Archive for October, 2008
Plug It In, Turn It On: The Internet Over Power Lines
Home networking products that use a house’s internal electrical wiring for computer networks have been available for some time. Now, Powerline Technologies, a subsidiary of PowerTrust, wants to deliver broadband services over existing power grids.
Kodak CF Reader Transfers Images in a Flash
Toss serial cables and USB hardware, the Kodak Picture Card Adapter lets digital photo fanciers transfer images direct to laptops from compact flash cards.
Compaq Pockets a PDA for Palm Lovers
Compaq’s Aero 1550 is one Pocket PC that could easily get Palm users to switch — if not for the added power and the ultra-thin design, then for the suite of Pocket PC apps.
Does P4 Deliver on Performance Promise? Yes and No
Intel wrested the clock-speed crown back from AMD on Monday by releasing the long-awaited Pentium 4 at 1.5GHz. Unlike the Pentium II and Pentium III, which use the same essential architecture as the five-year-old the Pentium Pro, the Pentium 4 introduces a host of new features and is truly Intel’s first new 32-bit chip.
Intel Announces Low-Power Pentium III — Again
Intel officially rolled out new low-power versions of its Pentium III and Celeron processors Monday. The 500MHz Pentium III and the 500MHz Celeron are intended for use in ultra-light notebooks, a small PC-market segment currently dominated by Transmeta’s low-power Crusoe processor. Intel expects the new processors to ship this quarter and to start showing up in retail systems later this year.
Think About It: Ode to a Lovely IBM Laptop
PC 911 whips out a stripped-down IBM ThinkPad 240 in taxis, onstage for demos and back at the office and finds the portable-but-powerful offering a consistent performer.
Survey Says: Forget About Rambus, and Keep Eyes on Chipsets
The broad shape of what’s happening in the PC industry is pretty clear, says semiconductor industry research company Semico. In a presentation to hardware developers and system designers for this year’s Platform Conference in San Jose, Calif., analysts with Semico explained that chipsets is where all the action will be in the near future. And, they said, Rambus’ Direct RDRAM is quickly headed for obscurity.
