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Pozdrav,

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Ako imate neko pitanje ili vam je potrebna pomoc, postavite vase pitanje u komentar ispod.

ALIENWARE 14 GAMING LAPTOP

Over the last few years, Alienware's designs have grown stagnant with the company focusing primarily on spec refreshes and subtle tweaks. But now, Dell's enthusiast PC gaming arm is revamping its laptops with brand new designs, premium components, and state-of-the-art processors from Intel and Nvidia. The new Alienware 14 (previously the M14x) now acts as the entry-level model in the range, delivering significant punch in one of the category's more compact form factors. How does Alienware's smallest laptop stack up against its predecessor and the competition? Read on to find out.

 

Regardless of whether you're a fan of Alienware's other worldly aesthetic, there's no questioning that its new designs are a vast improvement over the previous generation. The company has traded matte black plastic casing for a predominantly aluminum and magnesium alloy chassis in a charcoal color palette. Its rounded edges, thin illuminated cutaways in the lid, and wraparound LED lining at the base give it a distinctly modern, yet futuristic vibe.

Despite its sleek new look, the Alienware 14 hasn't shed much in the way of thickness or weight. At 1.6-inches thick and roughly 6 pounds, it's a still quite a beefy laptop. Although the market is quickly moving toward ultra-thin, lightweight designs, like the MacBook Pro or Razer Blade, Alienware is still committed to maintaining power and customization. The Alienware 14 is designed with plenty of headroom to maximize airflow across its quad-core Intel Core i7 and GTX 750M or GTX 765M processors, driving peak performance and ensuring a longer livespan.

One of the biggest benefits of the larger chassis, however, is storage. The stock model comes equipped with a 750GB HDD, but can be upgraded to dual-hard drive configurations. With the ever-growing emphasis on digital distribution and next-gen titles certain to be significantly larger, the added storage capacity gives the Alienware 14 a distinct edge over the Razer Blade, which although significantly thinner, comes with a meager 128GB SSD and costs $600 more.

The baseline model starts at $1,199 and comes with a 1366x768 display, quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU, Nvidia GT 750M, 8GB of RAM, the aforementioned 750GB HDD plus an auxiliary 256GB SSD, slot-loading DVD-RW drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0. Many of the specs can be upgraded, and for my testing, Alienware upped the processor to a GTX-class 765M GPU, 16GB of RAM, a Blu-ray drive, and a full 1080p display, which retails for $2,029.

At those specs, the Alienware 14 was capable of running any title I threw at it at native resolution and high or very high settings. On average, Battlefield 3 drove around 41 FPS at high settings, while BioShock Infinite at very high hovered around 36 FPS, and Tomb Raider and Need for Speed: Most Wanted set to very high specs garnered 49 FPS and 40 FPS, respectively. I had to scale the settings back to medium on Crysis 3 -- a more demanding title -- but performance remained stable at 38 FPS.

Although it may not be the maxed out performance many PC players typically demand, the Alienware 14 delivers a considerable amount of power for its size.

Battery life, on the other hand, is expectedly limited. In PC Mark 8 battery testing, which accounts for gaming, casual browsing, and media viewing behaviors, the Alienware 14 lasted for anywhere between 2 to 3 hours. I tested the machine at 50-percent display brightness and with the LED 'AlienFX' system turned both on and off, which surprisingly, resulted in only a 10 minute battery life differential. Taking gaming or other GPU-taxing software out of the mix increases the run time, but only by an hour under the most energy-conscious of settings. Though hardly ideal, the Alienware 14's shortcomings in battery performance are common for the category.

Other less desirable elements pervasive in the gaming laptop realm and carried over to the Alienware 14 include a fairly noisy fan system. During gaming sessions, the fans run at full blast, drawing cool air from vents on the bottom and blowing it out the back. This is a stark contrast to the Razer Blade, which generates a fraction of the noise. But in exchange for the constant buzz of the fans, the Alienware 14 maintains a cool surface temperature for lap use.

Alienware has made a number of other usage improving features, such as implementing a textured matte plastic finish on the clamshell interior, which feels soft to the touch. There's also the drastically redesigned keyboard, which has traded the tall, rounded keys of the previous generation for a flatter, lower profile design. Although players lose some of the clear tactile differentiation, the new key design is more conducive for fast, on-the-fly finger taps and gestures. The trackpad also sports a soft-touch finish, but now lights up. Ultimately, however, most gaming situations will require a mouse or gamepad for accurate controls.

