General Gaming Article |
- Lenovo Wrestles PC Crown from HP; IDC Says Hold the Boat
- Daily Deals: 240GB Intel 520 SSD, Linksys Dual-Band Router, and More
- Logitech Unveils Trio of Touch-friendly Peripherals for Windows 8
- Future of Ultrabooks Still Very Much in Question
- Canonical Now Solicits Donations When Downloading Ubuntu, Says Don't Freak Out
| Lenovo Wrestles PC Crown from HP; IDC Says Hold the Boat Posted: 10 Oct 2012 05:04 PM PDT
According to Gartner's data, Lenovo took a slight lead over HP in Q3, shipping over 13.7 million PCs for a 15.7 share of the overall PC market. HP shipped more than 13.5 million PCs and dropped into second place with a 15.5 percent share. Dell (10.5 percent), Acer (9.9 percent), and Asus (7.3 percent) round out the top 5 spots.
Looking at the market as a whole, Gartner says PC sales are in a slump leading up to the release of Windows 8. "A continuing slowdown in consumer PC shipments played a big part in the overall PC market decline," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. "The third quarter was also a transitional quarter before Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system release, so shipments were less vigorous as vendors and their channel partners liquidated inventory. "Retailers were conservative in placing orders as they responded to weak back-to-school sales. By the end of September, retailers were focused on clearing out inventory in advance of the Windows 8 launch later this month," Kitagawa added. "On the professional side, there was minimum impact from Windows 8 in the quarter because the professional market will not adopt Windows 8 PCs immediately after the release." IHS iSuppli's outlook on the PC market was even more grim, saying that even the normally busy back-to-school shopping season was a bust. "There was great hope through the first half that 2012 would prove to be a rebound year for the PC market," said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for computer systems at IHS. "Now three quarters through the year, the usual boost from the back-to-school season appears to be a bust, and both AMD and Intel's third-quarter outlooks appear to be flat to down. Optimism has vanished and turned to doubt, and the industry is now training its sights on 2013 to deliver the hoped-for rebound. All this is setting the PC market up for its first annual decline since the dot-com bust year of 2001."
Yikes! As to the topic of Lenovo versus HP, IHS iSuppli didn't weigh in on the matter, but International Data Corporation (IDC) did. According to IDC's data, Lenovo does indeed own a 15.7 percent share of the market, just as Gartner reported, but said that still ranks No. 2 behind HP, which edged out its rival with a 15.9 percent share. HP may wish to cling to IDC's numbers so that it can still wave around its "We're No. 1!" flag, but for how long? In the third quarter of 2011, IDC had HP ahead of Lenovo by 4.3 percentage points (17.4 percent versus 13.1 percent), a lead that has now been reduced to two-tenths of a percent. It's splitting hairs to argue over a fraction of a percent, especially when sales are so bad all around, even for Apple, which has seen its shipments erode in recent months. "PCs are going through a severe slump," said Jay Chou, senior research analyst, Worldwide PC Tracker. "The industry had already weathered a rough second quarter, and now the third quarter was even worse. A weak global economy as well as questions about PC market saturation and delayed replacement cycles are certainly a factor, but the hard question of what is the 'it' product for PCs remain unanswered. While ultrabook prices have come down a little, there are still some significant challenges that will greet Windows 8 in the coming quarter." Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Daily Deals: 240GB Intel 520 SSD, Linksys Dual-Band Router, and More Posted: 10 Oct 2012 10:51 AM PDT
Top Deal: The deal to watch out for today is the impressive Intel 520 Series 240GB SSD for $170 with mail-in rebate (normally $200). The deal also comes with a five-year warranty. We gave the drive a 9 in our review earlier this year and praised its reliability and fast SF-2281 controller. The SSD has sequential read and write speeds of 550MB/s and 520MB/s, respectively. Laptops: Dell Inspiron 17R Special Edition 17.3" laptop with Core i7 2.3GHz, 2GB GeForce GT 650m video card, 1TB hard drive, 1920x1080 display, 8GB of DDR3 RAM for $950 with free shipping (normally $1,139). Hardware & Peripherals: Antec Nine Hundred Two V3 Black Steel computer case at Newegg for $90 after mail-in rebate (normally $120 - use coupon code: EMCYTZT2330). Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD for $65 with free shipping after $35 mail-in rebate at TigerDirect (normally $100). Linksys E2500 Simultaneous Dual-Band Wireless-N Router (refurbished) for $33 with free shipping at Cisco (normally $90 - use coupon code: HSDISH5). |
| Logitech Unveils Trio of Touch-friendly Peripherals for Windows 8 Posted: 10 Oct 2012 09:30 AM PDT
"This new family of products takes the traditional mouse functionality you're used to and optimizes it for the navigation experience offered by Windows 8," said Mike Culver, vice president of brand development for consumer computing platforms at Logitech. "Our new mice and touchpad replicate the touch-screen experience that you've grown accustomed to on smartphones and tablets. With Windows 8 now offering up a similar touch experience, our products give you quick, easy and dynamic access to the core elements of the new interface." All three products are designed to be an extension of Windows 8 on your physical desktop so that you can interact with the Windows 8 Style UI without groping your monitor. Perhaps the most intriguing is the Touchpad T650. It connects to your computer via USB or with a wireless dongle. It supports Windows 8 gestures, so even if your monitor doesn't support touch, you can still perform functions like pinch-to-zoom and three-finger swiping (to return to the Start screen). The Touchpad T650 will be available later this month for $80 MSRP. Logitech's Touch Mouse T620 sports a full touch-surface with support for fix touch gestures. It too communicates via 2.4GHz wireless. The MSRP is $70.
