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Portables

Ask Slashdot: How To Shop For a Laptop? 732

Posted by Soulskill from the compare-and-contrast dept.
jakooistra writes "My sister recently asked me for a laptop recommendation. I said, 'Sure, what are techie brothers for,' and diligently started my search for her perfect laptop. Two days later, I feel like I've aged two years. Every laptop vendor seems to want to sell a dozen different, poorly-differentiated models, with no real way of finding out what is customizable without following each model to its own customization page. And there are so many vendors! How am I, as a consumer, supposed to find what I need? Is there a website, hiding somewhere I just can't find, that tracks all the multivariate versions and upgrade choices in an easily searchable database?"
AI

Apple Tells Siri To Stop Recommending Nokia 337

Posted by samzenpus from the pick-the-other-guy dept.
judgecorp writes "Apple has changed the answer Siri gives to the question 'What is the best smartphone ever?' to prevent the voice-driven assistant from promoting the Nokia Lumia 900. Originally Siri trawled online reviews on the web, using the Wolfram Alpha search engine, to come up with the Lumia, much to Apple's embarrassment. Now, Apple has intervened, replacing that answer with a joke: 'Wait there are other phones?'"
The Internet

Global Broadband Speeds Dropped At the End of 2011 118

Posted by timothy from the new-jersey-isn't-a-city-oh-wait dept.
darthcamaro writes "A strange thing happened at the end of 2011. For the first time in years, global broadband adoption and speeds dropped. According to Akamai, broadband adoption declined by 4.6 percent and average speeds declined by 14 percent. In a somewhat strange twist, New Jersey now also dominates the top 5 list of fastest broadband cities in the U.S, though Boston is the fastest overall at 8.4 Mbps."
Spam

Microsoft Blocking Pirate Bay Links In Messenger 198

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the references-replaced-with-fnord dept.
RemyBR writes with an excerpt from an article at El Reg: "Microsoft has confirmed that users of its instant messaging app will not be able to send each other links to popular torrent site The Pirate Bay, citing malware fears. 'We block instant messages if they contain malicious or spam URLs based on intelligence algorithms, third-party sources, and/or user complaints. Pirate Bay URLs were flagged by one or more of these and were consequently blocked,' Redmond told The Register in an emailed statement."
Handhelds

Apple Unveils New iPad 989

Posted by samzenpus from the new-and-improved dept.
adeelarshad82 writes "As expected, Apple announced the new iPad complete with a Retina Display, quad-core processor, 4G LTE, and an improved camera. The new iPad will run the rumored A5X processor, which according to Apple will provide four times the performance of the Tegra 3. The revamped tablet will also include a 2048-by-1536 display, apparently the most in any mobile device. And finally with 4G LTE, the new iPad will provide up to 73 Mbps download speeds; partners for which include Verizon, Rogers, Bell, Telus, and AT&T."
China

Labor Activist: Apple May Be Terrible, But All Others Are Worse 218

Posted by samzenpus from the best-of-the-worst dept.
CheerfulMacFanboy writes "Labor Activist Li Qiang wants you to know that the iPhone 4 in his pocket is not an endorsement of Apple's policies, just an acknowledgment that the company is doing a better job of monitoring factory conditions than its peers. The founder of leading advocacy group China Labor Watch (CLW) told us that, though the Cupertino company does more-thorough inspections than competitors, it is responsible for poor working conditions at its suppliers' factories and needs to invest some of its record-breaking profits in improving them. 'Although I know that the iPhone 4 is made at sweat shop factories in China, I still think that this is the only choice, because Apple is actually one of the best. Actually before I made a decision, I compared Apple with other cell phone companies, such as Nokia,' he said through a translator. 'And the conditions in those factories are worse than the ones of Apple.'"
Windows

Windows Phone 8 Detailed, Uses Windows 8 Kernel 267

Posted by Soulskill from the starting-from-scratch dept.
MrSeb writes "Thanks to a leaked video — a video that Microsoft made for Nokia — we now have lots of details about Windows Phone 8 (WP8). From deep Windows 8, Skype, and SkyDrive integration, through to the addition of NFC 'wallet' payments and BitLocker encryption, it sounds like Windows Phone 8 will be close to iOS and Android in terms of features. The interesting stuff is under the hood, though: WP8 will have the Windows 8 kernel instead of the Windows CE kernel of its predecessors. Through the Win 8 kernel, WP8 will support native code and multi-core processors. It will also have the same network stack, security, and multimedia support as Windows 8. While Win 8 apps won't be directly compatible with Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore says developers will be able to 'reuse — by far — most of their code.'"

