Gadgetory

welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Dan Ackerman at the Computex conference in Taiwan Asus showed off some i popping new laptop tech specifically the to screen no keyboard a I powered project Precog prototypes say that three times fast it's expected to come out next year we'll see we'll see but do you think this has a potential to be the future of laptops now I'm gonna tell you from a historical perspective this is not the first time someone's trying to do a thing where there's a laptop we have a screen where the screen is and you have a second screen where the keyboard usually is and when you want to type on it it puts an on-screen keyboard on there otherwise you can use it from other things Acer was one of these many many years ago that was an interesting kind of novelty item yeah though lenovo 2016 yoga book oh that's that's totally different that's another one like that and that's where they had again it was kind of a small folio and two screens they had Android and Windows versions but but Acer and other companies were doing this many years ago cuz you could type on your iPad they figured oh why do we need to keyboard anymore I've never really worked out I don't know if this one will either the thing I like about it is it kind of looks like those those foldable tablets on the west-world and everyone's like these tablets are great why don't we have these oh here you go here I don't know if they're running Windows 10 on Westworld but what do you think about some of the a RAI features I'm gonna run through two of them right now for instance the laptop knows when your meetings are and conserves battery life accordingly it also sees where your hands are located on the keyboard and moves the keyboard around so you're actually typing properly or it can put different things on that second keyboard screen depending on what you want to do at least hypothetically I don't know how much I would attribute that to AI and more to just good programming you know anything to keep track of your calendar and your meetings and ramp up and down your power usage accordingly I guess that is a good idea although this thing had decent battery life you wouldn't really need that it makes me a little concerned not the battery life if you feel like you have to go through those kind of extraordinary measures but having done a lot of the on-screen typing on previous versions of systems like this it's not great for you know people who write a lot during the day you're right I'm not sure it's really going to work out like that also this thing looks like it's probably gonna be expensive so what's your over under what do you think $2,000 plus oh yeah maybe if it even ever comes out these prototypes sometimes they do sometimes they don't the real value of a prototype like this is it gives you a lot of concepts that could later bleed down into more reasonably priced products definitely at WWDC Apple showed off new restrictions on online tracking tech it added to its Safari browser for instance when you use websites let's say Facebook with buttons for liking or sharing stories Safari will prevent online trackers from capturing that data unless you permitted to me I feel like some of this stuff is long overdue people are getting a lot more aware of privacy issues and it's nice to see that a major company like Apple is getting involved it's an arms race it's a browser arms race right now about who can add the most security and privacy features through their browsers whether it's Chrome or it's Firefox or Safari or even edge for a long time the browser's were competing to display the websites and properties in their full multimedia glory so you'd want to use them and they were playing to the media companies now it seems they are making a play for the consumers because so much of that privacy and data information that we're worried about flows out through that browser yeah absolutely and and last up the embattled Chinese telecommunications manufacturer ZTE agreed to a settlement that would lift a ban on US companies doing business with it ZTE will pay 1.7 billion dollars in penalties the change in fortune appears to be related to the fact that President Trump got involved so I guess good for him if you're a ztk ZTE customer then the company has gotten a lifeline yes so I mean are they actually changing anything and how they do business because of it because right now I just print out my web browsing history every month put an envelope sent it right to China for if I don't know and I think there are a few more shoes to drop related to this so definitely keep an eye out on this area if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNET I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Dan Ackerman thanks for listening 38 seconds over I mean like that's pretty good for us that was a lot of information and we didn't even get through to the Zen Book Pro by the way which ASIS also showed off its got a 5.5 inch screen in the trackpad yeah I mean it's also not the first time we've seen that other laughs I think this stuff is quick you scream laughed had I think a razor in there big 17-inch had something like that but it was never really utilized properly it wasn't a true like Windows second display it could only do certain things but we saw another Reiser prototype at CES this year where it was a laptop though much like this one much like this much like this razor blade out here except for where the touchpad was there was nothing it was a big blank spot like an empty spot and you would take your razor phone and they'd make a very nice phone that nobody bought but it's a nice phone just like how all those other phones out there where there was a notch there is not right right and and you you plug it right into where the touchpad goes and that becomes your touchpad and then this laptop shell becomes basically an Android powered laptop I feel like I would get so distracted though if the touchpad is also a screen that's like telling me stuff yeah you can turn it off you're like what it looks cool in the