Best Laptops - CNET Guide

You can dive into the various subcategories here for detailed suggestions for every need and budget, but on this page, we present the current laptops that are our personal favorites, because of style, power, value, or just because we like them. 

 

Best high-end laptop

Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display

The newly redesigned MacBook Pro with Retina Display combines an amazing screen with just enough of the MacBook Air design to feel like a new animal, and to take its place as the best of the current MacBook breed.

Price: $2,079.98 - $2,199.00 (check prices)

4 stars Excellent Read full review

 

Best ultra-thin 13-inch

Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, Summer 2012)

This year's MacBook Air opts for gradual improvements rather than anything revolutionary, but lowered prices continue to make it the go-to mainstream recommendation for any MacBook owner-to-be.

Price: $1,099.99 - $1,199.00 (check prices)

4 stars Excellent Read full review

 

Best convertible laptop

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13

The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 is a convertible touch-screen laptop/tablet that most importantly doesn't compromise the traditional laptop experience.

Price: $989.99 - $1,199.99 (check prices)

4 stars Excellent Read full review

 

Best laptop under $800

Toshiba Satellite U845t

While it's not going to dazzle anyone, the Toshiba Satellite U845T is a great example of exactly how much laptop $799 should buy in 2013.

Price: $779.99 - $799.99 (check prices)

4 stars Excellent Read full review

 

Best gaming laptop

Lenovo IdeaPad Y500

For those looking for something more than a feature-light ultrabook, the gamer-friendly Lenovo IdeaPad Y500 is close to brilliant, and several configurations are currently available at a deep discount -- but I can't believe it doesn't have a touch screen.

Price: $999.00 - $1,611.00 (check prices)

4 stars Excellent Read full review

 

Best Windows 8 tablet

Microsoft Surface with Windows 8 Pro (64GB)

The Surface Pro's gutsy design successfully reinvents the Windows 8 laptop by cramming an ultrabook experience into the body of a 10-inch tablet. Those wanting to go all-in on the tablet experience won't regret buying the Surface Pro, but we're holding out for a future, more polished generation of the device.

Price: $959.00 (check prices)

4 stars Very good Read full review

 

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How The CIA Tried To Turn A Cat Into A Cyborg Spy

PopSci - In the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency recruited an unusual field agent: a cat. In an hour-long procedure, a veterinary surgeon transformed the furry feline into an elite spy, implanting a microphone in her ear canal and a small radio transmitter at the base of her skull, and weaving a thin wire antenna into her long gray-and-white fur. This was Operation Acoustic Kitty, a top-secret plan to turn a cat into a living, walking surveillance machine. The leaders of the project hoped that by training the feline to go sit near foreign officials, they could eavesdrop on private conversations.

The problem was that cats are not especially trainable—they don’t have the same deep-seated desire to please a human master that dogs do—and the agency’s robo-cat didn’t seem terribly interested in national security. For its first official test, CIA staffers drove Acoustic Kitty to the park and tasked it with capturing the conversation of two men sitting on a bench. Instead, the cat wandered into the street, where it was promptly squashed by a taxi. The program was abandoned; as a heavily redacted CIA memo from the time delicately phrased it, “Our final examination of trained cats... convinced us that the program would not lend itself in a practical sense to our highly specialized needs.” (Those specialized needs, one assumes, include a decidedly unflattened feline.)

Operation Acoustic Kitty, misadventure though it was, was a visionary idea just 50 years before its time. Today, once again, the U .S. government is looking to animal-machine hybrids to safeguard the country and its citizens. In 2006, for example, DARPA zeroed in on insects, asking the nation’s scientists to submit “innovative proposals to develop technology to create insect-cyborgs.”

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This plasma TV has the best picture ever tested - The Panasonic VT60

 

CNET Editors' Rating

4.0 stars - Excellent

$2,200.00 to $2,599.99

The good: The Panasonic VT60 produces the best picture quality of any TV we've ever reviewed, equal to or better than our in-house Pioneer Kuro reference; exceedingly deep black levels and excellent shadow detail; well-saturated colors and excellent skin tones; industry-leading sound quality; extensive features including touch-pad remote, voice control, and onboard camera.

