Editor’s note: Chester Ng is co-founder and CMO of SweetLabs, makers of Pokki, a modern app platform for the PC. Follow him on Twitter @chest.
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been blessed by the prescient researchers at Gartner and IDC with fresh data and predictions about the shipment trends for smart devices, especially the PC. This has sparked the typical “PC is dead,”… → Read More
Sim City 5 is yet another game that exposes an inherent conflict at the heart of the PC, about how connected and app-like or independent it should be. Publishers like EA might be trying to convince PC users to think of their games more as services, but PC users are still as reluctant as ever. So are operating system developers. And so the PC continues to muddle on. → Read More
If the huge profusion of mobile handsets, phablets and tablets on display at CES weren’t enough of an indicator, we now have some numbers from Gartner that spell out how the PC industry continues to decline in the face of smaller, cheaper, more portable, and more popular computing devices. Total worldwide PC shipments for Q4 totalled 90.3 million units, a decline of 4.9% over Q4 2011′s 95 million… → Read More
According to IDC’s latest report on smart device shipments, we’re in for a record-breaking holiday season. The analyst firm is expecting device shipments to grow 19.2% over third quarter levels, and 26.5% year-over-year to reach 362 million shipments in the fourth quarter of 2012 with a total market value of $169.2 billion dollars. In Q3, worldwide smart device shipments grew 17.1%… → Read More
As we’re waiting for the iPad Mini, Apple is discussing the Mac, which has become the #1 Desktop and Notebook, according to the company. This is huge, because the personal computer industry has been run by Microsoft in the past, but Apple has shown strong growth in the past six years straight. → Read More
If you’re an Android and a PC, you should check out BlueStacks — before hackers catch on or Chrome sneaks in this functionality, take advantage. The startup’s software has been going like hotcakes over the last few months, as it’s offering a much-needed service for Android and PC users, having developed software that allows Android users to run their apps on all Windows PCs, tablets, and laptops… → Read More
There has been much debate about what the post-PC era is, when it will arrive, or whether it’s already here. But key pieces of new data, emerging last week, are making the case that we crossed the imaginary line from the “PC” era to the “post-PC” era at the end of 2011. According to analysts at Canalys, two major computing milestones were achieved at the end of this year: smartphone shipments… → Read More
Vizio, maker of cheap LCD TVs for most of this millennia, has just announced they’re releasing five new PCs including ultralights and all-in-ones. These things are oddly well-designed and should come in at under competitor prices – a plus in the low-margin world of CE. → Read More
As promised earlier this summer, mobile video calling app Tango has finally made it to the PC. Today, a year after its launch on iOS and Android, Tango is now available for Windows desktop computers (XP, Vista and Windows 7). The company says a Mac version will be available later this year. → Read More
Is Silverlight really dead, or is it the future of Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Windows Phone? This is a question weighing on the minds of legions of Microsoft developers right now – developers who were once promised that Silverlight was the answer to their cross-platform, cross-browser compatibility woes, only to be later informed that JavaScript and HTML5 will be the tools used to build Windows 8… → Read More
Oh, happy day! Angry Birds is now available for the PC. “But wait,” you say. “There’s no app store on Windows. How will I download it?” Don’t worry: Intel has you covered → Read More
We all agree that the Crysis 2 leak was pretty crummy, hoping that Crytek doesn’t use it as an excuse to abandon PC development altogether. If the Cervat Yerli’s message on the MyCrisis forum is any indication, then the company won’t hold this latest bit of unpleasantness against the larger PC community. → Read More
A panel at this year’s Game Developers Conference has the Internet (or, at the very least, the CG chatroom) spinning around in circles with excitement. The panel, “Update on PlayStation Move Development,” says the official description, “will bring developers up to speed on developing for the PlayStation Move controller. We will cover developing for the new PlayStation Move Sharp Shooter… → Read More
The long-awaited Dreamcast collection for the Xbox 360 and PC now has a release date: February 22. The collection includes Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5: Part 2 (ha!), and Sega Bass Fishing. No price available just yet. → Read More
Are we looking at the final days of BIOS? Apparently so, if we’re to believe the BBC. Its replacement, UEFI (which I’ve taken to pronounce like UEFA, as in the UEFA Champions League), will be found on more and more PCs beginning next year. For end-users that immediately means one thing: much faster boot times. → Read More
How do you guys feel about PC cases these days? Are you a fan of the over-the-top styling that so many of them feature, or would you like something a little more staid? I ask because NZXT has a new case called the Phantom. It’s not too crazy—there’s no spinning lights or any of that jazz—and it’s a full tower. That’s key in case you want to rock dual video cards or want to add… → Read More
Back in the dark ages, it used to be if you wanted a computer, you built it yourself. And I don’t mean order the parts and put them together, I mean soldering the chip sockets into a breadboard and assembling all the bits by hand. For whatever reason, computer enthusiast Matt Sarnoff misses the halcyon days of the Altair, and decided to build his own PC the old fashion way: with a hot piece… → Read More
This is a counterpoint to The Three Mac Features I Want On My Next PC PCs suck. They’re underpriced, underpowered, and nothing more than disgusting commodity hardware stuck into a box with no regard for usability and peripheral compatibility. But I still want one. Well, sort of. I don’t want to give up OS X my Mac’s performance record or, well, my freedom. So I guess really what… → Read More
The twee little Mini-e ER1402 is a $300 computer with a big heart. The fella weighs a mere 9 pounds and has HDMI out and AMD Athlon II NEO Processor, NVIDIA GeForce 9200 graphics and 2GB of memory, just enough for a walk in the park and a wee snoot of brandy at the local after.
