Computers

After several years of relative Wi-Fi happiness, I suddenly hit a performance wall with my home network. I happened to have a new Linksys EA 7500 router to test for an upgrade, but the real difference was when I plugged in the Max Stream AC1900+ Wi-Fi Range Extender.

The NuPhy Halo75 is a 75% mechanical gaming keyboard that has 2.4GHz, Bluetooth, and wired connection options.

As we hit the halfway point of summer vacation (for kids), back to school is starting creep closer. For many parents, that’s going to mean a mad scramble to find a laptop for their university, college high school or even elementary school student. But which one to choose? Best Buy alone stocks hundreds… I can’t tell you the perfect laptop for your student —the best advice I can offer is to make certain you understand your student’s requirements, research the options and don’t leave your choice until the last minute when popular models might be in short supply. To help you get started, though, here are my picks as some of the best laptops of the year for back to school.

I had a chance to review the ASUS ZenBook 4K laptop and if you love 4K than this is certainly a machine for you.

Two extremely hot new laptop options are now available for pre-order at Best Buy. The Dell XPS 15 laptop and XPS 12 convertible laptop are ultra thin, built with premium materials, powered by the latest 6th generation intel Core CPUs and feature stunning 4K displays.  

 Looking for a way to add a second display to your PC without blowing your budget? If you have a tablet you can use it to get the second screen advantage while saving space and money.

 Like most people, I was initially confounded by the switch to USB Type-C. The new charging and connectivity platform is appearing in newer smartphones, tablets and notebook PCs as a way to make devices sleeker, more versatile and help them to charge a lot faster. Is this really the one port to rule them all?

As you no doubt know, when it comes to trying to pack the performance needed to undertake serious video gaming in a laptop, it comes down to a very tricky balance between speed and portability. Try to shove too much power in a gaming laptop and for all intents and purposes, it ceases to be a portable PC —heavy, bulky and with little battery life. Go too far in the other direction, though, and you end up with something that’s svelte but unable to play games on anything but the lowest settings. I just spent some quality time with a gaming laptop that manages to strike the perfect balance: the Eurocom M3. It’s a compact, lightweight laptop with the power to chew through pixels and polygons while keeping frame rates high. Eurocom says the M3 is the most powerful 13-inch notebook ever made and everything I’ve seen supports that claim.

 Looking to pick up a PC that can support multiple displays without having to be upgraded or tweaked? If thats the case, then you’ll want to read on.

Chromebooks are one of the fastest growing computing categories. Small, lightweight and inexpensive these Google Chrome OS-powered notebooks have proven ideal for many users including students and small business. They’re great for home too. But what if you want the touchscreen experience that’s become a standard feature on Windows 8 Ultrabooks? You were pretty much out of luck on the Chrome side. Acer has filled that gap quite nicely with the new C720P Chromebook, an 11.6-inch device that combines the advantages of Google’s Chrome OS with a multi-touch display. It’s available now at Best Buy, but if you want a preview of what it’s capable of, I’ve spent some time putting a C720P Chromebook through the paces for a review.