With great excitement I set off to snap pictures of laptop herds, grazing the shelves of the local Best Buy. Sporting my new macro capable camera and memory card, this was going to be a pictorial review that would rival the Discovery channel's �Tribes of the Orinoco�. We all know how bad laptop keyboards are. Cramped with missing keys, these are the trophies I seek.

As I entered the store, the smell of fresh electronics sharpened my senses. I found my first large herd fanned out across Brand Name Gulch. Camera in hand I rushed to the front of the herd knowing I was between them and the only outlet. It took some tricky footwork to position a shot of their Read the rest of this entry…

The word "performance" usually means CPU, memory, disk, or video performance to most people. That's usually what I mean by it too. But after several months of experience with one particular notebook, I've found a component that has destroyed performance more than any other: the keyboard.

When PC Pitstop did a bloatware survey last year, we had several notebook PCs that we couldn't return. I took one of them, the Toshiba Satellite A135, to use as a Windows Vista test system. Initially, I tried leaving all the preinstalled crapware on the system to see how it would perform. After a few weeks of that, I couldn't stand it anymore. At least the crapware situation can be fixed, though, unlike the keyboard.

I hate this keyboard.

Take a look Read the rest of this entry...

Tired of missing the backspace because of a lazy pinky? Need some extra function keys for Gaming? Want to use color to reduce your hunt and peck time? No Problem, make that key any size you want or any function you want. Art Lebedev, of Art Lebedev Studios, is using OLED technology to remedy all the scenarios above and many more. My hardware closet contains at least 12 keyboards so I have no clue how I missed reading about this before now. I do remember some vague comments about OLED technology a few months back, but nothing like what I've read today. Optimus Maximus, you will be mine! Read the rest of this entry...

I'm pretty manic about my laptops. It drives my wife nuts because I need to buy a new laptop every year. The reason is simple - technology. Or better put - Moore's Law. Each year technology evolves, making each new laptop more powerful , lighter, and with more storage and a brighter, higher resolution screen. Man, I love it. Read the rest of this entry...

The initial analysis of our February 2008 Processor Survey results. Read the rest of this entry...

Systems with multi-processors, once found only on servers and other extreme high end performance systems, have found there way into the general consumer arena. The percentage of systems running PC Pitstop's on-line diagnostics and having multiprocessors grew from just over 1% in January 2006 to almost 30% in January 2008. The percentage of portables that have multi-processors has reached almost 40% in January 2008. A comparison of Intel to AMD shows AMD with a slight edge in both desktops and portable platforms as a percentage of their respective number of system with multi-processors. Read the rest of this entry...

Long time no see. What? It's past Ground Hog's Day? Man, I feel like I've been buried in a hole. The reason is because I have been working non stop on a (w)hole redesign of our world renowned Full Tests. We are renaming the service, PC Pitstop OverDrive Beta. Our plan is to run the beta for as long as necessary to weed out any last bugs. The product has already undergone substantial testing, but it is not possible to foresee every situation without a formal and public beta period. Once that is over, our plan is to move our signature Full Tests to OverDrive. Vrooom! Read the rest of this entry...

The initial analysis of our January 2008 Photo Printing Survey results. Read the rest of this entry...

On January 21 2008, David T. Stone of Seattle, Washington was updating and testing a beta video driver for one of his many computers. Continuing his habit of quite a few years, he went to the PC Pitstop Full Test to check the results. No bells, no flashing lights, but that test was the 100 Millionth PC Pitstop Test run since our inception on March 3rd of 2000. Read the rest of this entry...