hardware systems - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Microsoft's Surface Pro highlights flawed two-for-one strategy

  Microsoft's upcoming Surface Pro tablet sums up the company's seeming strategy with Windows 8: That business users can do with one device what they currently accomplish with two.

• Hackintosh vs. Macintosh

  If you're thinking of buying a computer from Apple and opt for its cheapest "Mac mini" line, you'll be presented with several upgrade options at checkout.

• Tablet smackdown: iPad vs Surface RT in the enterprise

  IPads are already making their way into businesses via bring-your-own-device efforts with Microsoft Surface RT tablets hoping to follow suit as employees lobby for their favorite devices. But which one makes more sense from an IT perspective?

• 2013: Year of the hybrid cloud

  The time for dabbling in cloud computing is over, say industry analysts. 2013 is the year that companies need to implement a hybrid cloud strategy that puts select workloads in the public cloud and keeps others in-house.

• "The Human Face of Big Data" offers a geek-out-worthy coffee-table book

  "The Human Face of Big Data" is an ambitious and attractive new large-format book that aims to give readers, through photography and short articles, a glimpse of how powerful new data processing capabilities are changing people's lives. Author Rick Smolan is a photographer who gained fame for his "Day in the Life" series, which included an edition focused on the Internet in 1996, "24 Hours in Cyberspace." He says that his latest work is based on the premise that "our planet is beginning to develop a nervous system."

• Bye-bye, mouse. Hello, mind control

  When workplace computers moved beyond command-line interfaces to the mouse-and-windows-based graphical user interface, that was a major advance in usability. And the command line itself was a big improvement over the punch cards and tape that came before.

• The new business model: Competing with partners!

  Whether you blame Google, Microsoft or Apple, the old way of doing business in the mobile market is falling away. Mike Elgan explains why that's not necessarily bad.

• HP-Autonomy fraud allegations fallout: The winners and losers

  Hewlett-Packard's bombshell revelation that it would take a US$8.8 billion non-cash writedown after allegedly discovering major accounting fraud related to its Autonomy business unit has rocked the tech world.

• Hurricane Sandy leaves wounded servers in its wake

  Data recovery experts have been kept busy in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which left a slew of data centers underwater, damaging equipment and threatening a significant loss of business-critical data.

• Four takeaways from Cisco's Q1

  Four things are clear from Cisco’s better-than-expected Q1 FY 2013 results:

• The TV is the new tablet: How gesture-based computing is evolving

  Few people watch television alone today, even when they're by themselves. Most are gravitating toward the multi-screen experience, in which viewers keep a smartphone, tablet or laptop close by so they can access the Web while they watch TV. But as televisions become smarter and gesture-based computing evolves, viewers may be able to mount and control everything they need on the living room wall.

• Michael Gartenberg: Looking beneath the Surface

  The physical keyboard and inclusion of Office are differentiators that make a straight-up comparison with iPads and Android tablets impossible.

• High-performance computing turns to apps to cut cost and frustration

  Steve Jobs was right about apps in more ways than perhaps he ever knew. The concept of using apps to make software easily available and affordable to large numbers is arriving in high performance computing.

• After a tough year, Intel and HP push ahead on Itanium

  It has been a rough stretch for Itanium. HP and its customers were startled after Oracle abruptly announced its intent to discontinue software development on HP's Itanium servers. But neither HP nor Intel has backed away from Itanium, and last week's announcements appear to affirm that.

• Most memorable tech industry apologies of 2012: From Apple to Google to Microsoft

  Tech vendors have been as bombastic as ever promoting the magical and amazing things their latest smartphones, cloud computing wares and network gear can do. When things go wrong, they're naturally a little less visible, but plenty of companies have sucked it up and done the right thing this year (perhaps with a little legal prodding here and there) and publicly apologized for minor and major customers inconveniences.