Hardware Archive

Commodore 64 turns 30: what do today’s kids make of it?

"It is 30 years since the Commodore 64 went on sale to the public. The machine was hugely successful for its time, helping to encourage personal computing, popularise video games and pioneer homemade computer-created music. BBC News invited Commodore enthusiast Mat Allen to show schoolchildren his carefully preserved computer, at a primary school and secondary school in London."

Andre Hendrick, the man who kept the PC open, passed away

"Andre Hedrick, a principal engineer and operating system architect at Cisco Systems and a Linux kernel contributor, has died. He leaves behind a wife, four young children and many friends. Andre made a significant contribution to personal computing history in a way few people fully realise." I indeed had no idea. It's subtle, but quite important indeed. Worth reading, and our thoughts and condolences with his family and friends.

Lenovo, Asus see lots of growth; Dell, HP don’t

Gartner has its figures for PC sales. Worldwide, Asus and Lenovo seeing lots of growth, Dell and HP losing lots of sales, Apple doesn't register in the top 5. Overall, the market remained flat. If you take a narrow view of the world and only focus on the US, things look different. In the US, everybody loses, and only Apple sees minor growth. All this excludes tablet sales, but considering people are hammering on and on and on about how it's a post-PC device, I think it makes sense to exclude it. You can't have your cake, and eat it too. Then again, who cares.

Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future

"The UEFI secure boot mechanism has been the source of a great deal of concern in the free software community, and for good reason: it could easily be a mechanism by which we lose control over our own systems. Recently, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett described how the Fedora distribution planned to handle secure boot in the Fedora 18 release. That posting has inspired a great deal of concern and criticism, though, arguably, about the wrong things."

Vizio: a quiet American success story takes on sleeping giants

Another fantastic article at The Verge, this time covering Vizio in-depth, written by Nilay Patel. "Vizio is one of the best-kept secrets in consumer technology. The tiny Southern California company consistently sells the most HDTVs in America, but it's a sure bet that you know virtually nothing about it. Hell, most people don't even know Vizio is an American company, even though all but three of its 417 employees work in the US."

Vizio details PC line-up

And finally, finally, finally, Vizio has fully unveiled its brand new line up of laptops and all-in-ones. The successful American TV maker announced its new kit at CES in January, catching my eyes with a set of beautiful, distinctive laptops and all-in-ones, and, as they promised back then, they have now unveiled all. This has want written all over it. Update: Rejoice: non-glossy, matte screens on the laptop.

A 1956 encyclopaedia’s view on the computer

Two weeks ago, my grandmother passed away - the last grandparent I had left. As those of you with experience in dealing with deceased family members know, the funeral is only the start; the next part is taking care of the deceased's affairs, which includes going through all their belongings to determine what to do with them. I took care of my grandmother's extensive book collection, and while doing so, I hit something that fascinated me to no end: a six-volume Christian Encyclopaedia from 1956. In it, I found something I just had to share with OSNews.

The Raspberry Pi’s here, and it’s awesome

It took the world a good while, but today, my Raspberry Pi finally landed on my doormat. Since it only arrived today, I haven't had the time to put it through its paces, but I do have a few first impressions to share with you all, while I also want to explain how the Pi will allow me to complete my already seven year long quest for The Elusive Three.

Can Layoffs Save Hewlett Packard?

Hewlett Packard announced the company would lay off nearly nine percent of its 300,000 person workforce over the next two years, or about 27,000 people. The move is expected to save HP $3 billion to $3.5 billion annually. HP stock went up 5% in response to the news Thursday morning. Research firm Ovum asks "...the key missing piece is long-term company vision and strategy, which hopefully will be revealed to an anxious customer base soon... the question still remains: Just what kind of company does HP want to be next year, three years, five years from now?"

Seagate to acquire LaCie

"Seagate this morning announced plans to acquire LaCie, a Paris-based producer of consumer data storage devices, for at least $186 million. Seagate said it has agreed to buy a 64.5% stake in LaCie held by Philippe Spruch, the company's chairman and CEO. On completion of that transaction, Seagate intends to made an all-cash tender offer for the rest of LaCie's shares."

iPhone charger teardown: quality in a tiny expensive package

"Disassembling Apple's diminutive inch-cube iPhone charger reveals a technologically advanced flyback switching power supply that goes beyond the typical charger. It simply takes AC input (anything between 100 and 240 volts) and produce 5 watts of smooth 5 volt power, but the circuit to do this is surprisingly complex and innovative." Quite fascinating, although I'm not sure just how much the mentioned advantages really matter beyond bragging rights.

My Raspberry Pi thinks it’s a mainframe

"As the Raspberry Pi started to ship the Sinclair ZX Spectrum turned 30 years old, and comparisons were being made between the two and their role in providing access to affordable computer hardware. Given the phenomenal advances in computing since the birth of the ZX Spectrum, I thought it might be fun to compare the Raspberry Pi with a computer that was closer to the state of the art at around that time, and to see if the Raspberry Pi could fill its shoes..."

HP states they didn’t copy Apple’s MacBook Air

Speaking of HP, the company replied to a question if they copied Apple for their latest ultrabook, the Envy Spectre XT. "There are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don't. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities." It's an ultrabook, a category of laptops defined by Intel. Coincidentally, Intel also developed the internals of the MacBook Air. These products are looking relatively similar because their internals have been designed by the same damn company. Get over it.

How Hewlett-Packard lost its way

"Leo Apotheker's disastrous tenure as HP's CEO revealed a dysfunctional company struggling for direction after a decade of missteps and scandals. Can his replacement, Meg Whitman, fix the tech giant?" As a consumer, I wish they simplified their product line-up. They have the engineering skills - I just have no idea what I'm supposed to buy when I visit their site. The choice for the ZenBook late last year instead of anything HP had to offer was elementary.