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Microsoft: 500 million will run Windows 8 in 2013

May 23rd, 2012
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicts that more than 500 million people will be using Windows 8 by the end of next year, AFP reports.

Ballmer, who was speaking at a forum in Seoul, South Korea, also expects Windows 7 to hit the 350 million device milestone later this year.

Windows 8 was described by Ballmer as the “deepest, broadest, and most impactful” operating system the company has made to date. He promised the “best economic opportunity” for hardware makers and Metro application developers who opt to support the upcoming operating system.

Corporate and enterprise demand have boosted Microsoft’s sales of Windows 7, Bloomberg reports, following the more than half decade of Windows XP success – and inadvertently helped along by the sudden requirement to shift away from Windows Vista.

One of the reasons why Windows XP remains so popular is the reluctance to upgrade to Vista in the first place. With many legacy applications still running suitably well on the decade-old platform, there was no incentive to upgrade. Vista suffered with poor backwards compatibility and performance issues, which led to many upgrading to Windows 7 as soon as it was released.

Windows 7 shot ahead of Vista and became the fastest-selling operating system to date. According to Net Applications, Windows XP has a declining share of 46 percent, while Windows 7 has a rising share of more than 38 percent.

At the current trend, Windows 7 could overtake Windows XP in October – coincidentally the month slated for the forthcoming release of Windows 8.

Windows 8 will ‘disappoint’: Analysts cut price targets on HP, Dell
Microsoft faces Windows 8 trouble if it fails to ship in October

Windows 8 should be an interesting and testing time for Microsoft. While the upcoming operating system will run on PCs and tablets alike, the ultrabook market is still developing – in competition with Apple’s MacBook Air – and will likely boost sales in the slimmer and more aesthetically attractive notebooks.

Gartner says more than 100 million tablets will be sold in 2012, with the figure tripling to more than 320 million tablets in 2015. The research firm estimates that Windows 8 will gain more than 12 percent of the tablet market, dwarfed by Apple’s nearly 60 percent, with the iPad.

Last week, BMO analysts cut Hewlett-Packard and Dell’s price targets, after one of its analysts claimed that “Windows 8 will prove to be a disappointment, at least out of the gate.” Analysts do not think that Windows 8 will be as successful as Windows 7 was and continues to be, and that PC sales could suffer as a result.

Having said that, if Windows 7 continues to sell hot off the shelves and overtakes Windows XP in time for an October arrival, Windows 8 could push through the expected worst of it and prove analysts wrong.

Source:http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57439338-501465/microsoft-500-million-will-run-windows-8-in-2013/

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Leap Motion Brings 3-D Motion Control Technology To Laptops And Desktops

May 23rd, 2012
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Leap Motion has officially set the new standard for how we use desktop devices.

The world’s most accurate 3-D motion control device is said to revolutionize the way users control their laptops and desktop computers.

Leap Motion’s newest creation offers a motion control interaction space that will allow users to operate traditional desktop computer elements — windows, folders and icons — and interact with applications, using gestures made in the air.

By creating a three-dimensional interaction space, consisting of 4 cubic feet, The Leap controls the computer more precisely and quickly than a mouse or touchscreen, and as reliably as a keyboard, according to a statement released by Leap Motion.

Information Week’s Thomas Claburn notes that the Leap device produces an infrared light that reflects off objects in the four-cubic foot visible to its sensors, much like Microsoft’s Kinect.

Accordingly, The Leap device then interprets that data to direct the movement of objects on the screen of the connected computer.

“It was this gap between what’s easy in the real world but very complicated to do digitally, like molding a piece of clay or creating a 3-D model, that inspired us to create the Leap and fundamentally change how people work with their computers,” Leap Motion CEO and co-founder Michael Buckwald said in a statement.

Leap Motion expects its Leap device to be useful for basic computing tasks like navigating an operating system or browsing through web pages, 2D or 3D drawing, manipulating 3D data visualization systems, and playing computer games, including first-person shooters like “Rage” and “Call of Duty.”

Based in San Francisco, Leap Motion is a motion-control software and hardware company that develops 3-D motion-control and motion-sensing technology.

The $70 device is slated to ship “this winter,” as Leap Motion says it has already begun accepting requests for free developer kits.

Source:http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/344071/20120522/leap-motion-3d-technology-laptops-desktop.htm

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VIA Hops on the Low Cost PC Bandwagon with a $49 APC Android System

May 23rd, 2012
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The vibe Silicon Valley must be getting from the masses is that low cost, pint-sized PCs are the wave of the future, hence why we’re seeing so many of them recently. The most popular of the bunch right now is the Raspberry Pi PC, but lo and behold, VIA is jumping in the ring with a $49 APC Android PC.

