Benchmarks are the best way to gauge a notebook’s prowess with applications such as office suites, photo and video editors, video players, games, and the like. Aesthetics are another important consideration, because you'll likely be staring at the thing for the next several years. By those measures, Samsung’s $1060 Ativ Book 7 Ultrabook (model NP740U3E-K01UB) is a fine machine. But a notebook must also feel good in your hands—unless you rely on dictation software, you have no other way to use it. And on that score, I found this laptop a major disappointment. ROBERT CARDINSamsung Ativ Book 7 is pretty enough to look at, but actually using it can be problematic for touch-typists. The Ativ Book 7 has a gorgeous brushed-aluminum finish. But if you wear a watch with a metal wristband, take it off before you lay hands on this computer’s keyboard. The noise produced as one metal scrapes the other is enough to curdle a glass of milk into cottage cheese. Reliance on integrated graphics doomed the Ativ Book 7's gaming performance. After my ears recovered from the horror, I once again laid my hands on the home row of the Chiclet-style keyboard. Such shallow-travel keyboards are common among Ultrabooks—they’re practically a necessity to achieve the required thinness—and I’ve touch-typed on more than my fair share of them. But the keys on the Ativ Book 7 travel such a short distance and deliver so little tactile feedback that I found myself constantly making typos. To read this... Continue reading at 'PC World'
[ PC World | 2013-08-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#fair share
In 'The Escape Artists' by Noam Scheiber and 'Confidence Men' by Ron Suskind, President Obama's economic recovery plan and his advisors are in the spotlight, but the books' analyses are off the mark in places.On Oct. 28 and 29, 1929, when the great crash devastated the stock market, Herbert... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#stock market
#hard times
Late New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid writes about insights gained rebuilding the war-ravaged home of his great grandfather in Lebanon in 'House of Stone.'A yearning for home, wherever that may be, is one of many themes that the late New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid so deftly... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#anthony shadid
Controversial political and social issues are examined with an intellectual passion.Thinking the Twentieth Century Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#twentieth century
#timothy snyder
#social issues
In reckoning with her friend's suicide, the author pulls readers into that empty space where loss and grief reside.The Guardians: An Elegy Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#sarah manguso
This is a brilliant collection of writings on politics, social and cultural engagement and literary life.Reading for My Life Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#literary life
#book review
'Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and the How the World Can Finally Overcome It' describes what spread the pandemic and what could rein it in.Tinderbox Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#aids epidemic
This collection of short stories includes the fine 'Frankenwittgenstein,' 'Considering the Bittersweet End of Susan Falls' and uneven others.Hot Pink Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The novel takes place across decades and tells overlapping stories as it tries to piece together a fallen world.Gods Without Men Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#hari kunzru
#takes place
This is a comprehensive biography of the president and an assessment of his leadership qualities on and off the battlefield.Eisenhower in War and Peace Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
In the 2011 Man Booker Prize finalist, the author has pitch-perfect voice and her jazz musician characters have rhythmic conversations.Not unlike its counterpart rock 'n' roll, memorable jazz novels occupy a pretty slim shelf at the local bookstore. Though the music has been gracefully spun into... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#half-blood blues
#esi edugyan
#local bookstore
#roddy doyle
#michael ondaatje
The Web magazine will publish an expanded look at books on the first Saturday of each month, as stand-alone book review sections in newspapers have dwindled. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2012-03-02 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
A creepy professor eavesdrops on a woman's therapy sessions and becomes obsessed with her.By Blood Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
With care and craft, the novelist and essayist seeks to summarize Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 art film 'Stalker,' finding elements that will keep the non- cinéaste onboard.Zona Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#geoff dyer
The death of language is explored via plague-carrying children and their horror-struck parents in a wildly inventive tale by Ben Marcus.Spend too much time with 24-hour news networks and it's easy to feel that exposure to that much talk can make you sick. Taking the idea a few steps further,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#flame alphabet
#ben marcus
In 'Enemies: A History of the FBI,' Tim Weiner ('Legacy of Ashes') offers a scathing indictment of the FBI, before J. Edgar Hoover and since.Each week, the FBI sends reporters an email of "top ten news stories" that it hopes will hit the headlines. The press releases usually highlight crooks... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#press releases
Tracie McMillan takes us to agricultural fields, Wal-Mart and Applebee's, where she works short stints and tries to eat healthfully on meager pay.The American Way of Eating Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
Thomas Mallon's novel deftly paints a picture of 1970s America and adds an imaginative back story to the characters.Watergate Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The author's short stories paint vivid pictures of growing up Filipino American.In a smoke-stained San Francisco hotel room, Felix Starro is making fake blood. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The murder of Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey and a family's violent rise to prominence is given gripping life.On a morning in August 2007, a slender masked man ran up to Chauncey Bailey on an Oakland sidewalk and fired two shotgun blasts at the journalist. The first slug tore through Bailey... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of the Washington Post, sent a memo to his staff announcing, among other changes, that the book reviewers will now be report to the editors of the their respective sections. Brauchli told PW that these moves will not affect the paper's coverage of books. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-08-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book reviewers