Naturally, the more compact configuration will take getting used to if you typically play on a fullsized desktop keyboard. It took several hours to get accustomed to the feel of the design before being able to net the same competitive multiplayer performance I achieve on my tower.

The glass-covered LED display of last-gen has been replaced by a more traditional matte finish screen, which helps reduce the overall weight of the unit and eliminates glare. While I still prefer glass panels, the upgraded 1080p display on the Alienware 14 looks good. The maximum viewing angle isn't quite as wide as some laptops, but it's more than sufficient for an intimate gaming situations. Colors are rich and vibrant, and only begin to wash out when you careen your head far to the side.

Each model comes equipped with a DisplayPort, fullsized HDMI output, three USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader, headphone jack, and Ethernet port -- another competitive advantage of its robust design.

The Alienware 14 is a significant leap forward for the company, yielding a new, more modern design but remaining uncompromising in performance and personalization -- for better or for worse. The market is shifting toward thinner and lighter devices, and many may be reluctant to spring for such a bulky machine, but where the Alienware 14 lacks in compact portability, it makes up for in performance, wide array of optional upgrades, and comparatively affordable cost.

21.5-inch 2012 iMac

Apple isn't normally the first company to put new chips from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia in its products, but the wait for the new iMacs has been long byany standard. Some 19 months have passed between the early May introduction of the 2011 iMac and the late November shipping dates for this year's models. But the Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs the 21.5-inch model uses were both available months ago, and these desktops haven't made the jump to a pixel-quadrupled "Retina" display. No one knows for certain whether the device's delays were due to rumored manufacturing issues or merely the decreasing importance of desktop computers to Apple's bottom line, but at least the refreshed computers are finally here.

The 2012 iMac's most visible innovation is, of course, its physical design—this is the first substantial change to the iMac's body since the aluminum unibody iMacs were introduced in late 2009. The edges of the computer are just 5 mm wide, a significant reduction from the desktops the company has been selling for the last few years. The end result is a computer that is substantially lighter and thinner than it was before.

Happily, the newest iMacs still retain most of what made past models appealing—the graphics processors won't set any speed records, but they compare favorably to those in competing all-in-ones. Fast, desktop-class quad-core Ivy Bridge processors from Intel power every iMac within the pricing spectrum. The screens, while not of the Retina variety just yet, are excellent IPS panels with great color and viewing angles. There are several improvements subtly enhancing their quality over previous models. And as with other all-in-ones, cable clutter is kept to a minimum.

Despite that progress, there are a number of regressions—particularly in the $1,299 21.5-inch model we're looking at in this review. These new iMacs really are attractive machines, but what features are sacrificed in pursuit of thinness, and can you live without them?

The new iMac is going to take up about the same amount of space on your desk as the old model—the thinner body of the machine doesn't subtract much from its "stand depth." That's still 6.9 inches (down from 7.42 inches on the old model). What's much more noticeable is the machine's weight: at 12.5 pounds, it's exactly eight pounds lighter than its predecessor. You can immediately feel it when you lift the computer and move it around.

Though its body is much thinner and lighter, the new iMac has a lot in common with the preceding aluminum unibody design (which was itself not drastically different from the first aluminum-and-glass iMac introduced back in 2007). The front of the system is mostly taken up by the 1920x1080 display, its surrounding black bezel, and the sheet of glass that covers both of them. The "chin" below the screen and the back of the computer are one solid piece of aluminum mounted on a separate stand. As with all of Apple's aluminum unibody hardware, the fit and finish is excellent. There's nothing about the new iMac that looks or feels cheap.

The monitor stand is very slightly smaller than previous models due to the computer's decreased weight. It will continue to be a sticking point for some—where the competition can often swivel, pivot, and go up and down, the iMac's stand still only allows for tilting the screen up and down. The high-quality IPS display panels that Apple uses ensures viewing angles are never a problem. But if you need to raise (or lower) your iMac significantly to make yourself more comfortable at your desk, you'll have to figure something else out.

While the new iMac is indeed very thin around the edges, Apple's product photos don't convey that the new iMac still packs much back. All that computer has to fit somewhere, and the iMac tucks most of it away in the juicy bubble on the back of the machine. It's still much thinner than the old model, make no mistake, but while buying the iMac at the Apple store I heard more than one fan gushing about how the whole system was LCD-thin throughout. That isn't quite true.

