Hardware

Foxconn Technology, the Taiwanese electronics maker typically linked with Apple products and workers' rights violations, said it closed a Chinese plant Monday following a fight between factory employees. Foxconn said that several people from the Taiyuan plant, which employs nearly 80,000 people, wer...

In the not too distant future, all data, whether it is data at rest or in transit on a network, sensitive or not, will be encrypted. However, the performance overhead associated with encryption and decryption is one of the few remaining roadblocks to enterprise-wide adoption of this technology. Fort...

Motorola and Intel on Tuesday announced the Motorola Razr i, the first smartphone from the vendor that is built around an Intel processor. The Razr i, which runs Android Ice Cream Sandwich, will be released in Europe and Latin America beginning in October, but there's no word as to when it might be ...

Storage manufacturer HGST on Thursday demonstrated a helium-filled hard drive enclosure. This platform will let HGST design seven-platter drives in a standard 3.5-inch form factor. The company currently has five-platter drives in that form factor. With the added capacity two more platters offer, a h...

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the feasibility of using all-optical switches for possible use in computing. Their research, published in Nature Nanotechnology, demoed all-optical switching in individual cadmium sulfide nanowires. They also demoed a functional NAND ...

Intel announced Tuesday the Intel Perceptual Computing Software Development Kit, which will let devs bring gesture interaction, facial and voice recognition, and augmented reality features to Intel Core processor-based Ultrabook systems and PCs. This will be released early next quarter. Intel Vice P...

At a time when consumers are flocking to tablets and laptops, HP has decided to push strongly into the all-in-one PC market. The company on Monday announced four new consumer AIO PCs: the Envy 20 and Envy 23, the SpectreONE and the HP Pavilion 20. All four are designed to work with Windows 8, and ar...

Japanese manufacturer Murata has unveiled a new monolithic ceramic capacitor that is one-quarter the size of the one mainly used in smartphones. Its new capacitor has a footprint of 0.25 mm x 0.125 mm, compared to the 0.4 mm x 0.2 mm footprint of the one currently predominantly being used. The capac...

EXPERT ADVICE

Speeding Up Your PC, Part 5: Getting Secure

One of the most dreaded words for any computer user is "malware." Rogue software and infected files can implant bits of code that log keystrokes, spy on activities, slow down searches and snatch financial information. Users can help protect their PC by installing antivirus software, but even this c...

EXPERT ADVICE

Speeding Up Your PC, Part 4: Managing Drivers

Driver software manages communications between a computer and its system components and peripherals, such as printers, graphic and sound cards, motherboards, game controllers, Bluetooth devices, and other hardware. Driver software acts like a translator, helping a computer's operating system communi...

Intel has signed up IDT to develop an integrated transmitter and receiver chipset for the former's wireless charging technology. It will use magnet resonance technology that could enable a computer to power a device wirelessly -- just set the device down near the PC, and it starts charging. Intel a...

AMD CTO Mark Papermaster outlined his vision of the future of computing at this year's Hot Chips semiconductor design conference, detailing his plans to build systems where natural human communication could allow greater interactivity between users and computing hardware, a concept he called "Surrou...

Samsung on Tuesday announced its new Series 7 and Series 5 All-in-One PCs designed to run Windows 8 when the OS is launched later this year. The PCs have high-resolution, 10-point touchscreens, as well as slim bezel displays, metal bases, and third-generation Intel Core processors. The displays also...

Lots of people think that updates aren't really that important. In the past, updating a program often involved implementing small features or fixes that, most of the time, didn't seem worth the bother. While this may still be true for some applications, there's no doubt that updates are crucial fo...

I've written about gadget battery technologies and how to calculate basic battery needs in previous articles like "Juicing Up Your Gadget Battery Power." I've also covered some of the ways to keep yourself charged up on the road with extended battery packs for smaller devices. Continuing this theme ...

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