Finally, the Touch Mouse T400 is more in the style of a traditional mouse, but with a dedicated touch zone area with support for three touch actions. There's a rubber grip wrapping and a glass touch-surface. Like the other two devices, this one will launch this month, but with an MSRP of $50. |
| Future of Ultrabooks Still Very Much in Question Posted: 10 Oct 2012 09:02 AM PDT
Barely more than a week ago, IHS iSuppli came out and slashed its near-term sales forecasts for Ultrabooks by more than half from 22 million units to 10.3 million units. According to IHS iSuppli, Ultrabooks cost too much, a problem that's compounded by the fact that industry players have done a poor job marketing these devices. In order for Ultrabooks to make any kind of dent in the mainstream market, the research firm argued that pricing would have to be in the vicinity of $600 "With the economy languishing, Ultrabook sellers may have trouble finding buyers at the current pricing, especially with fierce competition from new mobile computing gadgets such as the iPhone 5, Kindle Fire HD and forthcoming Microsoft Surface," said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. A new report by GBI Research casts a more positive light on Ultrabooks. GBI Research says 1.3 million Ultrabooks were sold last year, but thanks to falling component prices, it expects that number to balloon to 148.7 million by 2016. By then, Ultrabooks will account for nearly half all notebook sales. "Although currently viewed as prohibitively expensive, Ultrabook sales will explode in the next five years, making up 47 percent of annual notebook sales by just 2016," GBI Research predicts. Pricing might not be the only thing holding Ultrabooks back. If there's a common complaint that we see time and again, it's that the display resolution on many Ultrabook models simply isn't high enough. Ultrabooks panels are typically smaller in size than traditional notebooks -- 11.6 inches and 13.3 inches versus 15.6 inches and 17 inches -- but even still, we often hear users lamenting the lack of higher resolutions. Look for that to change, too.
Acer recently announced its Aspire S7 Series, which will ship in the standard 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch sizes, but with Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) screen resolutions. In addition, we're starting to see some 15.6-inch Ultrabooks, such as HP's 6t-1000 and Vizio's CT15 line. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Canonical Now Solicits Donations When Downloading Ubuntu, Says Don't Freak Out Posted: 10 Oct 2012 08:30 AM PDT
There are eight categories to choose from, each with a slider to increase or decrease your overall donation. Some of the options include, "Make the desktop more amazing," "Performance optimization for games and apps," "Improve hardware support on more PCs," and "Better coordination with Debian and upstreams." In case your initial reaction is to freak out and assume the worst -- that Canonical is in dire straits and might start charging for Ubuntu -- the open source developer says to relax, Ubuntu is and always will be free, and this is simply about making it easier for supporters to fork over funds. "Today, we're making it easier for people to financially contribute to Ubuntu if they want to. By introducing a 'contribute' screen as part of the desktop download process, people can choose to financially support different aspects of Canonical's work: from gaming and apps, developing the desktop, phone and tablet, to co-ordination of upstreams or supporting Ubuntu flavors," Canonical explains. "It's important to note that Ubuntu remains absolutely free, financial contribution remains optional and it is not required in order to download the software."
A pictogram at the bottom of the contribution page puts your donation in perspective by comparing the dollar amount to some other equivalent. Donate $15, for example, and Canonical will tell you that's the equivalent to the price of King Kong versus Godzilla on DVD. SPOILER ALERT: King Kong wins. For those of you who were previously on the fence over whether to donate or buy the DVD, we hope that makes your decision easier. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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If you've been paying attention to the PC wars, you've known for awhile it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that 
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