“APC brings the familiarity and convenience of Android to the PC at a US$49 price point that will open up exciting new markets and applications,” said Richard Brown, VP of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. “Like a bicycle for your mind, APC will enable more people than ever before to explore the vast online universe.”

The system consists of a Neo-ITX motherboard that can hooked up to a TV or PC monitor. It measures just 17cm x 8.5cm, can be housed in a standard mini-ITX or micro-ATX chassis, and consumes just 4 watts at idle and 13.5 watts under load. An ARM-based VIA processor clocked at 800MHz does the heavy lifting and is helped by 512MB of DDR3 memory, 2GB of NAND flash storage, and built-in 2D/3D graphics with support for up to 720p. It also has an HDMI port, VGA port, four USB 2.0 ports, audio outputs, a microSD card slot, GbE LAN port, and a custom build of Android 2.3.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/VIA-Hops-on-the-Low-Cost-PC-Bandwagon-with-a-49-APC-Android-System/

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Lenovo’s IdeaCentre A720 Now Available to Tingle All Ten Fingers

May 23rd, 2012
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If you dig the all-in-one form factor, the Lenovo IdeaCentre A720 is about as compelling as it gets. After showing off the A720 at CES, Lenovo now has the AIO available for purchase, reports The Verge.

The A720 boasts a large 27-inch screen with 10-point multitouch support, and the display itself can be adjusted from -5 to 90 degrees. The highest-end version of the computer will have an Intel Core i7-3610QM processor, a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT620 graphics card, 8GB of DDR3-1600MHz memory, and a 1TB hard drive with a 64GB SSD. Buyers will also get a wireless keyboard and mouse, mini optical wheel mouse, Blu-ray combo ODD, built-in WiFi, an HD 720p webcam, 6-in-1 card reader, and IR remote, and HDMI in and out.

The aforementioned version of the A720 starts at $2,099, with two other versions starting at $1,949 and $1,849. The Verge noted that in any configuration, the A720 costs quite a bit more than what Lenovo said it would this January; around CES time, the company thought it would hit the market at closer to $1,299.

Lenovo expects shipments to land around the second week of June.

Source:http://hothardware.com/News/Lenovos-IdeaCentre-A720-Now-Available-to-Tingle-All-Ten-Fingers/

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Government Scheme Offers PC With Broadband For £159

May 23rd, 2012
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Get Online @ Home, the government scheme intended to get the last eight million UK citizens online, will offer discounted refurbished PCs with a year’s worth of broadband through TalkTalk, for £159.

Headlined by UK’s Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox, the scheme is also supported by Microsoft, Simplify Digital and a host of computer hardware recycling companies. It is part of the GO ON UK initiative launched last month to boost the digital capability of UK SMEs, charities and the remaining 8.2 million adults who have never used the Internet.

The initiative is a successor to the Race Online 2012, a two-year campaign that got 2 million Brits using the Internet for the first time.

Cheap and cheerful

“We know that the cost of buying and connecting a PC is a significant barrier and so being able to offer a PC with a year’s broadband for under £160 will be a lifeline for many,” Lane Fox told the Telegraph.

Get Online @ Home will provide refurbished desktop computers and laptops pre-loaded with Windows 7 and a Talk Talk Internet connection, ready to use out of the box, to anyone in the UK.

The price for a desktop PC without the Internet connection is £149, reduced to £99 for charities and people receiving certain benefits. Every computer comes with a 15″ flat screen monitor, keyboard, mouse, CD drive and USB ports. Contents inside may vary, but customers can count on at least a Pentium 4 2GHz processor, 1Gb of RAM and a 40Gb hard drive.

Laptops are slightly more expensive, with a £199 price tag, reduced to £169 for those less fortunate. Each will have a minimum of 1 hour standby battery life, a webcam, several USB ports, and at least a Celeron processor with 1Gb of RAM and a 40Gb hard drive.

The scheme has delivered discounted hardware since March 2011, but the new partnership with TalkTalk involves a cut in prices for computers, or broadband, depending on how you look at it.

If broadband, priced at modest £5 a month, is bought together with a Get Online @ Home PC, TalkTalk will give customers a £50 discount, making a year’s worth of broadband connection cost just £10 on top of the cost of the computer.

The offer includes 40GB monthly download allowance, a free wireless router, free set-up and unlimited evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. However, customers will also have to take TalkTalk’s £14.50/month line rental (which has to be paid to use a landline phone anyway).

“The Internet connects and entertains, educates and informs – it even saves money. Yet there are children growing up today in towns and cities that are fully broadband enabled who do not have internet access at home to support their education. TalkTalk believes that every family should be able to have safe and affordable internet access and, as theUK’s leading value for money broadband provider, this belief is at the very heart of our business. We are proud to be a founder partner of Go ON UK and make this vision a reality,” said Dido Harding, CEO of TalkTalk, at the launch of GO ON UK last month.

