Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia is proving to be quite the albatross around the company's neck. The company has stepped away from focusing on phones, and its handset sales revenue fell by almost half in the first quarter. Microsoft sold only 2.3 million Lumia phones during the quarter, 73 percent fewer units compared with the first quarter of 2015. That meant Lumia handset revenue fell 46 percent. This dragged down the company's overall device revenue despite major gains in its Surface business. Sales of Surface tablets and the Surface Book touchscreen laptop brought in $1.1 billion for Microsoft during the last quarter, compared with $713 million during the same period last year. That's good news for the company's future, but it's being hurt by the present state of the phone business.
Things just a lot more interesting in the x86 server market. AMD has announced a plan to license the design of its top-of-the-line server processor to a newly formed Chinese company, creating a brand-new rival for Intel. AMD is licensing its x86 processor and system-on-chip technology to a company called THATIC (Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Co. Ltd.), a joint venture between AMD and a consortium of public and private Chinese companies. AMD is providing all the technology needed for THATIC to make a server chip, including the CPUs, interconnects and controllers. THATIC will be able to make variants of the x86 chips for different types of servers.
The big-box retailer announced several other connected-home appliances and tools, too, including a programmable room air conditioner.
Shipments of virtual reality hardware will begin to "skyrocket" this year and keep climbing through 2020, market analyst IDC said. It's not a shock that VR systems will see huge growth this year, after several VR devices, including the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive, and the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition VR headset, all debuted in recent weeks. But those shipments will continue to balloon through 2020, when IDC expects 64.8 million units to be sold. That's a compound annual growth rate of 183.8 percent, or almost a tripling each year.
The Pennsylvania Public Service Utility Commission has voted to fine Uber US $11.4 million for operating without its authority and failing to comply with data requests for an investigation. The PUC's vote on Thursday reduced the fine from the $49.9 million that administrative law judges had recommended last year. The PUC had accused the ride-hailing service of operating without a PUC license from February to August 2014. The PUC reduced the fine because Uber has modified its internal practices to comply with the commission's conditions. The company has not had significant compliance problems since the PUC granted it authority to operate, Commissioner John Coleman Jr. said in a statement.
In the San Bernardino case, it turned out that the FBI didn’t actually need Apple’s help to access the data in shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone 5c. But if Apple had helped, it certainly would have been cheaper. Speaking at a security conference in London, FBI Director James Comey was asked how much the bureau paid the
Acer is firing on all cylinders with its powerful new Predator gaming PCs, which will also provide the compute muscle for your virtual reality headset. The Predator 17X is a 17.3-inch laptop with an Intel i7-6820HK Core processor that can be overclocked to 4.0GHz. The GeForce GTX 980 GPU can be overclocked as well, to 1310MHz, which is a whole load of graphics performance. For a big laptop it's fairly portable, especially considering its "custom triple-fan cooling system," akin to what you might find on a desktop. The laptop sucks in air at the sides and pushes it out the back. But watch your electricity bill if the system is running at full speed for long periods of time.
One wouldn't typically imagine liquid cooling in a tablet, but Acer has pulled it off with its latest Switch Alpha 12. The liquid-cooling feature is especially noteworthy, considering fans are disappearing from tablets and hybrids. But tablet has Intel's Skylake-based Core I processors, and it needed a cooling mechanism, and Acer didn't want fans in it. While announcing the tablet Thursday, Acer said it is the first fanless tablet with a Skylake Core I processor. The device doesn't use Intel's power-efficient Core M processors, which is offered in many Windows thin-and-lights and the new MacBook. The Acer device has a "closed-loop liquid system," which dissipates the heat as liquid floats through the system. The liquid cooling system takes up little space.
Thursday at EVE Fanfest 2016, CCP unofficially-officially announced “Project Nova.” It’s the heir-apparent to Project Legion, which itself was the successor to almost-dead-PS3-exclusive
Google will soon become a modern-day TV guide with Once the feature rolls out, searching for show titles will bring up a list of air times and channels at the top of the Google search results page. Users will also be able to specify a TV provider for precise local results. Last year, Google dipped its toes in this territory by listing streaming sources when users looked up a particular movie or TV show. Those results will soon appear below the live TV listings. It’s unclear, however, if the listings will cover all TV providers, or just a subset of participants. With streaming video sources, Google is requiring providers to register their interest and markup their webpages so that show information is visible to Google’s search engine.
If you believed the vendors, you’d think Wi-Fi was simple: Turn on your computer or other device, hop on the Internet and you’re set to go. But as we all know, life isn’t quite that easy. Your home or office network can have dead spots where devices can’t seem to connect, or where the connections get slow or flaky. Public hotspots can make you prey for hackers and snoopers. And when you are at a hotspot, you might need to share your connection with your other devices, including smartphones and tablets. While there is no way to immediately solve all the problems associated with wireless connectivity, there are applications that can make things better—and many of them are free. I’ve rounded up nine free pieces of Windows software that can go a long way toward helping you solve your Wi-Fi issues at home, in your office or on the go.
First The end of the line for Dropbox on XP will come in two waves. First, on Sunday, June 26, you will no longer be able to download the Dropbox desktop program for XP. When that happens, Dropbox will also prevent you from signing into an existing account or creating a new account with the utility.
Facebook Messenger's feature improvements aren't stopping with the recent The feature builds on Facebook’s group text chatting feature. Inside a group chat, you should soon see a red phone icon. Tap that button and your call will start. Once the call is ongoing, a new screen allows you to manage participants. Users should see the phone option worldwide by Thursday, Facebook messaging chief David Marcus said in a recent
It’s been a long, long, But Romero’s been talking about creating a shooter for the past few years, vaguely discussing the development process for the past few months, and now the stage is set for one hell of a reveal… ...On Monday, that is. April 25. That’s the date listed at the end of the (humorous) teaser video above, titled “The Return,” which also directs viewers to the website for Night Work Games. The site in question is similarly sparse on details but does feature this rather candid sentence:
Take a quick tour of what’s new in the developer preview of Android N.
Most people write to me about having a “virus,” but have nothing of the kind. Their problems are caused by failing hardware, badly written software, or their own mistakes. But Leonard’s problems, which included overused RAM and mysteriously disabled security programs, suggested something malicious. In 2014, I wrote about
Netflix and other online video services might wish that people didn’t know about PlayOn, but the DVR for streaming video is becoming harder to ignore. Last year, PlayOn quietly released a PlayOn has now come up with a name for its headlining feature: “SVR,” short for Streaming Video Recorder. It’s also added a couple of helpful features, including ad-skipping in PlayOn’s mobile apps and a recording scheduler, so users don’t need to hog bandwidth during evening hours.
The Ubuntu desktop has seen very little If you’re using the Unity 7 desktop—now Unity 7.4—you’ll have a better experience than ever before. Those controversial