Hardware

There seems to be a never-ending cycle in consumer electronics: a new company comes along and introduces the next breakthrough in tech-based innovations, consumers buy into the product in droves, the novelty of the product wanes, the company ... re-packages the product in wireless form, the novelty of the product wanes, a new company comes along and introduces the next breakthrough in tech-based innovations... Meet the latest product to get re-packaged in wireless form: High-Definition TV. The move towards wireless "Hi-Def" is not a simple transition. Many companies have made several unsuccessful ... (view more)

Apple they'll soon be turning the tech world upside down by introducing a new level of computer performance by focusing their energies on something called 'parallel computing'. There's a certain irony in this. Supercomputers are stacking up PCs to ... get their performance while PCs are using supercomputing methods to get boost theirs. Just this week, IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory announced the first "petaflop" computer (named 'Roadrunner') that is, essentially, an armada of PCs working in parallel. The new machine is capable of performing more than 1,000 trillion operations per second. ... (view more)

Blu-ray may have won the high-definition format war, but sales of its high-definition DVDs and players have tanked. A report from ABI Research notes that it's been one quarter since HD DVD lost the high-definition format war to Blu-ray, and the ... market has absorbed the consequent impacts. HD DVD and universal players are selling at deep discounts and will no longer ship after 2008, but Blu-ray player and optical drive markets will need to undergo further evolution before reaching their full potential. Consumer electronics manufacturers need to introduce full-featured players that sell around ... (view more)

It looks as if the low cost laptops designed for the developing world may run on Microsoft Windows. However, the news follows turmoil among the project's management with a third major figure departing. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) scheme aims to ... produce cheap machines to sell in bulk to governments of developing nations. It involves a laptop (named XO) that's designed to be particularly easy to use, and durable enough to survive in a wide range of climates. Originally, the laptop was only designed to run a package of software named Sugar which includes music creation and photo features. ... (view more)

There was a time in 1948 when Polaroid Corporation was the cocky, swaggering, technological king of the hill. In that year it introduced "instant" film development and in one terrible industrial instant, began a process that would result in the ... near-obsolescence of conventional film. However, just over 50 years later, Polaroid faced bankruptcy thanks to the digital camera. Now, it seems, Polaroid wants to recapture those golden days by introducing instant digital image printing. A Polaroid printer about the size of a PDA will produce dry-to-the-touch, business-card-sized color photographs ... (view more)

One of the most painful tech losses in the last year came to HD-DVD owners, the faithful few who purchased Toshiba or Microsoft hardware hoping the high-def evolution would at some point steer in their direction. Now, those folks can wipe their ... tears and get a few bucks for their trouble. For those HD-DVD owners who still haven't heard, you can expect the number of movies shipping for the format to completely cease soon. Toshiba gave up the ghost months ago, after major studios and retailers announced they were finally ready to back Blu-ray, which despite its higher cost sold both more movies ... (view more)

It's a small world after all. The more advanced technology gets, the tinier it becomes. But, is it all good news? As major technology-based companies continue to play a game of "can-you-top-this" with one another, it seems as if the only way to stay ... ahead of the pack is to offer a product that stores the largest amount of data on the smallest device possible. The best example of this phenomenon is the surge in popularity of the USB drive. A simple memory stick no longer than 4x1 inches has replaced the bulky floppy disks of yesteryear. Now pardon the pun, but many are overlooking one "small" ... (view more)

Apple is reportedly considering a plan to sell premium-priced iPods that include unlimited access to the entire iTunes library. The deal would work on both iPods and iPhones, and would either be a flat-fee or a monthly subscription. Users could then ... download as many songs as they like from the iTunes site for as long as they have their device. Subscribers could still be able to keep up to 50 of the songs on their computer even after they stop using the iPod or iPhone. It's possible they might be allowed to legally burn them to CD as well. (Source: chicagotribune.com ) It's thought Apple could ... (view more)

No sooner has HD-DVD bitten the dust and a new DVD format appears to be launching -- but its creators say they aren't looking for a war with Sony's Blu-ray. New Medium Enterprises, based in London, say their HD VMD system will cost far less and ... therefore won't be a direct competitor. HD VMD, which stands for versatile multilayer discs, is based on the red-laser system found in standard DVD players, unlike Blu-ray which uses a more expensive laser. This means HD VMD players should retail for around $199, one-third cheaper than the lowest-priced Blu-ray machines. To date, virtually no major ... (view more)

Recently we reported the release of a tool that can hack into a Windows XP PC without a password using a two-year old authentication bypass technique. Information Week is reporting that it turns out the same method also works on Windows Vista and ... computers running Linux, Mac OS X and BSD Unix. Microsoft doesn't consider the bypass technique to be a legitimate security vulnerability. As noted by the company, if a hacker has unrestricted physical access to your computer, it's not your computer anymore. A couple weeks ago, researchers from Princeton University, the Electronic Frontier Foundation ... (view more)