Hasta La Gadget!

With Windows 8 on the horizon and the school season just beginning, it would appear that Intel’s profits this most recent quarter are not doing as well as they had the quarter before it. Today’s Q3 earnings report showed Intel to have a third-quarter profit fall of 14% while they noted operating expenses as being on the climb and personal computer sales declining. The quarter reported today showed Intel with revenue of $13.6 billion, this number having a range of error plus or minus $500 million.

This report had Thomson Reuters analysts nearly correct with their guess at $13.7 billion in revenue, with expectations hitting roughly 57% to 58% for expected gross margin. Chief Executive Paul Otellini spoke on the earnings call saying that the world was in the midst of a “period of breakthrough innovation and creativity.” With this in mind, he continued, “As we look to the fourth quarter, we’re pleased with the continued progress in Ultrabooks and phones and excited about the range of Intel-based tablets coming to market.”

Intel also reported a profit of $2.97 billion, this down from $3.47 billion a year earlier. The current shares ring in at 58 cents per with per-share profit falling from 68 cents to 60 cents year-over-year. This number excludes acquisition-related costs. Revenue fell 5.5% to $13.5 billion, this putting the company well in range with the company’s prediction from September of $13.2 billion (plus or minus $300 million). Gross margin also narrowed from 63.4% to 63.3%.

Operating expenses – noted above as one of the reasons the company isn’t doing quite as well this quarter – rose 10% this quarter to $10.4 billion. Data-center revenue increased 5.7% while Intel’s PC client group fell 8.3%. Stocks in Intel have fallen since the report was released earlier today down 1.9% to $21.92 in after-hours trading. In other news, Intel remains a mainstay in the vast majority of high-end computers working with Windows 8 in this upcoming holiday season – keep your head high!

[via WSJ]

Intel Q3 profits fall 14% with PC demand on the drop is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Adata has announced the launch of a new line of solid-state drives called the SP600. This line of SSDs is aimed at entry-level users looking for an upgrade drive to make their computer faster. There are three SSDs in the line, and all of them are budget priced.

Despite low price points, Adata promises decent performance with read speeds of 360 MB per second, and a write speed of 130 MB per second. Adata also promises random 4KB read speeds as high as 40,000 IOPS and write speeds as high as 30,000 IOPS. These SSDs won’t break performance records on the market, but they offer decent performance for entry-level users shopping on the cheap side of the market.

The SSD line will be offered in three different capacities. The capacities include 32 GB, 64 GB, and 128 GB. These drives aren’t sized for massive amounts of storage, but should be large enough for most users to take advantage of as a boot drive.

Users of these storage devices will see faster boot times and quicker application loading times when programs are installed to the SSD. Adata will be offering all three versions of the new SP600 SSD family via Newegg and Amazon among other retailers. The 32 GB drive will sell for $49.99, the 64 GB drive will cost $69.99, and 128 GB drive will sell for $99.99.

Adata debuts new SP600 SSD line is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

We’re fans of the existing Raspberry Pi developer board’s around here. These little things can be used for all sorts of purposes, including little HTPC computers and much more. As useful as these little developer boards are, there some users out there who have been clamoring for better performance.

Back in September, Raspberry Pi announced a new Turbo Mode that promised to squeeze 50% more performance from the little machine. Turbo Mode allows the processor to be overclocked as high as 1 GHz for more performance. More processor speed is a great thing, but Raspberry Pi says that one of the most common requests is extra RAM.

Raspberry Pi has now addressed that request for more RAM with the announcement that the Model B of the little developer board is now shipping with 512 MB of RAM. Previously, the little board had 256 MB of RAM. Versions of the board running 512 MB of RAM are expected to arrive in customer’s hands today.

The company says that it will make a firmware upgrade available “in the next couple of days” allowing users to access the additional memory. That would indicate that right out-of-the-box even though there’s 512 MB of RAM present, the Raspberry Pi boards won’t be able to access more than 256 MB. Combining more RAM with Turbo Mode should broaden the use of this tiny little developer board.

Raspberry Pi Model B gets 512 MB of RAM is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I’m sitting here, typing this post on my desktop computer, but more and more people are using laptops as their everyday machines. Heck, I use a MacBook Pro to get stuff done whenever I’m not at home. The trouble with laptops is that they can get pretty hot. Here’s a cool laptop stand, that packs down flat for easy travel.

Itamar Neiger’s minimal laptop stand can be made out of plywood or a foamed polymer sheet. The design was conceived to serve two purposes. To give laptops a better angle for typing, and to lift it off the working surface, allowing better ventilation and to prevent overheating.

The stand disassembles neatly and fits into itself, so it’s easy to carry around when you’re on the go. I need one – when can I 3D-print my own?

[via designboom]

The folks responsible for designing the user interface for Netflix must have had smiles on their faces when they realized that they’d be able to create a Windows 8 flavoring for their archives. The new release of Netflix made specifically for Windows 8 is up for download right this minute, and incase you did not guess, yes, it is made specifically for the touchscreen. Of course you’re not going to have to use a touchscreen to make it work, but you’re definitely going to enjoy the process more if you do.

This update brings the same access to a top 10, new releases, and genres galore that you’re used to from Netflix Instant as well as a whole new way to access it all. The setup replicates closely what you’ll be doing with Windows 8′s own panel-based user interface for touchscreen devices, complete with swipe to the left to drag your whole collection. This update includes the same set of content as any other Netflix Instant offering, here allowing your desktop to make the best of the whole situation.

Netflix viewers on Windows 8 with this update and no touchscreen will be clicking and dragging rather than pulling on scrollbars. This may well bring up some ire in the userbase as we must assume that not everyone in the Windows universe will be wanting to use the touchscreens Microsoft intends them all to use. What we’ll see instead, more than likely, is an update that includes more than one interface – or a scrollbar – if the user does so desire. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The Netflix update for Windows 8 is available from your Windows Store as you would any other app, here bringing with it a couple extra updates outside the user interface as well. This update also brings with it what Netflix describes as a lessening of CPU usage as well as less of a drain on the battery life of your notebook computers. Netflix also notes that “this fall” they’ll be updating the app once again specifically – for now, time to watch True Grit!

Netflix Windows 8 app download up now with touchy panels is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.