The thing about the new iMac is that once it's on your desk, you don't often notice how thin it is. Viewed from the front, it's basically indistinguishable from the last few models (as you can see in some of our comparison shots). This isn't a bad thing, really, and it's still a very attractive computer. But it goes to show that you can really only do so much from a design perspective with an all-in-one that is, by necessity, mostly screen.

Cooling PC.Air and Water cooling

PC building is a gateway drug. It starts out innocuously enough--picking out components, researching cases, hard drives, video cards, and so forth. And then you find out that you don't have to use the CPU cooler that came with your CPU--that there are aftermarket coolers that can make your CPU run even cooler, so you can overclock it more. And then next thing you know your credit card company is calling you to make sure you really meant to buy $200 worth of MOSFET and southbridge waterblocks from Slovenia.

So what is water cooling? How does it compare to air cooling? Is it even necessary?

First, let's cover the basics. Electronics turn energy into calculations, and the byproduct is heat. The hotter your processor, the worse it performs--modern CPUs will clock themselves down and finally shut off before they damage themselves, but in the old days it was easy to fry your CPU by running too hot. You can increase the performance of your CPU (and your RAM, and your GPU) by overclocking and overvolting, but that requires more energy, and thus puts out more heat. Basically: the better you cool your components, the better they'll perform and the longer they'll last.

If you recall from thermodynamics lectures, heat likes to equilibrate. So if you put something with the capacity to absorb heat next to something that is hot, and as long as there's some way for heat to transfer between them, the hot thing cools down and the cool thing warms up until they reach equilibrium.

All CPU coolers work in the same basic way: A heatsink, usually made of copper, but sometimes aluminum or nickel, sits atop the CPU's heat spreader (that's the square metal plate on top of your CPU). A thin layer of thermally conductive paste also sits between the CPU heat spreader and the heatsink, to smooth out the microscopic gaps between the two metal surfaces and provide as much heat transfer as possible. On an air cooler, the heatsink has special heat pipes attached within it or on top of it. The pipes themselves are filled with a fluid that vaporizes as it heats up and rises to the end of the heat pipes, which are usually festooned with thin aluminum or copper heat fins. These fins provide as much surface area as possible. A fan (or several) provides a steady stream of cool air over these fins, and as heat transfers from the fins to the air, the air heats up and the fins cool down. The fins cool, the heat pipes cool, the heatsink cools, and presto, the CPU cools.

In a liquid cooler, liquid flows through channels carved directly into the top of the heat sink, and is pumped away from the CPU toward a radiator (which actually cools via convection). The radiator has a fan (or several fans) that constantly blow over its fins, heating the air and cooling the fins. The fins cool the radiator, which cools the water, which is constantly circulating through the loop and keeping the CPU cool.

Because it involves a constantly circulating supply of liquid to keep the CPU cool, rather than just a hunk of metal, a closed-loop liquid cooling system is more complicated than an air cooler. A liquid cooling loop needs a water block (comprising the heat sink and heat exchanger), a pump, a radiator, fans, a reservoir for additional liquid (because the more liquid you have, the more heat capacity you have), and the tubes and fittings to connect all of these parts together.

So why even deal with the added complexity? First, a liquid cooling loop can be be significantly cooler and quieter than an air cooler. And the part that attaches to your CPU is much smaller. Rather than having a two pound, six-inch cube of metal fins hanging from your motherboard, preventing you from using RAM with tall heatspreaders, and maybe even cutting into the space you need for your graphics card, you just have a small water block and some tubes leading elsewhere.

Air cooling is goog and cheap.You can get a great aftermarket air cooler that will lower your CPU's burn temperatures by 20-30C for about $30 (that's the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ or Xigmatek Gaia). Results scale pretty well from there to about $90-100. The air coolers you can get in that price range are massive collections of copper and aluminum, with multiple cooling fans--your Phanteks TC-14PE,Noctua NH-D14, or Prolimatech Megahalems. These represent the best air coolers on the market.

There are two substantial advantages to using an air cooler rather than a water-cooling loop at all: first, fewer moving parts. A giant heatsink with a nonoperative fan is still a giant heatsink, so you'll still get some cooling even if your fan dies, and the fan is essentially the only thing that can go wrong. For a liquid cooling loop, your fan could die, your pump could die, your tubing or radiator could start leaking...the list of possible failure points is greater.

The second advantage is that the airflow from the CPU cooler actually helps cool motherboard components, especially the voltage regulators, which typically lie directly in the airflow path between the CPU cooler fan and the rear exhaust fan. Without that CPU cooling fan it's easy for them to get toasty, so you may need more fans in your case than you would otherwise.

