One of Lenovo’s most hotly-anticipated ThinkPads ever announced will finally make its first retail appearance in Singapore at the PC show this Thursday.

First announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, the ThinkPad Helix is the first ever ThinkPad to come in the tablet plus keyboard dock form factor. And with a starting price of S$2,199, it’s probably the most expensive convertible we’ve seen so far.

So what does the Helix offer with that high sticker price? …

One of the things that has been said about the new Xbox One’s launch earlier this week was that it wasn’t “next gen” enough, that it was just more of the same.

Another charge was that Microsoft was slapping a PC into a nice box and branding it a game console. Both the Xbox One and the rival Sony PS4 unveiled earlier will use AMD x86-based chips similar to PC processors.

All this begs the question, why not get a PC in the living room instead?

…

Ever since the iPhone 4 with its self-styled retina display hit the market, tech companies have been scrambling over each other trying to top each other in the display of their smartphones. Smartphones with 1080p displays are all the rage right now, and even televisions are getting their resolutions bump up to 4K.

Thankfully, laptops are also starting to receive this much-needed upgrade, with Sony’s latest range of affordable laptops shipping with displays of at least 1,600 x 900 pixels. …

Folks who have been holding out for Microsoft’s Surface Pro in Singapore should save up for one when it arrives in stores here by the end of June.

Singapore will join more than 20 other places, such as Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, where the much-watched tablet will be sold, Microsoft said on its blog moments ago. Currently, the Surface Pro is sold in the United States, Canada and China. …

In these tough times, PC makers are still grappling with how much processing power and features to place in their Windows 8 tablets, just to compete with low-cost, low-power iPads and Android tablets.

The Dell Latitude 10 is one example of an either “half empty” or “half full” experience, depending on how you see things.  …

The arrival of touch-screen tablets and other designs with screens that flip, turn or rotate has not revived the fortunes of the ailing PC market.

Instead of providing a much-needed reboot, these Windows 8 machines may actually have made things worse by plunging the market into its steepest ever decline, according to research firm IDC. …

It’s a PC. No, it’s a tablet. No, it’s both.

Not content to let Lenovo and Sony steal the show with humongous desk-bound tablets, ASUS has unveiled its own take on the “coffee table computer” – the ASUS Transformer AiO.

True to its transformer moniker, the computer runs both Windows 8 and Android 4.1, and has both an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and an Intel Core processor. …

Singapore users will finally get their hands on the Microsoft Surface, though only on the less powerful “RT” version, when the company starts shipping its much-touted tablet in more countries this month.

The first Windows tablets from Microsoft, the Surface RT and more powerful Surface Pro, had been positioned as alternatives to Apple’s iPad and rival Android tablets when they went on sale in the United States in October last year. …

PC makers may be fitting all new high-end machines with touch screens and Windows 8, but affordable options are still a key offering.

Starting at S$599, Dell’s latest family of Inspiron laptops are indeed very affordable , with one interesting feature. …

A “lukewarm” response to Microsoft’s Windows 8 has failed to arrest the declining popularity of the PC in 2012, as shipments continued to slip, said research firm Gartner earlier this week.

In a report out on Tuesday, it said more than 90 million PCs were shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012, down 4.9 per cent from the same period a year ago. For the full year, the shipments totalled more than 352 million, a decline of 3.5 per cent from 2011. …