The global PC market has been taking a beating thanks to several factors, including some rather boring products and a sluggish global economy. Research firm IDC recently released its outlook for the global PC market and has announced that it expects the market to grow only 0.9% in 2012 thanks to slow mid-year shipments. The research firm expects 367 million PCs to ship this year.
If IDC’s predictions prove true 2012 would be the second consecutive year of growth below 2%. One big factor that has affected the market according to the research firm is slowing PC growth in Asia/Pacific that has reduced the impact of emerging market growth. While growth is slowing in emerging markets, mature areas like the US are also seeing shipments of PCs decline. IDC attributes the shipping decline in the US and other mature markets to factors other than weak economic conditions alone.
According to IDC, consumers are waiting to see what Windows 8 and ultrabooks will look like before purchasing. Considering the ultrabook has been on the market for a while now and people have pretty much stayed away I think the market has a very good idea of what the ultrabook looks like they simply don’t want one at the current price. IDC also says PC shipments are declining because people are spending on other products like smartphones and tablets.
IDC expects updates later this year, such as Windows 8, to revive PC growth, to some extent. IDC expects worldwide PC shipment growth to average 7.1% from 2013 through 2016, which is a decline from 8.4% compound annual growth rate IDC predicted previously.
“IDC remains optimistic that PC penetration opportunities in emerging markets will form the bulwark of the market and help sustain double-digit Portable PC growth in the long run. However, a host of all-too-familiar variables will lead to a subdued second half of the year with only consumer notebooks remaining in growth mode for all of 2012,” said Jay Chou, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker. “Factors such as Windows 8 coupled with Ultrabooks could present a positive turn of events next year, but it also faces some initial hurdles; chief of which is that buyers must acclimate themselves to an operating system that is a dramatic departure from existing PC paradigms. The PC ecosystem faces some work to properly educate the market.”
If you’ve got massive amounts of historical data to backup and have had trouble finding a low cost storage solution, then you should check out Amazon Glacier.
There are plenty of archiving services out there, but most of them will cost you a lot of money, compared to what Glacier is offering. Glacier’s data vault is a lot slower, but it will cost you just a penny per gig per month. This amounts to 10% of what Amazon charges for its S3 storage service. There are no setup fees, and Glacier can handle petabytes without any problems. However, the service is designed for data that is infrequently accessed and where retrieval times of several hours are acceptable. Accessing more than 5% of your data per month costs $0.05 per 1,000 requests. Requests take between three and five hours to process, and that’s before they’re ready to download.
It’s a safe way of backing up all your precious photos, music, and other stuff that’s vulnerable to a hack or data loss, which could be irreplaceable if not properly archived in redundant systems.
Users of Apple’s newest operating system OS X Mountain Lion are finding a brand new software update ready for them this week containing upgrades for both iMessage and Migration Assistant as well as bug fixes galore. This update will bring users up to version 10.8.1 and is a completely free download. If you’d like to grab this download, head to the Apple symbol in the upper left-hand corner of your screen, click, and find the “Software Update” menu option.
Once you do upgrade, you’ll find that you’re running just a bit quicker and that several bugs you may or may not have noticed recently are completely fixed up. Apple’s upgrade list includes several small fixes as well as an “unexpected quit” error appearing in Migration Assistant more often than the software and hardware company was comfortable with. Per Apple, their upgrade list reads as follows.
• Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit • Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail • Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display • Resolve an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent • Address an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input • Resolve an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names • Address a issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file • Improve 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials.
NOTE: Check out our full OS X Mountain Lion review if you’ve not already downloaded the software yourself – it’s a winner!
For a full list of upgrades, you can head to Apple’s full upgrade page at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5418, and note that Apple suggests that you do a full back up of your system before you initiate this upgrade as well. Selecting your Apple Menu and Software Update will also reveal any other software updates available to you via Apple’s own server.
Software updates for 3rd party applications can be found in your Apple App Store application – Software Update works specifically with Apple-loaded software. If you’re uncomfortable with the Software Update process, you can also use Apple’s Manual Update software to make it all smooth.
Quarterly Earnings for HP were reported today with Meg Whitman, the company’s chief executive, noting that they’re “still in the early stages of a multiyear turnaround.” This comment in addition to assurances that HP was “making decent progress despite the headwinds” came amid news that Hewlett-Packard had a net quarterly losss of $8.9 billion dollars – aka $4.49 a share. The company has been in a rather tumultuous bit of a mix up over the past few years as major events in the mobile industry and computing have taken their toll across the whole of the manufacturer’s hardware and software collection.
