Items tagged with computers
Quantum computing is the next big field of research that could topple how we use computers today. Now, IBM has proved and demonstrated that quantum computers have advantages over their classical counterparts. To understand what IBM has done, we must first grasp how quantum computing works today. As the blog post describes, computing can be viewed as circuitry, where at the start are a number of classical or quantum bits (qubits). These bits are set to a starting value and then traverse through the circuit, which imparts change on the bits through gates that depend on a user-written program. For example, to compute 1 + 1, you must start at 1, then go through a plus gate to increase the starting...
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Perhaps in a parallel universe, tablets rule the day and traditional PCs are now extinct. Not in this universe, though. Both Gartner and International Data Corporation (IDC) tallied more than 62.1 million worldwide PC shipments in the second quarter of 2018. Where the two differ is in the precise growth rate—Gartner says PC shipments are up 1.4 percent year-over-year, marking the first quarter of annual growth since Q1 2012, and IDC pegs it at 2.7 percent. The exact number doesn't matter, it's the fact that PC shipments are on the rise that is interesting, and encouraging, especially in light of consumers increasingly using their smartphones for tasks that were once the exclusive domain...
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HP has announced updated EliteBook 800 notebooks and ZBook 14u/15u mobile workstations that have some slick features that mobile pros will love. The new workstations have some common features according to HP including support for the new Thunderbolt Dock G2, new displays, and robust security features. The machines are also rated to MIL-STD-810G. The new notebooks feature premium design language that was previously only available on the EliteBook 1000 series. The EliteBook 800 series machines feature 8th generation Intel Core vPro processors and promise up to 14 hours of battery life. If you manage to use all the battery power and still have work to do, HP Fast Charge tech will charge the battery...
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Perhaps the most surprising thing about LG mulling whether or not it wants to completely exit the traditional PC market is the fact that LG makes computers. Indeed, the South Korean electronics maker dabbles in PCs and even recently announced plans to unveil an updated Ultra PC model (laptop), Tab-Book 2 (hybrid 2-in-1 similar to Surface), and a 27-inch all-in-one desktop at CES. However, these might be among the last PC products LG ever releases. According to The Korea Times and "industry sources" it spoke with, LG is thinking about scaling back is traditional PC business and shifting focus to tablets, hybrid PCs, and smartphones. Everything is being considering, even exiting the PC market altogether,...
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Computer sales are slumping, but Windows 8 isn’t to blame for the slide, according to market consultant Gartner. The research firm said that PC shipments (including laptops), which dropped to 76 million in the second quarter, can be attributed to the rising popularity of tablets, rather than customer dissatisfaction with Microsoft’s latest operating system. HP's Z1 Workstation for business. Image Credit: HP “We are seeing the PC market reduction directly tied to the shrinking installed base of PCs, as inexpensive tablets displace the low-end machines used primarily for consumption in mature and developed markets,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. The...
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It's official, Lenovo now has an operational PC manufacturing plant in the U.S. Sure, the majority of its operations are still taking place overseas, but that's of little consequence to the people employed at the new facility in Whitsett, North Carolina. The grand opening was also a big deal for the locals, with North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory and other "prominent local dignitaries" attending the ribbon cutting ceremony earlier this week. Lenovo's 240,000 square-foot Whitsett facility created 115 new manufacturing jobs in North Carolina and is on pace to fully ramp up production by the end of the month, the world's second largest PC maker said. In addition to manufacturing, it also serves...
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The way Gartner sees it, we're all going to be living in single-PC homes in the not-too-distant future. Mom, pop, little Billy and his sister Janet won't have their own PCs anymore, and will instead share a single primary PC in the household for heavy lifting, and use a tablet for content consumption chores, like surfing the web and playing casual games. This shift that's taking place means that secondary PCs are fast becoming relics; once they're too old to be useful anymore, they'll just die out and be replaced by a tablet. The market research firm believes this is already taking place, noting that worldwide PC shipments declined 4.9 percent year-over-year to 90.3 million units in the fourth...
