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Sprint To Offer Ultrabooks
Sprint has become the first U.S. mobile operator to offer an ultrabook, which is being sold with a 3G/4G mobile hotspot device at no added cost.
Sprint and Lenovo announced the 13.3-in. IdeaPad U310 ultrabook with a hotspot device for $799.99, subject to a two-year Sprint mobile broadband service agreement, the companies said. Three months of broadband service will be available for free.
The hotspot is either a MiFi 3G/4G mobile hotspot by Novatel Wireless or the Overdrive Pro 3G/4G mobile hotspot by Sierra Wireless. Data plans for the hotspot start at $35 a month for 3GB, or $50 for 6GB.
Sprint said the offer is focused on small business users and students. It will be available through Sprint telesales at 800-Sprint1, Sprint business sales and business partners and on the Sprint ultrabook Web site.
The IdeaPad U310 features Lenovo RapidBoot, allowing it to resume from hibernate status in less than seven seconds, and BootShield for fast booting even with multiple apps installed.
Skype Confirms Glitch
July 23, 2012 by admin
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Skype, a division of Microsoft, confirmed on Monday that a bug in its software has led to instant messages being shared with unintended parties.
The company said it will provide an update to fix the problem in “the next few days.”
According to user reports, the unintended recipients have been connected to just one of the two users who exchanging messages. The problem could have harmful consequences. For example, two co-workers using Skype to exchange IMs (instant messages) could, as a result of the problem, share the message with another contact in one user’s address book — potentially a third co-worker being unfavorably described in their IM exchange.
According to Skype, the problem only arises in “rare circumstances.”
The issue first came to light last week in Skype’s user forums. It seems to stem from the update issued by the voice, video and text messaging service in June.
Intel Goes Wireless
Maho Bay is a desktop platform wrapped around the recently launched Ivy Bridge desktop processor and Intel plans to enrich this platform with a Wireless mini card offer of its own.
The plan is to make new SKUs based on half Minicard (mPCIe) standard and offer it with its boards that have support for PCIe 1X or faster. Maho Bay also allows some combinations with Sandy Bridge processors and will allow the use of these mini Wireless cards on older processors with new boards. It looks like the Panther Point chipset is necessary even for older Sandy Bridge processors on Maho Bay platform.
The top range card with premium performance is Intel Centrino Ultimate N 6300, and the card has virtually the same specification like its mobile brother. It supports Intel Wireless Display as well as Intel My Wifi technology and quick driver connect.
Since it is using 3×3 antennas and MIMO standard it us capable of achieving speeds of 450Mbits per second and it does support multiple streams. It supports dual band 2.4 + 5 GHz and Intel Vpro. This is still a 802.11n based product as Intel hasn’t really jumped the gun to support 802.11ac in 2012.
It looks like it is too early for Intel to embrace this new standard due to its very limited market penetration.
Sprint Will Support Mozilla’s Mobile OS
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A new operating system for mobile phones, similar to the Mozilla Firefox internet browser has got the backing of several major telecom companies, turning up the heat on Google and Apple in the smartphone market.
Mozilla said on Monday that mobile network operators Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, Smart, Telecom Italia, Telenor and Etisalat are backing the Firefox platform.
The non-profit organization which evolved from Netscape after the internet browser wars 14 years ago, said phone makers ZTE and TCL Communication Technology will roll out the first Firefox OS phones using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors in early 2013.
Mozilla, which fosters the collective development of open-source Web applications, currently generates most of its income from a contract which makes Google the default search provider for Firefox users.
Broad support from telecom companies and handset makers is crucial for any new smartphone platform to take off in a market increasingly dominated by Google’s Android software, which has a market share of around 60 percent, while Apple’s iPhones run on its proprietary iOS software.
Do Work-At-Home People Work Hard?
July 4, 2012 by admin
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A new survey by Citrix shows that many people sneak in other activities while working from home.
Based on a survey of 1,013 American office workers, conducted in June by Wakefield Research, 43 percent watch TV or a movie and 20 percent play video games while officially working from home. Parents are more likely than those without children to partake in these two activities, which aren’t work-related.
