Archive for the ‘Products’ Category

Given the success of Windows 7 with an initial October release date, it is unlikely that Microsoft will risk missing the Christmas shopping season as it did with Vista. It does not take much more than common sense to predict that Windows 8 will be released so Microsoft can take advantage of the busiest buying season of the year and hardware makers will be in tow to make sure there are enough hardware reasons to give Windows 8 the necessary support to get off the ground quickly. Software makers are making progress as well. Among the most notable ones: Mozilla.

Mozilla is ready to launch the 11th generation of its web browser on Tuesday – and it will bring the long awaited Chrome data migration toolset with it. It’s a first feature that goes much more directly after Chrome and is an attempt to regain users that were lost to Google’s browsers.

Last week, Microsoft released “Flight”, the apparent next version in its Flight Simulator series that first launched in 1982. Some may argue whether this game is good enough to be called a successor, while the game is just as groundbreaking as the first version was. Flight embraces a trend in PC gaming that is likely to accelerate over the next few years and help shape the way we will purchase and play games in the future.

Nokia calls it the next breakthrough in photography: A smartphone with a 41 megapixel camera – three times the resolution of current mainstream digital cameras. However, it comes with huge drawbacks that are tough to swallow and create a problem that, without the 808, you simply don’t have. Here is some food for thought why this phone matters, and why it is a technology demonstration that will end up as a commercial flop.

Preview - In 2010, Billy May released an animation about an imaginary Mozilla Open Web smartphone. Called Seabird, the phone was praised as an evolutionary smartphone that, albeit imaginary, included the vision for a phone that not just copies Apple’s iPhone, but incorporates Mozilla philosophy as well as a vision that is years ahead of the products we are using today. Mozilla’s B2G, a mobile operating system that will be demonstrated at MWC next week, could carry that vision and emerge as the dark horse in the smartphone arena.

The second half of 2011 was, it seems, a recovery period for Mozilla’s Firefox team. After a prolonged Firefox 4 development period that caused Mozilla to miss the most critical evolutionary phase of web browsers since the defeat of Netscape, Firefox has been losing market share and there is doubt whether Firefox can rise again. An updated roadmap is the prescription to keep Firefox competitive.

Chrome for Android was released with about 3 months delay (or more than 3 years, depending on your view) on Tuesday. Google hopes to replicate the runaway success of the desktop version of the browser, but the browser is less appealing and less accessible to the user than Chrome, which makes this mobile browser an inconclusive product that, in addition, lacks compelling features over rivals.

In its first public presentation, AMD’s new leadership explained a new direction of the company to align itself with an evolving CPU and GPU market. In 2013, AMD will be releasing its first SoCs for desktop and tablet computers. Execution will be key for the company to succeed in a highly competitive market that is dominated by ARM vendors and challenged by Intel.

January 2012 has been a remarkable month for the web browser as we know it. Those who closely follow the popularity of web browsers already know that Chrome has, according to StatCounter, surpassed Firefox in market share in November 2011, thus rearranging the rules of the browser game and turning it, for now, into a two-horse race. Now, Chrome is beginning to approach IE in most regions around the globe and has reduced its distance to IE, on one day, to less than four percentage points. If the current trend, which has lasted for more than 3 years, continues, then Google will surpass IE within 3 months.

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.

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.

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.