IBM Remains US Patent Leader

by Taylor Flatt on January 14th, 2009 at 8:32 pm EDT - 521 views

IBM, for 16 straight years, has dominated in most patents per year. This year, they have topped off at over 4,000. IBM managed to beat out their challenger Samsung by 671 patents. IBM said this in their official release, “IBM’s 2008 patent issuances are nearly triple Hewlett-Packard’s and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google – combined.” However, HP fired back saying they are seeking quality of the patents, not quantity.

While IBM grabbed 11.5 technical patents per day last year, they are looking to increase their technical production by upwards of 50%. This seems pretty odd to me that IBM is the leader in patents. I would think that companies like Microsoft or even Sony would be towards the top of this list. It just seems that many people have forgotten about the hero of old that rivaled Microsoft in the beginning.

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New Mac Ready HP Home MediaServer

by Nathaniel Ed on December 29th, 2008 at 11:18 pm EDT - 220 views

Today HP released their lastest product, called the HP MediaSmart Server, which is the company’s home media server, and is compatible with both PCs and Macs. This new product will allow users to access various files from any computer in the user’s network. It also makes this info available on the internet as well.

What’s New?
Based on that of the Windows Home Server by Microsoft you are also able to do much more with it. This includes things such as hosting an iTunes library, making it available to any computers hooked into the network. You can also schedule backups of digitized files from computers on the network.

The package also includes HP Photo Publisher, which allows the user to upload photos onto the web, on websites such as Snapfish, Picasa, and Facebook. It is also compatible with Time Machine, which allows Mac users to use the product as a backup drive.

Pricing
HP MediaSmart Server ex485 with a 750 gigabyte hard drive – $599
HP MediaSmart Server ex487 with a 1.5 Terabyte hard drive – $749.

It will be available for preorder January 5th, 2009. Picture above courtesy of MacWorld.

Source: MacWorld

Notebooks Outsell PC For First Time in History

by Taylor Flatt on December 23rd, 2008 at 7:57 pm EDT - 220 views

For the first time in history, Notebooks have outshipped the PC in the third quarter.  By nearly 100,000 shipments, Laptops have shipped 38.6 million units (rose 40% since second quarter) whereas the PC shipped 38.5 million units (dropping 1.3% since second quarter).  This is truly a historic day for the laptop industry especially for Acer, whos share in the market has driven them less than 2% behind Dell (#2).  Although HP still holds the reigns, in the next year we could see a shift from Dell, the once industrious and userfriendly company, to Acer the up and coming power in the Laptop industry.

I personally don’t find this surprising.  Not only do people require laptops more and more but schools are beginning to make the switch from hundreds of PCs, to providing individual laptops to their students.  I believe this trend will continue for years to come and with the tight race now commincing, this will only lead to better and more efficient products.

Come the beginning of the year, it will be interesting to see if any companies make any big moves to try to get on top early.  Any ideas?

Source: Reuters

HP DV7T Customizable Notebook

by Taylor Flatt on December 23rd, 2008 at 12:29 am EDT - 390 views

Recently, I was graced with a HP DV7T laptop.  To start off, here are the specs,

• Net Price: $887.18
• 17.0″ diagonal WXGA+ High Def BrightView Widescreen Display
• 4GB DDR2 RAM
• Intel Graphics media Accelerator 4500MD
• 250GB Sata HDD
• Webcam
• Fingerprint Reader
• Integrated 56k Modem
• Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card
• 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
• SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• Vista Home 64bit

With that covered, I’d like to say that I was quite pleased when I received the laptop.  Not only was the computer slick with the black glassy exterior but it had a catchy interior with a light up display that allowed me to control my media center by touch.  It also had a neat light up display on the back (Letters HP light up).

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