Normally when I review a laptop, I spend most of my time on performance and design – how it looks, how it feels to hold and type on, how it performs under various workloads.  Today’s post on the MSI GX640 gaming laptop is a bit different, because I wanted to focus on MSI’s implementation of Windows 7 Device Stage.

For those of you not familiar with Device Stage (I suspect most of you are), it’s a new feature in Windows 7 that makes it easy to find the things you want to do with your devices on your PC – basically, a a multi-function version of Autoplay that displays all the applications, services, and information related to your device.  To access the device stage experience: click Start, then Devices & Printers, from the Devices and Printers folder, you’ll see all of the devices connected to your PC.

While Device Stage is typically used by device manufacturers for things like cameras, MP3 players, and printers, MSI is taking advantage of it to make managing your PC extremely easy.  Unlike most manufacturers who typically pre-load their machines with a bevvy of house-made applications to set up preferences, configure power management, and update drivers, MSI has has customized Windows 7 Device Stage to allow users to easily access system settings, open the Network and Sharing Center, modify keyboard, audio, and other hardware settings, get easy one-click access to the user manual and to MSI support, and keep their MSI drivers and software up to date.

When I first heard about what MSI is doing with device stage, I wasn’t sold on it – I’m used to working in different applications and Control Panel windows to manage PC settings, and I’ve never thought of that process as difficult or cumbersome.  After using the GX640 for a few days, though, I started to realize how nice it was to have everything in one place. 

In terms of performance, the MSI GX640 doesn’t disappoint.  Mine was loaded with a Core i5 processor, powerful NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250M graphics, 4GB or RAM – although it came pre-loaded with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium, so I couldn’t use all 4GB.  Even with the RAM limitation in place, I had an easy time playing my standard test loads of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Street Fighter IV, and running standard apps like Office 2010, TweetDeck, Internet Explorer 8, and the Windows Live Suite was a breeze.

MSI did a nice job of making the GX640 look and feel like a high-power gaming rig.  It’s big with a 15” 1680 x 1050 screen, and is trimmed with red paint and lots of brushed aluminum.   Not quite as intimidating as an Alienware M15x or my Origin EON 18, but still more aggressive than your average 15” laptop.  It just looks like it means business.  My favorite design touch on the GX640 was the aluminum palm rest with the laser-cut mouse buttons.  It’s an aesthetic choice that I really like.  My only gripe with the system is that its heavy – it weighs nearly 6lbs and has a monster power brick that weighs another 1- 2lbs.  While that’s not a deal breaker for a guy my size who’s used to carrying a big backpack full of tech gear, it could be awkward for a smaller user. 

Overall, I liked the GX640 more for everyday stuff and its great implementation of Device Stage than for its gaming prowess (which is undeniably formidable, I’m just spoiled by that Origin!).  It’s a capable laptop and shows the power of a great piece of hardware taking advantage of Windows 7’s unique features.

Have a question about this or any other PC?  Post a comment, hit me on Twitter or Ask Ben Anything via email.  Your question might appear in my monthly Ask Ben Anything Q&A column.

“Whoa.  This thing is freakin’ gorgeous.”

That’s the first thing I said when I unboxed my new ASUS U43Jc, affectionately known as the “U Bamboo”.  More than almost any other laptop I’ve ever used, this laptop is truly striking. The engineers and designers at ASUS caseback and palmrest are made entirely of natural, sustainably grown bamboo, which ASUS tells me can grow over two feet in a single day.  Talk about a renewable resource! Even the trackpad and mouse buttons are overlaid with bamboo, so when open, the machine has a clean, unbroken feel – a big plus for a minimalist like me. Working with a hard grass like bamboo is tricky, but ASUS has done an excellent job of blending it with brushed aluminum (the keyboard body) and polycarbonate (display frame, undercarriage). Together they make the U Bamboo look more like a piece of fine furniture than a PC.

I’ve mentioned how much I like ASUS’ PCs many times before, particularly the ASUS UL30vt that I carry with me on trips. From unboxing to shut down, the U Bamboo reaffirmed my appreciation for ASUS’ gear. Inside is an Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 500GB 5400rpm hard drive, and NVIDIA GeForce G310M discrete graphics, which are instantaneously switchable to integrated Intel HD graphics using NVIDIA’s OPTIMUS technology.  If you’re not familiar with OPTIMUS, you need to be – it allows you to toggle between GPUs instantly with zero flickering and maximum battery life.  Totally awesome.  For more info on just how awesome, check out Brandon’s post on the tech.

