PC and Components

Hewlett-Packard and Samsung Electronics will now ensure that their PCs in China are installed with licensed Windows and Office software as part of new agreements signed with Microsoft meant to fight piracy.

Alcatel-Lucent will refocus on IP networking and ultra-broadband access in mobile and fixed-line networks as it seeks to return to profitability by 2015.

A Dell special committee has rejected a new proposal from a key shareholder Carl C. Icahn, and said it will continue to support the proposal by founder Michael Dell and private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners to take the company private.

Nvidia is to start licensing its graphics cores more widely in a bid to cash in on the need for powerful graphics in smartphones, tablets and other devices.

Carl Icahn has acquired a larger stake in Dell and called for a better buyout offer than the proposal of $US13.65 per share from Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners.

Many eyes in the tech world will fall on Oracle later this week, when the vendor's fourth-quarter results are set for release. This is typically the biggest reporting period for Oracle each year in terms of revenue, but a number of questions loom beyond its top-line performance.

Times are tough for Sony. The once-venerated electronics manufacturer is struggling in the tablet, smartphone, and digital music-player markets, so I felt much trepidation when I opened the box of the Xperia Tablet Z, Sony's new 10-inch Android tablet. But I came away pleasantly surprised. This is an idiosyncratic device, to be sure, but it's got a whole lot going for it.

Discover the software alternatives when you unplug the Creative Suite drip

China has produced a supercomputer capable of 54.9 petaflops that will likely be recognized as the world's fastest system this week with the unveiling of a new Top500 list.

The new Mac Pro is a black cylinder dense with high technology, from powerful Intel workstation-grade processors to two shockingly fast graphics cards to an array of expansion ports. We got a brief chance to go hands-on.

San Francisco-headquartered company, Splunk, first set foot in Australia in 2010 with the hire of Dan Miller (currently Australia and New Zealand general manager). Now it is making some bold moves in the channel. ARN spoke to A/NZ channel sales manager, Richard Smith.

When HP first announced it was retrenching more than 25,000 staff worldwide and the depth of its financial problems, Nermin Bajric spoke exclusively to the HP PPS South Pacific vice-president, Robert Mesaros. Now, six months later, he and Mesaros met again to discuss what has happened at HP since.

Saar Gillai, named head of Hewlett-Packard's Cloud operations in January, is on the hot seat.

John Swainson has one of the more challenging jobs in the tech industry right now. As president of Dell's software division, he's charged with sorting through all the software Dell has acquired and organizing it into coherent offerings that can further its effort to become a more profitable, software- and services-driven company.

Since its introduction, the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface has created a fair amount of controversy. UEFI was created through an industry consortium as an evolutionary step up from BIOS, the simple firmware long used when starting a computer to initialize all the components and load the operating system. Among its advanced features, UEFI includes an option called Secure Boot, which requires that any software used before the operating system starts, or after it shuts down, has been signed by a certificate authority.

The new super high-resolution screens bring beauty, clarity and precision to our work and play, writes columnist Mike Elgan. Are they worth the extra money? Definitely.

IBM and Hewlett-Packard recently held events in Las Vegas. IBM went first and demonstrated how its customers will use Watson to change the world. HP responded by bringing executives on stage to talk about new products. HP can't let its competition keep winning.

Deciding on the level of encryption you should be using requires careful consideration.

Gibbs reviews two products from Satechi and is impressed by a paper that explains the power of social network analysis

As usual, the Apple rumor mill has been on overdrive as WWDC nears. But all the hype about anything CEO Tim Cook might reveal misses the point, says columnist Ryan Faas. WWDC is still about developers.

Inkjets, which are losing some of their cachet among consumers, are finding new jobs in small offices and workgroups. We've tested enough business models over the past couple of years to prove that a high-quality inkjet multifunction is faster and cheaper to operate than a comparably prices laser product in the sub-$500 space. A good place to start is with HP's $400 OfficeJet Pro 276dw. It is expensive to buy, but it's also an excellent inkjet multifunction whose enhanced manageability features lets it play nice even in the corporate environment. The 276dw also installs easily, produces nice output quickly, and ink costs are low.

Lenovo's cleverly designed Windows 8 laptop-tablet hybrid takes too many turns for the worse

HP's business-grade notebook packs plenty of speed and nice features into a retro design

We look at the Dell XPS 18 and the Sony Vaio Tap 20: Two all-in-ones that transform into large-scale tablets. Is this an alteration you can work with?

Windows 8 has changed the way we navigate the desktop, so it's not surprising that Microsoft has a pair of new wireless mice designed specifically for Windows 8.