Intel made a bit of a surprise announcement on Tuesday, January 22nd. They have announced they will be slowly discontinue production of desktop motherboards over the next 3-years when they will be out of the market completely. Intel says they are going to focus instead on on other aspects of the PC industry, such as reference designs for Ultrabooks and all-in-ones, along with its Next Unit of Computing (NUC). While this is great news for other desktop PC motherboard manufacturers such as MSI and Asus, is this a sign that the traditional desktop PC is going the way of the VCR? The tablet market has grown by leaps and bounds in the past…
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However, they are not for consumers. These Firefox OS (formerly Boot to Gecko) phones are being made by a Spanish company GeekPhone for the purpose of allowing developers to create apps for the new platform. Currently there are two phones the Keon and Peak which both house 4 GB of ROM, 512 MB of RAM, a MicroSD slot, 802.11n wireless networking, light and proximity sensors, GPS, an accelerometer, as well as a camera flash. The lower end Keon has a 1GHz Qualcom Snapdragon S1 processor, 3.5-inch screen, 1,580mAh battery and a 3-megapixel camera. While the higher end Peak has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon…
Not as much Tablet news this week around now that CES has wrapped up. All external links go to Tom’s Hardware unless otherwise stated. Tablet Announcements: Gigabyte Announces Two Windows 8 Tablets – The 11.6-inch S1185 and the 10.1-inch S1082. Both seem to have decent specs and both will use Windows 8 Pro. Pricing not yet announced and likely won’t be until we get closer to the February 2013 and March 2013 releases for the S1082 and S1185 respectfully. Archos 80 Titanium tablet has same resolution as iPad Mini for $169 [C|Net] – Mentioned this new product line from the French…
Many have wondered if Microsoft used the same desktop Windows Kernel on the Windows Phone 8. The answer is yes as indicated by this tweeted photo of the error screen: Microsoft says ‘normally’ users should never see this error and therefore don’t have to try to figure out just how to insert an install CD into their phones. It seems this particular person was trying to flash their phone when something went horribly wrong. This also serves as an example of how to ‘brick’ your phone. No indication is Microsoft was going to offer any support, other than may be have the user…
Looks like Oracle is going to be paying out some overtime to its developers who worked over the weekend to get Java 7 Update 11 released. This emergency update patches the latest (announced January 10th) vulnerability CVE-2013-0422 as well as CVE-2012-3174 from June 2012. They have also changes the way Java interacts with web applications “The default security level for Java applets and web start applications has been increased from ‘medium’ to ‘high,” Oracle said in the advisory. This means the user will always be prompted to before an unsigned Java applet or Web Start application can run. Previously, Java applets and applications ran automatically is users…
One of my favorite add-ons for Firefox is Copy Link Text (or CoLT). I like this add-on as it allows you to copy the link text, the link location or both (as an HTML, Wiki, BB Code or other link format). I’ve never really found one for Chrome until recently. The extension is also called Copy Link Text and unlike the Firefox extension though, does require a little setup (and a browser restart) to be able to copy both the link location and text as an HTML link. Once you have installed the extension from the Chrome Web Store you…
Looks like 2013 is going to be the year tablets really start taking off. There has been a lot of tablet news this week which is likely because of The Consumer Electronics Shows (CES) this week in Las Vegas. All links are to Tom’s Hardware unless otherwise noted. Tablet Announcements: Archos Shows New Titanium, Platinum Android Tablets – French company – tablets will feature white finish instead of the typical black/aluminum finish and some will support a 2048 x 1536 resolution (for about half the price of the iPad). Panasonic Announces Android, Windows 8 Tablets – Panasonic might be taking a bit of risk here doing both Android and Windows 8…
So it was reported on January 9th that Microsoft had sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses. While at first that may sound impressive, especially given the lack luster reports on the sales and response of Windows 8 it really isn’t. They key word in this statement from Microsoft is licenses. This is not the same as ‘copies of Windows 8’ or number of ‘Windows 8 PCs’ sold. A better way of looking at this is 60 Million copies of Windows 8 have been produced or made. This figure includes both Windows 8 software only and Windows 8 installed on new PCs. However, it does not reflect how many copies…
Normally, I don’t re-post from my Firefox Blog, but these browsers plugin vulnerabilities affect other browsers (such as Chrome & Safari) besides Firefox. Dangerous vulnerability in latest Java version Version: Java 7 Update 10 Issue: Can be used for Cyber attacks (even on fully patched Windows machines) Recommend Action: Browser plugin should be disabled or sandboxed (see Work Around below)) Work Around: For those who MUST have Java, use Firefox 17 is or newer. The Java plugin will be installed but ‘sandboxed’. The plugin will not execute/run until the user gives permission ‘click to play‘ on a per site basis. The user will…
I think we have come to the point that our smartphones and tablets are more powerful than our traditional desktop/laptop computer. At their keynote address on Thursday, January 10th at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Samsung’s Stephen Woo announced the world’s first eight-core processor for smartphones and tablets, the Exynos5 Octa. However, it is not a true 8-core (or octa-core) as it is really 2 quad-core processors. My HTC Sensation phone only as a dual-core processor and the new (for 2012) Samsung Galaxy Note II phone/tablet as a quad-processor. The Asus Nexus 7 and Microsoft Surface tablets also have a quad-core processor….