With 12 percent fewer notebook computers sold this past quarter compared to the same quarter last year and 23 percent fewer printers sold in that year-on-year comparison, HP did not have a whole lot of good news. Revenue was down each of HP’s major units, with the company’s total revenue in the fiscal quarter moving downward 5 percent to $29.7 billion. HP anticipated the loss all the way back on August 8th when the company announced a noncash charge of $8 billion in its services unit.
This noncash charge was attributed to its write-down of value in a 2008 acquisition of the consulting firm EDS, which was purchased for a measly $13.9 billion. Also announced earlier this year were 27,000 job cuts which HP has also noted they’ve taken a charge out of $1 billion altogether.
One year ago in this same financial quarter, HP’s income was been reported at $1.9 billion, or 93 cents a share – this on a revenue of $31.2 billion. If the write downs are not considered, the slightly less-than-impressive $29.7 billion revenue this quarter is slightly greater than Wall Street analysts have reported – according to a survey of analysts by Thompson Reuters as earnings of 98 cents a share on revenue of $30.1 billion.
It may come as no surprise to many of you out there, but I’m what’s technically referred to as a slob. I keep myself clean, my clothes clean, and my car clean, but outside of those three things, I pretty much don’t care. I’ve been known to eat Cheetos while typing to the point that you can’t read the letters on the key tops because of the thick cheesy coating.
I once did that on my wife’s keyboard she didn’t appreciate it all, she really didn’t like the fact that I simply licked the cheese off when she complained either. If you want a keyboard that you can wash safely without worrying the letters will wipe off when you clean it with water – or stop working altogether, Logitech has a new washable keyboard called the K310. This is perfect for messy people and germophobes.
The keyboard is designed with programmable function keys, media control keys, and a number pad. The keyboard has drain holes in the back to help water dry and the keyboard can be submerged in water up to 11 inches deep as long as you keep the USB cable dry. The keyboard will hit the US this month for $39.99(USD). Of course nothing they can do can prevent this from happening.
As you’ve probably learned from experience, hard drives tend to be quite finicky if dropped. That’s one of the reasons why it’s best to leave yours home, but Drobo has just come up with a mobile solution that’s supposed to be rugged and give you tons of storage.
The beauty of the Drobo Mini is that it’s packed with durable 2.5″ drives, up to four of them. It’s actually a mini RAID array, the size of a deli sandwich. It’s built out of metal and carbon fiber, is soft to the touch, and will offer you a total capacity of up to 3TB, and can be configured with single or dual drive redundancy, and drives are hot-swappable. It’s compatible with both Thunderbolt and USB 3.0, and works with Mac OS X and Windows systems.
Without drives, the Drobo Mini is available for pre-order on their site for $649(USD). Fully equipped with 4 drives (3TB), it retails for $1,249.
Not too long ago it seemed like every time we turned around Shuttle was unveiling a new small form factor computer or mini PC. It’s been a while now since we heard from Shuttle, but Giada has been picking up the slack with what seems to be a never-ending stream of mini PCs for customers to choose from. The latest to come from Giada is the new A51 mini PC series powered by an AMD processor.
The CPU inside the A51 is an AMD T56N, and the machine uses AMD’s 850N FCH chipset. Graphics duties are handled by an integrated GPU. Typically, enthusiasts frown on integrated GPUs, but in the case of this computer, destined for home entertainment use, the CPU and GPU team to support 1080p video streaming, and 5.1 surround sound. That’s all you really need out of a mini PC likely to spend its life in the living room.
Giada says that this little computer has plenty of power to become your secondary home computer. It’s roughly the size of a book measuring 192 x 155 x 26 mm and is offered in black or white colors. The computer consumes only 35 W of power in use and has integrated Wi-Fi.
Along with integrated Wi-Fi, the machine also has Bluetooth, one USB 3.0 port, four USB 2.0 ports, a memory card reader, HDMI output, VGA output, and S/PDIF optical audio out. The computer also has a gigabit LAN port for wired networks. Rounding out the hardware is 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and 320 GB of storage. The machine is designed to run Windows 7 Home Premium, but the operating system is optional. Pricing is unknown at this time.
One of the problems I had in college wasn’t taking notes during lectures; the problem was keeping up with those notes. I always seemed to lose the most important sheets ahead of the test and ended up scrambling around trying to find them. If you take a lot of notes in college or the business world, the IRISNotes 2 digital pen system may be of interest to you.
This device can take your handwritten notes using what appears to be a normal ink pen and turns those notes into editable text documents on your computer. The system is very easy to use simply requiring you to write on standard sheets of paper. Some systems like this require you to use special paper to transform the notes into digital text.
