Charles McLellan

Senior Editor

Bio
Disclosure

I'm a Senior Editor at ZDNET, based in the UK. My experience with computers started at London's Imperial College, where I studied Zoology and then Environmental Technology. This was sufficiently long ago (mid-1970s) that Fortran, IBM punche…d-card machines and mainframes were involved, followed by green-screen terminals and eventually the personal computers we know and (mostly) love. After doing post-grad research at Imperial for a while, I got involved in helping to produce a weekly news magazine based in Amsterdam. This was in the mid-1980s, and one of my duties was to set up data communications links with technologically-challenged national newspaper journalists in a number of European cities via a 300-baud modem and an acoustic coupler. Tech support people have my sympathy! I've been in computer publishing since the late 1980s, starting with Reed Business Publishing's Practical Computing, then joining Ziff Davis in 1991 to help launch PC Magazine UK as Production Editor. After a couple of years I switched to commissioning, editing and writing, becoming a Technical Editor and then First Looks Editor. When ZDNet came looking for a Reviews Editor in 2000, I was ready to make the move from print to online — just in time for the dot-com crash! It's been a long road from punched cards to the cloud and AI, but it'll still be fun seeing where we go from here.

Charles McLellan has nothing to disclose. He does not hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Latest from Charles McLellan

Eurocom Monster 1.0 review

This 11.6in. notebook is an outstanding performer. It's not particularly lightweight or attractive, but the specification is top-notch and the screen, keyboard and touchpad are all perfectly usable. Plenty of professionals will be keen to get their hands on this system, if they can stomach the price tag.

July 5, 2012 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Eurocom Panther 2.0

If you're after great industrial design or long battery life, this hulking desktop replacement is not for you. But if you value a wealth of configuration options and excellent performance, take a look at Eurocom's Panther 2.0. Just be prepared to rack up a hefty price tag.

February 15, 2011 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Sony VAIO PCG-GRX516SP

Although they come in many shapes and sizes, Sony's VAIO notebooks are perhaps best known for being either small and ultraportable or large and multimedia-ready. No product exemplifies the latter type of system better than the GRX516SP. This massive 3.8kg beast truly deserves its 'desktop replacement' tag -- in fact, with its 35.5cm by 29.2cm footprint, if you stuck a set of legs on it, you could probably use it as a desk. All that bulk accommodates a 16.1in. screen, which is the largest you'll find on any portable at the moment. But the stand-out feature of this very well specified system is its optical drive: this is the first notebook we've seen with a built-in DVD writer - a rewriteable DVD-RW unit.

November 20, 2002 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Dell Inspiron 8600

If you're looking for a notebook on which to watch DVD movies, play games or edit video, then Dell's new Inspiron 8600 should be at the top of your shortlist. On the other hand, if you want something portable and affordable on which to run your business productivity software, then this £1,599 (ex. VAT) system is seriously over-specified. Featuring a 1.7GHz Pentium M processor, 512MB of 266MHz DDR RAM, a 15.4in. wide-screen display, Nvidia's new GeForce FX Go 5650 graphics chip with 128MB of video RAM and an 80GB hard disk, the Inspiron 8600 is a state-of-the-art notebook that takes no prisoners.

September 18, 2003 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Dell Inspiron 8600c

When Intel releases a new processor, it's an odds-on bet that Dell will be among the first to market with a showcase for it, and in the case of the new <a href="http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/processorsmemory/0,39024015,39154053,00.htm">Dothan</a> Pentium M chip, that showcase is the Inspiron 8600c. The Inspiron 8000 series is Dell's flagship range of desktop replacement notebooks for power users, and our top-end 8600c review model didn't disappoint: with its 2GHz Pentium M 755 CPU, 1GB of DDR RAM, 60GB hard disk and 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 Pro graphics chip, it turned in the best set of benchmarks we've recorded to date. At £1,349 (ex. VAT) it's no budget option, but if you need desktop-level power and features in a reasonably portable format, the Inspiron 8600c is an excellent choice.

June 10, 2004 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Acer TravelMate 4501WLMi

Acer's TravelMate 4500 series -- the 4501WLMi reviewed here is the top-of-the-range model -- is a reasonably portable desktop replacement system for business travellers who need to take a fully featured notebook on the road, and are prepared to accept a bit of weight in their luggage. This 2.95kg system is based around a 1.5GHz Pentium M 715 processor and comes with luxuries such as a 15.4in. wide-screen WXGA display, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics, a 60GB hard drive and a multi-format DVD writer.

October 19, 2004 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Apple's 'Thunderbolt' MacBook Pros

Apple's latest MacBook Pros introduce Thunderbolt I/O technology, formerly codenamed Light Peak.

February 24, 2011 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Dell SmartPC 250N

The first thing you notice about Dell’s SmartPC 250N is that it is silver - or rather, the plastic casing has a silver-effect finish. But the differences between the new SmartPC range and Dell’s dark-grey mainstream Latitude and Inspiron notebooks are more than skin-deep: like most manufacturers, Dell has now succumbed to the temptation to build notebooks around desktop rather than mobile processors -- in this case, a 2.2GHz Pentium 4.

August 14, 2002 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Lenovo ThinkPad T420s

Much of this ThinkPad's design — and particularly the excellent keyboard — is traditional, but it packs plenty of up-to-date specs too: Core i7 CPU, hybrid discrete/integrated graphics, solid-state drive, USB 3.0 and a high-quality multimedia subsystem. All this makes for an expensive notebook, but it's one we're happy to recommend.

March 15, 2012 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

Gigabyte X11 ultrabook review

This lighter-than-MacBook-Air 11.6in. ultrabook has a slim but sturdy carbon-fibre chassis and performs well for a system with integrated graphics, although battery life is slightly disappointing.

August 30, 2012 by Charles McLellan in Laptops

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