pictures it looks cool but I don't actually understand what the value of it would be do people want secondary displays that's the question do you want a laptop with another screen that just pops out from the side and has extra stuff do you want what Apple has which is the touch bar which is basically an oled tiny strip second display that's a that's a good question do you want a phone with a screen on both sides there certainly or or you open it up and it's screen screen I mean people are working on all these prototypes under the conception that you want another screen you want that second screen experience but built into your main device is that true it sounds dark new it sounds like no you have no interest in second screen I but at the same time there's this dueling issue that okay maybe I don't think from a practical perspective some of it makes sense but we also complain about the fact that phones all look the same these days or laptops are all very similar and we want to see innovations and hardware so I guess I'm really focused on the fact that like it's the same thing as the movies is that everybody wants something new but we just want the same goddamn rom-com as before battery life yeah just put Sandra Bullock and a bigger battery right exactly that's all we need anyway we should get to questions if we have some Brian yeah let's go ahead and jump into the chat if anyone's got any comments or questions about aces their ZTE or more WWDC even though there isn't a whole lot till to talk about on the couch we have a comment Jean is a fan of you guys says both guys are cute and handsome what it's the beard that's a lie it's the beard okay I'll take it okay good just wanted you to know that figure we could all use a self-esteem booster words I'm completely fine with it I can't wait to show that off from an OT let's talk about quality Dan you could probably floor this one pretty easily since you've tampered with every asus under the Sun a note e says at Asus quality seems poor they have two aces laptops both have serious issues with specifically the monitor and the hinge now what's your experience Picard number what I'm sorry to hear that number two you do this long enough you hear from readers who have similar problems with every brand out there there's always lemons everyone's customer service is awful the only exception is probably if you have Apple care and you go to an Apple store at least they try to make you feel like they're taking care of you and if you buy especially on the lower end the more plasticky laptops that are under $1000 this is definitely they're definitely not designed to last more than a couple of years plastic parts plastic hinges even when you get expensive stuff they get very easily I have terrible luck with this I think for years almost every high-end electronic item I bought had to go back and be replaced it was a clunker yeah but nobody likes in aggregate nobody likes their laptop brand specifically about Asus though do you have a general impression it's tough because they make so many laptops and they at least used to be a white label brand for so many other companies they even made Apple laptops at one point so they definitely have the manufacturing scope and scale and know how if you have an individual laptop or to them that are having a problem you have my deepest sympathy but especially with brands like Asus it's tough to get service yeah unless you got it from like Amazon or Best Buy or someplace and you can just send it back and still within the return which is which is a good idea people should do that let's take one from our old friend Sir enjoy how far youth how far you think would the top grade hardware and futuristic novelty diverge in the laptop market specifically citing Asus has come out with a gaming Beast with the ROG G 703 G Dan yes I mean they do they do a great job at that they actually have some very interesting gaming laptops we just tested the new Zephyrus which is a close cousin of that one I think and that has its super slim when you open the lid a panel on the bottom rises up like this to give it additional cooling so you can crank up that 1070 max-q nvidia graphics card we're seeing almost the opposite in a way and that we're seeing big high-end gaming parts like 1070 and 1080 and video cards now that they have these smaller more efficient max-q versions showing up in slimmer and slimmer laptops which is great this is actually a good example right here this is the new razor blade you can see it's quite it's quite slim and that's a gaming lab this has got a 1070 in it and it's got a 15-inch screen now whereas the older model which was roughly the same size only had a 14 inch screen because they managed to cut down on that bezel that thick border around the screen if you want a great example of bezel craziness look no further than Ben's own MacBook Air right yes but my god prepares for the comments we all know what the situation is with the MacBook it's a very low resolution screen I okay it's my work laptop I know but then again you know what I got here's the updated this design since like 2010 it's it's true but at the same time nobody loves it I have a MacBook Pro as my personal laptop that's like about eight or nine years old now I replaced a bunch of parts on the inside of it but it's also like the design it's it's you know compared to a MacBook or the newer MacBook Pros with the touch bar look they're not as sexy I mean it's it's the screen resolution it's the bezel that's the S or two things that really knock this guy out for right now it's also the 10th anniversary of the MacBook Air so maybe we'll see a new one later this year maybe they'll finally maybe they'll finally rescue it I would literally say that every year every year every this year in January which was the 10th anniversary of the original MacBook Air which was like more than 2000 hours when it launched I went back and said wow that's crazy I wonder who reviewed the original MacBook Air ten years ago for seeing that and one looked up the review and I had no memory of this but