The easiest way to get into liquid cooling is with an all-in-one loop. These consist of a single closed loop with a radiator on one end and a pump/water block combo on the other. The system is pre-filled and pre-sealed so you don't need to mess with it--just install the radiator and its included fan onto one of your case's existing fan mounts (usually the rear exhaust fan), attach the water block to the CPU, and fire it up.

Most all-in-one loops cool the CPU only. There are some all-in-one loops for GPUs, like the Arctic Accelero, but if you want to liquid-cool more of your system than just the CPU, you're looking at a custom setup.

The vast, vast majority of all-in-one liquid cooling loops come from just two OEMs: CoolIT and Asetek, with CoolIT powering some high-end Corsair loops and Asetek providing essentially everything else.

An entry-level one-fan, one-radiator all-in-one liquid cooling loop starts at around $60 and cools about as well as a midrange aftermarket air cooler. This includes the Corsair H55, NZXT X40, Antec Kühler 620, Cooler Master Seidon 120M, and others. I wouldn't bother with one of these, frankly. I'd either get a bigger air cooler or a loop with a bigger radiator. Why? A bigger radiator will be more effective than a smaller radiator because of its larger fin surface area, so you can get the same cooling results while running your fans at lower speeds--which means less noise.

A great dual-fan liquid cooling loop will be in the same price/performance range as a top-notch air cooler. These can consist of a double-thick 120mm or 140mm radiator, or a 240mm or larger one. A 120mm or 140mm radiator will be the most compatible with current cases--larger radiators need to be mounted in places other than the rear exhaust fan mount, like the top of the case.

Mad Catz M.O.J.O

Mad Catz arcade fight sticks might have received a mention during Microsoft's Xbox One E3 keynote, but the company had another product to demonstrate on the show floor - the M.O.J.O. It's an Android-powered micro console built to let you play smartphone and tablet games using a controller on the big screen. We finally got a look at one this morning, and can now bring you our first impressions.

There's just no stopping Mad Catz's mad expansion plans. The peripheral maker has turned software publisher over the past couple of years, and this holiday season it takes a stab at console manufacturing with the M.O.J.O. Android console.

Another Android console? Isn't this just a super-charged Android phone without the screen, like the Ouya or Gamestick?

“M.O.J.O. is basically a supercharged smart phone with no screen that plugs into your flat screen TV to bring the living room experience to mobile gaming. M.O.J.O. is designed to interact seamlessly with our GameSmart controllers, mice, keyboards and headsets, in fact, the entire eco-system of gaming peripherals.” said Darren Richardson, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz via official announcement today, so yes.

As you might expect, given its "micro-console" monicker, the M.O.J.O. is a diminutive black box that's barely any bigger than a deck of cards. The wedge shape leaves room for an HDMI output, two USB ports, a microSD card slot, MicroUSB port and 3.5mm headphone jack at the rear, without making the system too boxy.

From the front, the single blue power LED is the only sign of life - there's no ports or inputs here. The bundled controller connects wirelessly, so there's no need to plug it in.

The controller, which Mad Catz dubs the CTRLR, runs off two regular AAA batteries, rather than a rechargeable battery pack, but operates over the energy efficient Bluetooth 4.0 protocol so should be fairly frugal when it comes to draining them. It feels very similar to an Xbox 360 controller, with asymmetric analogue sticks, four face buttons, two triggers and two bumpers. There are also dedicated multimedia buttons and a mouse mode, which lets you navigate using the left thumbstick for games which don't natively support controllers.

Pressing the Mad Catz logo in the centre of the controller will retuurn you to the Android home screen. Unlike the competing Ouya, which has its own custom user interface, M.O.J.O. runs a near-stock version of Android. This means that you'll be able to access the Google Play store, along with all the apps and games tied to your account. You can also install a host of catch-up TV services and on-demand movie apps too, turning the device into a seriously comprehensive media streamer.

At the time of writing, specifications have yet to be finalised, but the development hardware is based on an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, with 16GB of internal memory for apps and games. It was able to play graphically intensive games like Riptide GP smoothly at 1080p through a TV, but it's highly likely that the final model will use a more powerful Tegra 4 CPU for even more performance.

