Nicholas Kolakowski

Acer will continue to manufacture netbooks, even as many of its manufacturing rivals shift their focus to super-thin “ultrabooks” and tablets. Netbooks once proved a white-hot seller, snatched up by consumers interested in their low price and portability. Two opposing forces helped wither that market: manufacturers’ own desire to push products with higher margins (in […]

Research In Motion’s PlayBook is due to receive a major software update in February. However, many other details surrounding the tablet-including its price and retail availability-seem in flux at the moment. Early on Nov. 27, tech publications such as Electronista began reporting that Best Buy was canceling PlayBook orders, quoting users on the retailer’s message […]

Microsoft’s week involved gearing up for the future. On Nov. 22, the company revealed it is prepping new Kinect hardware especially designed for Windows, the better to extend the popular hands-free controller beyond its traditional realm of the Xbox 360. The hardware alterations necessary for a Windows-optimized Kinect include shortening the USB cable “to ensure […]

Despite some positive reviews for their sleek design, Nokia’s new line of Windows Phone devices will fail to achieve blockbuster sales, according to an analyst. “With no breakthrough innovation, we believe Nokia’s new phones are unlikely to get traction in a highly concentrated high end,” James Faucette, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, wrote in […]

Microsoft is prepping new Kinect hardware especially designed for Windows, as the company seeks to expand the utility of the hands-free game controller beyond the Xbox 360. According to a Nov. 22 posting on the Kinect for Windows blog, the hardware will elaborate on the existing Kinect for Xbox 360 device and appear sometime in […]

Microsoft will offer Windows 8 upgrade as an online purchase and install, a fairly radical change from the company’s traditional model of boxed software and discs. “Buying boxed software is quickly becoming the exception rather than the rule,” Christa St. Pierre, a member of the Windows Setup and Deployment team, wrote in a Nov. 21 […]

Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad may soon reside in history’s dustbin of dead technology, but the webOS-powered tablet can mark at least one small victory before it plunges forever into that abyss: According to research firm The NPD Group, the ill-fated device managed to rank as the second-highest-selling tablet in the United States this year, trailing Apple’s iPad […]

Whether Amazon’s Kindle Fire proves to be the iPad challenger expected by pundits and analysts, the next version of the tablet may already be in development: According to the Taiwanese publication DigiTimes, the online retailer is working on 8.9- and 10.1-inch models. “Amazon is developing 8.9- and 10.1-inch next-generation Kindle Fire models, and has selected […]

Apple iPad 
Apple’s iPad kick-started the consumer tablet industry and created a market for thousands of third-party developers’ apps and games. If Apple holds to its established release schedule for new editions, the next iPad is likely arriving early in 2012. Kindle Fire 
If the just-released Kindle Fire succeeds as a significant iPad challenger, it […]

Amazon’s Kindle Fire could become the second-ranked tablet on the market, suggests new data from ChangeWave Research, a division of analyst firm The 451 Group. In the firm’s November survey of 3,043 North American consumers, some 2 percent claimed they’d already preordered the Kindle Fire. Around 5 percent indicated it was “very likely” they would […]

Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates will testify Nov. 21 in a federal antitrust lawsuit leveled against the software giant by open-source business software-maker Novell. Novell claims that Microsoft relied on illegal practices to crush WordPerfect, a rival to Microsoft Word. The long-running suit, originally filed in November 2004, centers on Novell’s claims that Microsoft withheld […]

Microsoft’s Windows Phone could rack up 50,000 apps in its marketplace in January 2012, according to a new estimate from the blog All About Windows Phone. “At the current growth rate, we estimate that Windows Phone Marketplace will reach the 50,000 app mark in the second or third week of January 2012,” read the blog’s […]