The system uses a pen that gets power from a battery and a receiver that clips to the top of the notebook or page. The receiver can store 100 pages of text and then download the information to a computer via a USB cable. The software running on the computer uses optical character recognition and converts the handwriting into text that can be sent to Word, Outlook, Notepad and other applications.
The IRISNotes 2 system comes in two versions, including Express and Executive. The Express system ships with a battery-powered pen and four replacement batteries with aluminum carrying case. The Executive version has a pen with a rechargeable battery, a leather carry pouch, and 30-pin connector to share notes directly with the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. The Express system sells for $99. The Executive system sells for $149, and both are available now.
This summer HP has brought on a beast of a business machine in the Z1 all-in-one Workstation, complete with an upgradable set of innards and all-in-one style. The display is a massive LED-backlit 27-inch IPS panel at 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution and inside you’ve got several configurations available straight from HP, each of them landing in at right around $2,700 USD in the end. You’ll be working with an Intel Core i3 processor, Windows 7 or Linux, and the whole machine is easier to modify than your sub sandwich – fabulous for the tech-friendly business owner.
Setup
This beast is heavier than you’ll ever want to wish to carry at a back-breaking 21.32 kg (47 lbs). You’ve got a beast of a display up on two different hinges, this allowing you to adjust both the angle and the height at which the display sits. Once you’ve got it where you want it, you’ll probably want to leave it alone, though, as the weight of this conglomeration of metal, plastic, and glass is not the easiest thing to move around.
The monitor sits on its two hinges mightily, both of them making sure that this heaving beast does not move even the slightest bit once its set in place. In addition to being able to set this computer up with its “traditional display” setup (on the stand it comes attached to) you can mount it to the wall with industry standard VESA mounts. This unit utilizes a 100×100 VESA mount pattern, making it easy to set up with 3rd party display gear.
HP has done an amazing job of making sure this computer both looks and feels fabulous with a black and silver metal setup both on front and back. While most workstation-aimed computers are made to sit out of the way or under a desk, this all-in-one unit looks great from all sides. The one odd point that appears off as far as aesthetics go is the power cord port which sits under the display – it feels like HP went so far to keep the front and the back clean that they nudged that rather unsightly cord to the underside.
Connectivity
That said, the rest of the computer is indeed rather clean looking. You’ve got your power button up top on the right, a system activity LED below that right near the eject button for your optical drive. The optical drive is always a Slot Load 8X SuperMulti DVDRW no matter what configuration you pick up, and it sits right above a 4-in-1 Media Card Reader as well. Next on the right is a standard Firewire 1394a port above two USB 3.0 ports and ports for Audio in and out. Each of these buttons and ports are super easy to access.
What’s not so easy to access – and perhaps rightfully so – are the ports below the monitor. This collection of ports includes the power port (as mentioned above), one standard DisplayPort in/out, digital audio via a S/PDIF port, audio in/out and subwoofer out, and a set of four more USB 2.0 ports. There’s also a hidden USB 2.0 port under the hood which HP has used up with a dongle that connects with a couple of packaged accessories: keyboard and a mouse – both of which are relatively high quality.
Software
You can work on this system with Windows 7 or HP provided Linux, the Linux builds including drivers from 32 and 64-bit OS versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 Workstation, RHEL 6 Workstation, and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 11 for your convenience. For Windows 7 you’ll either get 32-bit or 64-bit Genuine Windows 7 Professional installed right out of the box.
With a computer that’s made to be updated in the hardware universe for years into the future, you’ll also want to be sure you’ve got the software to back it up as well. Windows 8 will of course be able to be loaded here, and with HP Performance Advisor included in the out-of-box experience, you’ll have HP’s own software wizard to help out out along the way as you continue to optimize your system towards its constant full potential.
This machine also includes HP Remote Graphics Software, (loaded standard with every new-age HP workstation,) an environment which allows you to access your setup remotely from other machines connected to the web with ease. Just as it was with each of the other HP workstations we’ve tested over the past year or so, this machine plays nicely with a vast array of machines outside its build – Directory Mode allow you to access workstations throughout your office, RGS functionality works with pixels (as opposed to data) to expand your workspace to a wide variety of 3rd party monitors automatically, and the whole RGS suite works on both Windows and Linux.
This device also comes with ISV certification so you know its up to snuff according to the Independent Software Vendor set of tests – standard stuff! Along those same lines is the fact that this machine is Energy Star certified with 90% efficient power supplies, and each HP Z1 comes with a warranty that includes limited 3-year parts, 3-year labor and 3-year onsite service extendable up to 5 years with HP Care Pack Services – business friendly indeed!
