Intel released its second-generation Core CPUs back in January. Unfortunately, the excitement generated by the release of the fastest mainstream desktop processors was quickly dampened by the Cougar Point chipset recall. To be clear, this issue affected only the earliest Sandy Bridge-compatible motherboards, and not the Sandy Bridge CPUs themselves. This issue is now fixed—there are no defective motherboards available through reputable North American retailers like Newegg and Amazon. In the almost half-year since the initial Sandy Bridge CPU release, the ...

Here in the states, Sony's 13-inch VAIO Z series has been missing from the company's online store for months, but in Europe, at least, it lives on -- a quartet of Z21 series laptops have surfaced on various e-tailers as the possible successor to last year's Z11. So far, we're seeing a pair of configurations with a Core i5-2410M processor and 128GB of solid-state storage and two more with a Core i7-2620M CPU and 256GB in storage. Judging by this sample, ...