It is unclear why Get Online @ Home chose TalkTalk as its partner, taking into the account the company’s abysmal performance in Ofcom’s annual customer satisfaction survey.

Last month also saw the launch of the HomeKey – a £70 bootable computer on a USB running Linux, designed to give older or less able people an easy-to-use PC on cheap hardware. HomeKey’s creator, SimplicITy was very critical of the Race Online scheme, saying that the problem iis the difficulty of using Windows, not the price of hardware, and claiming that many of those trained by the initiative will have failed to carry on using their systems once the training is complete.

Source:http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/government-scheme-offers-pc-with-broadband-for-159-79070

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Dell profit plunges on disappointing sales

May 23rd, 2012
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US computer maker Dell on Tuesday reported a 33 percent drop in profits in a disappointing quarterly report for former market leader.

The company, which has slipped to third place in the global PC market, said its profit in the first fiscal quarter fell to $635 million.

Revenue in the quarter was $14.4 billion, a four percent decrease from the same period the previous year.

Dell said however the firm was moving away from its traditional PC base to services.

“We continued to shift the mix of our business during a challenging environment,” said Brian Gladden, Dell’s chief financial officer.

“Our enterprise solutions and services businesses now account for 50 percent of our gross margin, and we’ll continue to make the necessary investments to maintain our progress.”

Texas-based Dell, once the biggest PC maker, has fallen to third place behind market leader Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo, and is just barely ahead of fourth place Acer Group.

Dell last month said it was buying Wyse Technology to expand its business offerings in the Internet “cloud” in the face of softening demand for traditional computing hardware.

Last year, Dell said it would halt sales of its Android tablet computer in the US market, failing to gain traction against rivals such as Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Apple’s iPad.

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/computer/294682/dell-profit-plunges-on-disappointing-sales

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RAM upgrade lets computer handle more tasks at once

May 23rd, 2012
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You may know that RAM (random access memory) is computer memory and that it affects the speed of PCs, laptops and handheld electronic devices. But is there any benefit to upgrading and adding more RAM to your computer?

The amount of RAM in your system is the primary factor in how fast it boots up, launches programs, navigates between them and responds to your inputs. If you have too little RAM for the amount of tasks you ask your system to perform, it will run slowly, freeze or crash.

Upgrading RAM doesn’t necessarily make programs run faster; it lets your system handle more tasks simultaneously. Let’s imagine your computer is a home office. The hard drive is like a filing cabinet where your data and applications are stored. RAM is the desk in your office.

Every time you launch a program, it’s as if you take a file from your filing cabinet and put it on your desk. Larger applications take up more space on your desk. A small desk will quickly run out of space to hold additional files. A larger desk (more RAM) allows your system to run more programs at the same time without performance lag.

When you don’t have enough RAM to support all the programs you want to run, your computer will file away what you’re not actively using to make room to run the new application. Let’s say you’re surfing the Internet when you launch Photoshop. Because Photoshop is a large program, it requires a lot of RAM to run.

If your computer doesn’t have enough RAM to run both Photoshop and an Internet browser, the system will push the files for the browser out of RAM and onto your hard drive. When you navigate back to your browser, the system has to retrieve the data from the hard drive to re-launch your Web-surfing capability.

This process takes longer than accessing a program that’s actively running. If you have enough RAM to run both applications, your system can leave the Internet browser fully functioning while you use Photoshop, allowing you to use both applications.

Every time your system has to dump data from RAM to make room for something else, or go to the hard drive to retrieve data to run a program, it takes time. This leads to a less responsive system. If you instruct your system to launch an application that it can’t support, it may crash — imagine the desk in the office scenario buckling under the weight of too many files.

Most applications instruct your system to automatically launch certain files from their program every time you start your computer. This makes it faster for the program to load when you select it. However, having multiple programs launch to your RAM simultaneously slows your system’s boot-up if you don’t have enough RAM.

When buying a new computer, few people purchase enough RAM to accommodate their future use. Software writers expect that systems will support progressively larger amounts of RAM in the future, so they often write bulkier programs that require more resources to run. As you install system and program updates, the applications grow larger. Suddenly, the RAM that was more than sufficient when you bought your system is now lacking.

After nearly a decade in the computer-repair business, I’ve never had anyone complain that his or her computer had too much RAM. The most common grievance: a slow, unresponsive system. RAM is the most noticeable upgrade for the average user. Luckily, it’s relatively easy and inexpensive to add more RAM to your computer or laptop, resulting in a good bang for your buck compared to other hardware upgrades.

Source:http://www.standard.net/stories/2012/05/22/ram-upgrade-lets-computer-handle-more-tasks-once

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