Asus and Toshiba Most Reliable Laptops

SquareTrade has analyzed failure rates for over 30,000 new laptop computers covered by SquareTrade laptop Warranty plans and found that one-third of all laptops will fail within 3 years. Asus and Toshiba were the most reliable laptops over a period of three years followed by Sony and Apple with both performing better than average.
Read More

Verizon to AT&T: Stop Being a Crybaby and Improve Your Network

In the ongoing battle between Verizon and AT&T regarding “There’s A Map For That” ad campaign by Verizon, the company today filed an aggressive legal response to AT&T’s lawsuit. The lawsuit asked Verizon to pull the ads from the air. The ads highlight the poor 3G coverage offered by AT&T in comparison to Verizon. The legal response starts with an aggressive introduction:
Read More

Rumor: Apple’s Black Friday Deals Leaked

BGR has posted a shot of Apple’s yearly Black Friday deals (image above), which they got from one of their connects. Their sources say that Apple will email this deals out shortly. The deals will be available on November 27th only and some stores will open at 6AM that day. The image shows that Apple will offer up to 30 percent discount on iPods, up to 25 percent on Macs and up to 15 percent off on Apple accessories, software and hardware.
Read More

Microsoft Disputes Windows 7 Vulnerability Claims

Chester Wisniewski of Sophoslabs posted that in a test done by the labs 8 out of 10 viruses affected Windows 7. He wrote in his post “Windows 7 disappointed just like earlier version of Windows. You still need to run anti-virus on Windows 7, the new OS is no cure for the virus blues.” However, Microsoft didn’t like the results and called the findings biased.
Read More

New Battery Technology Could Offer 10 Times More Capacity than Lithium-Ion and Upcoming Zinc-Air Batteries

A new battery technology developed by Fluidic Energy may solve the problem. The new technology called Metal-Air Ionic Liquid (MAIL), which uses ionic liquid salts in place of liquid to conduct electricity is much more stable and isn’t prone to drying and eventual decay. Also as the new battery can use metals denser than zinc to store much larger charge in the given volume.
Researchers at Fluidic Energy estimate that they can improve battery capacity by up to 900-1,600 watt-hours (Whr) per one kilogram (2.2 pounds) mass. That is 11 times more than lithium-ion batteries available today.
Read More

Sprint Starts Selling Palm Pixi

Sprint today started selling the second webOS based phone from Palm. The new Palm Pixi is available on Sprint for $99.99 with two-year contract and after $100 mail-in rebate. The phone comes with 2.63-inch (320x400) touchscreen, 2-megapixel camera, Dual-band CDMA2000, EVDO Rev A, Bluetooth, GPS and 8GB of onboard memory.
Read More

Benchmarks Show Significant Performance Boost on Core i5 and i7 iMacs

Last week, Apple started shipping the new 27-inch iMac based on Intel’s Core i5 and Core i7 processors, and various websites have posted benchmarking results for the 2.8GHz Core i7 iMac and 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac. Timon Royer’s blog has posted Geekbench 2 benchmark results for all four processor configurations available for iMac.
Read More

ICD Announces 15-inch Vega Tablet Based on Android 2.0

nnovative Converged Devices (ICD) has announced new Vega tablet that will feature a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 resistive touchscreen. The Android 2.0 based device will have NVIDIA Tegra chipset, 512MB RAM, 512MB NAND flash, microSD card slot, 1.3-megapixel webcam, dual digital microphone, ambient light sensor, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth and 3G network support.
Read More

AT&T Issues a Letter to Customers to Set the Record Straight on Verizon Ads

Verizon ads are definitely cause lot of trouble for AT&T. The company today issued a letter to its customers clarifying details about its 3G network. The letter tilted “AT&T Sets the Record Straight on Verizon Ads” says:

To Our Customers:
As the U.S Market leader in wireless data service, we typically don’t respond to competitors’ advertising. However, some recent ads from Verizon are so blatantly false and misleading, that we want to set the record straight about AT&T’s wireless data coverage.

