HP EliteBook 8460p

It starts with the lid latch. Where other business laptops offer a small, flimsy latch or, worse, make you scrabble with your fingernails at a nonexistent one, the HP EliteBook 8460p ($1,239 direct) has a big, burnished button that unlocks the securely latched lid. It's the first of your daily exposures to the 8460p's solid construction and classy design.

We don't say "solid construction" lightly?like other EliteBooks, the 8460p is a business-rugged system, built to withstand military tests for shock, vibration, dust, and heat. It's not as invulnerable as fully rugged systems such as the Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 ($4,843 street, 3.5 stars) or Dell Latitude E6420 XFR ($5,612 direct, 3.5 stars), but it's built to shrug off the scuffs and bumps of travel?along with inadvertent liquid spills, thanks to a spill-resistant keyboard and drain hole in the bottom.

Against that, its sturdy construction makes the 8460p a bit bulkier and heavier than other 14-inch laptops such as the Lenovo IdeaPad U400 ($899.99 direct, 4 stars) and Dell XPS 14z ($1,299 direct, 4 stars), and it lacks a couple of up-to-date features such as Intel Wireless Display (WiDi). But it's still a handsome, helpful business companion.

Design
Compared to the basic black of, say, Lenovo ThinkPads, the EliteBook 8460p is a stylish platinum-silver slab measuring 1.3 by 13.3 by 9.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.4 pounds, with an aluminum lid, palm rest, and encircling strip that contains the ports on a black magnesium alloy base. A DisplaySafe rubber frame protects the screen, which has a tiny LED next to the webcam to illuminate the non-backlit keyboard (well, part of the keyboard) in shadowy situations.

The matte-finish 14.0-inch display offers 1,366 by 768 resolution. Though not the brightest or highest in contrast that we've seen, it delivered good detail and color. Audio from the HP's twin speakers?both mounted left of center, one on the front edge and one on the bottom?was loud enough to fill a conference room, but sounded flat.

The slightly concave, island-style keys of the 8460p's keyboard provide a nicely firm typing feel. Except for HP's bizarre keyboard trademark?small up and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right arrows?the layout is fine, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys and three buttons at top right that toggle Wi-Fi, audio mute, and browser launch. The last, when the computer is switched off, opens HP QuickWeb, which satisfies impatient surfers and e-mail checkers by bringing up a Web browser plus widgets such as weather and news headlines without booting Windows.

The glass-topped touchpad is first-rate, with smooth cursor motion, tapping, and gesture control and not-too-stiff, not-too-noisy mouse buttons below?and above, with the latter pair of buttons belonging to the pointing stick located at the intersection of the G, H, and B keys. The concave pointing stick isn't quite as successful as the touchpad (or Lenovo's TrackPoints), but should please users who want a choice of pointing devices.

Features
An old-school 56Kbps modem, along with VGA and Ethernet ports, decorates the EliteBook's back edge. On the right side of the chassis are microphone and headphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports?one an eSATA/USB combo port, the other able to charge handheld devices?and a DisplayPort and Smart Card slot. On the left are two USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, SD/MMC and ExpressCard slots, and the DVD?RW drive.

A docking connector on the bottom completes the hardware connectivity roster, which lacks only HDMI. Similarly, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth check two of three boxes on the wireless shopping list, with Wireless Display, as mentioned, absent. With neither HDMI nor WiDi available, business travelers planning a big presentation with the 8460p had better rely on a VGA projector rather than an HDTV set.

IT managers will like the 8460p's Core i5 vPro processor and TPM security chip, but small and medium as well as large enterprises can benefit from the best part of the 320GB (7,200 rpm) hard drive's software preload: HP ProtectTools, a suite of utilities that steer you through security functions ranging from managing passwords to encrypting data and sanitizing (securely deleting) files. Other software found alongside Windows 7 Professional includes HP Power Assistant for managing power profiles, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a 60-day Norton Internet Security trial. HP stands behind the EliteBook with a three-year limited parts and labor warranty.

