General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Gartner: PC Shipments Down in Western Europe, Especially Desktops

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 12:55 PM PDT

PC doomsayers received a little more ammunition from Gartner today, which announced that PC shipments in Western Europe totaled just 13.6 million units in the second quarter of 2012. That's a 2.4 percent decline to compared to the same period last year, and it's mostly due to slagging desktop PC sales, which dropped 12.8 percent year-over-year in Q2. Meanwhile, mobile PC shipments are picking up steam.

While the desktop struggled, mobile PC shipments grew 4 percent, Gartner said. Still, it wasn't enough to offset "weak overall PC shipments" across all of Western Europe, the market research firm noted.

Gartner didn't speculate why PC shipments dipped in Q2, though we suspect it has to do with the impending release of Windows 8. Businesses and users in need of an upgrade may find themselves in a holding pattern to see what kind of systems emerge under Microsoft's new touch-friendly OS, or look to score a deal on a Windows 7 system later this year.

Hewlett-Packard remains the top dog in PC shipments, and in Western Europe, the OEM commands a 20.2 percent share of the market despite a 13 percent decline in shipments. Acer is in second place at 17.3 percent after shipping 15.3 percent more PCs, and Asus, which increased shipments by 42.8 percent, is in third with a 10.7 percent share of the Western European market.

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FTC Fines Google $22.5 Million for Feeding Tracking Cookies to Safari Users

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 12:11 PM PDT

Google has agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging the sultan of search placed tracking cookies on computers running Apple's Safari browser that effectively bypassed the browser's built-in privacy measures. It's the largest fine ever handed out by the FTC, and one the government organization hopes will serve as a deterrent to other companies who might look to profit at the expense of privacy.

"The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order," said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. "No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place."

Google rakes in billions of dollars in revenue each year from serving up targeted ads to Web users by using cookies. According to the FTC, Google told Apple Safari users they would be automatically opted out of tracking activities, but then proceeded to use cookies that sidestepped the browser's default privacy settings and displayed ads from its DoubleClick advertising network.

"Google exploited an exception to the browser's default setting to place a temporary cookie from the DoubleClick domain. Because of the particular operation of the Safari browser, that initial temporary cookie opened the door to all cookies from the DoubleClick domain, including the Google advertising tracking cookie that Google had represented would be blocked from Safari browsers," the FTC said in a statement.

The FTC's ruling is a definite win for privacy advocates and Safari users in particular, though the fine hardly amounts to a slap on the wrist. Google last year recorded $37.9 billion in revenue, and almost all of that was generated from advertising.

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Lenovo to Launch ThinkPad T430u Ultrabook This Month Starting at $779

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 08:55 AM PDT

Lenovo's been enjoying a fair amount of time sitting the limelight as it celebrates the ThinkPad brand's 20th anniversary. Most of the attention has been split between the OEM's ThinkPad Tablet 2 with Windows 8 and ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook, but nearly slipping under the radar is the company's ThinkPad T430u "ultraportable," which is by all means an Ultrabook aimed at the business crowd.

The ThinkPad T430u was first introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year and slated to launch in the third quarter. Making good on that promise, Lenovo will begin selling the business-centric Ultrabook later this month starting at $779 rather than $849 as previously planned, The Verge reports.

As a refresher, specs include a 13-inch display with a 1366x768 resolution, Intel Core ULV processor with Intel HD graphics (discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 620M GPU will be available), 1TB hard drive or 128GB solid state drive, up to 8GB of RAM, and a spattering of ports including USB 3.0.

In terms of size, the T430u has a 0.83-inch waistline and weighs 4.08 pounds. That's a little heavier compared to other 13-inch Ultrabooks, though it also carries a lighter price tag than most.

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Android Leads iOS in "Two-Horse Race" for Smartphone Dominance, IDC Says

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 07:35 AM PDT

With all due respect to Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and any other mobile platform not named Android or iOS, you're all just a bunch of also-rans in what's becoming "unquestionably a two-horse race," according to data and analysis by International Data Corporation (IDC). Android and iOS set a new combined smartphone OS record in the second quarter of 2012, with the two platforms feasting on an 85 percent share of the market, leaving just 15 percent in scraps for all others to fight over.

Even though it's a two-horse race, it's not really a close one. According to IDC, Android ended Q2 with a 68.1 percent share of the smartphone OS market, while iOS trailed a distant second at 16.9 percent. After that it's BlackBerry with a 4.8 percent share, followed by Symbian with 4.4 percent, Windows Phone/Mobile with 3.5 percent, Linux (mostly Samsung's Bada platform) with 2.3 percent, and all others combining for a measly 0.1 percent.

"Android continues to fire on all cylinders," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Phone Technology and Trends program. "The market was entreated to several flagship models from Android's handset partners, prices were well within reach to meet multiple budgetary needs, and the user experience from both Google and its handset partners boosted Android smartphones' utility far beyond simple telephony."

IDC also gave a large amount of credit to Samsung for Android's success. According to IDC, Samsung accounted for 44 percent of all Android smartphones shipped in Q2, which totaled more than the next seven Android vendors combined.

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Samsung Investigating Child Labor Claims at Supplier's Factory in China

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 07:13 AM PDT

Samsung wasted no time in sending a team of executives to one of its suppliers' factories in China to investigate claims that it may be using child labor. The in-house investigation is in rapid response to a China Labor Watch (CLW) report alleging to have found issues of underage workers and student labor exploitation at HEG, which builds mobile phones, DVDs, stereo equipment, and MP3 players for Samsung.

