By Scott Moritz April 29, 2008
AT&T is planning to put some extra shine on the even sleeker new Apple iPhone. When the 3G iPhone is introduced this summer, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. iPhone sales partner with Apple, will cut the price by as much as $200, according to a person familiar with the strategy. AT&T is preparing to subsidize $200 of the cost of a new iPhone, bringing the price down to $199 for customers who sign two-year contracts, the source says. Apple is expected to have two versions of the new iPhone, an 8-gigabyte-memory and a 16-gigabyte-memory model with price tags widely expected to be $399 and $499. AT&T and Apple declined to comment. At $200, the iPhone would be within reach of a much wider consumer market and give AT&T a strong magnet to pull lucrative customers away from rivals like Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile. The $200 rebate or subsidy would be limited to AT&T customers and not available through Apple’s stores. The new iPhone sold by AT&T will likely be locked or programmed so buyers can’t take the cheaper iPhone to another phone service.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Log Into Your Toshiba Laptop -- With Your Face
by Mark Hachman 04.29.08
Toshiba said Tuesday that the company has added an application to several notebook PCs that will "recognize" users via the installed Webcam. The Toshiba Face Recognition software will allow users to log on to four newly designed notebooks, the Satellite U400, M300, A300 and Satellite P300. Alternative forms of authentication have become increasingly common, as manufacturers and industry organizations attempt to go beyond just the common username/password combination. In the corporate and financial space, tools like fingerprint readers and security tokens add an additional layer of security, although early versions of fingerprint readers could be easily fooled. More complicated forms of biometrics, such as iris and retinal scanners, are more commonly used by government agencies and security systems at airports. Toshiba describes the new face-recognition software as a "fun and convenient" way to log in to the PC, however, and a company spokesman said the new software is more of a gimmick than a security precaution.
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Toshiba said Tuesday that the company has added an application to several notebook PCs that will "recognize" users via the installed Webcam. The Toshiba Face Recognition software will allow users to log on to four newly designed notebooks, the Satellite U400, M300, A300 and Satellite P300. Alternative forms of authentication have become increasingly common, as manufacturers and industry organizations attempt to go beyond just the common username/password combination. In the corporate and financial space, tools like fingerprint readers and security tokens add an additional layer of security, although early versions of fingerprint readers could be easily fooled. More complicated forms of biometrics, such as iris and retinal scanners, are more commonly used by government agencies and security systems at airports. Toshiba describes the new face-recognition software as a "fun and convenient" way to log in to the PC, however, and a company spokesman said the new software is more of a gimmick than a security precaution.
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Hey! Ho! Time for Ballmer to Go?
By Betsy Schiffman April 29, 2008
The investment community likes Steve Ballmer. He's competent, aggressive and occasionally crazy. He's been at Microsoft's helm for eight years, during which time the technology landscape has drastically changed several times over. And although Microsoft hasn't always kept up, it has remained ridiculously profitable. But Wall Street loves a winner, and what happens when one of the most feared companies in the world becomes a limp, lame underdog? Nothing good. And it usually starts with the CEO's ouster. "This is a company that screwed up a real important product transition, and you've got to lay the majority of the blame at the foot of the CEO," says Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and blogger. To be fair, there is nothing in Microsoft's financial results that suggests turmoil -- third-quarter earnings topped Wall Street estimates, and the outlook was decent -- but we'd still venture to guess that Steve Ballmer's days as CEO are numbered, thanks to a potentially botched Yahoo takeover, the abysmal Windows Vista release and a floundering web strategy.
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The investment community likes Steve Ballmer. He's competent, aggressive and occasionally crazy. He's been at Microsoft's helm for eight years, during which time the technology landscape has drastically changed several times over. And although Microsoft hasn't always kept up, it has remained ridiculously profitable. But Wall Street loves a winner, and what happens when one of the most feared companies in the world becomes a limp, lame underdog? Nothing good. And it usually starts with the CEO's ouster. "This is a company that screwed up a real important product transition, and you've got to lay the majority of the blame at the foot of the CEO," says Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and blogger. To be fair, there is nothing in Microsoft's financial results that suggests turmoil -- third-quarter earnings topped Wall Street estimates, and the outlook was decent -- but we'd still venture to guess that Steve Ballmer's days as CEO are numbered, thanks to a potentially botched Yahoo takeover, the abysmal Windows Vista release and a floundering web strategy.
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AMD: Next CPU architecture will be completely different
New architecture promises to be completely different from Phenom, and capable of brand new features
by Ben Hardwidge 29th April 2008
AMD has squeezed an awful lot out of its AMD64 architecture since it first materialised in 2003, and even the latest K10 core used in the Phenom chips uses basically the same architecture with a different cache system. However, the company says that it’s now looking at a whole new architecture for the next generation of CPUs. AMD’s technical director of sales and marketing for EMEA, Giuseppe Amato, told Custom PC that ‘if I look at the next generation architecture of our CPU, then it will definitely not be, how can I say, comparable with the Phenom. It will look completely different.’ Amato was unable to give us any specific details of the new architecture, but did add that it would ‘solve problems that today we think can never be addressed by hardware.’
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by Ben Hardwidge 29th April 2008
AMD has squeezed an awful lot out of its AMD64 architecture since it first materialised in 2003, and even the latest K10 core used in the Phenom chips uses basically the same architecture with a different cache system. However, the company says that it’s now looking at a whole new architecture for the next generation of CPUs. AMD’s technical director of sales and marketing for EMEA, Giuseppe Amato, told Custom PC that ‘if I look at the next generation architecture of our CPU, then it will definitely not be, how can I say, comparable with the Phenom. It will look completely different.’ Amato was unable to give us any specific details of the new architecture, but did add that it would ‘solve problems that today we think can never be addressed by hardware.’
Read more here -->Link
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