computers

Lenovo Group, world's leading computer manufacturer, Thursday said it is
exploring opportunities for setting up its own research and development
(R&D) centre in India.

Google Inc is preparing a service that would enable users to store data from their personal hard drives on its computers, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday in its online edition.

Users would be able to house files they would normally store on personal computers -- such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images -- on Google's computers, the Journal said, citing sources familiar with the matter.

In an era where technology is changing fast every day, computers too have been bitten by the change-bug, by becoming more of a lifestyle statement rather than a machine for everyday use. Computers have now become an inseparable part of human life as they have become portable

In the fast-track life computers and laptops come handy when one needs to communicate with anyone in any part of the world, perform multiple functions – watch videos, listen to music and play games.

Then this article is a must read for you.

Built in wireless capabilities are becoming almost standard equipment on most laptop and home computers these days for a couple of reasons. One of the primary reasons is cost. Adding wireless capacity is so inexpensive that it would be silly for the manufacturers not to add it. The perceived value of any machine with wireless capacity far exceeds the cost to add it. Wireless is the wave of the future, so if the manufacturers want to stay ahead of the technology curve they need to add it to all but there most basic models.

A team of two dozen Hyderabad-based engineers have developed a device that is likely to replace home PCs and allow entertainment, besides Internet.

The best part of this hardware device developed by Ichip Technologies is that it comes at a fraction of the sub-10K home PC, and brings about the flexibility to use the existing TV as the display device.

The company has filed four patent applications and is in talks with OEMs to offer this packed with new televisions and also with four large domestic telecom carriers.

Economic Times has reported that besides offering landline, mobile and internet services, now MTNL will offer a PC with internet connection at a onetime payment of just Rs. 4500.

According to the publication, MTNL will initially sell low cost PCs in a partnership with Chennai-based Novatium in Delhi, the capital of India.

The news also says that this PC will look similar to other desktops, but does not contain a CPU unit or any storage devices. Rather, terminals will be connected to a centralized server in the locality by MTNL and provide it with the internet service. That means storage of data and all other applications are done by a centralized remote server.

Six major Internet companies have been sued for using computers to process their e-mail.

AOL, Amazon, Borders, Google, IAC, and Yahoo stand accused of violating a patent on automatic message routing held by Texas-based Polaris IP.

Attorneys representing Polaris IP filed a claim of patent infringement on Monday in U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall, Texas.

The lawsuit charges the companies with implementing systems that "comprise interpreting electronic messages with rule base and case base knowledge engines" as described in the patent held by the plaintiff, "Automatic message interpretation and routing system."

Toshiba Corp. will start producing a 320G-byte hard-disk drive for laptop computers before the end of this year, the company said.

It is the first 2.5-inch drive to be announced at that capacity, with production to begin in the fourth quarter, according to Toshiba. Pricing was not announced.

The drive is one of a series of five that make up Toshiba's new MKxx52SX family of hard-disk drives. The 320G-byte model will contain two platters -- the circular disks on which data is recorded. Other drives in the range will offer between 80G bytes and 250G bytes of storage space. They will connect via a 3G bps (bits per second) serial ATA (SATA) interface.

Adobe Systems Inc.'s upgrade for its Flash Player, released on Tuesday, adds support for one of the latest video encoding standards as well as new audio support.

The upgrade, called Moviestar, applies to Adobe's latest Flash Player, version 9. A beta of the upgrade will be available for download later in the day, with a final version to be ready in the third quarter, Adobe said.

Moviestar supports the playback of video encoded using the H.264 standard, which allows for greater compression of video files than previous standards while maintaining quality. Adobe already supports H.264 encoding in products such as Premiere Pro and the After Effects video editing software. Moviestar also includes High-Efficiency AAC support, an improved audio compression technology.

Gmail users who utilize the Web e-mail service to back up data on their home or work PCs and are approaching its 3 GB limit level may appreciate Google's additional storage offering. However, the extra space comes for a price: Users could buy as little as 6 GB of storage for $20 per year, or up to 250 gigabytes for $500 annually. It will also offer a 25 GB plan for $75 and a 100 GB option costing $250.

The next version of Firefox will identify malware on Web sites and make users stop and think about it.
With the number of malicious Web pages mushrooming over the past several months, the Mozilla Foundation is looking to help users defend themselves. Window Snyder, who is Mozilla's "chief security something-or-other," says the company is taking a two-pronged approach.

First, Mozilla developers are working on giving Firefox 3.0, the next version of the open source browser due later this year, the ability to detect malicious code on Web sites that users are trying to access. "In Firefox 2, there's no mechanism that identifies if malware is present," says Snyder.