it was made this guy and we we republish the videos like I seen it flash back so if you have a big sideburn trigger warning right there you can go back and watch that for sure all right more questions more questions from Ivan Zhang hey guys did Asus announced the price of the ROG phone yet I don't think so I don't believe it look like a very cool phone but the problem is the same problem razor had with it's sort of game or friendly razor phone which is that these phones have great features everyone loved especially the screen on the range of phone everyone likes the hardware on this ROG phone but especially if you're in the US there's a 99% chance you're getting an iPhone or a Samsung phone and that's just it and if you even go to a third or fourth brand it ain't gonna be a sustain to be razor eye it's pixel that's probably you're totally you're you're absolutely right by unfortunately and and the thing is is that right now we're in a cycle where there are more mobile options out there there's a new mobile phone there's no it's true but like Razer did come out with a new phone there's the essential phone you I see something serious companies already practically had a business right they said that they're not going to do an essential you're selling the guy selling the company that's like this is it's it's good for customers to have more options but unfortunately at the same time this is the cycles go people don't want more options they want two or three really good options and it's like this too big soda brands there's two big fast-food chains there's two big blah blah blahs is a very exploitative and I guess Nintendo I mean that's three once you get more than that you you you you hit a cliff very fast weight the weight so the pixel will probably stick around because Google has more money than God and that's all that will exist is another that's probably careful there John Lennon yeah they use that brand in Chromebooks and other things and tablets also but you know everyone has ether a Samsung phone or an Apple phone maybe a pixel yeah I can't think of too many people who had something different in the u.s. other markets obviously different yeah way I'm kind of curious what is your perspective who are the two big fast food chains isn't it now as somebody who's not been in a fast food restaurant in probably 20 years I may be wrong but I assume it's still McDonald's and Burger King in the US well sure but again that's yeah okay those are the 800-pound gorillas there are other ones but none of them have that kind of scale they are someone who used to as somebody who used to work in the beverage industry trade press as a business reporter covering liquids I can tell you the scale of Coke and Pepsi and their respective parent company is is just Dwarfs anyone else and they frankly own most of the other brands now anyway how did we get to this point I was just curious well I know I totally broke our rhythm here but I was like two fast food joints like America is the big fest we have to change and all those work the same way really the coca-cola company McDonald's here not Coco Lee it's really a franchise company but the bet the parent companies are basically responsible for like secret recipes and marketing wait is it isn't it now though we're like Mountain Dew and everything yeah yeah yeah no totally they own all these other brands but in McDonald's you buy a franchise and you run it as an independent business and you buy your supplies from the main office and they handle all the advertising all right because the same way they make the secret formula syrup and they buy the ads other companies actually mix it with water and put in a bottle and take it to a store for the record I'm gonna I'm gonna pull us back to tech stuff even I'm learning new things about your your knowledge base so well done for the record I just want to appreciate that even though I'm not in the room with you guys anymore I am being piped in so you can actually communicate with me to a speaker embedded in the floor and I like Dan talks to that speaker it makes me really feel like I'm there all right yeah we got some time left let's get some more actual relevant questions sorry everybody who got a little derailed but hey sometimes we have fun from pratik how good is the new Asus HDR monitors are they good for consoles and casual PC gaming it's a good question I have not tried them I say console I know we've tested a bunch of HDR and otherwise monitors for PCs the problem with HDR is always do you have HDR content it's a term people throw around very loosely and there's basically two types of HDR content that you have to individually decode and play back that said a well-tuned HDR screen even without that specialized content will look very nice we just saw a Lenovo laptop for example with an HDR ready display and it's not gonna have the right drivers to decode HDR content which again has to be specifically made to be displayed that way for a while now I guess we don't really have a date like a real nice display same issue is 4k it sounds yeah even if you have all the right hardware it's still a matter for that specific monitor but certainly if you're if you're moving forward in getting a new display you might as well get an HDR compliant one just check the two it is HDR 10 and the other one is like Dolby vision maybe look for one that decodes both nice alright handful more questions here before we call it a day syringe Oh Dan a word on where HP stands in the laptop masterrace bear in mind this comment was being made from an HP Spectre x-360 that's a good laptop right there you know I feel like they do a very good job they've actually got a couple of things the top end of the line that are that are pretty darn good The Spectre whether it's the clamshell Spectre which is super thin or the x360 which is there yoga style with the hinge that folds back both very good they put some effort into the gaming stuff but I don't think there's anything groundbreaking there of recent and of course they still do a lot of good business laptops if you