The bad: Extremely expensive; forthcoming ZT60 might have even better picture quality; worse bright-room picture than that of the Samsung F8500; somewhat humdrum design; camera is limited, and facial recognition is a gimmick.

The bottom line: The Panasonic VT60 has one of the best pictures of any TV we've ever reviewed, but it's soon to face some tough competition.

Read the Full Review

Nat Geo: Live Eagle Webcam

Nat Geo - You're looking at a live webcam featuring a bald eagle nest in Washington, D.C. The nest is home to a bald eagle pair and their chicks, which hatched in March 2013. You'll see the adults bringing fish from the Anacostia River to feed their young. The two chicks are covered with black juvenile feathers—they won't sport their characteristic white heads until they are four or five years old.

About the Eagles

The nest featured here is about five feet wide and made mostly of sticks. It sits about 80 feet up in a tree on the grounds of the Metropolitan Police Academy. Installing the webcam, provided by National Geographic, was Chief of Police Cathy L. Lanier's idea. She has long been interested in the eagle pair that chose the academy grounds for its home. "It is fitting and exciting that our national bird has made a home on the Metropolitan Police Department's Academy grounds," said Lanier. "We look forward to viewing the eagles in their habitat."

The eagles are thought to be the same pair that has nested in the area for several years, says Craig Koppie, raptor biologist at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Chesapeake Bay field office in Annapolis, Maryland. Koppie is an advisor on the Earth Conservation Corps eagle restoration project, which also oversees a second bald eagle nest in Washington.

Bald eagle nests usually contain one to three dull-white eggs, and the parents take turns incubating them. Eggs hatch in about five weeks, and hatchlings are covered with soft, fluffy, light-gray feathers. “Generally the female stays on the nest while the father’s job is to bring in the food,” Koppie says. Food for this pair of eagles is generally fish—catfish, shad, or perch—plucked from the Anacostia.

Read More & Watch the Webcam!

As Google I/O nears, 15 killer apps show best of Chrome

 

Chrome's killer apps

Anyone who says you can’t get real work done on a Web browser—or in a browser-based operating system, for that matter—hasn't seen some of the latest Chrome apps.

Rising above glorified bookmarks, the cream of Google’s Chrome Web Store can stand toe-to-toe with desktop software. More are offering offline functionality, too. Coming soon: 'packaged apps' that look and act more like traditional software.

Finding Chrome gems can be tricky. The store's layout is chaotic and provides no easy way to distinguish good from bad. These 15 Chrome apps rock, whether you’re working on a Windows PC, a Mac, or a Chromebook.

Gmail Offline

The app version of Gmail, Gmail Offline is available from the Chrome Web Store. It has improved dramatically since its 2011 debut. The app now supports Rich Text Format and attachments, and it can download your email messages from the past week or from the past month. You might even prefer Gmail Offline’s clean, tablet-like interface over the desktop version.

Pixlr Editor

Photoshop diehards might scoff at Pixlr Editor, but it gets the job done for basic to intermediate drawing and image editing. Pixlr comes with various brushes and effects, and it supports layers and layer masks. You can even save and load .PSD files, if you’re coming from Photoshop. Though Pixlr doesn’t work completely offline, once you’ve opened it in your browser, the app becomes fully functional without a connection. In Chrome, consider installing the Edit in Pixlr extension, which lets you right-click and send images directly to the app.

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Dell XPS 18 review: A massive tablet that doubles as an all-in-one desktop

CNET Editors' Rating

4.0 stars - Excellent

The good: The Dell XPS 18 combines an all-in-one PC with a lightweight 18-inch tablet, making it a flexible system for at-home entertainment and productivity.

The bad: You're paying a premium for a relatively small screen. Less expensive configurations cut too many corners to be a good deal.

The bottom line: It's the best of the small handful of current tablet/all-in-one hybrids, with a subtle, sophisticated design and good battery life, but this new genre is still in its early days.

Read the Full Review