Hasta La Gadget!

Analysts aren’t confident. The market sure as heck doesn’t seem confident. But HP? HP is very confident in its choice of former head of SAP, Léo Apotheker, for its top spot. How confident?

“I have never felt more confident about our business.” That’s a quote from Cathie Lesjak, HP’s CFO, who has been the interim CEO for the company since the untimely departure of Mark Hurd.

Lesjak, of course, seems to be particularly excited to go back to her old job. “My heart is in being a CFO, and my family and I are pleased I’m going back to that,” she told the press during a conference call this morning.

Just to show you how ultimately confident HP is in its choice, the company wants you to know that Apotheker was its number one choice, never mind the fact that he was only SAP’s CEO for a total of seven months.

According to HP, Apotheker was the only person offered its top job. After an exhausted two month search, HP “ended up with six people who could have done the job,” says HP independent board director, Bob Ryan. From there, the board chose Apotheker unanimously.

Is HP on the up and up here? Does the company’s confidence really matter if no one shares the sentiment? After all, HP’s stock price dipped four percent on the news of Apotheker’s hire.

If you’re the type of person who has an interest in technology, you can probably relate with these two problems: 1) Having a glut of old, outdated computers taking up space 2) Not having a working laser gun.

Well, now both these problems have a common solution.

It’s not the most powerful laser in the world–it can burn through plastic and light matches. But it might be a cool way to do some wood-burning art, light up that cigarette, or really show backyard ants who’s boss.

YouTube DIY laser guru Drake Anthony shows how to turn the average dust-covered PC into a working laser capable of burning and cutting. You will just need the diode from the DVD burner (16x or faster) along with some other techno innards from the donor computer (as well as some minimal other supplies including protective goggles!).

Walk through video after the jump.

Are you a Mac? Or are you a PC? Are you an iPhone guy or a soldier in the Android Army? If you feel strongly about any of these questions, chances are, you’re a fanboy. More »

A touchscreen iMac? Sure, why not. The rumors have been bubbling around for some time now, and let’s face it, they do seem to make some sense. Ever since the release of the first iPhone, Steve Jobs has clearly stood on one side in the great battle between buttons and touchscreens.

So why not bring such functionality to the company’s perennially successful all-in-one desktop? After all, the product exists in a space not likely to cannibalize potential iPad or iPhone sales, even with the addition of such functionality. Those devices are all about portability, and while the iMac has a decidedly smaller footprint than the majority of desktop combos, it’s not really designed to leave your office space.

Various patents filed by the company seem to confirm the rumors, including the spiffy one above that appears to turn the iMac into a giant iPad.

DigiTimes, that Taiwan-based source of seemingly endless Apple rumors, is fueling the fire once again. According to the paper, “Sintek Photronics has reportedly sent samples of projected capacitive touch panels to Apple to be incorporated in the latest iMac.”

Sintek Photronics apparently has that rare ability to create viewable touchpanels for devices with screens over 20 inches. The iMac starts at 21.5 inches.

So, if the rumor is true (which, naturally, is a big “if”), what sort of timeframe are we looking at for a touchscreen iMac? Well, Apple Insider points out that, since the device is are still in the testing phase, it most likely won’t see a release this year.

Makes sense to us, especially since the iMac just got an upgrade in July. Apple bumped the device up to Core i5 and Core i7 processors. An early 2011 release isn’t out of the question, however, particularly given the fact that the iMac doesn’t strict to the annual release schedule of an iPhone or iPod.

In late August, BlackBerry manufacturer Research in Motion offered a deal to increase government access to its users’ handsets, in attempt to appease the government of India. The country forced a deadline on the phone maker–the latest in series of countries to issue an ultimatum to the, including Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It seems, however, that RIM’s proposal won’t be enough to win the favor of the Indian government. According to internal memos issued late last month, the compromise issued by the company isn’t offering the government the sort of unfettered access it desires.

A senior official at the company’s Department of Technology confirmed the government’s frustration with India’s Financial Times, “RIM maintains that it does not have the keys that can be offered to security agencies for converting secure corporate e-mail into readable format.”

An October 31st deadline is in place for a solution, after which the Indian government while the company to shut off services for the more than one million users in that country.