Performance
The EliteBook 8460p features a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M processor and 4GB of RAM. The combination won't set any speed records, but makes the HP a peppy performer for the productivity work for which it's designed.

Its PCMark 7 score of 2,065 is 200 to 300 points shy of slugging it out with the likes of the Lenovo U400 and Gateway ID47H07u, but its Handbrake video encoding and Photoshop CS5 image editing times of 1 minute 46 seconds and 3:56, respectively, are extremely competitive with other Core i5-based, 14-inch laptops, though they trail the Core i7-equipped Dell XPS 14z (1:37 and 3:27, respectively).

And though we'd be the last to suggest that a busy business traveler waste her time playing games, we must note that the Radeon HD 6470M graphics powered the HP to playable frame rates at 1,024 by 768 resolution in Crysis (38.3 fps) and Lost Planet 2 (31.3 fps). Our biggest disappointment in benchmark testing was that the 8460p balked at our MobileMark 2007 battery rundown test, obliging us to fall back on our DVD simulation test of looping a two-hour MP4 video from the system's hard disk. The HP's removable 62Wh battery lasted 5 hours and 1 minute with screen brightness set at 50 percent.

Compared with the Editors' Choice pair of the Acer TravelMate 8481T-6440A and Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5), the HP EliteBook 8460p is a little heavy and short on battery life. But even with the extra weight of its semi-rugged construction and the lack of those laptops' HDMI and WiDi, the EliteBook 8460p is a first-class business laptop. It's attractive, with a great typing and touchpadding experience, and built with security in mind.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE:
Compare the HP EliteBook 8460p with several other laptops side by side.

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Penultimate (for iPad)

Apple's iPad gives you numerous ways to take notes, from typing on the virtual keyboard to writing on the touchscreen with a stylus or your finger. The note-taking app Penultimate (99 cents), recently purchased by the note-syncing and storage app company Evernote, is one of the best iPad note-taking apps around. It's fast, friendly, flexible, and at less than a buck, a bargain, all reasons it's an Editors' Choice. Using the app is second nature because it's nearly the same as doodling in a paper notebook. While the app's touch-based sophistication will no doubt impress consumers, when paired with a touch stylus like the Kensington Virtuoso ($24.99), Penultimate can scale to the professional demands of engineers, architects, and industrial designers. Not to mention that the app is optimized for the new iPad's high-resolution retina display.

The Penultimate iPad app doesn't have a keyboard, so it's not useful for typing notes. And it isn't quite as feature-rich as our other Editors' Choice Note Taker HD ($4.99, 4.5 stars)?although the latter costs five times as much. (For more recommendations, see "Note-Taking Apps for the iPad.")

Broad Strokes
Penultimate's interface looks familiar, though if there's any uncertainty, an interactive walkthrough takes just a couple of minutes to complete. You write in a virtual notebook, filled with blank, grid, or lined pages. The tools, a pen?fine, medium, or broad tipped, in ten shades?and eraser follow your finger or stylus across the page. New pages appear when you flip forward by touching the top corner of a page. Flipping between pages is nearly as smooth as thumbing the pages of a physical book, a testament to the app's speed.

Also worth mentioning are two controls through which you can improve usage. From the settings,you can move the toolbar?buttons for clearing a page, writing, and erasing?from the bottom of a page to the top. There's also a clever feature called Wrist Protection, which, automatically disregards stray marks from a resting wrist. Sometimes, especially when doodling, Wrist Protection can be overly protective, ignoring quick swipes, but when it comes to writing, it's a must.

Finger Painting
Penultimate organizes your work in terms of "Notebooks." Accessing different notebooks is as easy as returning to "My Notebooks" and swiping through the covers. Inside a notebook, you can create as many pages as you like. Unlike a notebook that comes in one style?blank, lined, or grid?with Penultimate, you can alternate between the three paper background styles. An in-app connection to The Paper Shop allows you to buy additional paper styles, such as sheet music paper, should you choose. A few are free, but most cost about a dollar.