Read More

Dell Officially Announces Mini 3 Smartphone

Dell today officially entered the smartphone race with the new Mini 3 handset. Dell has partnered up with China Mobile and Claro to launch the phone in China and Brazil. The Mini 3 smartphones are designed around the Google Android platform to deliver power, flexibility and customization opportunities for both users and carrier, according to Dell.
Read More

Battery Life Comparison: Windows 7 Vs. XP

Few days back, we posted results of benchmarking tests done by PC Mag on Windows 7, Vista and XP. Results were equally divided between Windows 7 and XP in the six tests, as Windows 7 came on top in 3 and XP won 3. Vista didn’t win a single test. All the tests done by PC Mag were performance based and none measured the impact of the OS on the battery life. Well, now many tech websites have posted battery life comparison between XP and Windows 7. And the results are unanimous, XP trounces Windows 7 in every battery life test.
Read More

Apple Files Patent For Improved Pen Aware Computer Systems

Pen based computing has largely been a niche market, but it looks like Apple plans to bring pen based computing to the mainstream, like it brought mp3 player with iPod and touchscreen with iPhone. In a patent application filed by Apple titled “Method and Apparatus for Acquiring and Organizing Ink Information in Pen-aware Computer Systems”, the company talks about methods that can be used to improve accuracy of pen-based inputs. Apple says that the pen-based input methods used today are inadequate for many users.
Read More

Microsoft Now Says: Mac OS X Didn’t Inspire Windows 7

Yesterday, we wrote that Microsoft’s partner group manager Simon Aldous said “One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use. What we’ve tried to do with Windows 7 – whether it’s traditional format or in a touch format – is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics.”
Well the above statement would have definitely annoyed Ballmer and hence company today disowned Simon by calling him ‘uninformed’ and ‘inaccurate’. Brandon LeBlanc posted on Microsoft’s Windows Blog:
Read More

AMD Reveals Its Processor Roadmap

AMD will start 2010 with introduction of their new Danube –mainstream notebook platform, and Nile – the third generation of AMD’s ultra-thin notebook platform. Both the platforms will be designed to give more than seven hours of battery life. Danube will bring AMD’s first quad-core mobile processor almost one year after Intel introduced its quad-core mobile processors.
Read More

Performance Comparison: Windows 7 vs. XP

PC Mag has posted results of benchmarking tests they ran on Windows 7, XP and Vista. The website used a 1.73GHz Toshiba Satellite m45-S269 laptop with 1GB RAM and 100GB hard drive for the tests. PC Mag compared Startup and Shutdown time, Picasa video encoding time and results of benchmarking tools including Geekbench, SunSpider and PCMark05 for the three operating systems.
Read More

Microsoft Executive: With Windows 7 We Created a Mac Look and Feel in terms of Graphical User Interface

If you have used both Mac OS X and Windows 7, you can clearly see that Windows OS was inspired by Mac’s user interface. And, now Microsoft executives are also accepting the fact. In an interview with PCR, Microsoft’s partner group manager, Simon Aldous said:

“One of the things that people say an awful lot about the Apple Mac is that the OS is fantastic, that it’s very graphical and easy to use."

Read More

Apple iPhone News Roundup

According to Strategy Analytics, Apple became the world’s most profitable handset maker in third quarter of 2009 surpassing Nokia. Apple’s operating profit from sale of iPhone came in at $1.6 billion in Q3 2009 compared to total operating profit of $1.1 billion reported by Nokia. This means that two iPhone models, iPhone 3G and 3GS generated more profit for Apple than the total profit Nokia achieved by selling over 100 different handset models.
Read More

AT&T Says to Verizon: “There’s a misrepresentation for that”

Yesterday, we reported that Verizon’s ad campaign showcasing poor 3G coverage offered by AT&T has improved Verizon’s brand perception. And, AT&T is not happy about that. So the company has published information that shows Verizon isn’t telling the whole story. In the publication titled ‘There’s a misrepresentation for that’, AT&T says:
Read More

Ricoh Officially Releases Details About Upcoming GXR Camera

Yesterday, information about the new GXR system from Ricoh was leaked, and today, Ricoh came out clean and provided complete details about the new camera system. The new GXR system offers interchangeable slide mount ‘lens units’ – sealed modules containing both optics and sensor, meaning it can switch from a large (APS-C) 12-megapixel CMOS sensor with fast prime lens to a tiny 10-megapixel CCD sensor with 24-70mm lens. Ricoh claims that the GXR system based cameras are the world’s smallest and lightest digital camera with the ability to change lenses.
Read More

Analyst: Verizon Sold 100,000 Motorola DROID in First Weekend

Broadpoint AmTech Analyst Mark McKechnie estimates that 100,000 Motorola DROID phones were sold on the launch weekend. According to Mark, Verizon had 200,000 DROID phone on hand, and most stores sold at least half of their stock. He says by end of 2009 Motorola will sell 1 million Google Android based phones and the number will reach 10 million in 2010.
Read More