With access to all your existing Android games, the Google Play store and a whole world of third party apps, emulators and multimedia, the M.O.J.O. has some clear benefits over a closed system like the Ouya. Whether the stock Android interface is well suited to a TV and controller combination is something that's up for debate, but we imagine that the proliferation of Android-powered micro consoles means TV-centric launchers can't be far behind. When that happens, M.O.J.O. could well be an excellent investment for anyone looking for a compact and powerful media streamer that can also play games.

We'll know more about M.O.J.O. a little closer to launch, with the device expected to go on sale in time for Christmas here in the UK.

Ouya Game Console review

If you’ve come here wondering whether you should buy the Ouya, let me answer that straight away: no, you shouldn’t. At least not yet.

Instead, let the hacker-types, tinkerers, and the extreme hard-core gamers be the guinea pigs for the Android-based console, because it currently needs all the testing it can get.

With any luck over the next six months, the Ouya's software library will grow to a much more compelling state, bugs will get fixed, the interface will have much-needed features added, and native nongaming content will be released. Harder to address will be the cheap controller and underpowered system architecture, however.

Of course, if one killer app is enough to justify a new console purchase, there are few launch titles in the annals of console debuts as complete and thoroughly engaging as TowerFall. It's the best reason to ignore everything I said up top. No, really. It’s that good.

The console's low price and free-to-try system for games puts another point in its corner and will appeal to gamers on a budget, but exercising patience and giving the system time to find its footing is the best course of action right now.

The Ouya has lots of potential as a cheap alternative to the mainstream wares being pumped out by Microsoft and Sony, but continued refinement will be necessary if it’s to become something viable.

The Ouya is a gray and black box that weighs 0.68 pound and is small enough to fit into the palm of my hand. It features a combination of smooth embossed aluminum and glossy plastic, and its body is tapered slightly at the bottom. A circular power button sits on the top and glows with a dim white LED Ouya logo ( a "U") when powered on. The power button is surrounded by four unobstructed screws resting in each of the device’s four corners, allowing tinkerers to easily remove the top plate and access the system’s innards.

On its back is an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, a full USB port, and a Micro-USB connection. Internally there’s 8GB of storage (expandable through the aforementioned full USB port), 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and support for 5.1 sound. All games and apps must be either downloaded directly to the device or installed via external storage. There is no disc-based media.

The design is no-nonsense and practical, and it thankfully features vents on both its top and bottom. It’s not the sturdiest of devices, however, and the plastic parts that make up its outer shell contribute to an overall hollow, brittle impression. But it's not an eyesore and won't look out of place in an entertainment center. And even if it did, it's so small that most people wouldn't even notice it's there.

Around 30 seconds after pressing the Ouya's power button -- and about 2 seconds after hearing the "OOUYA!" greeting bellow -- the home screen appears with four options: Play, Discover, Make, and Manage. Each is presented with large, clear fonts on a blatantly orange background. There’s currently no option to change the background, but hopefully (for the sake of my eyes) one will be added soon.

Play is where you’ll find all the games you’ve downloaded, each represented by a graphical tile. Discover is the games store. Titles are categorized into regularly updated curated channels. Channels can range from developer favorites to games that Ouya decides to promote. There's also a search feature for finding more-obscure games (if you know the name), or more useful is the Genres section, which allows you to browse through every piece of software available on the Ouya through categories like Retro, Platformer, App, Play with Friends, etc. As a note, this list is found near the bottom of the page; it should be surfaced higher.

Make has two functions: it's where you access the Web and launch side-loaded apps, and if you're currently developing a game on Ouya -- Ouya acts as a development kit once the SDK is downloaded -- Make is where you'll find your latest game builds. Finally, Manage houses your Ouya’s system settings, mostly mirroring typical Android 4.1 options.

There’s a kind of sparse, bare-bones quality to the interface, and it doesn't feel quite professionally done. Like an experiment instead of an actual finished release, or a mock-up a buddy hacked together over the weekend, just to illustrate a design philosophy.

The orange progress bar for app downloads blends with the slightly more orange background, making it difficult to see. There's no list of your currently downloading apps, which would be useful after queuing up a bunch of downloads.

Also, while you can hold the analog stick in a direction and have it quickly scroll through a list in the Ouya’s interface, the very Android-like settings menu only supports the feature when using the D-pad. It’s that kind of small, but glaring inconsistency that makes the console feel not quite ready for the masses.

It’s also buggy, with the "Ouya launcher has stopped responding" error message appearing more times than I could care to keep track of. Sound errors were abundant and didn't always sync up when making menu selections. There are no profiles, achievements, or leaderboards and currently no online play. Ouya says these are coming by the end of the year, but it’s yet another reason to take the wait-and-see approach with the console.

