We’ve seen a smattering of high-end gaming laptops in recent months, but Asus’ ROG G750JZ is in a class all of its own. Taking a giant-sized 17.3in display as a starting point, Asus has packed a suitably huge chassis with only the most choice of high-end laptop hardware – the G750JZ is a serious gaming laptop with a suitably serious price.Physically, Asus’ laptop is monstrously large and foreboding. Wrought entirely from heavy, black matte plastic, the only interruption to the Asus’ all-black chassis is the white Asus logo set in the middle of its thick, hefty-feeling lid. The G750JZ’s wedge-shaped profile tapers forwards like the menacing bonnet of a supercar, and a huge pair of intake and exhaust fans hidden behind thick, plastic grilles expel hot air from its rear.At 4.8kg, it’s arm-achingly heavy, and the brick-sized PSU catapults the device’s overall heft to a 5.4kg, but this isn’t a laptop we’d be worried to take out of the house. The build quality feels taut and rigid, and there’s barely a hint of flex or give anywhere around the Asus’ muscle-bound physique.

Inside that unassuming exterior lurks a potent specification. While most sub-£500 laptops make do with Core i3 processors and integrated graphics, Asus has found room in the budget for an Ivy Bridge Core i5 CPU, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a capacious 750GB hard disk and a dedicated Nvidia GeForce 710M GPU. It’s a seriously capable combination, putting the Asus in pole position for application performance this month, with a score of 0.67 in our Real World Benchmarks. This represents more than enough power for everyday tasks, and the laptop should even stand up to challenging video-editing projects without slowing to a halt.Thanks to the Nvidia GPU, gaming performance is also very good for a laptop with this price tag. The X552CL eased through our Crysis benchmark run at 1,366 x 768 resolution and Low quality settings with an average frame rate of 78fps. Unusually for a £450 laptop, there’s also enough power to turn in playable frame rates in our Crysis benchmark at 1,600 x 900 resolution and Medium quality: the X552CL averaged a smooth 32fps. That’s impressive for a budget machine, and proves that there’s power enough for most modern titles, as long as you don’t push the resolution and quality settings too high. Should you wish to indulge in a spot of gaming on the big screen, there are HDMI and VGA video outputs along the laptop’s left-hand edge.

The Asus’ 15.6in display offers a merely adequate 1,366 x 768 resolution and fairly narrow viewing angles, thanks to the use of a TN panel. Nevertheless, image quality is respectable: although the LED backlighting reaches only a modest maximum of 216cd/m2, the contrast ratio of 251:1 is a touch better than average. The improved contrast ratio helps the Asus dredge up more detail that its peers. By far the best aspect of the Asus’ performance is its natural colour reproduction: lifelike skin tones and bright, solid-looking colours immediately distinguish the X552CL from its budget rivals.The experimental new service, called Contributor, will see ads replaced with placeholders thanking the user for donating to the site. The idea is to allow visitors to contribute to the running costs of the site, without having to put up with invasive or targeted adverts, which many web users choose to block in the first place.

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Participating site owners are compensated, depending on the amount of times "contributors" visit their website, with payments made through Google's AdSense system, in the same way as they would be compensated for hosting the Google-sold adverts. It's not clear whether participating websites will earn as much through Contributor as they would from hosting ads. There are a few catches with the Google system. Firstly, the ads will only be blocked on sites that run purely Google adverts. Although Google runs by far the biggest web advertising program, many leading sites sell their own advertising space, perhaps only falling back on Google AdSense to fill unsold inventory. Right now, the service is only being trialled with a few US websites - including Mashable, The Onion and Science Daily - so users are still likely to see adverts on the vast majority of websites they visit.

Many users may also be reluctant to pay to block adverts when they can already do so for free, on every website they visit, using browser plugins such as AdBlock Plus. Those plugins return no revenue to the website, so Google is perhaps relying on consumers recognising that website content has to be paid for somehow.Publishers are increasingly turning to paywalls to fund their websites - Google Contributor at least gives web users a way of rewarding websites without having to set up a separate subscription on each site.Google Contributors can choose to pay between $1 and $3 per month to use the service. Those interested in the scheme are being asked to join an orderly queue on the Google Contributor website.Microsoft COO Kevin Turner has sparked speculation that Windows 10 and future versions Windows could be sold as a rolling subscription, rather than a one-off software licence purchase.

