Hardware

Beefed up and slimmed down, the new 1TB PlayStation 4 Ultimate Player Edition is scheduled to arrive in Japan before this month concludes and then launch in the UK in the middle of July, Sony announced on Sunday. The revised console, bearing twice the storage capacity of its predecessor, will arrive...

Here to save all our wrists -- or at least those of people with a spare $299 to spend on a computer accessory -- is a lovely, wood-finished keyboard called "Keyboardio Model 01." Taking its cue from a long history of ergonomic keyboards, the device splits an atypical keyboard in two, dedicating half...

Touchpad pioneer Synaptics has touched up an unlikely area on a keyboard: the spacebar. The company last week announced the availability of its SmartBar technology, which adds gesture features to the bar. For example, text can be selected by swiping it. A double-thumb gesture can be used to zoom i...

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled the Surface Hub, a large-screen device meant to dramatically improve business collaboration. The 55-inch and 84-inch interactive displays marry white boards with presentations, voice with video, speakers with addressees, Android with iOS, and Windows 10 with conferenc...

Microsoft on Monday confirmed that Windows 10 will be released July 29 as a free upgrade for PCs and tablets running Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and on new Windows 10 devices. The OS will be available for other devices later this year. Consumers can reserve free upgrades now. Windows 10 includes the ...

"Wood chips" takes on new meaning with a new green technology, cellulose nanofibril, or CNF, developed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Products Laboratory and detailed in a research paper published this week. The "chips" in question...

If there is one vendor on the planet that has the capability to fight Apple -- on paper, it is Lenovo. Lenovo this week will hold its annual Lenovo Tech World event in China, showcasing the company's new breadth. While it would be easy to position this as the U.S. against China, Lenovo is actually f...

Apple on Tuesday announced performance enhancements for the MacBook Pro and a new configuration and price changes for the iMac. The new 15-inch MacBook Pro with its Force Touch trackpad and improved flash storage, battery and graphics performance is available immediately online, starting at $1,999.

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Venom Less Toxic Than Heartbleed

It was a little over a year ago that the Heartbleed bug shocked the Internet with its potential for mischief. Now another flaw in open source code has sent network administrators into damage control mode. The bug, called "Venom" for "Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation," allows...

Early reviewers last week weighed in on Apple's new MacBook, and for the most part, they were underwhelmed. The new MacBook is 13.1mm thick, weighs 2 pounds, and has a 12-inch Retina display. Apple has touted it as the future of the notebook, pointing out that it had to reimagine every element to ma...

OPINION

Apple’s Storm Clouds

An Apple shop recently dumped Apple for Dell following a surprising revelation. Over most of the last two decades, the only time I've seen a move like this was when some change in IT forced it, and a lot of staffers subsequently would quit. This move was largely user-driven. Then, last week, one of ...

GADGET DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES

Gadget Ogling: Dashing Buttons, a Plug-In PC and a Smart Teakettle

Amazon Dash is a series of WiFi connected buttons you dot around your home for various products. Once you run out, hit the button, and Amazon will ship out more of what you need. Run out of things like trash bags, razors, detergent, diapers, paper towels, dog food or toilet paper, and Amazon can shi...

The BBC last week announced that it would give programming PCs to 1 million students through its Make It Digital initiative, an effort to spark greater interest in technology. The 11- and 12-year-old UK school children will receive Micro Bit, a stripped-down computer that can be worn on a lanyard. S...

OPINION

Apple Drifts Away From Jobs

Steve Jobs' Apple displayed a rather fascinating balance between design and utility. Granted, it often shifted more toward the design side, which resulted in problems like Antennagate, but that tended to happen when Jobs wasn't around. He made sure the products worked well and looked good -- he unde...

Nvidia on Thursday launched the latest in its GTX 900s series of mobile GPUs -- GTX 960m and 950m -- designed to make a gaming laptop as future-proof as possible. Asus' recently unveiled GX501 is one of the machines that already has incorporated the latest Nvidia tech. The new GPUs include such gami...

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