If you make mistakes, as you will at first while getting used to writing with your finger or a new stylus, you can use either an eraser or an "undo" button. Multiple undos are supported, thankfully, and a redo button lets you toggle back if you undo too many actions.

The Penultimate iPad app doesn't have handwriting-to-text OCR, as the app Notes Plus ($7.99) does. So if you write by hand, the text stays in your handwriting, for better or worse. The iPad display doesn't tent to make handwriting look any worse than it already is, and if anything, smooths it slightly. Penultimate is fine for quick notes, and amazing for sketching or mind-mapping, but we wouldn't recommend it for heavy writing.

Art Gallery
Whether you're sharing in real time through a projector, distributing sketches as PDFs, or backing up files in iTunes, Penultimate is a capable companion. If you're looking to collaborate with colleagues, you can connect your pad to a projector via the Apple iPad VGA Adapter ($29). You can also share sketches via email. From inside a notebook, you can select either page or a full notebook to be attached as either a standard PDF or the proprietary .pen format.

Exported PDFs look great. There's even an option to include the paper background image, or convert it to flat white. You can import image files into your notebooks and mark them up with notes or just place them on a page and resize them however you want. Penultimate integrates well with Dropbox, Evernote (Penultimate is now owned by the company Evernote), and iTunes.

Your Last Pen
Penultimate for iPad, a PCMag Editors' Choice, is an excellent and ridiculously inexpensive note-taking app that is especially handy for those who have to sketch diagrams and images in their notes. Typists will lament the lack of a keyboard and should stick to Note Taker HD, our other Editors' Choice, instead. Tight integration with Dropbox and Evernote, two big players in the cloud syncing space, given Penultimate a little more utility than it would otherwise have on its own. Now that the product has been picked up by Evernote, we're excited to see what's in store next for this capable and already impressive app.

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Tune Your Guitar with the Power of the Sun

This Solar Guitar Tuner from ThinkGeek has a solar panel to keep its batteries recharged.? The TASCAM TC-15 chromatic tuner has needle, strobe, fine, meter tuning modes, with twelve tone equal temperament tuning and a detection accuracy of within one cent (one hundredth of a semitone).? Tune the guitar by plugging it into the Solar [...]

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HTC ThunderBolt software update v2.11.605.19 710RD now available OTA

HTC Thunderbolt owners have had a bit of a rough ride thus far when it comes to software updates. Now though, Verizon is pushing out the latest non Ice Cream Sandwich update to address some issues that have long been bothering folks. The update shows as v2.11.605.19 710RD and here's what Verizon states is corrected:

• Device is enabled with the Wireless Alerting System.
• Device now supports Cisco Any for better VPN functionality.
• Improved data connectivity.
• Improved device stability will decrease device resets.
• Improvements to default mail application allows Yahoo! Mail accounts to receive messages properly.
• Resolved issues with Mobile Hotspot connectivity. + Incoming calls now display the correct state, when applicable.

This particular update appeared in RUU format back in April so you may already have it if you were adventurous and loaded it up. If not, go ahead and check for system updates. It'll either be there waiting or it will be along shortly for you. Need to know more? Folks in the Android Central forums have already gone through it so head on into the forums below to discuss it some more.

Discuss the v2.11.605.19 710RD update in the Android Central Forums, Thanks, Steve!

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Quantum Object Teleported 100 Kilometers by Chinese Scientists [Physics]

Though quantum teleportation has existed for well over 10 years, it has never actually happened at a distance that would be of any use to people in the real world. But for the first time, Chinese researchers were able to teleport a quantum object nearly 100 kilometers, ramping up the real world applications for the idea. More »

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Vodafone takes legal action as govt plans Rs 20000 crore tax ...

