PC and Components: Features

When it comes to laptops, ultrathin is in -- particularly since the launch of Apple's MacBook Air earlier this year. As might be expected, though, the Air isn't the only game in town -- skinny laptops are available from a variety of other vendors.

Amazon.com's Kindle has turned a long under performing category of tech gadget -- e-book readers -- into an overnight hit, and in the process has boosted interest in electronic paper display (EPD) technology. The Kindle and its rival, the Sony Reader 505, both boast e-paper displays that look unnervingly like printed pages and consume next to no power. However, today's EPDs -- and today's e-book readers -- are only the beginning.

Australians have never really been an emotional bunch. But if some of our researchers get their way, we might just be showing our feelings at work with a little help from some innovative IT.

There's something I have to say at the outset of this review: From the time Apple announced the first 17-in. PowerBook G4 models five years ago, I've always been a little prejudiced against them. I'd never have tried to talk someone out of buying one, but I always shared my opinion that a laptop with a 17-in. display barely qualifies as a laptop at all. It seemed to me that the 17-in. PowerBook and its successor, the Intel-based MacBook Pro, was simply too big, too bulky and too heavy -- though I confess I'd never carried one around.

When Gordon Moore made his prediction in a 1965 issue of Electronic Magazine (download PDF) that the number of transistors on a chip would double every year (eventually updated by Moore to two years and then updated again by Intel to 18 months), it was just a "lucky guess" based on a few points of data, he recalled in an interview in 2006. But the idea, which has grown to encompass ever cheaper, ever smaller, ever more powerful components, has so captivated the IT industry that you can't attend a technology conference without seeing at least one PowerPoint presentation displaying the Moore's Law graph.

iPhones, broadband and gamers give reason for economic hope.

Green has never been sexier. It's the new black, and it sells.

Say goodbye to the tower.

One day after the resignation of the One Laptop Per Child's president was publicly revealed, the educational project's founder and chairman says the group's XO laptop may evolve to use only Windows XP as the operating system, with open-source educational apps such as its home-built Sugar running on top.

April 23rd marks a significant milestone for Seagate Technology -- it ships its one billionth hard drive.

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program was first announced in 2005, media attention centered on two aspects: the US$100 price tag and the humanitarian nature of the project. Three years later, the environmental genius of these award-winning laptops still not only burns bright but even inspires copycats. Vendors such as Asustek and Via are working to bring their own low-cost, low-power computing devices to emerging markets and education.