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Perhaps a sign that the times are changing, personal computers (PCs) during the second quarter of 2012 accounted for less than half of all DRAM shipments, the first time in a generation that this has happened, according to data by IHS iSuppli. PCs' share of DRAM shipments dipped to 49 percent, down from 50.2 percent in the first quarter. "The fall is notable, given that the share of PCs hasn’t dipped below 50 percent since the 1980s, when personal computers were a new product whose sales were rising at rapid clip," IHS iSuppli explains. "After accounting for the overwhelming share of DRAM buying for decades, average PC share from the first quarter of 2008 until the fourth quarter of 2011...
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If you walk into any Walmart and head over to the HDTV section, one of the brands that will jump out at you is Vizio, which has built a reputation for building and selling comparatively affordable TV sets. In a way, Vizio is to TVs what Rosewill is to PC parts -- value oriented. Perhaps bored with focusing almost entirely on HDTVs (Vizio also dabbles in related equipment, like home theater speakers and Blu-ray players, as well as tablet PCs), Vizio is reportedly taking its low-cost mojo over to the PC industry. In an interview with USA Today, Vizio's chief technology officer, Matt McRae, goes into a bit of detail about new PCs Vizio plans to unveil at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas...
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When it comes to Macs versus PCs, Apple versus Microsoft, and iOS versus Windows, haters gonna hate no matter which side you choose, if in fact you're not completely platform agnostic. There's nothing we can do about that. All we can do is observe and report the facts, and in this case, a market research firm is saying Apple is on track to become the world's largest PC vendor in 2012. Is that really a fact? It depends on how you view the numbers. Canalys said it expects Apple to overtake HP in the second half of next year, but that's only if you count tablet sales. If you do, well, Apple's full year PC shipments for 2011 are on pace to reach 415 million units, up 15 percent year-on-year, and...
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Occasionally when a company talks to the Chinese media, statements get lost in translation or twisted out of context by the time they're converted to English. It happens, and had we awoken to find Lenovo denying reports it told a Chinese newspaper it fully expects shove Dell aside to become the world's second largest PC vendor in the world (in terms of market share) by the end of the year, we wouldn't have been surprised. But lest anyone doubt Lenovo was completely serious or that the company's comments had somehow been misconstrued, Lenovo today issued an open statement reiterating it expects to surpass Dell sooner rather than later. "Lenovo has tremendous momentum in the market. We continue...
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For those of you keeping score, China just leapfrogged over the United States to become the largest PC market in the world, according to data by market research firm IDC. The latest figures peg China accounting for 18.5 million units worth $11.9 billion shipped in the second quarter of 2011, enough to edge out the United States, which received 17.7 million units worth $11.7 billion. China now holds a 22 percent of the PC market, compared to the U.S. at 21 percent. Does it really matter? "China's lead in the PC market is a huge shift that reflects the rising fortunes of emerging markets as well as the relative stagnation of more mature regions," said Loren Loverde, Program Vice President, Worldwide...
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Market research firm Gartner put together some preliminary figures on the state of the PC industry with mixed results. On one hand, worldwide PC shipments jumped past 85.2 million units in the second quarter of 2011, a 2.3 percent increase from the same period a year prior. However, the growth is somewhat marred by failing to meet Gartner's earlier projection of 6.7 percent growth. "After strong growth in shipments of consumer PCs for four years, driven by strong demand for mini-notebooks and low-priced consumer notebooks, the market is shifting to modest, but steady growth," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. “The slow overall growth indicates that the PC market is still...
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Devil Mountain Software has been featured in IDG articles before, as a firm that offers performance testing based on its Exo Performance Network (XPNet). Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that one of IDG's writers, Randall Kennedy, is actually the CEO of Devil Mountain Software, although he made up an alter-ego to cover his tracks. While that's already a source of concern for those who want performance data that is valid, truthful, and uncompromised (like HH readers), there's a secondary concern: just how valid is DMS' data?This whole story is somewhat reminiscent of the scandal that embroiled the New York Times, with Jayson Blair, who actually made up stories, you might recall. How...