The shape? Not my absolute fave but when you have so little work with, you kind of take what you can get. Very, very… → Read More
Digital Storm just announced their latest PC, the Special|Ops. Intended mainly for the gaming fanatic, the Special|Ops runs the latest is CPU/GPU technology, and comes boxed in a quite attractive and well ventilated case. Of course they’ve already brought us the Black|Ops and the Black|Ops Assassin, so I think we’re starting to see a trend here. → Read More
Digital Storm announced their latest enthusiast PC, the Black|OPS Assassin. Normally we don’t bother telling you about every new computer that hits the market, but this one is actually fairly unique. It’s a departure from your standard design in that it uses vertical cooling, and the laws of physics. → Read More
Uh oh, sounds like the tablet that Steve brought down from the mountain might be susceptible to attack. A recent campaign by malware spammers has been targeting users of the much hyped iPad, inviting users to download an updated and improved version of iTunes. The update promises to provide more compatibility and better performance, and is completely fake. → Read More
Maingear just announced their new mX-L 15 notebook, a gaming machine with a price that’s not on the crazy scale. It’s available in multiple configurations of course, which we’ll talk about after the jump. → Read More
Whoa. Rockstar just announced that the two DLCs for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, will be released for the PS3 and PC on March 30. That’s March 30 world-wide, mind you. The games will be sold separately (as downloads on PSN and Games for Windows Live) as well as in the familiar Episodes from Liberty City double pack. → Read More
TransferJet is a close-proximity wireless transfer technology Sony introduced in 2008. The idea is to let two electronic devices quickly exchange data (theoretically at up to 560 Mbps) just by bringing them close together (touch is possible, too). By way of comparison: The data transfer rate for Bluetooth Version 2.0 + EDR stands at just 3 Mbps.
Toshiba announced during IFA in Berlin last year … → Read More
There was plenty of talk ever since Lehman Brothers exploded in mid-2008 about how would consumers cope. Would they keep buying widgets in the face of insane job cuts? Would they keep buying, but only at a fraction of what they had in the past? Let’s take PC sales, a pretty good barometer of where the average person is. (It’s a big purchase, but not like buying a car or house.) Shipments of new… → Read More
Unless you’ve been living offline for the past year, you’ve undoubtedly heard and/or seen “I’m On A Boat,” Lonely Island’s mock hip hop song/video. Today brings a response to it in the form of a group of Apple fanbois rapping about their love of using Apple products. They even have one character autotuned up, just like T-Pain in the “I’m On A Boat” version. No word on if they used the I Am T-Pain… → Read More
Some more Psystar news for y’all. You’ll recall that the renegade company was more or less shut down last week, slapped with an injunction and expected to pay Apple an awful lot of money. Put all of that aside for a minute, for there’s new news: Apple and Psystar have struck a deal! The deal, which ends a 17-month-long legal battle, means Psystar will stop selling computers pre-loaded with Mac OS… → Read More
IBUYPOWER computers aren’t exactly known for being subtle but it’s worked for them for 10 years and they are still going strong. To celebrate their anniversary, IBUYPOWER is re-releasing the Chimera 2 with all new hardware and a pretty impressive new paint job. → Read More
You can almost hear Steve Jobs flipping out right now. Psystar, notable for its efforts to sell generic PCs with Mac OS X pre-loaded, has just released something called Rebel EFI. It’s software that allows you to instal Mac OS X on generic PCs without having to Hackintosh said PC. (Hackintoshing isn’t for the weak of heart!)
Update: Psystar’s site is down but here are the installation… → Read More
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