Aside from the graphics, the U Bamboo has the usual suspects in terms of drives and ports; DVD super-multi, USB, ethernet, VGA and mic/headphone.  There are a few surprises, though.  First, the ASUS U Bamboo is one of the first laptops to offer a USB 3.0 port for wicked fast data transfer!  There aren’t a lot of USB 3.0 devices out there yet (mostly external hard drives) but from the ones I’ve used, there is a noticeable difference in speed.  Second, the ASUS U Bamboo series features Intel Wireless Display technology, which I first discussed when I reviewed the Toshiba E205.  WiDi is really cool – it allows you to remotely project your entire display to any monitor or TV (you’ll need a receiver, of course).  To see what it’s all about, hit my hands-on with the E205 and watch the video.

Battery life was very good, netting me about 8 hours of real use over the weekend.  A lot of that has to do with ASUS’ highly customizable “Power4Gear Hybrid” application and “Super Hybrid Engine” that go a long way to helping you squeeze every second of uptime out of the battery.  I normally don’t like these types of apps since Windows 7 does an excellent job of power management out of the box, but these are great at giving you a huge spectrum of control, from “Just do it for me” to “I want to control every little aspect of power management, from processor state to device activity”.  That flexibility is what Windows is all about – tailoring your experience to be exactly what you want it to be.

In the limited time I’ve had to play with the U Bamboo, I’ve been impressed by its beauty and brawn.  Mostly by its beauty, though; this is a PC that looks less like a computer and more like a work of art.  It’s well worth a look if you’re on a mission to up your style game or looking to add a “coffee table laptop” that matches your furniture. That’s how I’ll be using mine, since the U Bamboo matches the wood in my living room perfectly!  And given today’s offer - you can get it through Amazon.com for $999 with a $150 gift certificate to use towards another purchase - it’s a hard deal to pass up.

Have a question about the U Bamboo or any other PC?  Post a comment, hit me on Twitter, or Ask Ben Anything via email.  Your question might appear in my monthly Ask Ben Anything Q&A column!

Yes, I stole the headline from Conan the Barbarian.  But after using the Origin EON 18 gaming rig for the last few days, it’s the only way I could accurately depict just how mercilessly powerful this PC is.

Not familiar with Origin?  Don’t worry – up until a few months ago I hadn’t heard of them either.  So who are they?  In short, they’re a Miami based system-builder that’s entirely focused on super-high-end gaming PCs.  Their founders were instrumental in the launch of Alienware several years ago, and they’re continuing that “we-build-machines-that-will-melt-your-face-off” mentality with the monster EON laptop line.    What I’m loving about Origin as a company is that when they say custom, they mean it.  No matter what you want in a machine – a particular motherboard, graphics card, SSD, memory chips, paint job, etc. – you can get it.  Nothing is off limits. 

First off, this machine is BIG.  No, wait…big isn’t an adequate word.  Huge would be better.  Monstrous would be even better than that.  The Origin EON 18 is a crazy 17” wide, 11’ high and 3” deep and weighs over 10 lbs and stretches the boundaries of what you can legitimately call a “laptop” – let’s just say you won’t be using this on your tray table in coach!   Here’s a shot of the EON next to the smallest PC in my arsenal, the 8” Sony VAIO P:

The screen is a glossed 1080p with color depth that rivals my LCD HD TV, and inside is a full arsenal of top-of-the-line specs.  Here’s what my EON is packing:

• Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M (Windows Experience Index scores of 6.6 for both desktop and gaming graphics).  The card is huge and has both a DVI and HDMI port attached.  Since I ordered mine, Origin has started offering the latest NVIDIA GTX 480M cards, as well as a DUAL ATI Radeon HD 5870 cards running in Crossfire mode.
• Processor:  Intel Core i7-820 CPU (WEI score of 7.2).  I went for the 820, but you can spec an EON all the way up with a Core i7-940 Extreme.  That’s an extra $576, but its as big and heavy as you can go on proc. 
• Memory:  8GB of DDR3 RAM.  Self explanatory.  If you need more memory than this, you’re more of a power user than I am.
• Storage:  256GB Crucial RealSSD.  I *only* put one in here…but you can spec it with up to three for a over 750GB of SSD storage.  Origin will run them independent, or RAID 0 or 1 on your request.  If you go that route, be ready to drop an extra $2000+!  I should also note that you can go with regular HDDs as well – and use them to max your machine out with 2.75TB of space.  That’s just plain silly.
• Ports, etc.:  A full compliment of the usual ports and radios – Wireless B/G/N, Bluetooth 2.1, 4 USB ports, microphone & headphone ports, eSATA and a TV tuner round things out.  TV looks GREAT on that killer 1080p screen!

Performance on the Origin is exceptional.  In my stopwatch tests it crushed all comers (i.e., every other PC in my office) with a blazingly fast 1-second sleep/resume, and cold boot took only 24 seconds.  Full shut down was super fast as well and took just a hair over 7 seconds.    In every test I threw at it the Origin performed flawlessly.  Blu-Ray discs looked amazing, and day-to-day stuff ran smoothly with zero lag.  I tried to push the system, running Avatar in Blu-Ray at the same time as 10 tabs in IE (3 with Flash video), TweetDeck, Almost the entire Office 2010 suite (Word 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Excel 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010), Zune, Office Communicator, MSN Messenger, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Sync and Digsby Messenger, and I just couldn’t slow the system down. 

