Author: Tarandeep Kaur

HP Probook Stream 11 and Pro 11 Education Edition are the two new cheap laptops. Both of these two are part of the HP National Education Technology Assessment (NETA) that technological strategies for sustainable education and evaluate the impact of interventions in schools technologists.

HP Probook Stream 11 and Pro 11 Education Edition specifications are not very different from the standard models. HP ProBook 11 EE is an ultraportable with Windows operating system and semi-rugged rubber housing. Specifications include 11.6 inch screen with optional touch panel, Intel Celeron or Pentium processor. HP Stream Pro 11 is an ideal mini laptop for your class room that comes equipped with a 11.6 inch display packing 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, Intel Celeron 2840 bay trial processor with 2 gigabytes of memory and 32GB of flash storage.

Unlike HP Stream Pro 11 that was launched last year, the HP Probook 11 EE will cost somewhat more as it will offered to small and medium sized companies. Price and availability of both laptops for USA is not yet known.

Micro Star International loves all in one computers and the company has launched two new AIOs namely MSI Adora20 5M and AE200 5M both of which are powered by AMD Beema. Interestingly both MSI Adora20 5M and MSI AE200 5M have identical specifications too.

There are two sub models in AE200 5M has two sub models, first has 21.5 inch display packing full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. It comes with multi touch, anti glare coating, anti-flicker and blue light technology that reduces eye strain.

The 19.5 inch model has HD+ display packing 1600 x 900 pixel resolution and has same features as 21.5” model. For storage you get 500 GB or 1 TB SATA III HDD in both models.

The MSI Adora20 5M has 19.5” display with 1600 x 900 pixel resolution, AMD E2-6110 1.5 GHz quad core processor, Radeon R2 discrete class graphics, up to 8GB RAM, 802.11n Wi-Fi, DVD super multi drive and 1 megapixel HD camera. It too has multi-touch with anti-glare, Anti-Flicker technology and Less Blue Light technology. The anti glare coating is totally optional though. For storage you get a 2.5 inch SSD.

All in one computers did not enjoy a lot of success last year but it looks like this category will finally take off this year.

NVidia GeForce GTX 960 is the new graphic card that introduces the new GM206 GPU and it is also the world’s first graphics card that is capable of outputting 5K resolution.

NVidia GeForce GTX 960 specifications include 1024 CUDA cores, 1127 MHz clock speed which together promise maximum single precision floating point performance of 2413 GFLOPS and if you overclock it, you can push it as high as 3073 GFLOPS.

The reference design of NVidia GeForce GTX 960 will carry 2048 MB 128-bit GDDR5 memory with a clock speed of 7010 MHz and bandwidth of 112.16 GB/s and its output ports include one dual link DVI-I, HDMI 2.0 and three display ports. As said earlier the NVidia GeForce GTX 960 si capable of driving displays up to 5120 x 3200 (5K).

NVidia GeForce GTX 960 operates over PCI-E 3.0 bus and takes power from its 6 pin PCI-E power connector that has TDP of 120 watts. It has maximum operating temperature of about 98 degrees centigrade.

Hanspree Micro PC is powered by Intel Bay trail processor which allows the company to sell it preloaded with Windows 8.1 operating system. This allows user to transform your HDTV into a tiny windows PC that runs on a USB drive. That said the Hanspree Micro PC is slightly bigger than a typical Sandisk flash drive but clearly the pros outweigh the cons.

Hannspree Micro PC specifications

Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core processor
32GB of storage (25GB available as free space)
802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0
An HDMI connector, USB port, a micro USB port and a microSD card reader
4.4″ x 1.5″ x 0.4″ and weighs 1.3 ounces

Hannspree Micro PC Price

Unlike other similar solution, the Micro PC costs a lot. Some online stores are selling it for 277 dollars while some European stores can get it to you for mere 177 dollars, excluding VAT.

That said, it is still a better choice than getting a nettop since it plugs directly into your TV and is much easier to carry around. Its Bay Trail quad core processor is no slouch and can actually get the job done.