Hardware

Britain's Chancellor -- or, finance secretary -- recently unveiled one of the largest and most powerful computers in Europe. HECToR (High-End Computing Terascale Resource) can handle 63 trillion calculations per second, the equivalent of 12,000 ... standard desktop computers. Its power is equal to every person on earth simultaneously carrying out 10,000 calculations in a second. The $220 million machine is based in Edinburgh, Scotland and takes up 60 wardrobe-sized cabinets. It will be used for projects such as predicting climate change effects, projecting how quickly disease epidemics will ... (view more)

Another year, another black mock turtleneck and jeans! That's right, Apple CEO Steve Jobs again thrilled crowds at Macworld 2008 with his style, and most of all his hardware. Although this year -- by comparison -- was a bit tame, Apple still managed ... to deliver some revolutionary ideas. MacBook Air: An Ultrathin laptop, MacBook Air is 0.76 inches at its thickest point, comes with an 80 GB hard drive, 2 GB of ram, an 802.11n wireless card, and only weighs 3 pounds. The computer also has the smallest Intel chips ever made! The trade-off? It will lighten your wallet by about $1,799. (Source: news ... (view more)

In the world of hardware, Microsoft is -- gasp! -- an underdog. It took a full generation for the company's Xbox project to sweep up a respectable segment of the video gaming population, a goal it has now achieved with its successor, the Xbox 360. ... In the world of digital music, the Redmond-based company still has a ways to go, but a major facelift is starting to turn heads. When it first launched over a year ago, many techies were underwhelmed by Microsoft's Zune music player. A drab rendition of Apple's iPod, its brown, black, and white visage paled in comparison to the much sleeker and more ... (view more)

You've really got to give it to Toshiba. Even when the odds are stacked against the company responsible for HD DVD high definition movies, it still manages to capture the public's attention with drastically slashed prices. As Warner Brothers readies ... the release of all future flicks under rival Blu-ray, it's hard to completely dismiss any HD option that will be regularly priced for less than most DVD recorders. As a result of Toshiba's aggressive attempt to win back consumer approval, most HD DVD players will now be available for boxing-day blowout prices. Entry-level devices will retail for ... (view more)

In the war of Blu-ray versus HD-DVD, the last battle appears to be just over the horizon, mere weeks after it seemed Toshiba's format was in solid shape against its competitor from Sony. The reason this might all be at an end? No longer is Warner ... Brothers the only studio threatening to ditch Toshiba and HD-DVD. Just days after the studio officially announced its intention to only support Blu-ray in the future, Variety is now reporting that HD-DVD's best cards -- NBC Universal and Paramount -- are making undercurrent shifts so that they may soon change their allegiance to Sony as well. Though ... (view more)

Just months after it appeared Paramount's decision to exclusively back Toshiba's HD-DVD would save the format from what seemed an inevitable demise, Sony's Blu-ray is again threatening to snuff out its competition. Sales figures peg Blu-ray movie ... titles well ahead of the competition with the 2007 holiday season now just another footnote in the history books. According to statistics filtering out of the Blu-ray Disc Association's recent press event, Sony's format outsold the competition from HD-DVD by 2-to-1 when it came to total 2007 movie sales. Moreover, there was not a single week during ... (view more)

Sony has dealt a major, and possibly decisive blow to Toshiba in the current HD format wars. On Friday, Warner Brothers announced that it would cease production of the HD-DVD format backed by Toshiba in favor of Sony's Blu-ray. (Source: nytimes.com ... ) The format war is similar to that of the 1980s when Sony was locked in combat with JVC and others as Beta and VHS home video players battled it out for consumer support. Sony's Beta ultimately lost that battle. The current war started shaping into a serious conflict in 2006 when both sides released their first home video players. Despite a lot of ... (view more)

There are some conflicting reports this Christmas on which high definition movie format is best to put your buck behind. After Toshiba's HD-DVD dominated most of 2006, 2007 has belonged to Sony's Blu-ray, which efficiently locked up most movie ... studios. Unfortunately for Sony, at least one major studio switch has changed the momentum heading into 2008. Back in the spring of this year, it looked fairly certain that Blu-ray was going to bump HD-DVD off the road en route to a stunning next-gen victory. With its hardware tucked under the hood of every Sony PlayStation 3 and Blockbuster announcing ... (view more)

Up until this Christmas, the likelihood of Dad getting an HD-DVD or Blu-ray player was on par with his hopes of sliding a brand new Ferrari around Germany's Nuburgring. That's because extravagant cost has kept high definition movie players outside ... the average family home. That is, until this Christmas. For the first time in the history of the technology, Blu-ray and HD-DVD players are actually affordable gifts. When Sony introduced its first Blu-ray player, the BD-P1000, most homeowners -- even the hardcore techies -- scoffed at the $1,000 price tag. Although Toshiba's HD-DVD players were ... (view more)

Last Saturday, one of my friends called me up at 8:00 AM and asked,. "I have 12 PC's that have been donated to me for use in my non-profit. They have all sorts of software that I need to get rid of before installing an OS on them. Can you help me?" ... After pondering his request, I said, "Sure! I have just the tool for that job!" Before I could say "Bob's your uncle!" I had 12 PCs, with keyboards, mice, monitors, and speaker sets on my living room floor! What a mess! As my "friend" drove away, laughing gleefully, I resolved to charge him a very high fee the next time he asked for help. Since it ... (view more)