don't have a think pad there's a good chance maybe you have an HP EliteBook and that's been one of my favorite lines for a couple of years now because it's technically a business laptop but it works really great as a mainstream consumer laptop it just looks really sharp and good construction and they've got a cool feature that no one else has yet which is a polarized privacy filter that's built into the screen you hit a function key combination and the screen goes like that and if you're off angle or a little bit back the screen goes white and you can't read what's on it which i think is something that we are gonna want more and more because we're concerned about not just regular you know hacking and eavesdropping and snooping but this kind of physical hacking this eyeball hacking where you're in the airport lounge and someone over your shoulder figuring out what keys you're pressing for your password and where you're going and stuff well that's a cool feature it is and it's pretty cool from mark dybul our external GPUs here to stay people have tried that I see everyone saved up their PC questions I know I know I like the concept we should get the Razer core X in here any day now and we're gonna try it with both Nvidia and AMD cards but people have been trying to make the external GPU happen for Yee I don't know maybe almost 10 years and it just ins never worked for a variety of reasons as it doesn't integrate properly into this fine it's the hardware and the connection number one you need to through put so much data into and out of the laptop Dell has a proprietary connection for their version of it that they sell but nobody remembers that works with some Alienware laptops but it's a proprietary connection the box is stupid expensive and again with all these you're just buying an empty box with a with a GP slot in it and a power supply you just put your own graphics card you buy separately for $500 in this box you bought for 4 or $500 and that's how they get you that that's always been that's always been how they how they worked and then you know razors done an ok job at pushing this but it's not really mainstream Seuss's had one they've tried to sell off and on over the years it's an interesting concept do you want to take your you know Matt book style laptop if not actually a MacBook because it doesn't have a Thunderbolt 3 connection and hook it up to a box with a graphics card be able to play games and then pick it up and take it with you I don't know takes up a lot of deaf space you could get the same thing in a laptop that's still fairly thin like this and this will probably cost you less than buying slim regular mainstream laptop ploughin plus a graphics card plus an external GPU box if anyone can make it work I guess it's razor but I don't know if I had the volume especially here in the US for it there's a valuable contribution there Ben we have time for just a couple more from Sam levy how much better with the ROG phone be then let's compare it to something like the op6 I mean I haven't looked at the speck to the ROG phone frankly so I I couldn't say off the top of my head looks nice game people seem interested in it it's a tough market though for anyone whose brand name doesn't start with an A or an S that's that's always the problem and I don't see that getting resolved anytime soon and lastly to close it out one more from the ROG side of things from Josh Buddha is the ROG phone coming to any US carriers also a good question Ben's got the story open right now maybe fell down and take a look I don't I don't know this this thing was just announced so I still think we're waiting for some details about it especially with the su stuff they have different plans and different products in different markets they do a lot of different stuff in Asia in Europe in the US I'm sure this will get a US release of some kind from them but they may not do they might sell directly as opposed to going through a carrier and you just put in your SIM card of choice but I feel like it's gonna be expensive and it's not gonna be mainstream but that said the razor phone has it's super hardcore fans I bet this will also and they may offer in that and they made an effort to make it look different and interesting which is probably why so many people are asking about it so if it's such a plateau in terms of phone development everything's the same glass and metal slab anyone who does something different definitely gets a round of applause for me right yeah but at the same time this is probably not gonna get I mean the handful of people that are watching the show that are asking about it or probably audience that's the audience a lot of babies French door and a screw I don't know we'll have to find out anyway any other questions no I think that's gonna just about wrap it up for today thanks everybody for joining us we are back on the semi regular now so sorry again about that hiatus but it's great to have all you guys back from Josh - - - sir enjoy - Yahoo - everybody new joining in the channel Michael Brown just giving a shout out we love having you guys we love doing this and yeah it's good to be back sounds good awesome should I should I round us out yeah I don't have the script anymore I'm just gonna have to wait script just were 400 episodes in you don't know what lefties are on it go with what I feel I'll start doing like a haiku or something okay the 359 is available on iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music the Amazon echo and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for watching I can't believe I did that here go ahead I could throw in a quick plug dancers know about podcasts we have a new episode of seen a book club coming up very soon it's gonna be very exciting very hot controversial guest that's all I'm gonna say and thank you very much for being here and answering all these wonderful laptop questions always a joy to have you I always answer people's laptop questions alright we'll have you on again soon and thanks everybody we'll see you again tomorrow see you tomorrow folks