New Apple commercial ridicule Microsoft ad campaign

Apple’s new commercial directly attacks Microsoft’s recent $300 million advertisement campaign. Microsoft ad campaign features Bill gates and Sein field and gained bit popularity lately.

Apple Unveils 24-inch LED Cinema Display for MacBook

Apple unveiled a LED Cinema Display featuring a stunning 24-inch LED-backlit widescreen display which is designed for the new MacBook® family. The display contains a built-in iSight® video camera, mic and speakers enclosed in aluminum. The new LED Cinema Display will be available in November through the Apple Stores.

Sony and Toshiba top laptops

Sony and Toshiba laptops scored highest in a poll to find which home computers are the most reliable. The two brands got 93 per cent reliability in the “Which?” Computing annual survey. Overall, laptops scored 87 per cent for reliability, compared with 80 per cent for desktop computers. Apple, Compaq and Dell chosen as the top desktop brands.

Rwanda Distributes XO laptops

Rwanda launched the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program with the distribution of 5,000 laptops. The laptops are currently being sold for US$188, but OLPC is working to drive down costs through a give-one, get-one-free program. Nearly 100 teachers have already completed training by the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology in the use of specialized OLPC XO-1 computers. The organization has also provided Ethiopia with 5,000 laptops, and South Africa and Ghana have each received at least 100 laptops. Rwanda is one of the poorest countries in the world with a GDP of $238.30.

HP Breaks the 24-hour Battery Life Barrier

Up to 24 hours of continuous laptop operation on a single battery charge is possible now with an HP EliteBook 6930p notebook. “With the HP EliteBook 6930p, customers no longer have to worry about their notebook battery running out before their work day is over.” said Ted Clark, senior vice president Notebook, Global Business Unit, HP. The longer battery life is made possible by some of the energy efficient laptop components such as Intel® solid-state hard drives (SSD) and mercury-free LED displays. The highly efficient HP Illumi-Lite LED display boosts battery run time by up to 4 hours compared to traditional LCD displays and Intel SSD provides up to a 7 percent increase in battery life

Sony Recalls VAIO Laptops

Sony is recalling thousands of its VAIO laptops, due to an issue that can cause overheating. According to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission,the recall is for about 74 000 laptops in US. Sony said on its website that “the issue involves a small number of units which may overheat due to a wiring problem”. Sony is offering users free inspection and, if necessary, repair of their VAIO notebook. The company asks customers to visit Sony’s product support Web site to see if their laptop is included in the recall.

Mac’s Market Share Continues to Grow

Mac’s user base is growing in a rapid phase,thanks to iPod’s popularity. More and more personal users and small business community are moving to Apple’s Mac computers from Windows PC. Analysts believe Mac’s growing popularity is partly due to a “halo effect,” created by Apple’s iPod. Apple had a 10.4 home market share at the end of the first quarter of this year, compared to 7.5 percent for the first quarter of 2007, and 5.4 percent for the first quarter of 2006. Release of Microsoft’s new operating system Windows Vista also helped Mac to furthered its success.

Microsot Resosponds to Mac ad, enlists Seinfeld

The “Get a Mac” campaign may one of the reasons behind Apple’s rising market share in computer industry. Now Microsoft is fighting back with its own ad campaign. Seinfeld will be one of the key celebrity pitchmen in the $300 million ad campaign which is  going to be launched soon. The new ad effort is expected to use some variation of the slogan “Windows, Not Walls.” But its doubtful that $300 million is sufficient to reverse the negative public perception of Windows Vista.

Laptops with 3G Connectivity

Lenovo has announced that it has teamed up with Vodafone in the UK to offer mobile broadband built-in to the laptops. Customers will be able to purchase new ThinkPad notebooks in the T and X Series and on all of Lenovo’s new ThinkPad SL Series notebooks with the new connectivity option. The price for the data plan will cost £8.50 a day for unlimited data around Europe, USA and Japan according to Vodafone.

Top 10 Computers From Past To Present

1. The Difference Engine by Charles Babbage -1822
2. ENIAC -1946
3. IBM System/360 - 1964
4. Datapoint 2200 - 1970
5. Xerox PARC Alto - 1974
6. TRS-80 - 1977
7. Apple II - 1977
8. IBM PC - 1981
9. Apple Macintosh - 1984
10. IBM Roadrunner - Current

Toshiba’s New Cell powered Laptops.

Toshiba unveiled its first Quad Core HD processor notebook. The new mobile PC features a Cell-based chip said to be able to offer a “revolutionary high-definition, multimedia user experience”. The Qosmio G55-Q802 series laptop is equipped with a Quad Core HD co-processor with 4 SPEs (Synergistic Processor Elements) and 128MB of XDR memory. The starting price of the G55-Q802 is set at $1,549.99. The notebook will ship with Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed. The featured components are a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo T7350 CPU, 4GB of DDR2 memory, a GeForce 9600M GT graphics card with 512MB of dedicated memory, 500GB worth of storage space via two 250GB SATA hard drives and a DVD SuperMulti drive.

