John G. Spooner

A new wave of lightweight notebooks promises to be more livable for the road warrior, by offering more advanced features and built-in optical drives. Among them are new entries from Lenovo and Toshiba, each of which announced on May 31 a new business-oriented notebook line built around a 12.1-inch wide screen and an internal optical […]

Microsoft is making it much more difficult to access and steal a businesss vital data from one of its PCs. The giant software maker will deliver Bitlocker, a hard drive encryption tool, as part of its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system, which is now in its second beta and is due to large businesses in […]

SEATTLE—Microsoft is still aiming for an on-time delivery of its Windows Vista, but in the meantime, it wants as many people as possible—millions and millions—to take it for a test drive. Despite suggesting it might delay the OS again if it receives negative feedback from testers, Microsoft executives speaking at WinHEC said the company was […]

SEATTLE—Microsoft has renewed its interest in mobile computing. The software giant, which earlier in 2006 introduced its Ultra-Mobile PC, formerly code-named Origami, has created a new mobile marketing group with rising executive Mika Krammer as its director, and is working to synchronize not only what it says about its two mobile operating systems—Windows and Windows […]

PORTLAND, Ore.—Concerns about power consumption are one of the main factors driving chip maker Intel to move more quickly between processor architectures. Following the arrival of its Core Microarchitecture in June, the chip maker has said it plans to begin delivering a new architecture every two years. Thus Intel will change out the circuitry that […]

SEATTLE—Microsoft is going for the beta hat trick, said Bill Gates, Microsofts chairman and chief software architect. The software giant on May 23 delivered Beta 2 versions of its Windows Vista operating system, Office System 2007 and Windows Server Longhorn at the same time. The scheduled 2007 arrival of the three products, now in beta, […]

SEATTLE—Microsoft is going for the beta hat trick, said Bill Gates, Microsofts chairman and chief software architect. The software giant on May 23 delivered Beta 2 versions of its Windows Vista operating system, Office System 2007 and Windows Server Longhorn at the same time. The scheduled 2007 arrival of the three products, now in beta, […]

Microsoft has, for the first time, given businesses that plan to roll out its forthcoming Windows Vista operating system a firm idea of the type of PC hardware they should choose. The software maker on May 18 released minimum PC hardware guidelines for Vista Capable PCs. The guidelines, expected to be a hot topic at […]

Advanced micro devices is about to roll out a new line of low-power processors to encourage a move away from the one-size-fits-all desktop PC. The chip maker on May 16 announced a line of low-power processors for desktop PCs, including 35-watt chips such as a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+ processor, as part of a […]

Dell, in a company first, is readying multiproc-essor servers based on Advanced Micro Devices Opteron chip. The Round Rock, Texas, PC maker, which has long been an Intel-processor-only shop, said May 18 it intends to add the Opteron to its line of multiproc-essor servers—machines that offer four or more processors—before the end of the year. […]