Consumer IT

News articles, editorial features, columns and more on various consumer technologies, and why corporate IT departments should care if their users are employing them.

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News

Apple Tops the $100B+ Tech Club

Ten years ago Apple posted revenue of $5.3 billion, a mere gnat compared to the IBM elephant which topped all tech companies with sales of $85.8 billion. Full Story »
News

Mobile World Congress Sneak Peek: Quad-Core Smartphones, Ice Cream Sandwich, More

It might be hard to imagine there will be that much more for makers of smartphones, tablets and other wireless offerings to reveal at Mobile World Congress at the end of this month after the deluge of products that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show to kick off 2012. But Sony, HTC and others have gotten wireless watchers in a frenzy already by issuing MWC event invitations and stirring speculation about Android 4.0, Windows Phone and quad-core devices.

News

Amazon Attacks Apple: You Get 3 Kindle Products for Price of IPad 2

Amazon has released a new advertisement that takes a shot at the price of Apple's iPad, emphasizing the lower cost of the Kindle e-reader and Android-based Kindle Fire tablet computer.

News

March Debut of 'iPad 3' a Sure Bet, Says Analyst

Apple will introduce a new iPad the first full week of March, and will start selling it the following week, according to reports and industry analyst expectations.

Advice & Opinion

Windows 8: Assessing IT Risks of a Consumer-Driven Wave

Microsoft is betting big on Windows 8. But will the immense promotional efforts the software giant is putting behind the latest Windows OS pay off? CIO.com's Rob Enderle handicaps the high-stakes game Redmond is playing.

News

Buyers Lining Up for Raspberry Pi's $25 PC

Raspberry Pi Foundation's US$25 PC will become available by the end of this month, and buyers hope it could fill in as a low-power desktop, while being an alternative to the more expensive open-source hardware.

News

Apple's Expected Television Set May Be in TV Makers' Hands

Reports about Apple's expected television set continue unabated with a new claim that Apple is talking to Canadian telecoms Rogers Communications Inc. and Bell Canada Enterprises about a possible TV set deal. The talks appear so serious that Bell and Rogers reportedly have Apple TV set prototypes in their respective development labs, according to The Globe and Mail, Canada's largest national newspaper.

News

iPad 3: Predictions and Challenges

iFixit's Kyle Wiens has a darn good track record when it comes to Apple predictions. Here, he opines about the next iPad, foresees broken iPads everywhere, and even hints where post-Steve Jobs innovation might be headed next.

News

Smartphone Shipments Outpaced PCs in 2011 for First Time

Smartphone shipments overtook personal computers -- including tablets, laptops, netbooks and desktops -- for the first time in 2011, according to new research from Canalys.

News

More Details Emerge on the Fully Open 'Spark' Tablet

Ever since the news broke last weekend that a fully open tablet is on the way, the excitement has been tangible in the Linux community.

News

Apple to Launch IPad 3 in March, Japanese Report Says

The iPad 3 rumor mill has heated up this week, fueled by a report from Japanese Apple blog Macotakara that the much anticipated tablet will come out in March.

News

Apple Surpasses LG As World's Third-Largest Phone Maker

Apple is now the world's third-largest phone maker by shipments and market share, according to a study from the International Data Corporation (IDC). Only behind Nokia and Samsung, Apple took the third spot globally from LG, up from the fifth spot last quarter.

News

Steve Jobs Imitation with Angel Wings Promotes a Tablet in Taiwanese Ad

A new television advertisement airing in Taiwan has an actor with angel wings and a halo doing a thinly-veiled imitation of Steve Jobs, to promote a tablet called the "Action Pad."

News

Apple Forcing IT Shops to "Adapt Or Die"

Many IT departments are struggling with Apple's "take it or leave it" attitude, based on discussions last week at MacIT, which is Macworld|iWorld's companion conference for IT professionals.

How To

LinkedIn Tip: How to Opt-Out of Social Advertising

LinkedIn's social ads, which automatically opt you in, may use your name and photo to promote brands that you follow. Here are step-by-step instructions for how you can opt-out.

 
As you know, everything is mobile, connected, interactive, and immediate. This is exactly why organizations need a highly agile IT infrastructure in order to keep pace with extreme fluctuations in business demand. This book will help you understand why infrastructure convergence has been widely accepted as the optimal approach for simplifying and accelerating your IT to deliver services at the speed of business while also shifting significantly more IT resources from operations to innovation.
For this white paper, IDC performed an in-depth analysis of the business value of VMware View, defined as the expected ROI associated with the use of the solution as a platform for the targeted deployment of a virtual desktop infrastructure.
This paper explains virtualization, its benefits for mid-sized business and how IBM's virtualization strategy can help these companies reduce costs, improve services and simplify management.
Forrester Research makes recommendations on best practices to optimize branch virtualization and consolidation initiatives. See how a "thin" branch architecture, with key servers, services and applications in the data center that relies on a high-performing WAN connection, can offer the greatest efficiencies.
When trying to achieve continuous compliance with internal policies and external regulations, organizations need to replace traditional processes with a new best practice approach and new innovative technology, such as that provided by IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager.
IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager helps organizations automatically manage patches for multiple operating systems and applications across hundreds of thousands of endpoints regardless of location, connection type or status.  
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as support considerations
Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business
Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.
VMware View™ 5 simplifies IT management while increasing end user freedom by delivering desktop services from your cloud. Building upon VMware's leadership in desktop virtualization, VMware View 5 delivers a high-performance user experience while giving IT greater policy control.

View this webcast and find out how VMware View 5 can help you:
- Deliver the highest fidelity experience of desktop services across any device and any network
- Simplify and automate IT management, security and control of desktop services
- Reduce the costs associated with your desktop environment
IT professionals are being asked to deliver faster "time-to-value" than ever before. An IDG Research survey found that CIOs are eager to invest in technologies that will enable them to get new applications and services up quickly, achieving faster time-to-value.
Learn how to reduce IT management overhead, ease revision control, guarantee data security, scale systems more quickly and reduce server and software costs.
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