See Also:
Lenovo leads in customer ratings.
Laptops thinner than Mac Book Air.

Pay Dell to Downgrade to XP

June 30 was the last day you could get Windows XP. Because of compatibility issues, uncertainty about Vista stability/ease of use, and hardware requirements there are many people who don’t want to go for Vista. If you are ready to pay up to $50 to downgrade to XP,Dell is ready to sell computers with Windows XP. This may well be the first time an older operating system is being sold as a bonus package. But Microsoft promised that Vista SP1 release solves many issues reported on Vista such as low battery life in Laptops.

See Also:
Vista SP1 pulled by Microsoft.

Apple SSD-based MacBook Air price drops

Apple has slashed price on the MacBook Air SSD version by $500. The 13-inch 1.8GHz MacBook Air with SSD now starts at $2,598. The super slim 13-inch 1.8GHz MacBook Air with a 64GB Solid State Drive was initially listed for $3098. Market research shows that Apple notebook sales are up by 61% from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.
Detailed specs of the Laptop:

Display: 13.3″ LED backlit color display with automatic brightness control (manual brightness option is there as well). Native resolution 1280 x 800, supports millions of colors (32 bit). Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics with 144 megs of shared memory. DVI out capable of driving monitors up to 23″.

See Also:
Apple Tech support the best.

CO2 emission can be reduced by 1 Billion Tonnes: HP

Some of the solutions described in HP’s white paper include “Low Carbon IT Solutions,” that identifies the potential to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

• Smart cooling and its use in the design of data center facilities that reduce energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions from commercial premises.
• Innovation in telepresence and videoconferencing that enable improved virtual collaboration to reduce the environmental impacts of international travel. HP’s use of this technology is expected to save approximately 20,000 international trips and at least 32,000 tonnes per year of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).
• Flat panel displays and Laptops, increases workplace flexibility to reduce energy consumption from non-critical travel.

HP TouchSmart PCs

HP unveiled a new generation of stylish TouchSmart all-in-one PCs. The new HP TouchSmart family of PCs features HP software designed specifically for touch. Without using a keyboard or mouse, consumers can play music and create play lists, zoom in or out of photos, and quickly check the weather or watch TV. Only one cord is enough to set up and power the system. The PC comes with a 22-inch diagonal, high-definition,wide screen display and powered by Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor. Prices for the base model HP TouchSmart IQ504 PC and the TV-tuner equipped HP iQ506 PC are expected to start at $1,299 and $1499, respectively.

Laptops thinner than Mac book Air

HP unveiled its entry in the growing list of slim laptops, the half-inch thick Voodoo Envy 133. The Envy, weighs less than three-and-half pounds and thinner than Apple’s Apple MacBook Air. Introduced in Berlin, Germany, the thin laptop is among the first PCs HP is creating using the Voodoo brand. The Envy is expected to be available during the summer, starting at about $2,099. HP(Hewlett Packard) is the world’s largest PC maker. World’s Number 2 PC maker Dell, also announced plans to produce slimline laptops and desktop computers.

Olympic themed Laptops and USB drives

As the sponsor of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Lenovo unveiled winning “Cloud of Promise” themed laptops earlier and now they release a USB drive with the same theme. If the devices come as limited edition there will be a great future eBay value for them. The “Cloud of Promise” theme for the Beijing Olympics was designed by Lenovo and selected over 300 competing themes.

23% home computers infected

A study conducted by Panda Anti virus revealed that 23% of the home computers which have up to date anti virus software were infected by malware. When it comes to corporate computers this figure increases to 73%. Survey was conducted among 1.5 million users. Panda Security developed a system called “Collective intelligence” to over come the threat. This security model based on the collection of information concerning malware from the Internet community and the automated processing of this data in new data centers.

Laptop for developing world by Dell

Competition is heating up in mini laptop market, after the XO computer designed by the One Laptop per Child effort. Dell released images of its new laptop for developing world. There is not much details available at this time about the new initiative. OLPC is a non-profit organization overseeing the $100 laptop project.

Related News : One Laptop per child

Best tech support

A new study by Consumer Reports finds that technical support for most computers is pretty dismal. According to the study Compaq and Hewlett-Packard’s tech support were found to be generally worse. For laptops, Lenovo’s tech support found to be  quite good. Apple rated as the best by consumers. The Consumer Reports’ survey showed Mac’s in-store help is excellent, solving problems 90 percent of the time.