Intel

Intel has revved up its mainstream SSD line from the Series 330 to the Series 335, and the company sent over a 240GB model for evaluation (and 240GB is apparently the only capacity it is launching this series with). The new drives feature 20nm NAND flash memory, compared with the 25nm chips in the older series, but Intel continues to use an LSI/SandForce SF-2281 controller with custom Intel firmware. The company uses the same controller in its Series 330 and Series 520 drives.

As the old saying goes: Seeing is believing.

Fujitsu is a veteran in the tablet PC game, and that experience shows to good advantage with the Stylistic Q550 (price as of June 1, 2012, starts at $729; as reviewed, $849). This Windows 7 tablet incorporates an Atom processor, and comes crammed with features--a fingerprint scanner, a smartcard reader, Trusted Platform Module, and a removable battery--that make it especially attractive to business users.

Here comes Ivy Bridge. The Asus Essentio CM6870 is one of the first budget desktops hitting the PCWorld Labs to run one of Intel’s brand-new Ivy Bridge processors and receive testing under the brand-new WorldBench 7 benchmarking suite.

On Tuesday, Apple released an updated line of iMacs, featuring quad-core Sandy Bridge Intel processors and Thunderbolt ports. Macworld Lab has all four standard configuration models, and the results for the $1999 27-inch iMac are in. The results do not disappoint, with the new iMac besting the previous generation of standard-configuration iMacs. The new 3.1GHz iMac even bested the performance of some impressively-equipped build-to-order models we've tested previously.

Intel has pulled back the proverbial curtain on their second-generation Core processors, which were previously known by the codename "Sandy Bridge." The new CPUs are built on a brand new microarchitecture, and feature a number of enhancements, including improved integrated graphics performance.

Fast AES encryption, better scalability, and consistent per-core performance make the new six-core Xeon a worthy successor to Nehalem.

Intel's two new Core i7 CPUs (860 and 870) are mid-range counterparts to its top-of-the-line Core i7 900-series chips, and initial tests (using Intel's new DP55KG motherboard) indicate their performance follows suit. Our early tests also show the new entry-level Core i5 750 is the one to watch when it comes to best bang for your buck.

Intel NAS Performance Toolkit is a NAS test tool that doesn't take a hard drive engineer to understand and use. Because it actually plays back various types of file actions, this tool is much more "real world" than similar offerings.