Nicholas Kolakowski

Hewlett-Packard might have inadvertently stumbled on the ideal iPad-killing strategy: Charge a mere $99 for a tablet with respectable hardware and decent memory, and then stand back as customers strip the shelves clean. But HP’s price slashing wasn’t driven by a desire to radically increase TouchPad adoption. As the company revealed last week, it is […]

New Interface Windows 8 will abandon Windows’ traditional “desktop”-style interface in favor of one centered on colorful tiles, itself heavily reminiscent of Windows Phone. Start Screen Windows 8’s start/unlock screen, at least in the early builds, is also heavily reminiscent of the one currently available for Windows Phone, complete with icons alerting the user to […]

Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad turned out to be a bestseller. All HP had to do was kill the tablet, which in turn sparked a global fire sale at electronics retailers. Over the weekend, Best Buy slashed the price of the 16GB TouchPad from $399 to $99, and the 32GB version from $499 to $149. (That’s on top […]

The intellectual-property war between Microsoft and Motorola Mobility is reaching a crucial phase, with the International Trade Commission’s Aug. 22 hearing into whether the handset maker’s Google Android devices violate Microsoft patents. Microsoft holds that Android broadly violates its intellectual-property rights, and has aggressively pursued litigation against companies that use Android as the operating system […]

From a behind-the-scenes perspective, Microsoft’s week must have been enormously busy. Between archrival Google announcing its intention to acquire Motorola and hardware partner Hewlett-Packard announcing its imminent exit from the PC business, there was more than enough to keep Redmond’s executives in battle-stations mode. If that wasn’t frantic enough, the company also began the inevitable […]

Research In Motion’s BlackBerry-branded Playbook has won the tablet wars. Actually, no, that statement probably deserves a little bit of adjustment: RIM’s 7-inch tablet hasn’t exactly put a dent in the iPad’s blockbuster sales run, but nonetheless it’s one of the few touch-screen devices on the market to actually survive the Apple juggernaut-something you can’t […]

Hewlett-Packard’s shocking one-two punch-that it would discontinue making its webOS mobile devices, and look to shed its PC business-is the sort of thing that business schools will be analyzing for years to come. Certainly HP’s decision to embrace software and services, and abandon a sizable but relatively low-margin PC business, is indicative of where companies […]

Apple will apparently manufacture its first iPad 3 units in October, with an eye toward a launch early next year. That report comes from the Wall Street Journal, itself quoting unnamed sources supposedly familiar with the matter. If verified, that would mean Apple is sticking with the release schedule it established with previous iPad generations. […]

Hewlett-Packard’s Website is still selling the TouchPad, the webOS tablet it has condemned to history’s dustbin of dead tech. Those interested in purchasing a piece of future geek trivia can find the 16GB and 32GB versions on HP’s official shopping page for $399.99 and $499.99, respectively. Another HP page sings the virtues of webOS, complete […]

Office 365 and Microsoft CRM users experienced a few hours’ worth of outages Aug. 17, something a Microsoft spokesperson attributed to a “networking issue” at “one of our North American data centers.” Service ended up fully restored. While customers wrestled with a lack of email and CRM, they rumbled their displeasure on Twitter and the […]

Microsoft is revealing a bit more about Windows 8 ahead of September’s BUILD conference, as part of what will be surely a long marketing campaign for the operating system. In his second posting on the “Building Windows 8” blog, Windows and Windows Live division President Stephen Sinofsky offered a further drill-down into the engineering teams […]

Less than two years after it acquired Palm for $1.2 billion, and only a few months after unveiling ambitious hardware plans centered on Palm’s webOS, Hewlett-Packard announced it was killing that strategy with extreme prejudice. If webOS withers and dies, or ends up purchased by yet another company that fails to actualize the software in […]