With so much chatter about tablets this year, you might think that the handheld, rectangular devices being unveiled represent a significant innovation. The reality is that so much of what we're seeing is not a whole lot different than what we saw in previous years; these products offer only a few new twists. But those new twists could make the difference between tablets' remaining a niche item and their finally busting out to the mass market in a meaningful way.
Windows is on the verge of dropping below 90% market share, with smartphones and tablets posing an increasingly serious threat to Microsoft's dominance of the operating system market.
Microsoft and Google are fighting yet another public relations battle, this time over the HTML5 video standards to be used in the next generation of Web browsers.
Look for more robust voice recognition to take hold in the realm of personal computing, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said in a brief interview this week that also touched on topics ranging from tablet computing, Oracle's acquisition strategy, and enterprise memory technology.
Microsoft is easing in to 2011 with a light Patch Tuesday for January. There are only two security bulletins this month, and only one of those two is rated as Critical by Microsoft.
Chip design firm ARM grabbed the spotlight at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week when Microsoft announced that its new Windows OS would work on the ARM architecture. ARM processors go into most of the world's smartphones and tablets, and with Windows support, the company can now focus on the wider market for PCs, where it has virtually no presence. Nvidia also announced that it was building its first ARM-based chip, code-named Denver, for PCs and servers.
Cringely here, reporting from CES in Vegas, where rude beasts walk the earth (at least, the ones that don't crawl or slither), impeded in their forward progress only by hip-deep mounds of tablet PCs. Everyone appears to be tapping, swiping, and gesturing on some kind of sleek black touch-sensitive device, when they're not squinting at blurry 3D screens waiting for their turn with the polarized glasses.
Rumor has it that Microsoft will launch a barebones version of Windows for TV set-top boxes at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Microsoft will reportedly announce a new Windows-based US$200 set-top box using Windows Media Center as its primary interface, according to the Seattle Times.
As recently as a year ago, many enterprises couldn't have imagined that the iPhone would now be second place in terms of security features that enterprises require, behind only the BlackBerry and ahead of Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.
For years, using voice recognition technology on phones or other devices has been a novelty -- something people try once but never again, usually because it works so poorly. But recent developments, including harnessing the computational power of the cloud, have made it more usable and will make it even better in the near future, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft has been paying more attention lately to the small business audience, as well as the cloud. With the "Aurora" Small Business Server (SBS)--officially named Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Microsoft delivers a solution that brings the two together--bridging local services and the cloud, and granting small businesses affordable access to big business tools.
Well, that was fast. Do-it-yourself electronics kit maker and hobby retailer Adafruit recently announced that a hacker had won the company's Open Kinect Bounty. Spain-based hacker Hector Martin Cantero, who is known online as "marcan," released a proof-of-concept video Wednesday night showing the Kinect interfacing with his Linux-based laptop.
Virtualizing x86 infrastructure isn't just a one-step process -- as servers change, the whole data center must change as well. While server hypervisors such as VMware's ESX, Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xen can make IT more efficient and cost-effective, many of the virtualization advantages can be canceled out when data centers rely on technology and processes that haven't been updated for the virtualization age.
Is Facebook building a phone? The company won't say for sure, but for some the idea of a Facebook phone is social networking overkill. To social butterflies, a Facebook phone is a dream come true. Here is a look at the pros and cons.