Wolfgang Gruener in
Business
on January 24
Intel will try to prove its claims that it can be a powerful manufacturer of processors for smartphones and tablets when its Medfield platform emerges in commercial products in H2 this year. In the same time frame, ARM vendors will release their first notebooks that challenge, conceivably, Intel’s most important and profitable business today. Both Intel and ARM are staging aggressive launches and prepare for a fight that will be much more bloody than the historic processor battles between AMD and Intel. Does Intel have what it takes to dent ARM’s segmentation-driven application processor market? Can ARM deliver processors that are compelling enough to face Intel’s prestigious and performance-driven CPUs?
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Rob Enderle in
Business
on January 23
eBay has never been a huge attraction for me as the idea of entering into auctions on-line just wasn’t something that I was that interested in. However after hosting me on campus last year, I was convinced that eBay was trying to be more like Amazon in terms of buying experience and they were showcasing an interesting additional step of providing apps that could point you to stores that had products you might want to buy. In other words, they were moving beyond actions and into consumer-focused commerce much more aggressively.
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Wolfgang Gruener in
Products
on January 17
Chrome developer François Beaufort has posted a screenshot that apparently has been taken on Samsung’s upcoming Chrome OS desktop PC. The big news here is that the hardware-accelerated Aura UI that promises a much richer interface for the user while leveraging the horsepower of a graphics chip will be part of Stumpy. The Chromebox will also integrate more hardware horsepower with an Intel Sandy Bridge processor.
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Wolfgang Gruener in
Test Drives
on January 17
Full Review – Buying a 2012 LaCrosse could expose you to what appears to be a trick question: Do you get the 303 hp 6-cylinder or the 182 hp 4-cylinder + 15 hp electric motor – for the same price? The case for the eLaCrosse is not exactly convincing and quite confusing, but it’s something we may have to get used to sooner or later.
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Wolfgang Gruener in
Products
on January 10
Intel unveiled at CES its much anticipated entry in the smartphone battle. Previously code-named Medfield, the Atom Z2460 lacks a snappy name, but it arrives with promising features. Intel has struck a partnership with Motorola as well as Lenovo to get the chip into a commercial devices as early as Q2, but only in China initially. There was also Clover Trail, Intel’s SoC for tablets and hybrids.
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Kurt Bakke in
Products
on January 10
We are seeing plenty of new tablets emerge at the CES 2012, which opened earlier today with a record number of more than 3100 exhibitors that have prepared more than 25,000 product announcements that are available to about 150,000 visitors over the next few days. Among those tablets is a particularly noteworthy device that could have a huge impact on the tablet market, if it works as promised.
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Wolfgang Gruener in
Business
on January 10
Recap – The CES opening keynote has, traditionally been not just a keynote. Placed in the heart of the Las Vegas strip, the opening keynote has always been a show with flashy announcements and explorations of future computer and consumer electronics technologies (with the exception of the initial Bill Gates appearance in 1998). After 13 keynotes, Microsoft will depart from CES and some may agree that it was time for Microsoft to move on as there were no CES worthy announcements during a 70 minute marketing pitch that was an hour too long.
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Rob Enderle in
Business Products
on January 09
Earlier today, HP launched the HP Envy 14 Spectre and I was immediately reminded of the 2009 Dell Adamo, which was Dell’s halo product that year. Both are wrapped in glass, both look stunning in black and both would cause you to drool. But the Adamo was a bit ahead of its time, Intel hadn’t yet figured out how to package performance, we weren’t yet divorced from our optical drives (streaming was in its infancy), and Adamo had some nasty tradeoffs, not the least of which was a very high price.
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Jack Gold in
Business Products
on January 06
Intel has created and “speced” a new form factor for notebooks it is calling ultrabooks. Many have speculated that this is a direct response to the popularity of the MacBook Air. But if this effort is only focused on that narrow vision, it will fail. Ultrabooks represent a much bigger strategic vision (and investment) that could revolutionize the notebook market, if Intel is successful.
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Wolfgang Gruener in
Products
on January 06
Google is reworking the Options menu of its Chrome browser. The most recent nightly builds include an experimental menu that eliminates the “Basics”, “Personal Stuff” and “Under the Hood” clutter at the top level. There is also a new feature that visualizes the suggestions provided by the Omnibox.
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Rob Enderle in
Business
on January 05
Cisco has been on a roll. They started by trying to come out with a competitor to Sonos, which had the catchy name “Linksys by Cisco Wireless Home Audio System”. It was expensive and too hard to set up, but with some modification, it may have been competitive. It consisted of a broad line of whole house entertainment products and instead of fixing the offering, they killed it. Then they purchased Flip, the most successful digital video camera ever brought to market in terms of volume largely because it was under $100 and very easy to use.
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Wolfgang Gruener in
on January 05
Four months after publishing the proposal for an extended service release (ESR) for Firefox, Mozilla will be releasing the first Firefox version that responds to business concerns that the rapid release cycle has made Firefox difficult to maintain in corporate. Firefox 10.0 ESR will enable companies to move from Firefox 3.6 to 10.
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