HP announces the 6th generation of ProBook 400 series laptops-- aimed mainly at SMB customers, the machines feature 8th generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7 "Whiskey Lake" processors inside a slimmer aluminium chassis.

Dubbed the 430, 440 and 450, the laptops respectively offer 13.3-, 14- and 15.6-inch displays in either 1920x1080 or 1366x768 resolution. The "ultra-slim chassis with crisp lines, clean edges, and a natural silver finish" weighs up to 2kg, and is 2cm thick. The laptops also feature a 180-degree hinge, spill-resistant keyboard and XMM 4G/LTE Cat 6 or Cat9 modems in case customers want to get some work done on the road.

According to IDC, W. European tablet shipments total 7.5 million units in Q3 2018-- a -2.9% Y-o-Y decline, with decent slate results in both commercial and consumer markets helping sustain an ailing market.

Strong back to school sales and "solid" enterprise growth help slate tablets in the enterprise segment, in good part thanks to "exceptional" iPad performance. Meanwhile smaller companies prove susceptible to consumer promotions, leading to healthy growth in SMB space. On the consumer side, strong iPad sales, Amazon Prime day and early seasonal promotions (such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday) bring slate shipments to a positive for the first time since 2013.

According to IDC, global tablet shipments are down by -8.6% Y-o-Y to reach 36.4 million units in Q3 2018-- with declines in both slate and detachable/hybrid tablet shipments.

Slate tablet shipments account for majority of market with 31.6m units, a -7.9% Y-o-Y decline. Detachable tablets, in the meantime, see a 13.1% Y-o-Y drop on shipments reaching 4.8m.

"The detachable market has failed to see growth in 2018, a worrying trend that has plagued the category off and on since the end of 2016," the analyst says. "In October we finally saw the highly anticipated refreshes of Apple's iPad Pro and Microsoft's Surface Pro, as well as new products by Samsung and Google, which lead us to believe that the last quarter of the year will turn the detachable category around, at least for the time being. Increasingly sparse are new products by the top-tier PC OEMs as they remain more focused on their convertible portfolio, a move that will ultimately affect the overall trajectory of the detachable market going forward."

Apple confirms months of rumours as it presents an iPad Pro redesign-- one offering an "all-screen" design bereft of Home button, Face ID facial recognition, a USB-C port and, of course, more powerful internals.

The 2018 iPad Pro comes in 2 sizes, 11- and 12.9-inch, with thinner bezels leading to smaller tablets. The 11-inch model actually measures as much as the previous 10.5-inch model, while the 12.9-inch model is smaller than the screen size suggests. Other than size both devices are essentially identical, with the same curvy unibody holding the A12X Bionic, a processor described by Apple as "the smartest and most powerful chip in a tablet."