"During the first investigation, seven children—all of them are under the age of 16—were found working in the same department as our investigators," CLW said in a statement. "This suggests that child labor is a common practice in the factory. The number of underage workers throughout the factory is unknown because our investigators had limited contact with workers in other departments. But the company has clearly violated Chinese labor laws."

According to the report, children "working under [the] same harsh conditions as adult workers" at HEG are being paying a 30 percent reduction in wages. Furthermore, CLW alleges a number of other Chinese labor law violations, including excessively long work weeks, discrimination in the hiring process, shortened breaks for night shift workers, and more.

In a statement to The Verge, Samsung said it conducted two separate on-site inspections at HEG already this year, but found no violations. Samsung also said it's going back for a third time.

"A team of inspectors consisting of Samsung personnel from Korea headquarters will be dispatched to Huizhou, China on August 9, and it will immediately launch an investigation and take appropriate measures to correct any problems that may surface," Samsung told The Verge. "Samsung Electronics is a company held to the highest standards of working conditions and we try to maintain that at our facilities and the facilities of partner companies around the world."

This isn't the first time a high-profile electronics company has been linked to poor working conditions at one its Chinese suppliers. Foxconn, which builds iPhone and iPad devices for Apple, along with all sorts of gadgets for various OEMs, went through a rash of worker suicides before vowing to improve wages and working conditions in general.

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Lenovo's ThinkPad Tablet 2 with Windows 8 Pro Surfaces, Launches in October

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 06:50 AM PDT

If you're wondering how OEMs are going to compete with Microsoft's own Surface tablet, here you go. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the ThinkPad line, Lenovo, which bought the brand from IBM in 1995, unveiled its first Windows 8 tablet, the ThinkPad Tablet 2. It's a full-size 10.1-inch tablet with "differentiators that matter," like an optional digitizer pen, 3G wireless with pay-as-you-go plans, and 4G models.

Like Surface, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 boasts Intel inside, only Lenovo opted to go with the Santa Clara chip maker's upcoming Atom refresh. That means it's going to be less powerful than Microsoft's Ivy Bridge-infused Surface, and undoubtedly less expensive, though Lenovo apparently isn't ready to reveal any pricing details just yet.

According to Lenovo, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 measures 9.8mm thick and weighs less than 1.3 pounds. An optional keyboard and dock can be paired with the device, which would add an array of ports including a full-size USB port. The keyboard is in the traditional ThinkPad styling with indented and curved keycaps, along with a center nub to control the on-screen pointer.

Look for Lenovo's ThinkPad Tablet 2 to launch on or around the same day as Windows 8.

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Google Strengthens Chrome's Flash Sandbox on Windows

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 06:22 AM PDT

It's just not all of us who have become blasé about browser updates, but even browser developers themselves seem to be having a hard time keeping up with all the frequent updates. The Google Chrome team must have been very jaded when they released the latest stable version of their browser late last month, as they totally forgot to mention one of the most important changes inside—one that took over two years for them to put together.

"A little more than two years ago, engineers on the Chrome team began a very ambitious project. In coordination with Adobe, we started porting Flash from the aging NPAPI architecture to our sandboxed PPAPI platform," Justin Schuh, a Google software engineer, wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "With last week's Chrome Stable release, we were finally able to ship PPAPI Flash to all Windows Chrome users, so they can now experience dramatically improved security and stability as well as improved performance down the line."

According to Google, this move from NPAPI to PPAPI essentially means that Flash on Windows is now in a sandbox that is on par with Chrome's native sandbox in terms of strength. Another advantage of Flash being ported over to PPAPI is that the complexity and legacy code that accompanied the former can no longer hamper the plugin's performance, leading to a number of improvements, including a 20% reduction in crashes, faster rendering and smoother scrolling. Further, Google says that PAPI is the only way to fully enjoy Flash in Windows 8 Metro mode, as it "doesn't let the OS bleed through"

"Moving forward, we're finishing off the PPAPI Flash port for Mac OS X and hope to ship it soon. And Linux users have already been benefiting from PPAPI Flash since Chrome 20, along with Chrome OS users who have been running it for almost a year. Soon all Chrome users will have access to the improved security, stability, and performance of PPAPI Flash."

RIM Slips Out of $142.7 Million Patent Fine in Appeals Court

Posted: 09 Aug 2012 06:02 AM PDT

Research In Motion (RIM) managed to escape from having to pay a hefty patent infringement fine when the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California overturned an earlier verdict that would have had the company pay $147.2 million in damages to Mformation, a software company that deals with mobile device management. According to the presiding judge, there wasn't enough evidence to support the jury's findings of patent infringement.

"We appreciate the Judge's careful consideration of this case. RIM did not infringe on Mformation's patent and we are pleased with this victory," said Steve Zipperstein, RIM's Chief Legal Officer. "The purpose of the patent system is to encourage innovation, but the system is still too often exploited in pursuit of other goals. Many policy makers have already recognized the need to address this problem and we call on others to join them as this case clearly highlights the significant need for continuing policy reform to help reduce the amount of resources wasted on unwarranted patent litigation."

Mformation has the right to appeal the case, and if it does, there will be a brand new trial. At issue are two patents Mformation holds and in which it believes RIM infringes on with its BlackBerry Enterprise Server software, which enables companies to manage employee devices remotely.

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