Michelle Maisto

UK retailer Dixons now offers two versions of its Advent laptop line, clearly inspired by the Apple MacBook Air. In addition to the 13.3-inch Altro, Advent now sells the Altro Elite, according to a Sept. 1 Website update.The Altro Elite laptop runs Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. The laptop weighs 3.5 pounds and measures 13.2 […]

A group calling itself the International Electromagnetic Field Collaborative released an impassioned, 44-page report on Aug. 25 with the intent of drawing attention to studies showing a significant risk of brain tumors from cell phone use and exposing what it calls “design flaws” in the Interphone study protocol.The 13-country Interphone study is said to be […]

The total notebook PC market performed well in the second quarter of 2009, with unit numbers passing 38 million and mini-notebook PCs, or netbooks, significantly contributing to those results, states an Aug. 31 report from DisplaySearch.The netbook market grew 40 percent quarter to quarter, with its share of total portable computer shipments rising from 17.8 […]

American Industrial Systems, a designer and manufacturer of rugged solutions for vertical markets, grew its hardware offerings on Aug. 31 with the addition of a 10.4-inch Rugged Tablet PC featuring a 10.4-inch industrial LCD screen and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor and an Intel 945 GSE chipset. The Rugged Tablet PC, which AIS officially […]

Sales of consumer Blu-ray players are quickly rising, the players’ prices are quickly dropping, and the number of movies now available in high definition is on the rise. And yet, the number of Blu-ray drives in PCs is only slowly inching up, according to a new report from iSuppli.BDs will be found in 3.6 percent […]

Nokia introduced its first Linux-based phone on Aug. 27, the robust N900 smartphone. It features a 600MHz ARM processor, an iPhone-size high-definition touch-screen, up to 48GB of storage and an open-source, Linux-based operating system called Maemo.The N900, which will join us some time in October and retail in the neighborhood of $700, followed on the […]

Nokia has introduced a new top-tier contender in the smartphone market-the N900-which uses an open-source operating system.The Nokia N900 is a robust phone that borrows from Nokia’s flagship N97 in looks-with a 3.5-inch touch-sensitive, high-resolution widescreen that slides up on its long, or landscape, side to reveal a QWERTY keyboard-but in an Android-mad market, the […]

Analysts were optimistic about Dell’s second-quarter fiscal year 2010 results, and indeed, during a call to media and analysts on Aug. 28, the Texas company announced net revenue of $12.8 billion, which was up from the $12.3 billion of the previous quarter-though it couldn’t touch the $16.4 billion of the same quarter a year earlier.“We […]

The New York Times’ David Pogue and the Wall Street Journal’s Walter S. Mossberg have officially weighed in on Snow Leopard, Apple’s software upgrade to OS X 10.6, which will be available Aug. 28.Snow Leopard is an upgrade from Leopard, and as the name suggests it’s not an overhaul but a refinement.While in recent years […]

Motorola has been expected to introduce a few Android-running handsets in time for the holidays, and a Sept. 10 debut is now looking like a good bet. On Aug. 25, Motorola sent out save-the-dates to members of the press for a Sept. 10 event in San Francisco. The invite included Google’s Android icon, leaving little […]

ABI Research is expecting handset shipments with dual-mode Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity to continue to double every two years through 2011. ABI analysts predicted the same for 2008 through 2010, and with the pattern holding, if not accelerating, said they expect 144 million of such handsets to ship in 2009, with the number rising to […]

Apple’s 13-inch MacBook is on the verge of a refresh that would include a slimmer, lighter enclosure, a redesigned internal architecture and better battery life, Apple Insider is reporting, citing information from “people familiar with the Cupertino-based company’s plans.”Apple upgraded its aluminum-bodied MacBook Pros in June. The $999 white polycarbonate MacBook, which hasn’t had a […]