It’s no hidden knowledge retained by a privileged few that Intel’s push (and rather creation) for “Ultrabooks” comes after increasing pressure from tablets and Apple’s MacBook Airs. The fact that no company could do what Apple did – pack in almost top notch hardware in an impressively small frame with incredible battery life to boot – Intel had to step in with $300M to make OEMs do something about the falling sales of Intel notebook processors.

And since last year we have seen a ton of ultrabooks hit the market. Many have made an impression on us, and despite mimicking some of the aesthetics of the MacBook Air, nothing has really come close to providing that quintessential ‘Apple experience’.  That is until now; the Dell XPS 13 promises to be what we secretly always wanted ultrabooks to be, a MacBook Air with Windows without the high cost.

The Design

So let’s have a look at the XPS 13 and see what it brings to the table. The first thing you’ll notice is that if it weren’t for the Dell logo on the lid, the XPS 13 looks almost exactly like a MacBook Air. The dimensions and the cuts and the sweeping angles look very like an MBA. The other major distinguishing factor comes from the carbon fiber on the back that gracefully wraps the rear end of the XPS 13. Better yet is the small metal flap that hides your Windows 7 serial key behind the XPS logo.

The XPS 13 is designed to look extremely simple, and as such there are hardly any nooks and crannies. The number of ports is minimal, with the power, USB 2.0 and 3.5mm jack on the left, and on the right we have one mini-DisplayPort and one USB 3.0 port. There’s nothing on the back or front side.

Well, there is one cool small strip of white LED light on the front to indicate the power state of the XPS 13. Also, there’s a battery level indicator on the right side, very similar to MacBook Pros (although there it’s shown in green light).

Keyboard & Monitor

Opening up the XPS 13 we’re greeted with a pleasant looking chiclet keyboard with large indented keys. The keyboard is, of course, backlit with white LEDs. The palmrest area is magnesium alloy with a soft felt paint finish that easy on the hands, while the glass touchpad is nice and large, although I’m not a fan of the squishy mouse buttons at the bottom.

The Corning Gorilla glass display feels very sturdy, and is actually easy on the eyes with a rich contrast, but the glossy finish takes away from the appeal during brightly lit conditions. One of the best things about the display was the 1cm black edges, making the 13.3-inch screen look larger than it is. Viewing angles are typical in this class of laptops, with anything over 120° from the sides bringing in the “negative” effect, and if the screen isn’t tilted directly towards your eyes you’ll start seeing dark shades on the top.

Usage

With the Core i5-2467M @ 1.60GHz (Turbo boosting up to 2.30GHz), 4GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory and 128GB SSD the XPS 13 has all the right components to make it good enough for general daily usage. Of the 128GB, only 98.9GB is available after formatting. And after the Windows install and all the bloatware from Dell, just over 73GB is available. Using this with one or two games and a couple of hundred MP3s is fine, but forget storing anything huge as the drive space will be sucked up quicker than you’ll realize.

Overall using the 1.3kg XPS 13 was a pleasure. It’s fairly fast thanks to the Core i5 processor, and the 4GB of RAM is adequate for watching HD movies, doing office work and browsing the net. Heck, weak as the integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics are, I still managed to play DOTA 2 on it, albeit with lowest settings.

That said, the XPS 13 gets fairly hot when under full stress, which I experienced while running benchmarks and playing gamers. The carbon fiber bottom keeps the XPS 13 comfortably warm; however, the center metal plate is too hot to touch directly. HW Monitor showed the chassis maxing out at 85°C while CPU itself touched 85°C. And just when the heavy duty stuff kicks in, the puny fan inside kicks into high gear, which may or may not be irritating depending on your tolerance levels (and whether you’re wearing headphones!).

Benchmarks

Since performance on most ultrabooks remains the same, what I decided to do this time around was to test the performance depending on the power modes. So first I ran PCMark 7 with the XPS 13 set to ‘High Power’ and plugged in. Then with ‘High Performance’, but unplugged. Finally I ran PCMark 7 with the XPS 13 on ‘Balanced’ and unplugged. Running it on ‘Power Saver’ mode results in a performance hit that’s felt even when browsing the internet, so no point in benchmarking in that mode.

Not bad, but we a performance drop of 5.4% when the XPS 13 is unplugged, and a further 7.5% when running in ‘Balanced’ mode. Not too bad, because the battery life I clocked in with ‘Balanced’, browsing the net and watching YouTube HD was just over 6 hours.

