Oct 05
Gateway on Thursday announced the XHD3000, a 30-inch widescreen monitor that the company is touting as the world’s first “quad-HD” display capable of rendering 2560×1600 pixels.
www.gateway.com or 1-800-GATEWAY, as well as technology and electronics retailers that sell Gateway products. It is priced at $1,699.99.
Of late, OEMs like Dell have tried to differentiate themelves and their brands by offering premium monitors, which they can pair with boutique systems. To date, however, Gateway has not offered a boutique line, and the company is in the process of being acquired by Acer. Continue reading »
Oct 05
In a counterattack on rival Intel, chip designer ARM Holdings said it will collaborate with six other tech companies to help make Linux-based smart cell phones and other devices easier to use.
ARM, based in Great Britain, unveiled the collaboration at its ARM Developers Conference at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center on Wednesday. The company develops chip designs and then licenses them to chip makers and hardware firms. Many of its designs are for mobile phones or the handheld device market.
The company formed an alliance with Marvell, MontaVista, Movial, Mozilla, Samsung and Texas Instruments. Together the group will create a platform - a blueprint for software developers - to help them more quickly develop better mobile software to run on the Linux operating system.
Intel has the same market in its sights. At its Developer Forum two weeks ago, executives at the Santa Clara chip giant demonstrated that certain cell phones with ARM chip designs cannot access some Web sites, as they touted Intel’s own designs for new cell phone chips. Continue reading »
Oct 02
NVIDIA IS AGAIN seeking to expand the graphics card boundaries with a new SLI configuration – Triple SLI.
This rumour has been sweeping across gaming websites and forums this past week and shows no sign of abating. It began with a picture posted on Expreview.com of a motherboard with three Nvidia 8800 Ultra’s installed. Touted as Nvidia’s “new Ultimate Gaming Platform,” it remains to be seen as to whether this is simply a rumour or a valid advancement. Enough about the rumour aspect, however. Continue reading »
Oct 02
I wrote recently (here) about the OLPC project’s plan to begin selling the XO laptop in a special one-for-two deal: buyers pay $400 for two, receive one, and get a tax deduction for the other, which is then delivered to a child in a developing nation.
As I said, I think that’s a good deal– the XO is likely to be a pretty interesting machine, even though its price is twice its original $100 target and battery life isn’t likely to live up to OLPC’s original projections (I covered that issue here and here).
Another low-cost Linux-based laptop that you’ll soon be able to buy is the Eee PC from Asus. Pricing for this machine, originally expected to start at $199, is now rumored to begin at $260 when the machine goes on sale later this month, with high-end models coming in around $400. Continue reading »
Oct 02
Samsung has thrown its weight entirely behind its dual-format Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD player and will de-emphasis its BD-only offerings, online reports suggest. However, the two-format machine, the BD-U5000, may have been delayed.
Separate reports point to a December release in the US, with the European debut taking place early in 2008.
Samsung launched the BD-U5000 at the IFA show in Berlin last month. Then, it said the player would arrive in Q4. In the US, it will, but the release schedule announced in Europe could reasonably be applied to the local roll-out too. Continue reading »
Oct 02
Could the worst be over? That was the question investors asked yesterday as UBS revealed its worst-case scenario for the effects of the credit crunch.
Switzerland’s largest bank wrote down SFr4bn (£1.67bn) at its fixed-income business, took an axe to its executive team and announced 1,500 investment banking job cuts.
UBS said the write-downs would mean a loss of up to SFr800m for the third quarter. Credit Suisse, UBS’s biggest rival in Switzerland, also felt the pain but said it had a profitable third quarter and was still in line for record profits for the full year.
The quarterly loss will be UBS’s first since it wrote off its investment in Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. Continue reading »
Oct 02
Sony has agreed to form a joint venture to design memory chips with the German firm Qimonda.
Memory chips are used to store information on products such as mobile phones and digital cameras.
Sony’s decision to agree a joint venture highlights the growing trend of chip makers sharing the large costs of design and manufacture.
The price of these processors has also been falling and this has squeezed the profits of manufacturers. Continue reading »
Sep 24
Computer enthusiasts in the developed world will soon be able to get their hands on the so-called “$100 laptop”.
The organisation behind the project has launched the “give one, get one” scheme that will allow US residents to purchase two laptops for $399 (£198).
One laptop will be sent to the buyer whilst a child in the developing world will receive the second machine
The G1G1 scheme, as it is known, will offer the laptops for just two weeks, starting on the 12 November.
“From day one there’s been a lot of interest expressed in having some way of people in the developed world participate in the programme,” Walter Bender, head of software development at One Laptop per Child (OLPC), told the BBC News website.
The XO laptop has been developed to be used by children and is as low cost, durable and simple to use as possible. Continue reading »
Sep 24
Late last month, hardware vendor HP announced plans to offer desktop computers in Australia with Red Hat Linux, OpenOffice.org, and Firefox installed. Now the company has confirmed that it is expanding this program to other parts of the world. Moreover, sources close to the company tell Ars Technica that expanded Linux offerings will also be coming to the US. Our source says that it is a “real possibility” that HP will counter Dell’s limited embrace of Linux “sooner rather than later,” so long as pilot programs proceed as planned.
Like many other mainstream hardware vendors, HP already provides relatively broad Linux server support for a number of distributions, including community-driven distributions like Debian. The company also certifies Red Hat and SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 for its desktop computers, but has only recently started to evaluate the advantages of offering Linux preinstallation options on a large scale. Continue reading »
Sep 22
LessWatts.org is Intel’s new website that hosts several power saving tools. As Linux.com reports, it also shares tips and tricks to help optimize power consumption on hardware from portable devices running on batteries to large data centers. ‘LessWatts.org is not about marketing, trying to sell you something or comparing one vendor to another. LessWatts.org is about how you can save real watts, however you use Linux on your computer or computers.’
As reported on Slashdot earlier, this isn’t the first time Intel has tried to help Linux users cut their power bills. In May, the company launched the PowerTOP program that monitors individual processes to keep track of power consumption. The project comes at a time when more vendors are pre-installing Linux on handhelds and laptops. Continue reading »
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