System – Hewlett-Packard HP Z1 Workstation
Manufacturer
Hewlett Packard
Product Type
Desktop
Operating System
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Motherboard
Hewlett-Packard 3561h
Processor
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31280 @ 3.50GHz
Processor ID
GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7
Processor Frequency
3.49 GHz
Processors
1
Threads
8
Cores
4
L1 Instruction Cache
32.0 KB
L1 Data Cache
32.0 KB
L2 Cache
256 KB
L3 Cache
8.00 MB
Memory
16.0 GB DDR3 SDRAM 666MHz
FSB
99.8 MHz
BIOS
Hewlett-Packard J52 v01.04
Above and below you’ll see some additional components listed as well as our standard Geekbench benchmark results. This machine does extremely well for itself, both in benchmarks and in practice with everyday light and heavyweight tasks like video processing. And again, you can switch essentially every piece out and make it more powerful as you deem necessary.
Benchmark Score – Hewlett-Packard HP Z1 Workstation
Section
Description
Score
Total Score
Windows x86 (64-bit) – Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
Integer
Processor integer performance
12316
15079
Floating Point
Processor floating point performance
23630
Memory
Memory performance
8518
Stream
Memory bandwidth performance
7951
Versatility
This machine is fabulous in its ability to be modified. Push the display down horizontal and lift the face up like the hood of a car and poof! Like magic, you’ve got a vast array of plug-n-play pieces at your fingertips. You can change out essentially anything under the hood at your leisure, and several expansion slots and bays are available for your DIY modifications. You’ve got one internal 3.5-inch bay OR 2x 2.5-inch bays, one MXM expansion slot for graphics (requiring NVIDIA custom cards, you may want to note) the base model uses Intel integrated graphics, but Quadro 500M, 1000M, 3000M and 4000M graphics cards are optional. You’ve also got 3 miniPCIe full-length expansion slots as well.
Four zones separate this device’s insides, with the 400w power supply, Quadro graphics card, CPU, and memory sitting behind fans and panels. Your power supply, hard drive chassis, and DVD/Blu-ray drive are easily removable, of course, and up to four 8GB full-sized memory DIMMs can be added as well.
Everything under the hood is able to be clipped in and out with ease using the simple to understand green arrows and hard-plastic holds. The hands-on video earlier in this review shows how simple it is to switch components in and out. Business owners pay attention here: upgrading your whole office will be so easy that you won’t need to hire Nick Burns to do it – for real!
Wrap-Up
This computer is a fabulous choice for an office in need of massive displays and Windows 7 (or Windows 8 later this year). You’ve got a perfectly solid build, HP has made the entire structure out of high-end components, and you’ll be able to modify this beast to your liking well into the future. As long as you’re not planning on lifting this monster up and lugging it around on a regular basis, you’ll be glad this was your business-oriented Windows choice for your next-generation standard workstation situation.
Video editors, web designers, graphic designers, and those working with massive files on the whole will find this machine quite satisfying.
Have a peek below at additional HP Z-series hands-on, review, and news posts we’ve published over the past two years, all the way back to the official launch of the series at an event we attended with HP!
With Apple this week becoming the most valuable public company in the history of the world, word that their own Apple Store outlets are doing fantastic as well seemed inevitable. As Jim Dalrymple of The Loop reports he’s spoken with Apple about, their stores have had almost 300 million visitors worldwide inside their fiscal 2012 year. That year begins in October 2011 and, of course, isn’t quite ofter yet.
This amount of visitors, also noted by Dalrymple, is nearly the population of the United States according to last year’s census. Apple Stores across the globe are bringing in more than five times the revenue per square foot that Best Buy did in 2011 according to CNET, and the store’s unique point in the Genius Bar has some impressive numbers of its own as well. Apple notes that 50,000 people get serviced at the Genius Bar in their Apple stores every single day.
Many Apple stores have what the company notes is over 100 “unique hands-on opportunities” with products such as the iPad, iPhone, iPods of all kinds, and Mac computers as well. With Apple’s extended line of associated brands in speakers, printers, accessories, and the like, the company provides a full experience to the average computer-loving customer. Apple’s newest stores have just opened in Canada, the total number now reaching 375 worldwide.
Have a peek at the timeline below for more information on recent events in and around Apple Stores across the globe. Apple continues to grow to be one gigantic company with their own retail storefront, manufacturing, software, and support services as well.
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