People talk about tablets signaling the death of PCs – heck, look at HP shopping around its PC operation if you want a hot, fresh example – but the segment that's really getting kicked in the family jewels are netbooks. The iPad and its Android brethren have just decimated netbook sales. Intel may be delivering another bit of bad news for the small-form laptops; reports say the chip maker's delaying the launch of the new Cedar Trail-M netbook platform and pushing back the release of its new Atom CPUs.
Intel's pumped about its Ultrabook concept. How pumped? So pumped that earlier this week, the company created a $300 million fund to help spur on the development of the powerful, low weight, long lasting laptops. The companies that are actually making the Ultrabooks, though, are apparently a little less enthused. You see, Intel wants companies to sell Ultrabooks for less than $1,000 – probably to make them competitive with the MacBook Air. That number's making a few manufacturers shift uneasily in their seats.
Ever since Intel laid to rest it's Netburst architecture, AMD has only been able to look back and reminisce about a time when the Sunnyvale chip maker held the performance crown the way a washed up athlete remembers his days as an all-star on the high school football team. We're not saying AMD is washed up by any means, it just hasn't been able to dominate the benchmarks chart. The company's upcoming Bulldozer could change all that, especially if leaked benchmarks turn out to be legit.
Steve Ballmer is no stranger to the CES keynote stage, having delivered the opening keynote at each of the last three editions of the popular trade show. It has now been announced that the Microsoft boss will also deliver a preshow keynote address at the next edition of the Consumer Electronics Association-owned event (much to a certain David Einhorn’s displeasure, we assume). But what will his keynote be all about?
Android has only been around for less than three years. In this time, the Linux-based operating system has quite literally gone places, appearing on a wide gamut of devices, from smartphones to e-readers. But it’s difficult to predict its next destination. Digitimes, however, has far too many industry sources for it to refrain from speculating. According to the site, Asus plans to build an Android notebook. Hit the jump for more.
Hold the phone (or omni-tool or Android that's an actual android or whatever); multiplayer in BioWare's single-player space epic? During the series' grand finale – after many wonderful years of solitary bliss? This could be a recipe for disaster. Don't go into a Krogan berserker rage just yet, though. If early reports are anything to go on, BioWare's not trying to make this the next Gears of War or anything like that.
Intel’s next-generation Atom platform, codenamed “Cedar Trail” and built on a 32nm manufacturing process, will be significantly cheaper when compared to current Atom N4xx and N5xx series CPUs, according to prolific rumormonger Digitimes. The chip maker is expected to begin shipping the next-generation Atom chips during the second half of 2011. Hit the jump for more.
In a season of outages, when internet-based services seem to be having a tough time staying online, the last thing anyone wants to talk about is an upcoming cloud-based operating system. But that is exactly what we are about to do. MPC readers, let us ignore the bone-chilling horrors of the past week that are otherwise likely to linger with many of you for a long time, so that we can concentrate on reports of an upcoming Chrome OS netbook from Samsung called “Alex.” The existence of this netbook came to light through a Chromium bug report. Hit the jump for specs.
It's been well over a month since Google finished distributing the entire quota of 60,000 Cr-48 Chrome notebooks reserved for Chrome OS pilot program participants, and the mid-2011 launch of retail devices promised by the company doesn't seem too far off now - just as long as the river of time keeps flowing at its familiar rate. But wait, what if there is yet another delay like the one that pushed retail Chrome OS devices to mid-2011 from late 2010? Pretty unlikely, according to our friends over at Neowin.
Humanity's knowledge of the next version of Windows has come up by leaps and bounds in light of a number of leaks over the past couple of months. New features revealed thus far run the gamut from hard system reset to system-wide implementation of the much maligned “ribbon” UI. Now, freshly leaked Windows 8 M1 Build 7850 screenshots show an overhauled task manager. Meanwhile, there is another report that points to an “Advanced Task Manager” in the latest builds of Windows 8. More details after the jump.
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