Leaves are dropping, days are shortening, and colder air is sweeping in. The holidays are almost here, and for most of us, that means feeling out proper gifts for friends and family – and, if we’re lucky, dropping just the right hints to unwrap what we’re after this year too. The especially good news for gadget enthusiasts being as follows: If your preferred pick happens to be a high-tech item, there’s a lot to get excited about this season.
Category: Features
Experts Question the Future of Netbook PCs
Thought the heretofore booming netbook industry was on a major upswing as price-conscious PC owners flocked to score one of the low-cost, highly portable laptops that emphasize performance over power? Guess again, as industry experts warn that the companies producing these systems and actual consumers buying them may be on different wavelengths.
With the holidays nearing and the machines’ stocking-stuffer-ready size and cost, netbooks are anticipated to be a big buy this gift giving season. But with the introduction of 12-inch screens, ION processors and rising sticker prices, some technology insiders say the lines may be getting a little blurry for these pint-size PCs. Many industry analysts noted that, in the coming months, we may see netbooks grow rather than shrink—a little “switcheroo” for the technology world—as unlike most machinery, dwindling in size with advancement, this hardware is growing and ultimately defeating its original purpose.
Experts Review Windows 7, Recommend You Upgrade
Talk about a reversal of fortune: According to leading technology experts, Microsoft is looking less like the dismally-clad actor seen in Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” commercials, and more like a suited-up Christian Bale from the new Batman movies as of late.
Thank the release of its seemingly well-chiseled new operating system (OS), Windows 7, set to debut October 22, which experts insist will please PC diehards with its overall refinements, speed, and broad hardware compatibility. Building on Vista, Windows 7 is predicted to minimize annoyances and provide a number of convenient new features designed to improve overall user-friendliness. But word on the street is that the new OS isn’t designed to dazzle—like the caped crusader, it’s no flawless hero, or so insiders also attest. Rather, as industry pundits who’ve been privileged to go hands-on with final review copies report, it’s simply a welcome step above its sluggish predecessor that’s destined to breathe new life into the Windows name.
In the Year 2020, Part II: Biotechnology and Genetics
Check out Part I of our series about life in the year 2020.
Nobody delivers profanity better than Bruce Willis. Nobody. Perhaps that’s why he’s seen so much of it in practically every script he’s tackled during the last 20-odd years. We don’t have a final count on the number of F-bombs our man Bruce dropped in his latest flick, Surrogates, but we can say with some authority that a world filled with robotic avatars gone amok would drive anyone to repeated vulgarity.
But 2017? Surrogates would have us believe that just eight short years from now, we’ll have retreated to our homes and left the “real” world to synthetically pimped-up alter-egos? Is it conceivable that we, as naturally exploratory human beings, would want to do that? Is it conceivable that such technology would even exist just 3,000 days from now?
Welcome to Part II in our three-part series on life in the year 2020. In Part I, we took a gander at cloud computing and the immediate future of the amazing, shrinking computer. In Part III, we’ll get the down and dirty on transportation, urban planning, and our changing cities. But today, we’ll go all Surrogates on you.
Cancel Cable and Save with Free Internet TV
At the beginning of September, I walked outside the house with a hatchet in hand and chopped the single line of coax that kept my household wired into the universe. I severed the cable TV.
Not literally, of course. That would have been pretty stupid – especially considering that our house kept the cable Internet connection as part of Plan B: Watch only what we could retrieve from the Internet. One connection, one bill.
In the Year 2020, Part I: Cloud Computing
It’s Friday afternoon. Andy’s had a long, tiring week, and he’s thinking this would be a great time to shed the shackles of his job and kick back with a good friend over a couple of beers and a juicy steak. One problem: Andy’s best buddy is off in Europe and he’s stuck in downtown Cleveland.
Best of CEDIA 2009
Attendance at the just-concluded CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association) Expo, held at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, was down for the second straight year to around 20,000, and the number of exhibitors shrunk from 500 to 400. But the good news for home theater enthusiasts is as follows: What the various exhibitors that remained actually exhibited was a considerable amount of ingenuity.
IFA Report 2009
Berlin, Germany—Think of the annual IFA electronics and appliance fair as a little bit CES, a little bit giant shopping mall. From September 4 through 9, over 1,200 exhibitors showed their latest wares to European retailers who cut deals so they can have the latest goodies on shelves in time for Christmas. Unlike the Consumer Electronics Show held annually in Las Vegas, IFA is open to the public for select days. Hoards visit the exhibits so they too can see and handle the latest cool gadgets. Also unlike CES, firms also show their appliances, large and small. So along with a zillion flat-screen HDTVs and cell phones, we strolled past refrigerators, washers, dryers and more coffee makers than you’d see in 10,000 Seattles.
Mac OS X Snow Leopard Review
The Macintosh faithful are all abuzz with the debut of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest and greatest operating system for Macintosh computers. However, unlike its “big cat” predecessors (like Leopard, Tiger, and Panther) Snow Leopard isn’t awash in splashy new features or new ideological paradigms meant to advance the computing experience – and knock Redmond back on its heels. Instead, Apple took a breath with Snow Leopard and focused on refining its Mac OS X operating system, taking the time to get lots of details right, improve performance, and make a bunch of under-the-hood changes that will benefit Macintosh users in the long run. Improvements to the OS are highly visible in a few places, show up in a lot of little areas, and amount to an upgrade greater than the sum of its parts. The enhancements in Snow Leopard become starkly apparent when one goes back to Leopard or Tiger. After using Snow Leopard, they seem clunky and slipshod, where Snow Leopard hums along and does things right.