Conclusion

The Dell XPS 13 brings nothing new to the ultrabook market, as the basic performance shows. But what it does do, and with a lot of class, is an ultrabook form factor that’s desirable by many. You’re not stuck with different aspects of a design you may or may not appreciate. The XPS 13 is a class act from Dell, and if you ignore the rather liberal inspiration from the MacBook Air, then the aluminum chassis with carbon fiber composite base presents an aesthetically pleasing design. The light weight and 18mm – 6mm thickness is something that makes for an ideal ultrabook. Also, starting at $300 cheaper than a similarly specced MacBook Air, you can’t go wrong with the XPS 13 at all.

Gone is the 14 year supreme reign of Nokia in the mobile world, Samsung has the old king beat. With the announcement of their Q1 results, Samsung has shipped out 93.5 million phones in the previous three months, compared to 82.7 million from Nokia.

Of this shipment, 44.5 million were smartphones, which toppled Apple’s iPhone sales of 35.1 million. These two statistics combined makes Samsung the biggest phone and smartphone reseller in the world.

From these smartphone shipments, the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Note are the top sellers; the mobile division in total growing 86% year on year. Meanwhile their TV business grew by an insane 550%, raking in $9.4 billion.

In a recent interview during the Info Security 2012 event, the CEO of Kaspersky, Eugene Kaspersky talked about Apple’s current state of security, or lack thereof.

“I think they are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” Kaspersky told CBR. “For many years I’ve been saying that from a security point of view there is no big difference between Mac and Windows. It’s always been possible to develop Mac malware, but this one was a bit different. For example it was asking questions about being installed on the system and, using vulnerabilities, it was able to get to the user mode without any alarms.”

Kaspersky’s statement comes at the heels of the Flashback malware that infected up to 600,000 Macs worldwide. And Apple wasn’t exactly the first ones out of the gate to get the fix up, even 3rd party security firms like Kaspersky deploying the fix for Flashback before Apple.

“Apple is now entering the same world as Microsoft has been in for more than 10 years: updates, security patches and so on,” said Kaspersky. “We now expect to see more and more because cyber criminals learn from success and this was the first successful one.”

“They will understand very soon that they have the same problems Microsoft had ten or 12 years ago. They will have to make changes in terms of the cycle of updates and so on and will be forced to invest more into their security audits for the software.”

While Sony and Nintendo are quite concerned about Apple taking a big chunk of the portable gaming market, I think they should be more worried on the non-portable side of gaming. Currently, the PS3 and Xbox 360 are enjoying a large base of hard core gamers but think about this for a second – what’s stopping Apple from entering and eating this market?

Let’s start with the hardware. The new iPad with its quad core GPU is already capable of powering a display that is even higher in resolution than a full HD display. So it is safe to say that that the next version of Apple’s SoC, the A6, will be a fairly capable piece of silicon that should be able to deliver at least the same quality of games that the 7 year old Xbox 360 and 6 year old PS3 currently do. Apple is already using a cut-down version of the A5 CPU on Apple TV so upgrading to a full A6 SoC on the next version of ATV won’t be much of an issue.

The next thing Apple needs is a gaming controller which they obviously don’t have at the moment. However, one of the articles from Anandtech suggested that Apple is indeed working on a gaming controller for iOS. While many people might start thinking in the direction of an iPad or iPhone, remember Apple TV is also based on iOS. Apple can easily utilize Bluetooth for pairing up the controller to Apple TV- maybe even use the latest low powered 4.0 standard already present on the iPhone 4S.

Last and certainly not the least, you need a gaming ecosystem. Guess what? You already have that in the form of App Store- much like Microsoft has Xbox Live and Sony has SEN. Games like Infinity Blade and Epoch are pushing non-casual gaming on the iOS further and further and with studios like EA and Ubisoft, Apple already has support from the gaming industry. In fact, there are rumors of Blizzard entering the iOS market; and then a supposed visit by Tim Cook to Valve adds fuel to the fire, even though Gabe Newell denied it.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who can see all the pieces of the puzzle coming together. At $99, the Apple TV is even more affordable than a $160 Nintendo Wii and becomes an impulse purchase. Games on the App Store are also much cheaper than their console counterparts- yes, I know they are cut-down or alternate versions but last-year devices can play games like Max Payne so imagine what next year’s silicon will bring?