The controller feels like a movie prop. Something you'd find on a set, thinking it's real only to be disappointed by its hollow feel once you've picked it up. That’s not to say it’s not functional. It works, but it just feels like an off-off-brand Xbox 360 pad. Thankfully, the lag I’d heard that plagued early Kickstarter units was nowhere to be found.

Intel's new 4th generation processors

Intel has officially revealed its next-generation lineup of desktop and mobile processors in the Core i3, i5, and i7 family, also known as "fourth-generation" or code-named "Haswell." The two-part announcement started over the weekend with Intel's quad-core enthusiast-level processors, and now the veil has been lifted on dual-core desktop and mobile processors, too.

We will mainly focus on the dual-core processors and what they'll do for mobile systems. For a detailed rundown on the quad-core processors, check out our hands-on look.

Haswell is Intel's code name for the fourth generation of Core i-series processors, those ubiquitous chips found in nearly every laptop, desktop, and (Windows) tablet out there. The last generation, code-named "Ivy Bridge," was released mid-2012. The newest CPUs come in a variety of types: desktop-based quad-core processors, dual-core mainstream processors, lower-power longer-battery-life ultrabook processors, and processors aimed specifically at tablets.

You can get PCs with the higher-end quad-core processors first, but these are expensive, high-performance machines. Intel leads with the high end first, then releases the middle-range processors (in other words, the ones you'd want to buy) later on. A number of systems will pop up over the next few months, but by the fall most PCs should have them -- not all, though.

You'll never see "Haswell" anywhere on an actual product box, so strike that from your memory. They're still all Core i3, i5, and i7 processors, ranging from i3 (slowest) to i7 (fastest), with a variety of speeds and types for each. Just make sure the first number after the "i7" or "i5" is a 4, as in "Core i7-4650U." If it were an older third-gen processor, that four-digit number would start with a 3. More specifically, Intel has also created four classes of mobile processor based on PC type: "H" for high-end quad-core processors, "M" for mainstream quad-core and dual-core laptops and some desktops, "U" for lower-power ultrabooks, and "Y" for super-low-power tablets and detachable hybrids. It's confusing, but that's why we compare different PCs with benchmark tests.

New dual core processors are faster than last year's processors, the real impact will be giving ultrabooks and tablets better battery life and graphics performance. We haven't tested any of the newer dual-core processors yet, but Intel claims up to 3 hours better battery life for ultrabooks, and significantly better graphics for gaming over last year's equivalent third-gen Ivy Bridge processors.

Intel's newest integrated graphics should handle gaming, video encoding, and graphics-based tasks a lot better. Keep in mind, though, that different fourth-gen processors have different levels of Intel graphics. The Iris-level pro graphics aren't the same as what you'll be getting on a new Haswell tablet. Last year's Intel HD4000 integrated graphics were a nice bump up from the previous HD3000 graphics, but weren't as good as higher-end dedicated graphics options from Nvidia and AMD.

Wi-Di 4.1 is built into new Haswell processors. Wi-Di, Intel's wireless display technology for beaming video and sound to a TV or monitor, has been around for several years, but the latest version features less lag and a new touch-friendly interface for touch PCs. Of course, you'll still need to find a TV or plug-in adapter that's compatible with Wi-Di. Also, according to Intel, fourth-gen Haswell ultrabooks will have faster wake-from-sleep times (under 3 seconds) and perceptual computing interfaces built in, using the Webcam and microphone to record gestures and voice. How those will work remains to be fully seen, but were teased at CES.

Intel is making touch screens a requirement on all fourth-gen Intel Core i-series ultrabooks. Now, that doesn't mean all slim laptops will be touch-enabled; it just means that those that don't won't be called "ultrabooks." Expect the majority to be touch, especially as prices drop, but a good handful of PCs will likely stick around without any touch at all.

If you're considering an ultrabook or tablet and want really good battery life or graphics, then yes, those gains could be worth waiting for. For mainstream laptops, that remains to be seen. You're always better off getting newer hardware, but the difference in a larger laptop might not be as dramatic. As always, you could try buying a laptop with a last-gen Intel processor online and see if there are any discounts.

Prices of these systems will vary, of course, but Intel says two-in-ones, meaning those ultrabook/tablet convertibles, sporting a fourth-gen dual-core Haswell processor could cost as little as $399 by the holidays. Most PCs will probably cost the equivalent of what the previous systems did.