My gaming tests produced the same results – my usual test games of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Street Fighter 4 ran beautifully.  I ran both games in full screen mode at full frame rate and didn’t see a single lag or flicker.  Street Fighter was REALLY fun to play on this guy…it felt like I was 13 years old again, playing the stand-up game at the Challenge Arcade in my hometown of Wyomissing, PA.

Beyond the “speeds and feeds” I’m really impressed with Origin’s industrial design and build quality. What stands out for me most is the all-glass trackpad and palmrest that’s completely smooth and unbroken, and the electroluminescent volume control (Which is “swipable” – just drag your finger across to change the sound level), hotkeys, and trackpad outline.  It gives the machine a high-tech look that says “nerd” as much as it says “sophisticated”.  All in all, a very nice balance of form and function.  Speaking of function, the Origin features a full keyboard + number pad, and has 8 dedicated “Gamekey” hotkeys which you can program to perform specific functions in specific games.  It’s a very nice touch that will be very useful if you’re a power gamer. 

All of this power does not come cheap.  My custom Origin cost nearly $5500 to produce (they start at $2177), and go way up from there.  That being said, it is hands-down one of the finest gaming rigs I’ve ever used – and the free lifetime support they offer on all of their systems is pretty nice, too.  If you’re a serious gamer and you want the best, Origin needs to be on your short list. 

For those of you who are regular readers of my posts, you know that I’ve waxed poetic about the ASUS UL30vt a few times. Those mentions generated a lot of questions, so I wanted to dig a little deeper into the machine that I said I loved so much, I felt like I was cheating on my wife.

The ASUS UL series comes in 4 sizes, the 12” UL20vt, the 13” UL30vt that I’m reviewing today, the 14” UL80vt, and the 15” UL50vt. Their name comes from Asus’ declaration that with these laptops, you have UnLimited possibilities (get it?), and with the features, battery life, design and price that these PCs pack, they’re telling the truth.

The thing I love most about the Asus UL30vt is its breakthrough battery life. ASUS touts up to 12 hours of battery life, and I can tell you from real-world, everyday use for more than a month, that figure isn’t marketing BS. After I unplug from a full charge I often get 10-11 hours of hard use out of my UL30vt – more than enough to outlast an average work day. That’s head-and-shoulders above most laptops and good enough that I’ve been able to take it to 3 days’ worth of meetings between charges.

Typically, if you’re getting massive battery life it’s at the sake of power (think netbooks – they get great battery life, but they’re not nearly as powerful as a “traditional” laptop.) That’s not the case for the Ul30vt. Under the hood is a Core2Duo ULV processor (an SU7300), 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a huge 500GB HDD. The UL30vt also features switchable graphics which goes a long way towards optimizing for peak performance or stretching battery life. ASUS’ “Power4Gear Hybrid” utility automatically toggles between Intel HD Integrated Graphics a dedicated NVIDIA® GeForce® G210M graphics card, which while not the highest-end NVIDIA notebook GPU is more than powerful enough to play mid-range games and watch HD video. There’s a button to switch manually between the two, and of course you can configure your power settings to work off either GPU depending on the circumstances. I set up mine to always work on integrated graphics since I use the UL30 as a travel machine, and as such am primarily concerned with staying up and running for as long as possible.

ASUS didn’t skimp on industrial design either. All UL models are available in a brushed silver or black aluminum finish, feature a multi-touch trackpad, and an island keyboard. The display puts out a standard 1366 x 766 with a ultra-glossy finish. And I do mean ultra-glossy – it’s brilliant in an office, but can be a bit hard to read in bright light. Weight is good at 4.6lbs, so it’s a breeze to carry around in my brand new medium Timbuk2 custom laptop messenger (note the colorful addition by my 20-month-old daughter/budding artist, Audrey).

If you’re shopping for an ASUS UL30vt, it’s priced VERY reasonably – I’ve seen them as low as $693 online. That’s a pretty low price for a machine of this caliber.

As I said before, I love my UL30vt – although I am currently having a pretty intense fling with my Sony VAIO Z – and highly recommend it if you’re in the market for a machine that will keep you running all day long.

Have a question about this or any other PC?  Post a comment, hit me on Twitter, or Ask Ben Anything via email.  Your question might appear in my monthly Ask Ben Anything Q&A column!