Speaking to Phil Winslow from Credit Suisse at a Q&A session, Turner said Windows 10 would not be a loss leader for the company, but that Microsoft would be looking to "monetise [Windows 10] differently" through "additional services", according to GeekWire.For more information on Windows 10: Windows 10 release date, news, features and technical preview.Analysts have been speculating for some tim ethat Windows 10 could mark a move towards a subscription based service.IDC research analyst Owen Rogers told PC Pro in April that Microsoft could move to a cloud-OS model, distributing Windows 10 for free and charging users for software add-ons and cloud services instead."Freemium software is win-win for both consumers and vendors ... by penetrating the market with a free operating system, Microsoft could not only bring in more paid customers, but may also make Windows more appealing to the greater public," Rogers said.

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Apple’s offer of a free upgrade to Yosemite for those already using OS X has set a precedent for giving away operating systems to existing customers. The announcement that Windows 10 Technical Preview users will be able to upgrade to the final release version at no cost would appear to back up the idea of Windows 10 being a free upgrade. This would appear to be a strikingly similar model to its Office cloud products: Office Online is free, but offers limited functionality, whereas Office 365 has more features, but users have to pay a rolling subscription. This is likely to be Microsoft’s preferred route, with a tiered pricing structure similar to its older operating systems, such as Windows 7's Starter, Home, Professional, and Ultimate versions.

The key difference between this idea of Windows 10 and older iterations of the company’s software, however, is that under the new structure, the low-end versions would be free, with increasing functionality available to higher-tier subscribers as bolt-ons. In this regard, holdings such as Office and Xbox Live appear to have been used as test-beds for ideas before a platform-wide rollout.Rumours that Windows 10 could be a "cloud-based" operating system have been swirling since before the OS was even announced. CEO Satya Nadella has constantly reaffirmed the importance of their rapidly expanding cloud platform to the company’s strategy with his "cloud-first, mobile-first" manta. It’s also by far their fastest growing sector, experiencing a mammoth 128% expansion last quarter. The increasing range of low-cost Windows laptops and tablets could also be a sign the company is planning to follow in ChromeOS’ footsteps by utilising an increasingly online-based system.http://www.batteries-pc.com/acer.html

Using Leap Motion to navigate Windows 8 was a frustrating experience for our reviewer, and there are other downsides: according to The Verge, Leap Motion significantly reduces the Envy's battery life.The controller can be easily disabled by pressing the function and space bar, with an LED showing when it's on.The HP Envy 17 Leap Motion Special Edition will arrive in the UK in November, starting from £999 inc VAT.The Leap Motion controller itself costs £63 exc VAT at retail, so isn't likely to have bumped up the price of the laptop too much, with comparable versions of the Envy 17 coming in at the £999 mark.Aside from the controller, it also features a 17.3in Full HD touchscreen display, 4th-generation Intel Core i7 chip, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB HDD and optional Nvidia graphics.HP also unveiled the passively cooled Spectre x2 hyrid Ultrabook. The Spectre x2 has a detachable display to be used as a tablet, and as it doesn't require a fan, it has "no noisy hardware or unsightly vents", HP said.

The HP Spectre x2 features a 13.3in, 1080p display, and runs Intel's 4th-generation Core i5 chip. It will arrive in the UK in November for £999.When is a Chromebook not a Chromebook? When it’s a Chromebook Pixel, of course. This is not, I admit, my finest attempt at humour, but it serves to illustrate a point: the latest Chromebook Pixel (which we're calling Chromebook Pixel 2, even though Google just gives it the old, numberless name) might technically be a Chromebook, but it’s a world apart from the rest of the field.Like the original, the new Pixel is unashamedly luxurious – in terms of the way it looks, and the stares it draws when you pull it out in a meeting, the machine has more in common with hardware like the Apple MacBook, the 2015 Dell XPS 13 and the Microsoft Surface Pro 3.It sports a powerful Intel Broadwell CPU, has a top-quality screen – and it costs as much as an Ultrabook, too. It’s altogether a different type of device than the average, cheap plasticky Chromebook.

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