Posted by Solutions Center on Mon, Oct 24, 2011
According to the http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/24/apple-macbook-pro-line-up-gets-processor-and-graphics-boost/ website, Apple is releasing a MacBook Pro near the end of this calendar year that gives you more in it for the same price.
Apple is scheduled to release versions of its MacBook Pro that have better graphics and processing power in them than previously released laptops. Both the 15” and 17” laptops will come with a faster AMD Radeon HD 6770M video chip than the chip that the models’ predecessors had. Processor power has also been increased in the 13” models from the 2.3 GHz Intel i5 chip up to either the 2.8 GHz Intel i7 chip or the 2.4 GHz Intel i5 chip, as well a larger hard drive (500 GB as a minimum, 750 GB as a max.). The 15” MacBook Pro is now also coming with a faster processor that can be increased all the way up to a quad-core 2.4 GHz Intel i7, which is the same processor in the 17” model.
Now that speed and graphics have been increased and it won’t cost you any extra, is now the time to buy the MacBook Pro? Have you been waiting for just the right time to buy? Well, maybe now is the time. There is speculation that next year, Apple will be making a design change to the MacBook Pro, so if you like the current way it looks, there may be no better time than the present.
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Posted by The Blogging Desk on Fri, Aug 05, 2011
CNN:
"What am I doing?" I thought to myself. "I'm here with my friends, and I don't need to be checking e-mail on a Saturday night."
The part that freaked me out was that I hadn't told my hand to reach out for the phone. It seemed to be doing it all on its own. I wondered what was wrong with me until I read a recent study in the journal Personal and Ubiquitous Computing that showed I'm hardly alone. In fact, my problem seems to be ubiquitous.
The authors found smartphone users have developed what they call "checking habits" -- repetitive checks of e-mail and other applications such as Facebook. The checks typically lasted less than 30 seconds and were often done within 10 minutes of each other.
On average, the study subjects checked their phones 34 times a day, not necessarily because they really needed to check them that many times, but because it had become a habit or compulsion.
34 is the average? I probably broke that just reading that article.
I have one of those fancy iPhone's and am completely guilty of checking it way too often than I should. So much so that I think I'm being barred from using my phone during the day when my wife and I go on our next(first) vacation. How do people live without a cell phone in their pocket? I'm not sure I want to even find out.
What happens when your CEO emails you at 3am on a Friday night and you don't have email notifications enabled? I assume you get your termination slip at 6am. That's just my guess. What about you? How often do you check your phone waiting for the next email from your boss?
Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Jul 19, 2011
CNet:
The pairing of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 with processors from companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia is expected to spawn a new kind of low-cost laptop, according to IHS-iSuppli, possibly threatening Intel's overwhelming dominance in laptops.
"After more than 30 years of domination by a single microarchitecture--Intel Corp.'s X86--the PC microprocessor...market finally is set for some real competition," Matthew Wilkins, an analyst at IHS-iSuppli, wrote in a research note today.
This will happen as shipments of ARM processors soar in the coming years, eventually shipping in about one out of every four laptops in 2015, according to Wilkins.
And those ARM processors won't be running in systems with Linux operating software or Google's Chrome OS necessarily. The lion's share will be inside Windows 8 laptops, according to Wilkins.
When ChromeBooks were announced I had high hopes that the barebones OS laptop would be able to break into the super low-end of the market. After all, it just needed enough juice to run a browser with Flash. How much could it possibly cost? $500? Oh, HAHA!
No thanks, Google.
With iPads as low as $499, it's increasingly difficult for low-end laptops to become an attractive sell. They could probably run Photoshop, but it would take eons to load and get anything done. It is small, but the battery life is probably only 2-4 hours long. It has a physical keyboard, but it's so cramped since the laptop is so small. Anything near $500 for a low-end laptop is unacceptable these days. Those folks will just look down the isle and see the iPad and that will be that.
If Microsoft is so excited about Windows 8 running on ARM, let's get the consumer also excited about it. The Netbook bubble has popped and been replaced by a deluge of iPad sales. Let's put some cheap capable Windows 8 laptops out there. But, this brings up other questions...will there even be a low-end laptop market in a few years?
Let's say the iPad still runs the mobile show in a few years. Microsoft would do well to get some cheap tablets on the market to compete, right? Who knows how long that $399 HP Laptop is going to last when compared to the ease of use of a tablet that is so much more mobile and easier to use.