Sign up for our Technology Newsletter 
Verizon May Not Carry The PlayBook
April 22, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Verizon May Not Carry The PlayBook
Verizon Wireless is still evaluating whether or not it will carry the PlayBook tablet computer from Research In Motion, the biggest U.S. mobile operator stated on Wednesday.
While BlackBerry maker RIM had said it expected Verizon Wireless to be one of its distribution partners for PlayBook, the company said it has yet to make such a determination.
“We’re still evaluating the BlackBerry Playbook and have not made a determination as to whether we’re going to distribute it,” Verizon Wireless Spokeswoman Brenda Raney said.
The comment came the day after PlayBook debuted at North American electronics retailers.
Seagate To Acquire Samsung’s HD Unit
April 20, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Seagate To Acquire Samsung’s HD Unit
Seagate Technology is to acquire Samsung Electronics loss-plagued hard disk drive (HDD) business for $1.4 billion as it looks to battle rival Western Digital Corp and curb price wars that continue to damage the industry.
The deal comes a month after Western Digital sought to buy Hitachi Ltd’s hard disk drive division for $4.3 billion, to create a global leader with deep resources.
It is yet to be seen whether Western Digital trump Seagate as the world’s largest hard drive maker after the deals conclude. In 2010, Seagate’s sales was $11.4 billion while Western Digital posted revenue of $9.85 billion.
Toshiba Corp and Fujitsu are the other smaller players in the hard-drive space.
The sale of the HDD business will see Samsung leave the cut-rate industry and focus on its bread-and-butter memory-chip business.
The sector is already battling persistent sales-growth declines and now faces a longer-term threat from wireless tablet devices using more power-efficient flash drives, or solid-state drives (SSD).
2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
April 19, 2011 by admin
Filed under Smartphones
Comments Off on 2GHz Smartphones On The Horizon
According to Asian sources, Samsung is apparently developing an ARM based 2GHz dual-core processor. The smartphone is expected to be the first on the market next year about of the Samsung’s Exynos line.
Apparently, this news was leaked from an executive at Samsung who also said the company intends to offer the new processors on its competitors to put on their smartphones and tablets. Samsung is also claiming that the processor will offer PC performance. Our question is what will the performance be based upon?
Intel’s 22nm MIC To Debut Soon
Word on the street is that Intel may debut their first Many Integrated Core (MIC) using its upcoming 22nm process technology and expects to have more than 100 developer sites for MIC by the end of 2011.
Intel’s MIC micro-architecture is expected to be used for highly parallel applications in the high end computing arena such as scientific exploration and research and weather modelling. Just like its competitors such as AMD’s FireStream or Nvidia’s Tesla, Intel is not fond of MIC replacing processors.
During his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Intel’s Kirk Skaugen, VP of Architecture and GM said that compatibility with x86 will give MIC certain advantages. Kirk also went on to say that MIC would act like a co-processor where you can use the same compilers, the same tools, and the same VTunesthat power.
Microsoft Delivers Massive Security Updates
Comments Off on Microsoft Delivers Massive Security Updates
Microsoft today patched a whopping 64 vulnerabilities in Windows, Office, Internet Explorer (IE), and other software, including 30 bugs in the Windows kernel device driver and one in IE that was exploited at the Pwn2Own hacking contest last month.
The company also delivered a long-discussed “backport” to Office 2003 and Office 2007 that brings one of the newer security features in Office 2010 to the older editions.
The 17 updates, which Microsoft dubs “bulletins,” tied a record set late last year, but easily beat the October 2010 mark for the total number of flaws they fixed. Altogether, today’s updates patched 64 vulnerabilities, 15 more than in October and 24 more than in the former second-place collection of December 2010.
Nine of the 17 bulletins were pegged “critical,” Microsoft’s highest threat ranking, while the remainder were marked “important,” the next-most-serious label.
Microsoft and virtually every security expert pegged several updates that users should download and install immediately.
“There are three we think are top priorities,” said Jerry Bryant, group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in an interview earlier today. Bryant tagged MS11-018, MS11-019 and MS11-020 as the ASAP updates.
Intel Z68 Chipset Coming
Sources in the tech industry are claiming that the Z68 chipset from Intel is scheduled to debut on May 8th.
The Z68 is specifically designed for high-end Sandy Bridge processors since it is equipped with additional features that are apparently absent on current P67 and H67 boards.
The Z68 is said to have improved overclocking performance, in addition to support for RST SSD caching and a slew of extra enhancements geared towards the high-end markets.
Intel Outs New Processors
Intel is not letting their Sandy Bridge design go to waste. They will soon release a series of Xeon server chips based on the 32nm Sandy Bridge core.The new chips have a maximum capacity of 10 cores, with hyper-threading and they are expected to deliver a 40 percent performance increase over the previous Xeon 7500 series.
Intel’s Next CPU Faster Than Sandy Bridge
Comments Off on Intel’s Next CPU Faster Than Sandy Bridge
We hear that Intel is already in discussion with its partners about the 22nm Ivy Bridge CPU, and the talks cover the chips performance. The 22nm processor supposedly offers more performance with a similar thermal design.
Intel is informing its buddies to expect a 20 percent performance increase over Sandy Bridge, which is about the same gain that Sandy Bridge had over Nehalem based CPUs. Keep in mind this is an optical shrink of the existing 32nm Sandy Bridge architecture. Intel traditionally takes a very safe process when it moves from one manufacturing process to another. The 22nm Ivy Bridge comes with the new architecture and will debut in time to take on Bulldozer and Llano from AMD.
Oak Trail Tablets Coming Next Month
April 5, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
Comments Off on Oak Trail Tablets Coming Next Month
Word on the street is that Intel will keep their word and debut Oak Trail based tablets as promised next month. Apparently, the tablets will be introduced during the week of Computex, that opens May 31. An Intel representative was speaking with PC Advisor and basically confirmed that the first batch of tablets should be available in May. No pertinent information in reference to design and launch schedules were revealed. Nevertheless, many PC manufacturers such as Fujitsu, Lenovo and Samsung were said to be the first to show tablets that are based on Oak Trail and Windows 7.
Nvidia Stockholders Mad As Heck
Reports are coming out that stockholders of Nvidia are losing patience with executives as they do not believe the company does not have a sizable share of the smartphone and tablet space.
Analysts were giving warning signs about Nvidia’s share ability to compete against the Apple iPad and iPhone and what appears to be an overall weakness in the PC market. Incidentally, analyst have always speculated that the success of tablets cannibalize PC sales. That said, Nvidia stocks fell around 3.8 percent. Keep in mind there are some who do not want to kick Nvidia to the curb this early in the game.