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MS Surface Pro Sells Out
Microsoft started selling its Surface Pro tablet last Saturday, and quickly ran out of its supply of the 128GB configuration.
While the less expensive 64GB device was also listed as out of stock Saturday on Microsoft’s online store, by Sunday it was again available.
The company acknowledged the outages.
“We’re working with our retail partners who are currently out of stock of the 128GB Surface Pro to replenish supplies as quickly as possible,” said Panos Panay, general manager for Microsoft’s Surface line, in a Saturday blog post. “Our priority is to ensure that every customer gets their new Surface Pro as soon as possible.”
Numerous online reports noted the shortages, saying that some Microsoft retail stores sported Apple-esque lines on Saturday and that many Best Buy and Staples locations — Microsoft’s retail partners for the Surface in the U.S. — had single-digit supplies that in some cases were claimed earlier in the week.
Microsoft is selling the Surface Pro in the U.S. through its online e-mart, its approximately 70 retail outlets, and the Best Buy and Staples chains.
The device, which runs Windows 8 and is powered by an Intel processor, sells for $899 in a 64GB storage configuration, and for $999 with 128GB. Keyboard-cover accessories — the Touch Cover and Type Cover — sell separately for $120 and $130, respectively.
AMD Delays Cards
While some people are packing in smoking, AMD thinks it is a good idea to pack in releasing new graphics cards, at least for a year or so.
AMD marketing manager Robert Hallock told Megagames that the company has no intentions to release Radeon HD 8000 series cards for the foreseeable future.
“The HD 7000 Series will remain our primary focus for quite some time,” he said.
When pressed he said that AMD and its partners are happy with the HD 7000 Series, and it will continue to be its emphasis in the channel for the foreseeable future. There had been some rumours that an HD 8000 Series was being developed. However AMD has never confirmed it and so far there has been no proof that any were ready to show up.
Hallock’s comments lend credibility to rumours that the HD 8000 family won’t be out before Q4 2013.
LinkedIn DropS BWP API
February 18, 2013 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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LinkedIn has shut off its API access to “Bang With Professionals,” a Web service that was intended to facilitate more, say, intimate connections among users of the business-oriented social networking site.
The service was designed to allow LinkedIn users to anonymously search for people in their LinkedIn network who would be interested in meeting up for casual sex.
“We all had a good laugh,” the founders of Bang With Professionals said on last Friday on the website, less than a month after its launch. “We all knew it was a matter of time before our API key was revoked.”
LinkedIn said it shut off API (application programming interface) access for the free site, which was intended to work on all desktops and mobile devices, because it violated the social network’s terms of use in a manner that was “inconsistent with the goals of our developer program.”
Among other things, API access isn’t allowed for any application that contains or displays adult content.
Data about the site’s 6,000 subscribers is safe and all their user IDs have been deleted, the founders said. The only thing that remains now is the site’slanding page.
The origins of Bang With Professionals are not unique in the fast-paced social networking landscape. The site was built “by two guys in three days,” the landing page says. The total launch cost was US$57: $40 for stock images, $12 for the domain name and $5 for an account on the server CloudFlare.
The Twitter handle for the site has since been deactivated, but at press time, the Bang With Professionals blog on Tumblr was still accessible.
Will SSDs Make HD’s Obsolete?
HD makers can expect to see revenues decline as demand for traditional disk drives falls, according to IHS Isuppli.
Hard drive manufacturers Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba have carved up most of the market, lowering warranties and keeping prices high after the Thai floods in 2011 that shuttered several factories. Now IHS Isuppli claims that the good times have come to an end, with industry revenues expected to drop by 11.8 percent in 2013 and 2014 not expected to show signs of improvement.
While Seagate and Western Digital gouged consumers by keeping prices artificially high even after production recovered to pre-flood levels, solid-state disk (SSD) drive makers aggressively brought prices down. Intel has also been pushing SSDs as part of its ultrabook specification and with Windows 8 tablets using SSDs, the long term prospects for hard drive makers are not looking good.
Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS Isuppli said, “The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013. Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favour smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs. However, HDDs will continue to be the dominant form of storage this year, especially as demand for ultrabooks picks up and hard drives remain essential in business computing.”
IHS Isuppli said Western Digital could overtake Seagate to become the market share leader by the end of 2013, and said that hard drives will see greater use in the enterprise market in cloud and big data use cases.
HP Looks Beyond Windows
Hewlett-Packard has announced the availability of its latest Pavilion laptop with Google’s Chrome OS as the PC maker attempts to improve laptop sales by offering an alternative to the Windows OS.
