Once upon a time, you could buy a computer that, despite being technically obsolete the minute you got it home, could still be useful for years and years to come. Lately, however, technology has been gaining speed on good judgment. Do the words "accelerated amortization" sound familiar?
What a difference a year makes. One year ago, we were dazed, dazzled, and beguiled by the arrival of dual-core processors. Offerings from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices had analysts, journalists, IT professionals and enthusiasts all gushing with praise for a bright new multitasking future.
As the whitebox market fights for its life, local players are reinventing the wheel and dishing out a few survival tips. Strength in numbers is a main strategy. It's a classic scenario. By building up a large team which works towards a common goal, the little guys are able to battle it out against larger, more powerful competitors - and make a statement while doing so.
Computer scientists at the University of Texas at Austin are inventing a radical microprocessor architecture, one that aims to solve some of the most vexing problems facing chip designers today. If successful, the Defense Department-funded effort could lead to processors of unprecedented performance and flexibility.
While smaller notebook price tags are great news for consumers, they are a big challenge for vendors and resellers alike. Several players in the market have now introduced models that break the $1000 barrier and the outbreak of a price war is a real possibility.
With dual-core technology promising double-digit performance increases with little or no rise in power consumption, resellers can pitch it as a key differentiator.
While many say there's still a role for the local whitebox player, morphing business strategies from a hardware player to a solution provider is a must in order to stay alive.
All the right components can make up a very good PC. But choosing the contents of your new machine can be tricky, because technology moves so quickly these days. We look at the components market, and asks the question: How do you beat remorse?
Today, it is exactly 23 years, nine months, 19 days; or 8693 days; or 751,075,200 seconds; or 12,517,920 minutes; or 208,632 hours; or just less than 1241 weeks since the launch of the original IBM PC on August 12, 1981.
Although chip makers have developed better strategies to combat counterfeiting, the absence of strong intellectual-property laws in emerging markets such as China means that the days of counterfeit chips are not over, according to industry experts.
Paradigm shifts were easier before the bubble burst. Serious change costs serious money, and few IT organisations have gobs of green stuff to throw around anymore. So it's no surprise that utility computing - hailed as the biggest paradigm shift since the first disk drive spun up - has stalled. It doesn't help that the marketing geniuses who came up with the concept still can't agree on what it means. There are three basic definitions.
With slashed prices and squeezed margins, where can resellers look for some LCD action? Take advantage of revised vendor strategies and do some creative thinking: Analysts have highlighted the multimedia space is a good place to start.
Four decades after he coined the most famous law in computing, Gordon Moore still has a few words of advice for the industry.
For all the attention being heaped on Moore's Law this week, there's another more important law that chip makers must contend with as they push the limits of semiconductor technology ever further: the law of diminishing marginal returns.
The whitebox industry has traditionally touted efficiency, flexibility and speed to market as key differentiators from tier-one competitors. But with the likes of Dell and HP adopting whitebox strategies, such as targeting the SMB market, the industry is under pressure.
In the past decade, PCI has served as the dominant I/O architecture for PCs and servers, carrying data generated by microprocessors, network adapters, graphics cards and other subsystems to which it is connected. However, as the speed and capabilities of computing components increase, PCI's bandwidth limitations and the inefficiencies of its parallel architecture increasingly have become bottlenecks to system performance.
Consumers thinking about buying a new personal computer in 2005 might be better off putting off their purchase until 2006. With few major changes in PC hardware or software due over the next year, the PC of 2005 is likely to look awfully similar to the PC of today.
As business and consumers gear up for the Christmas shopping season, users can expect the latest crop of gear to feature everything from new screen technology to advanced video engines. Notebook action is in full swing - and consumers are lapping it up.
Trend Micro is in the process of consolidating its product support offerings in the wake of a consumer backlash.
When it comes to processors, speed rules. Or does it? GARY H. ANTHES writes that there are several problems with chips, not the least of which is keeping them cool.
