” you’ll find several “universal” optical caddy adapter for HDD and SSD with 12.7mm or […]

August 28, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

The First Intel Core M Skylake-Y Low Power Processors: Core M3 6Y30, M5 6Y54, M5 6Y57 and M5 6Y75

Last year, Intel unveiled Core M Broadwell-Y processors with 4.5W TDP aimed at laptops and tablets, and offering a middle ground between the performance achieved by Atom/Celeron/Pentium processor and the more powerful Core i3/i5/i7 processors. CPU World has now released details about the new Skylake-Y Core M processor that still feature 2 cores and 4 threads, as well as a TDP of 4.5W. There are now four models: Model Cores / Threads Frequency / Turbo L3 cache Graphics GPU Frequency TDP Core m3 6Y30 2 / 4 900 MHz / 2.2 GHz 4 MB HD 515 300 / 850 MHz 4.5 Watt Core m5 6Y54 1.1 / 2.7 GHz 300 / 900 MHz Core m5 6Y57 1.1 / 2.8 GHz 300 / 900 MHz Core m5 6Y75 1.2 / 3.1 GHz 300 / 1000 MHz The processors have the same number of cores and thread, the same amount of L3 […]

August 7, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

2015 Open Source Hardware Summit Program Published

The Open Source Hardware Summit takes places once a year in different location each year. It was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2013, in Rome, Italy last year, and this year the event will be hosted in Philadelphia in the US, and the organizers just released the program. It will be a one day event (September 19, 2015) with four “tracks” with a total of 23 sessions, and a keynote: Science and Education Open Hardware, Open Minds: The Rise of Open Hardware in Academia and K-12 Education by Ben Leduc-Mills. The Rise and Fall of an Open Source Hardware Company by Nancy Ouyang. Open Hardware in Community/Citizen Science by Peter Marchetto. DropBot: an Open-Source Platform for Lab Automation by Ryan Fobel, Christian Fobel, Michael Dryden and Aaron Wheeler. Making Open Hardware the New Standard in Science by Joshua Pearce. Open Source Robotics Foundation and the Robotics Fast […]

June 5, 2015June 5, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Allwinner R58 Octa-core Processor Targets 2-in-1 Android Laptops

Allwinner R-series processor family, such as Allwinner R8, is supposed to target “IoT applications”, but IoT must have recently taken a whole new meaning as the latest Allwinner R58 octa-core processor targets 2-in-1 laptops running Android. Allwinner website however lists R58 as an high-end IoT platform for virtual reality and robotics. Allwinner R58 specifications: CPU – Octa-Core Cortex-A7 CPU up to 2.0 GHz GPU – PowerVR SGX544 GPU @ 600 MHz with support for OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1, DX 9_3 Memory 32-bit DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR3/LPDDR2 SLC/MLC/TLC/EF NAND with 64-bit ECC eMMC V4.5 Video 1080p@60fps video playback multi-format video playback, including H.264, MPEG1/2, MPEG4 SP/ASP GMC, H.263 including Sorenson Spark, WMV9/VC-1, JPEG/MJPEG, etc H.264 1080p@60fps or 720p@120fps video capture Display LVDS up to 1366×768@60fps or RGB LCD up to 2048×1536@60fps 4-lane MIPI DSI up to 1920×1200@60fps HDMI up to 1080p@60fps, HDCP V1.2 supported Dual display supported with LCD up to 720p@60fps and […]

April 9, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Intel Celeron N3000 2-in-1 Laptop, and MSI Motherboards with Celeron N3050/N3150 and Pentium N3700 Processors

Intel introduced the first low power Braswell Celeron and Pentium processors with 4 to 6W TDP, meaning a lower power consumption compared to Bay Trail-M processors, and with better performance. The first devices and motherboards based on these have started to show up with Intel’s Orchid Island 2-in-1 Reference Design based on Celeron N3000, and three MSI motherboards: N3050I ECO, N3150I ECO, and N3700I ECO respectively powered by Celeron N3050 dual core processor, Celeron N3150 quad core processor, and Pentium N3700 quad core processor, all clocked @ 1.6GHz (base frequency) and with 6W TDP. MSI did not release full details about their motherboards but we still now they’ll support H.265/HEVC hardware decoding up to 4K, Blu-ray playback and 8-channel HD Audio via an HDMI 1.4b port. Other connectors and interfaces include two DDR3L-1600MHz SO-DIMM slots (up to 8GB), two SATA III ports, one PCIe slot, Gigabit Ethernet, a COM port, […]

March 23, 2015March 23, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

How to Install Ubuntu 14.04 on Acer Aspire E5 Laptop

I’ve been owning an Acer Aspire One D255E netbook with a 10″ display, an Intel Atom N455 processor and 1GB RAM that served me well during my travels, but as I’ve become older and less patient, I felt I needed to upgrade it. I planned to spend around 10,000 Baht (~$300), wanted a 14″ display, one of the low power CPU such as Intel Bay Trail-M or AMD Mullins / Beema processors, at least 500GB storage, 4GB RAM, and the ability to install Ubuntu. Finally, after going through several products at my local shop, I had to chose between Acer Aspire E5-411-P3CL with a 7.5W TDP Intel Atom N3540 and Acer Aspire E5-421G-45L0 with a 15W TDP AMD A4-6210 processor that both sell for 11,900 Baht ($365). Despite my preference for processor with lower TDP, I still went with the AMD system, since the performance is a little better, the […]

March 22, 2015March 23, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Acer Shamelessly Sells Aspire E5 Laptops with a Crippled UEFI Setup Utility

Yesterday, I bought an Acer Aspire E5-421G-45L0 laptop powered by AMD A4-6210 “Beema” processor and after some effort I managed to install Ubuntu 14.04 and make it mostly work, but more on that later. I also planned to copy a 64-bit OS VirtualBox virtual machine from another PC to this PC, but I quickly realized I could only select 32-bit operating systems, so my 64-bit image could not boot. Virtualization extension are required for 64-bit support in VirtualBox, and I had not checked whether AMD A4-6210 supported these before purchase. Amazingly, I could not find that information on AMD’s very own website, but CPU Boss reports A4-6210 does indeed support AMD-V virtualization. All good, so I must be just a question of enabling it in the “BIOS”. So I rebooted the laptop, and pressed F2 to enter InsydeH20 Setup Utility. There are few options with only Information, Main, Security, Boot, […]