The Pavilion 14 Chromebook has a 14-inch screen and runs on a dual-core Intel processor. The laptop is roughly 21 millimeters thick, and weighs 1.8 kilograms. It offers just over four hours of battery life, said David Conrad, director for product management at HP’s consumer products group.
The laptop is expected to ship on Monday in the U.S. starting at $329.99. The company did not immediately provide worldwide availability information.
HP wanted to widen its product offerings and the new Chromebook is targeted at those who do most of their computing on the Web, Conrad said.
“It’s really about choice. We have a very wide offering,” Conrad said. “We think the time is right for an additional choice for people to have a gateway to their Google digital lifestyle.”
The laptop has only 16GB of solid-state drive storage, but will offer 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years.
The Chromebook has the same design as HP’s other PC offerings, which mostly run on Windows and have standard-capacity hard drives. But, with a lot of data moving to the cloud, the Chromebook provides a different usage model.
“We see this as another device to be used around the house. It’s easily managed,” Conrad said.
AMD Releases Vishera
Although it was detailed back in August last year, AMD has just now officially released its new “affordable” Vishera based FX-4130 quad-core socket AM3+ CPU.
The new CPU is part of AMD’s 4100-series and is based on Vishera core design with four Piledriver cores. It works at 3.8GHz base clock and can “turbo” up to 3.9GHz. It packs 4MB of L2 and 4MB of L3 cache and has a 125W TDP.
According to the slide over at Xbitlabs.com, the FX-4130 replaces the FX-4100 with the same US $101 price but should provide between 3 and 9 percent more performance.
As things get better with Globalfoundries and their 32nm process technology, AMD is expected to introduce new models based on cut-down versions of Vishera, according to the report.
No LTE On IBM’s SoC Until 2014
Intel is working on integrated LTE modems for its upcoming SoC designs, but CEO Paul Otellini claims they will not be ready for prime time until 2014.
In a recent conference call Otellini was directly asked about Intel’s plans for LTE integration and said “higher levels of integration” are expected next year. He went on to say that the first Intel-based phones with LTE should launch in early 2014, in time for the Mobile World Congress.
Otellini said Intel’s wireless team, formerly a business unit of Infineon, is making good progress in LTE.
“We believe we have a very competitive solution. The Infineon team is known for not necessarily being first to market, but being really good at engineering a very solid solution and being cost effective and cost competitive and I think that they are doing a very good job with respect to this product,” said Otellini.
TSMC 20nm Processors In High Demand
TSMC believes demand for next-generation 20nm chips will be even higher than demand for current 28nm products.
Speaking in a conference call, TSMC CEO Morris Chang said the volume of 20nm SoCs built next year will be greater than 28nm volume in 2012 and by 2015 it should be greater than 28nm volume in 2013.
TSMC hopes to start 20nm production in the latter part of the year. The company is constructing two new facilities at Fab 15 and it hopes to start 20nm production in both simultaneously. We could be in for a quick ramp.
TSMC will offer only one version of the 20nm process, compared to four versions of the 28nm process. This should also allow it to ramp up volume production faster, reckons Xbit Labs.
Will Microsoft Buy A Slice of Dell?
Microsoft Corp is in talks to invest between $1 billion and $3 billion of financing in a buyout of Dell Inc, CNBC cited unidentified sources as saying on Tuesday.
Private equity outfit Silver Lake Partners is working to finalize a bidding group to take the world’s No. 3 PC maker private, and has started discussions with potential equity partners, sources familiar with the matter have said.
Dell also has formed a special committee to take a close look at any potential deal on the table, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. If successful, it would be one of the largest corporate buyouts since before the global financial crisis.
Microsoft, which accelerated its foray into computer hardware in 2012 with the launch of the Surface tablet, will provide the capital in the form of mezzanine financing according to CNBC, which is a hybrid of debt and equity.
Intel Makes Changes To Haswell
Intel has started dividing its mobile market segments into processors lines, where the Y processor line goes up to 11.5W TDP, U line covers chips in the 15W to 25W range, while the M line covers 37W, 47W as well as 57W TDP space, with two to four cores and graphics up to GT2.
The high performance H processor line is yet another BGA package processor line that also aims for 37W, 47W and 57W TDPs, with quad-core processors and up to GT3 graphics with on-package cache memory.
Intel expects that high performing gaming and workstation PCs will go use these processors and they fit some thick clamshell designs, no Ultrabooks with 57W unless you would want to use one for welding.
Intel currently doesn’t detail the processor number and the number of SKUs but it is obvious that they will end up with quad-core Core i7 branding for QC1+ and QC2+ market segments.