Comment Re:And they think companies will use Windows Mobil (Score 2) 359

by TheoCryst (#38675488) Attached to: LG To Pay Licensing Fees To Microsoft For Using Android

I think this is a big reason why the Nokia deal is so important to Microsoft. In pretty much every aspect, it appears that Microsoft is ultimately trying to push Nokia+WinPhone as a product in and of itself, with little thought given to the OEMs. In my humble opinion, this is the right strategy. Microsoft can't (and doesn't want) to compete with Android directly, since they'd be going up against an entrenched and inexpensive foe with whom the carriers and OEMs already have a strong relationship. And after Windows's dominance in the 90s, they know exactly how futile competing against that can be.

But by betting heavily on Nokia, Microsoft has guaranteed themselves a partner who will build hardware specifically tailored to their OS (and vice versa) and who will never have to choose between putting marketing dollars behind Windows Phone or Android.
Earth

Earth Officially Home To 7 Billion Humans 473

Posted by Soulskill from the more-work-for-the-robots dept.
New submitter arcite writes "It's official: planet Earth is now home to over seven billion ugly-bags-of-mostly-water (otherwise known as humans). We're adding ten thousand new humans every hour, or one billion every nine years. Head over to 7 Billion Actions (put together by the UN with the help of SAP) and check out the population map data. Short of adopting a strict diet of Soylent Green, what viable solutions will enable us to survive on this increasingly crowded pale blue dot? What will the role of technology be in supporting this many people?"
Role Playing (Games)

Blizzard Announces New WoW Expansion: Mists of Pandaria 276

Posted by Soulskill from the april-fools-becomes-a-reality dept.
Blizzcon 2011 kicked off today, and the biggest announcement from the opening ceremonies was the development of a new expansion for World of Warcraft. Titled Mists of Pandaria, the expansion will focus on the battle between the Horde and the Alliance instead of a traditional Big Bad Enemy. There will be both a new race — Pandaren — and a new class — Monk. The level cap will be raised to 90, there will be "challenge mode" dungeons, and they're introducing a pet battle system. Blizzard also mentioned that people who buy a 12-month subscription to WoW will get a copy of Diablo 3 for free.
Iphone

iPhone 4S Pre-Orders Sell Out 327

Posted by timothy from the it-was-a-black-friday dept.
Perhaps to no one's surprise, the just-announced iPhone 4S has been been leaping off the shelves ... in advance of it ever hitting shelves at all. In fact, as reported by numerous sources (here's the WSJ's version), the company's pre-launch inventory has all been sold — and they only started taking the orders on Friday.
Businesses

Submission + - Mimicking Apple Risky Business (smartertechnology.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business says mimicking Apple's iPhone and iPad makes sense for big companies only if they continue to follow the basic business principles that already made them successful, offering an explanation for why HP has abandoned the smartphone and tablet market to concentrate on servers, infrastructure software, and cloud computing services. (I knew something was wrong last week when I saw its Touchpad in Cosco, who only buys heavily discounted items for resale).
HP

Submission + - HP Leaving Tablet, Computing Business (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by jpwilliams
jpwilliams writes: HP reverses it's initial decision and decides to exit the tablet and PC business, ditching the Pre and webOS. Apparently Leo Apotheker who recently joined HP from rival SAP, wants to refocus on the company's profitable software. This goes in line with another move this article mentions ... the acquisition of UK software firm Autonomy
Technology

Submission + - Google's Chromebook: Still a Thin Read (discovery.com)

Submitted by disco_tracy
disco_tracy writes: A computer that does "nothing but the Web," as Google advertises, can be a strange concept. Rob Pegoraro spent longer than usual trying Samsung's Series 5 3G Chromebook. But weeks into testing a review unit loaned by Samsung — even after software updates from Google have fixed bugs and improved its stability — he still couldn't see spending $499.99 on this model. Google's "nothing but the Web" tagline understates the Chromebook's problems.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Drops Use of 'Supercookies' on MSN (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: In response to work by Stanford University researchers who found that Microsoft and several other high-profile companies were using a controversial technique to keep persistent cookies on users' PCs to track their movements, Microsoft says it has discontinued the practice of using so-called "supercookies."

In July, Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford, revealed that some companies were still employing techniques that enabled browser history sniffing, which give the companies information on what sites users have visited and what links they've clicked on. The research also found that some companies were using cookies that re-spawn even after users have deleted them. Microsoft was using this technique on one of its sites, MSN.com, and now the company said that it is no longer doing so.

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