Is the Laptop Dead?

What kind of technology will grace your home office desk five years from now? According to Kit Eaton over at Fast Company it wont be a laptop. While Intel is hard at work pushing the Ultrabook, Eaton argues that – the sleek MacBook Air is the peak of design in the laptop field. Intel are simply chasing the tail of John Ive’s Air. According to Eaton “the Utrabook isn’t the silver bullet to securing their future–they’re instead almost like a well-polished, perfectly refined full stop at the end of the design description of the device.”

It’s interesting to think of this technology at the end of its natural life. We are on the brink of the next wave and in my mind it has to be some kind of tablet type device. Although having spent the weekend without my laptop trying to work from our iPad I am much relieved to get back to this MacBook Pro. The tablets need to resolve their cumbersome typing problems. If they could fix that I’d blog from the iPad in a heartbeat!

Unplggd: Tech Stocking Stuffers

It’s that time of year and we’ve only got a 8 weekdays left before Christmas weekend. These are tech gifts priced at a modest $20 and below, perfect for stocking stuffers. We’ve got cable management accessories, media card readers, travel kits.

Blue Lounge CableDrop

These six pack cable management clips have a peel and stick that adheres to most surfaces and helps wrangles your cords. They come in all sorts of colors – bright, muted, black, and white – fitting right in with whatever style/decor you subscribe to. Oh what fun it is to manage our tangled web of cables.$9.95 Read more

Unplggd: Smartphone Printers

While digital photo frames are becoming more and more convenient, printing out photos is still something that a lot of people will do (we’ve got large prints on our walls while our digital photo frame is mostly switched off). Most people will take snaps with their iPhones or smartphones, and having an easy way to print them out is handy. Some of these printers are full of features will others still require a cable to function.

1.HP ENVY 100 e-All-in-One: This AirPrint-enabled printer allows you to print out photos from almost anywhere in your home, which makes it pretty convenient. It’s an ePrint printer, so you can email it a picture and it will print it out as well. The only problem is that it’s an InkJet printer. It’s listed at $249.99 but you can get it for $164.80 on Amazon. It does 30 ppm in black and white and 25 ppm in color.

2. Polaroid GL10 This printer looks good on paper, but we’ve had problems with it when we saw it at CES 2011. However, it does print wirelessly from Android phones, which is a plus, and it’s somewhat portable.

3. Photo Cube: This is a printer that almost looks like the Bolle BP10 from last year. It looks pretty decent, but there’s no AirPrinting with this one. You’ll need to dock your smartphone in order to print your photos. We like the convenience of being able to print our photos from all over the place, but if you don’t need this, then this printer might work for you. However, it’s somewhat overpriced for what you get. It’s available from Hammacher Schlemmer for $160.

4. HP Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One: This printer will scan and copy documents as well. The list price on this printer, which is also an InkJet, is $149.99, but we’ve found it on sale for $89.95. It does 32 ppm in black and white and 30 in color.

By Range Govindan