If flat-screen TVs, cameras or printers had ruled previous tech bazaars in Singapore, then this year’s IT Show is surely being taken over by an overwhelming range of ultrabooks.

The latest craze among laptop makers to go really slim, yet retaining most of the power of a full-fledged machine while keeping costs relatively low, means that buyers are spoilt for choice when shopping for a PC for both work and play.

We’ve all seen how nice the first wave of ultrabooks from Asus and Lenovo are from last year. The next wave, from Acer’s Aspire Timeline Ultra to HP’s stunning Envy 14 Spectre, brings even more choice.

Here are a few to check out as you make your way through the crowds at the IT Show at Suntec City this weekend. …

If you’re a fan of Dell’s Alienware range of “bling-in-on” gaming desktops, you’d be happy to hear that the PCs now come with Intel’s top-end Core i7-3960X or Core i7 3930K six-core CPUs in Singapore.

On the new Alienware Aurora R4 desktop, the LGA2011-based CPUs are water-cooled, and factory-overclocked to between 3.9GHz and 4.1GHz as well, which seem alright, unless you’re the type who regularly pour liquid nitrogen into your PC for extreme speed.  …

What do you do with your printer toners after they run out of ink?

For most of us, it’s straight to the trash for these spent cartridges. But did you know that they can be recycled and re-made into useful products?

To encourage such a practice, five major printer brands – Brother, Canon, Dell, Epson, and Lexmark – have come together in a joint initiative to offer collection points for these used inks and toners.

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Dell is making a dash for the enterprise tablet market with the Latitude ST, a 10-inch Windows-based slate powered by an Intel Atom Z670 processor.

If you are wondering why this gizmo runs Windows and not Android, it’s because most companies are hardcore Windows users who can continue using the same Windows-based business software on the new tablet. …

You don’t see many impressive laptops every day, but the new Dell Inspiron 13z managed to evoke that very sentiment from us when we saw it last week. Not because it’s particularly good-looking or powerful, but because of the price.

For S$899, you can have a decently stylish-looking 13-inch laptop with an LED HD screen (1366 x 768), 2^nd-generation Intel Core i3 chips, 2GB of RAM, SRS Premium Sound HD and USB 3.0 ports. 320GB of storage space might not be enough for some, but at 7,200 rpm it’s at least guaranteed to be fast.

All in a package that’s under an inch thick and weighs in at 1.76kg.

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When some Microsoft folks recently asked me how users and techies felt about its upcoming Windows Phone 7 OS, I told them “you’re lucky to still be in the news”.

Until the past few weeks, when favourable first-looks of Microsoft’s totally rebuilt smartphone OS came online, the only OSes that anyone was talking about were Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

For an example of how fast a dominant OS can fall in interest level, look at Nokia’s Symbian OS that now powers most of its phones, as it transitions to the more advanced MeeGo. Who thinks anything great of Symbian now?

And compared to Nokia, Microsoft was worse off a few months ago – it only showed glimpses of what Windows Phone 7 was about at February’s Mobile World Congress and nothing more.

So, it was with a bit of surprise when I saw how well Windows Phone 7 was built, during a hands-on preview at the Microsoft offices here in Singapore last week.

Having lost crucial market share to Android and iOS, Microsoft has clearly done the right thing by building its new OS from ground up. Gone are the clunky “halfway house” touch offerings on Windows Mobile 6.5. Absent too is any lag that you get while moving around menus. In fact, pretty animations accompany most actions – without slowing things down. …

More flat-screen TVs, portable hard disks, printers and laptops were what I expected when I joined the mass of humanity that had congregated at the IT Show at Suntec Singapore yesterday.

Arriving just before noon, I could still find many lots in the carpark. And there weren’t so many people carting away large-screen TVs and printers on trolleys. Is it because everyone already has two TVs and three printers at home, thanks to spending crazily at previous shows?

My tiredness of the bargain-hunting, however, soon disappeared when I saw how cheap these new Intel Core i3 and i5-based laptops were going for.

I’m talking about prices from S$999 for an entry-level Dell Inspiron with a 14-inch screen. Cute with bright colours like cherry red and ice blue, it comes with enough horsepower from the dual-core processor to crunch everyday work. It helps too that Windows 7 now doesn’t suck up as much resources as Windows Vista previously. …

If you haven’t checked out Alfred’s post on the first day, do so!

I was a man on a mission at this PC Show as I was looking to replace my old cranky desktop, which had parts of it dying and failing on me over a period of six months. An old hard disk was the first to go (trashed), followed by a stuttering video card (repaired) and now the DVD drive has totally gone kaput. Can’t blame the old dear; the machine is a cobbled monstrosity of some very old parts mixed in with new ones that has lived quite a rich and long enough life.

So at the show I was looking mostly at desktops and netbooks (tempted to get one even though my old laptop is still perfectly fine — a typical geek itch), when I came across very cool touchscreen PCs at both the HP and Dell booths. I’ve been to the last three IT fairs, and this is a new product I haven’t seen at a fair before.

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