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We wrote earlier about China's new censorship moves with regards to PCs, mandating that new PCs there have site-blocking software installed, or at least provided via an included CD. Ironically, though not surprisingly, it turns out that the filtering software, "Green Dam-Youth Escort," contains pirated code.According to Solid Oak Software, the makers of CyberSitter, one of the more popular Internet-filtering programs, not only does Green Dam look similar to CyberSitter, it uses DLLs identified with CyberSitter, and even gets updates from Solid Oak's servers. Piracy? A Chinese company stealing intellectual property? No way... CYBERsitter - Solid Oak SoftwareGreen Dam - SoftwareSeriously,...
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While it's no secret that China blocks web sites that it doesn't want its citizens to view, the Wall Street Journal is reporting an escalation in this censorship. The WSJ reports that China plans to require that all PCs sold in the country as of July 1st be equipped with software that blocks access to certain Web sites. The software's Chinese name is "Green Dam-Youth Escort." The software was developed by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. Additional input came from Beijing Dazheng Human Language Technology Academy Co. According to Bryan Zhang, founder of Jinhui, Green Dam operates in a way similar to such products as Net Nanny, that allow parental blocking of sites. Green Dam would use a...
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Perhaps a couple of decades ago, someone like Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt would have been urging college graduates at their commencement to turn on computers, learn the latest technology, spur us forward.This being now, Schmidt instead suggested to graduates at University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University that they turn off their computers and experience real life every now and again.You read that right, the CEO of the biggest company in, well, ever, which makes its money off the Internet, told a bunch of 20-somethings that they should get away from that glowing screen — even the small ones on their cell phones — every now and again. At Carnegie Mellon, he said: You should...
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New research out of the University of Manchester in Britain appears to herald the imminent creation of the Cylon race. It appears the structure for computer processors will switch from silicon to carbon, just like people, perhaps, eventually. It's not news that graphene (carbon in sheets an atom thick) conducts electricity exceptionally well. But it needs to insulate as well, and until recently, it wasn't clear it could do the job. The university's research showed graphene can be modified to insulate. What does that mean? It means there can be electronics made entirely from carbon, silicon need not apply. The semiconductor industry exploits the "whole periodic table" to manufacture...
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Many techs will agree: antivirus programs can be a hassle. Mostly, the issues tend to stem from slower performance and similar issues that result from using an antivirus program. Still, it’s a bit of a lesser of two evils deal: you can risk getting a virus, or you can deal with lags in performance. Usually, you can count on well-known antivirus programs to only touch malicious files, but this isn’t always the case.AVG, a free antivirus scanner, recently created problems for some of its users when it mistook user32.dll, a critical Windows component, for a container for the Trojan Horses PSW.Banker4.APSA or Generic9TBN. When the scanner activated, it assumed this critical file was a virus and deleted...
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Researchers are planning to conduct an experiment at the University of Reading to see if humans can be fooled into thinking they are talking with another human, when in fact they will be talking with a machine. The experiment is a homage to mathematician, logician and cryptographer Alan Turning, who originally proposed the Turing Test, in which a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which try to appear human; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test."Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse...
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You run into an interesting problem if you're a computer manufacturer. You're supposed to make your units better and faster all the time, of course, but overall the price you charge for your rigs generally gets cheaper. That means you could sell more units year over year and still end up with less revenue because each unit is worth less. It's apparently not a problem this year, as estimates for the total value of PCs sold worldwide for the year are growing at a brisk rate, and there's a rosy outlook for revenue through 2012.IDC now expects shipments to rise 15.2 percent over last year, compared with a 2008 forecast of 12.8 percent growth that the Framingham, Mass.-based firm made in March.Stamford,...
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Sounds like a science fiction movie doesn't it? But it's not.The newly recognized species is believed to have arrived in a cargo shipment through the port of Houston. Scientists are not sure exactly where the ants came from, but their cousins, commonly called crazy ants, are found in the Southeast and the Caribbean."At this point, it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ant because it is so widely dispersed," said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist.The good news? They eat fire ants, the stinging red terrors of Texas summers.They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner's gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction....
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