A day after the Lok Sabha approved the?Finance Bill?the government suggested that it would raise a tax demand of Rs 20,000 crore on Vodafone, even as the?British companysaid that it was disappointed with move and will take all possible steps to safeguard its shareholders? interests.

?We are studying the legislation as amended, and will take all possible steps to safeguard our shareholders? interests. It would be grossly unjust if, on the basis of legislation passed five years after the event,?Vodafone?were to be charged tax on a gain made by someone else, especially where the Indian?Supreme Court?unambiguously ruled that no tax was payable in India according to the laws of India in force in 2007. Given this clarity, there was no legal basis for Vodafone to withhold tax,? the telecom company said in a press release.

Vodafone had earlier served a notice on the government under the India-Netherlands investment protection agreement, threatening international arbitration if the validation clause inserted in the Finance Bill was not dropped. The government, however, went ahead and got the Lok Sabha to endorse its proposal to amend the?Income Tax Act?from 1962 in a bid to tax overseas acquisitions involving interests or assets in India.

The statement came within hours of?finance secretary?RS Gujral?s interview to a television channel where he said that the tax department will make a claim of over Rs 20,000 crore. The income tax department has maintained that it would have to pay Rs 7,900 crore as capital gains ?as an agent? of?Hutch, whose stake it had bought five years ago. In addition, Gujral said the company will have to pay another Rs 7,900 crore as penalty and interest, which at that time had been computed at Rs 4,300 crore.

Referring to the validation clause in the Finance Bill, the finance secretary said, ?Based on that, whatever has been the demand stands validated. Consequently the demand, the interest and the penalty, those orders would stand validated. Once the Finance Bill is passed, perhaps the show-cause notice would require the interest amount to be updated because the interest calculation was up to an earlier period, and then taken forward.?

On its part, Vodafone said it was disappointed as ?despite very widespread concern in India and internationally, the government has not seen fit to propose amendments to address the uncertainty caused by retrospective tax legislation?.

The company, however, said that it remains committed to India and cited the Rs 50,000 crore it had invested since entering the market in 2007 and said it had paid over Rs 29,000 crore in taxes. To underline our commitment for the long term, despite making considerable investments over the past five years, Vodafone has yet to take a single rupee out of the country.

TOI

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Romney hopes gay marriage won't be used to raise money (Los Angeles Times)

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The overreaction to Sen. Richard Lugar's primary defeat (Los Angeles Times)

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CTIA 2012: a look back at our favorite devices

CTIA 2012 is wrapping up and we thought we'd spend a few minutes reminiscing about some of the more interesting devices we had a chance to see for the first time or that were launched here. Unfortunately for us -- and thereby for you, too -- the show lacked the bite we've seen at previous events, in fact it barely registered a nibble. We did catch up with five products we'd like to highlight so follow on after the break for our recap.

Continue reading CTIA 2012: a look back at our favorite devices

CTIA 2012: a look back at our favorite devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 15:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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#7DaysofSex Challenge Finale Post And Giveaway!

Ok so day seven of our 7 days of sex challenge was obviously sexless, but that didn?t mean we couldn?t do the vow renewal part. And after the week we had, I think we both really wanted to. We sat down and talked the week out, it had certainly been an eventful one and was life changing. Though I wouldn?t say we said vows like in our wedding, we did talk about how far we have come since we met. We were 19, young, and had the world ahead of us. Now at 29 and 30, with 8 years of marriage under our belt, we still have so much ahead of us, but our future is much more planned ? less sporadic. And that includes our sex life. I think when you start off so young you go through huge changes, and sometimes you grow in different directions. It doesn?t mean you love each other less, but you become different people. So growing in a relationship and learning about each other is a continuous process. We have gone from college students, to an engaged couple (in college), married (in college, and that was a challenge), to graduates with real jobs, [...]

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From "Merkozy" to "Merde"? (Americablog)

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Divided Congress likely to agree on student loans (reuters)

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