desktops

With all his computer experience, Power Downloader gets a lot of calls and e-mails from friends and family who want advice with computer issues. Always happy to oblige, Power tries to find the easiest way to explain how to use various types of software and computer functions, but sometimes words alone are inadequate for complex computer tasks.

To make his explanations a little easier, Power Downloader found a program to make simple screencasts. Screen2Exe lets Power make little demo movies so his friends can see exactly what he's talking about. Screen2Exe leads him through a step-by-step process to record … Read more

We've just taken a cheeky advance look at Asus' new Nova P20. It's the latest in a line of alternatives to the Mac Mini and at first glance it ticks all the right boxes for a small form-factor PC: It's tiny, it's very, very quiet, and it's not beige.

You can position it in vertical or horizontal orientations and it has touch-sensitive power and optical drive eject buttons, which help to keep the front looking uncluttered. 'Round the back there are four USB ports and three audio jacks that support surround sound. It also has … Read more

If consumers and businesses are going to be convinced to switch to solid-state drives over hard disks, it's going to take something more compelling than 16GB.

On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard will introduce a new version of its Compaq DC7800 series desktop PC. The product line was initially introduced last September, but now has an option of adding a 16GB solid-state drive (SSD) from SanDisk.

Sure, fewer moving parts when storing data is more reliable and saves power, but when an audience is conditioned to expect 80GB minimum in a desktop, 16GB appears a bit puny. (That's like running your … Read more

The switch from IDE standard to SATA standard in hard drives has been going on for years, and at this point you'd have a hard time buying a new PC (Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or any other brand) that supports IDE. The fact that there are millions of computers that came with IDE hard drives, means that you cannot close the door on it just yet. Once in a while, you need to copy data from an old hard drive to a new one, and many times that older hard drive happens to be of the IDE variety. It can sometimes … Read more

One of the companies showing off their wares at today's Macworld Expo was Glance, a service that's been around since 2002 but only recently started edging into the Mac scene starting at last year's Expo. Glance serves up screen-sharing tools for consumers and private companies. Its claim to fame is its 100-at-a-time screen sharing service, which can be used for large conference sessions or digital seminars.

Today the company is launching its remote-control feature for Macs, which, like some other screen-sharing services including Yugma and WebEx, allows a participant to get control of another user's mouse … Read more

CES 2008 may not have been a show for big wows, but there was plenty to talk about, at least on the computers and hardware front. For starters, Lenovo introduced three IdeaPads, the company's first consumer-oriented laptops for the U.S. market. (Lenovo also announced a corresponding line of desktops, predictably named IdeaCentre, for release in Europe, though we expect the line to reach our shores soon.)

HP caught our attention with the sub-$1,000, HD-equipped SlimLine desktop. Dell gave us a peek into the future with its 16-inch laptop prototype and the XPS 630 gaming desktop. Gateway … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Acer and Gateway don't have a whole lot of news here at CES--aside from a few new gaming desktops and a laptop--but it is new that they are here as one. Their combined logos were everywhere in their displays.

The transition since Acer's purchase of Gateway late last year for $710 million is nearly complete, the company says. The same person--Rudi Schmidleithner--now runs both Gateway and Acer's American business unit.

While Acer declined to give many details about the coming year, it did hint that it's going to be a busy one. While … Read more

It's always shocking when you realize the full breadth of HP's desktop product launches. Out of HP's four new desktop series, we count 10 new desktops set to hit stores in February. And that doesn't count the customizable counterparts at HP's Web site. All of these systems use chassis and hardware we've seen before, but what's most exciting is what you get for your money. We'll go over the highlights briefly:

HP Pavilion SlimLine s3300 Series (includes the s3300f, the s3320f, the s3330f):

HP's small form factor PC will range from $… Read more

Is the desktop metaphor dead, replaced by Web services like Google and Facebook? Or is Vista so bad that it's not worth buying?

New data points to the latter suggestion, leaving Microsoft with two options. It can either view its sagging Vista sales as a testament to the incredible work of art that is Windows XP (gag). Or it can concede that Vista is a pile of potty.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, this isn't a Windows thing at all but simply a recognition that we may have tapped out the "must-have" innovations on the fat-client desktop leading people to wait out upgrades until a hardware refresh makes the choice a no-brainer.

Regardless of how Microsoft chooses to view its Vista numbers, it clearly has a problem. Though it's only one dataset, PCWorld's users aren't jumping up and down for Vista. PCWorld measured Web traffic on its site, and found that adoption of Vista is tepid (14 percent), and is crawling compared with how fast XP came out of the gate:

How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first 11 months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002.… Read more