Nearly a quarter admit that they have a drink or two and another quarter admit to falling asleep. Another 35 percent do household chores; 28 percent cook dinner. Strangely however telecommuters are actually more productive than their peers in the office, according to preliminary findings from Stanford University’s study of a Chinese travel agency.
Nokia And Ford Team Up
July 3, 2012 by admin
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Ford has teamed up with Nokia to equip its cloud-connected vehicles with the Finnish phone maker’s Location Platform.
The Nokia Location Platform consists of a suite of client and server-side programming interfaces that allow developers to build interactive applications with maps and map-related services.
The possible integration of the service into Ford vehicles in the future could help Ford learn driver behaviour and control, improve and personalize vehicle performance.
“Another area of Ford’s research is designed to optimise hybrid powertrain efficiency,” Nokia said in a press release. “The Nokia Location Platform could automatically regulate a car’s powertrain as it travels through established or driver-specified ‘Green Zones’.”
Christof Hellmis, VP of the Map Platform in Nokia’s Location and Commerce business unit said the integration of Nokia’s Location Platform is not scheduled for production and has so far only been seen in the Ford Evos concept car.
Will Chipmakers Make Cuts This Year?
Gartner is warning that worldwide wafer fab equipment spending is on pace to total $33 billion in 2012 which is a decline of 8.9 percent from 2011.
Gartner analysts warned that this is a sign of an industry in downturn and said the market will return to growth in 2013 with WFE spending projected to surpass $35.4 billion, a 7.4 percent increase from 2012. Bob Johnson, research vice president at Gartner said 2012 spending was strong at the beginning of the year, as foundries and other logic manufacturers ramped up sub-30-nm production.
Will More Win8 RT Hybrids Start Showing Up?
June 29, 2012 by admin
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Rumour has it that Nvidia has the best drivers and might be close to fine tuning its Windows RT platform, but we are sure Qualcomm and Texas Instruments aren’t far behind.
The Asus Transformer series has set a new trend by providing tablet users with a keyboard dock with some extra ports and an additional battery. This is definitely the way to go as you get the best of both worlds in a single package Windows 8 RT is finally bringing Microsoft in the ARM market and needless to say there will be many systems to be ready for launch.
Nvidia with Tegra, Texas Instruments with OMAP and Qualcomm with S4 are getting ready to embrace tablets as well as hybrid notebooks based on Windows 8 RT. The Asus Transformer 600 is just the first of many to come and there will be at least a few more similar designs to launch this year with Windows 8 RT, so we have no doubt that we will see quite a few convertible Windows tablets.
Dell Buys Quest Software
Dell is set to buy Quest software for $2.5 billion. The move trumps the bid by Insight Venture Partners and was done on the quiet.
The No. 2 U.S. personal computer maker kept its name out of the limelight when Quest disclosed on Thursday that it had received an offer from a “strategic bidder” of $25.50 per share. Quest’s shares rose more than 9 percent to finish at $26.06 on Thursday.
Dell has been actively buying companies to expand its offerings to business and diversify away from personal computers. It told investors its focus on the hardware and software needs of corporate customers was gaining momentum. Quest could help Dell’s businesses in data management and protection and Windows server management.
Woman Sues LinkedIn
June 25, 2012 by admin
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An Illinois woman has filed a $5 million lawsuit against LinkedIn Corp, claiming that the social network violated promises to consumers by not having better security in place when more than 6 million customer passwords were stolen.
The lawsuit, which was introduced in federal court in San Jose, California, on June 15 and seeks class-action status, was filed less than two weeks after the stolen passwords turned up on websites frequented by computer hackers.
The attack on Mountain View, California-based LinkedIn, an employment and professional networking site with more than 160 million members, was the latest massive corporate data breach to have attracted the attention of class-action lawyers.
A federal judicial panel last week consolidated nine proposed class-action lawsuits in Nevada federal court against online shoe retailer Zappos, a unit of Amazon.com, over its January disclosure that hackers had siphoned information affecting 24 million customers.
The LinkedIn lawsuit was filed by Katie Szpyrka, a user of the website from Illinois. In court papers, her Chicago-based law firm, Edelson McGuire, said LinkedIn had “deceived customers” by having a security policy “in clear contradiction of accepted industry standards for database security.”
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