It’s family time here at Ask Ben Anything! Not just because my son Evan James was born on June 30^th, but also because this month I got literally dozens of questions that began “I’m looking to get my mom/dad/brother/sister/boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/etc. a brand new PC and am having some trouble picking one…”. So I thought I’d share a few that were representative of the types of questions that I got over the last few weeks.

Remember that if you have any kind of PC buying question, you can Ask Ben Anything by finding me on Twitter @BenThePCGuy, leaving a comment on one of my posts, or emailing me at benthepcguy@live.com.

Hey Ben -

My brother is looking for a laptop that meets the following reqs:

1. Cheap, as in, $300 or UNDER. (this is probably the biggest req, so I put it first. )

2. Screen size of 14" or greater.

3. Processor and RAM at least 1.5 ghz and 1 GB, respectively.

- Thomas S.

$300 means you’re going to be almost exclusively looking at netbooks, but since they all run Windows 7 beautifully, that shouldn’t be a deal breaker. I’ve recently grown fond of the Gateway LT210 series and I recommend you check them out – they look great, perform well, and are right in your brother’s price range. If you can get him to go up just a bit to the $500 range, you can get some really great full-size machines. I’d first have him check out the Acer Timeline 5810, 4810 and 3810 series. I reviewed them a few weeks ago and was impressed by their performance-to-price ratio. We also schlepped one of the 5810’s to our press event last month, where it was very well received. You might also want to look at the HP G62.  It’s got a Core i3 processor, sharp design, a very nice display, and it runs right around $500. My mother-in-law just got one and I really liked it when I played with it. …and by “played with it” I mean “was conscripted to set it up for her.”

My sister is in the market for a new laptop and needs something sturdy (can handle being tossed around a bit) and optimized for entertainment (music, TV, movies, photos). She is willing to spend up to $1,000. Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance!

- Julia K

At that price you have lots of options, and all of our recent offer machines – the Sony VAIO EB, the Toshiba e205, or the HP dm4 – meet your criteria. The latter is the one I’m most intrigued by right now because it has switchable graphics and a really slick laser-etched aluminum case. All are under $1000 and very solid machines with big drives, Core i5 processors, and nice, bright screens. The Asus UL80vt, the big brother of the UL30vt that I’ve been carrying as my main travel machine for the last few weeks is also a good bet. It also has switchable graphics, a big 500GB drive, and gets 10+ hours of battery life.

Then again….

If you want REALLY sturdy, go with a ruggedized laptop. I’m a devotee of the Panasonic ToughBook 30 and the Dell E6400 XFR. Both are shock, water, dust and impact resistant, and feature fully armored cases and crack resistant screens. They’re used mainly by professionals in heavy industry, law enforcement and the military, but they’re available for moms to purchase as well.

My mom is looking at iPads, but uses a Windows 7 PC for work and loves it (she’s a teacher). She wants something she can travel with (they live in Ecuador, so lots of traveling), that’s super light so she could answer email if she wanted, listen to music, read eBooks and watch TV shows.

Is there a sub $1000 (or around that price point) netbook or super lightweight PC you’d recommend? She likes the idea of a touch screen for the ebooks, but that isn’t a deal breaker.

- Beth N.

If lightweight is key, netbooks are always a good bet. I just got my hands on an HP Mini 311 which has NVIDIA ION graphics inside, meaning it’s very capable of handling movies and recorded TV shows. If you go to full-size lappies, I’m a new fan of the just-released Toshiba r705. It’s under $1000, has a Core i5 processor, and Toshiba bills it as the lightest full-feature laptop ever made (it weighs just over 3lbs.). There’s also Dell’s brand-new Inspiron R series, which are also pretty impressive in terms of specs and video playback and available under a grand. And while it’s (way) over her ideal price point, I can’t leave out the Sony VAIO Z. It’s wicked light, nasty powerful, and super slick.

Thanks again for all of your questions – keep ‘em coming!

NVIDIA has announced a new addition to their GeForce GTX line of graphics cards – the GeForce GTX 460.

Like the rest of the GTX line (based on NVIDIA’s Fermi architecture), the GTX 460 supports DirectX 11. The GTX 460 will play DirectX 11 game titles at high resolution (1920x1200) and supports NVIDIA’s 3D Vision in full 1080P HD. NVIDIA says that the GTX 460 compared to the GeForce 8800 GT provides 4.5x the geometry horsepower and up to 2.6x the gaming performance. The GTX 460 will come in 2 flavors:

• GTX 460 768MB with 192-bit memory interface – Estimated U.S. Price $199
• GTX 460 1GB with 256-bit memory interface – Estimated U.S. Price $229

The GTX 460 768 version is available starting today, the GTX 460 1GB version will be available later this month.

For more information on the GeForce GTX 460, I suggest reading this blog post from NVIDIA’s nTersect blog from GeForce Product Manager Justin Walker. You can also check out the GeForce GTX 460 product page as well.