So don’t be surprised if Apple repositions the Apple TV as not just a multi-media player but also a full blown system capable of playing games that are as good as the current-gen consoles games.

According to a report on Emirates 24|7, the iPad 3 will see an official release before April 30 in the UAE.

“Based on information from my sources I have learnt that the new iPad will be brought to the UAE within the next two weeks,” a grey market merchandiser told the website yesterday.

“That’s the reason we are trying to move our remaining stocks at the earliest. But you can never be sure, especially when it’s an apple product the dates are never fixed,” he added.

Grey imports of Apple’s latest tablet is widely available in the region. The prices have surprisingly remained sane, and are already closer – and could be even cheaper – than the official price.

As more of us start relying on cloud storage and bigger corporates start storing our data, the demand for huge storage spaces increases exponentially. This incredibly large amount of data requires an equally large number of hard drives and storage servers to keep everything safe and running steady, with multiple backups in case of failure or data corruption. And we all know how much we hate those! But how much power is going into maintain these data centers? What’s the cost to our environment?

While renewable energy is on the agenda for most companies who want public favor, or indeed are following such courses out of the goodness of their hearts, fossil fuel is still the primary way to power things. And apart from oil, coal is one of the second largest energy provider due to low costs. The adverse effect on Earth’s atmosphere due to burning coal is considerable, in a recent finding reported by Mother Jones. So let’s have a look at some of the top companies whose data centers use the most coal energy according to Greenpeace.

1. Apple: 55.1 percent
2. HP: 49.7 percent
3. IBM: 49.5 percent
4. Oracle: 48.7 percent
5. Facebook: 39.4 percent
6. Microsoft 39.3 percent
7. Twitter: 35.6 percent
8. Amazon: 33.9 percent
9. Rackspace: 31.6 percent
10. Google: 28.7 percent

The full report from Greenpeace can be read here.

In fact, the website’s sources suggest that the meet up could be to discuss an Apple-branded, “Kinect like video game console”. Why would Apple need Valve for it, though? Probably for Steam, which has an active 30 million subscriber base, and a ready-made platform for developers to launch their games on.

Apple seems to be focusing on the gaming-side of things a lot lately. The company was rumored to be developing a controller for its iOS devices, which eventually might be used with console. Valve, too, has been involved in a lot of rumors themselves, with Steambox and an advanced controller reportedly in-works at the development studio. Programmer Micheal Abrash also confirmed development on a wearable-computer, as well.

When Apple released the new iPad recently, the eyes of the whole world were turned towards the quad-core A5X processor and the Retina Display pixels it could push. The price reduction in the iPad 2 mostly went unnoticed; of course, who would look at last year’s tech when the shiny Retina Display is in front?

It’s good to know, however, that Apple hasn’t completely abandoned the iPad 2. With the production if the new quad-core A5X processor, production efficiencies have been brought to older processors as well, and the latest batch of A5 processors have befitted form this.

The new A5 chip is shrunk by almost 40%.

Previously the A5 came on Samsung’s 45nm process, the updated processor uses 32nm as discovered by Chipworks. This basically means a cooler and more power efficient processor as the updated A5 processor requires lesser battery power. Whether this translates directly to improved battery life remains to be seen.

Apart from the iPad 2, the current (third generation) Apple TV also uses this updated A5 processor, although they probably have one core disabled on it. The next logical usage for this processor would definitely be the iPod Touch whose aging design is due for a refresh.

Last week it was reported that over 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback Trojan that exploited a Java vulnerability. Apple was swift to work on the issue, and has deployed a security fix via the OS’s automatic system update.

A post on Apple’s support page contains a link to download a newer version of Java, which fixes the Java exploit and also disables automatic execution of any Java applets. The exploit is one of the biggest every for the Mac platform, and it is highly recommended that users install the patch.

In an exclusive video posted yesterday, Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Chief Rob Schmitz talks briefly about the various steps that go into assembling an iPad at the Foxconn factory in China. The video below shows how the various components of the iPad are assembled mostly by hand, with machines being occasionally used to assist in the assembly. The video also shows the long lines of eager workers who line up outside the plant every day to earn as much as $14 a day.

Schmitz is only the second journalist to be ever allowed into the facility, and is currently filing reports for public radio as well as writing up a blog post on his experiences. Apple came under heavy fire recently for working conditions at its plants, forcing the company to undertake a full investigation and respond to public rumors about long working hours and rumored worker casualties.