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2005 will see the next big battle for the home. The concept of the digital hub is slowly becoming reality, and both TiVo and Microsoft are making a run for the gold. ReplayTV is all but gone. Apple seems to have taken a pass on the entire concept. Sony is a player but has never been able to gain t...
Nearly four years ago I predicted that IBM would leave the PC business, and it took IBM two years to convince me that I was wrong. Imagine how surprised I was this week when IBM actually sold its PC business. Lenovo, formerly Legend, is a Chinese company partially owned by the Chinese government. ...
Once again we are on countdown for Christmas, and many of you will take the easy way out and give cash, checks or one of those pre-paid cards that allow recipients to buy what they want at an after-Christmas sale. But for me there is something of a letdown in getting cash for Christmas, and I tend...
The proliferation of video servers was amazing at the EHX show, as was the cost of some of these devices. The norm seemed to be about what PCs sold for in the early 1980s -- $2,000 and up -- and you certainly could see strong margins even if you couldn't see strong volumes at these prices. I rea...
As a guest of AMD, I went to Indianapolis to watch the top Ferrari team once again whomp the other nine teams in what remains one of the most expensive sports in the world. This racing team has been winning for so long and is so dominant in this sport that I often wonder why anyone watches these rac...
I'm a home automation nut. When I moved into my home a friend and I spent a week and $2,000 replacing all of the wall switches and many of the plugs with remote switches. I can now turn on and off my lights and sprinklers from my bed. (The latter is a handy anti-barking tool: Wet dogs bark less.) I...
The two major initiatives in the consumer market this year have to do with digital media, and they are from Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft's is the broad Media Center Edition that encompasses the home and provides your music on a variety of products, while Apple's is more targeted at just PCs (both...
Last week I wrote about three companies that had either followed an Apple-like strategy (Gateway), utilized ex-Apple employees (OQO), or executed on a founding Apple principle (AMD/Microsoft). This week we'll examine three more companies that owe a lot of what they are to Apple, as part of my not-so...
There are many "what if" stories surrounding Apple, and one of them is this: What if, when Microsoft asked Apple to license its OS, Apple had done so, becoming the core technology in Windows instead of a closed platform. If that had happened, it is widely believed, Apple would be larger than Dell no...
When I first started college I bought a calculator. It was from Radio Shack, and it was hand-held, did basic math functions, had an LED display and cost, if you adjust for inflation, about what a laptop computer costs today. There are pre-kindergarten children today using technology that is vastly ...
The personal computer market got a much needed shot in the arm last week when Microsoft launched the latest version of its media center offering, Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. We are rolling into the 4th quarter, which is critical to the PC industry, and the market is in the doldrums. But ...
The Fall Processor Forum was held last week in the Silicon Valley. This show has become the counter to Intel's Developer Forum, and it probably should now be called "The Everything but Intel Microprocessor Forum." It kind of feels like the rebuttal in a presidential debate. Intel, as the incumbent...
We are now moving into the countdown for Christmas, and it is time to start looking at some of the more interesting products you probably won't see at your local Best Buy. For an awfully long time, the affordable notebook products have been, well, butt ugly. You might have bought one anyway, but it ...
A little over a decade ago the market for aftermarket radios and gear for cars was relatively robust. At that time most car companies used standard-sized radios, and if you wanted to upgrade it was a relatively simple task. That isn't the case anymore. Radios are increasingly designed-in to cars and...
The Institute of Internal Auditors Research Foundation has issued a report providing strong guidance on how to assess exposure for personal technology, with a heavy focus on personal computers. The report is titled "PC Management Best Practices: A Study of the Total Cost of Ownership, Risk, Security...
We just had a back-to-school flop. There was no apparent marketing of technology products, particularly PCs. And, surprise, we now have inventory problems and companies are warning that Christmas might not materialize as a major buying event either. Given how fragile the technology recovery is -- or...
The consumer electronics industry has been in the doldrums for some time and it wasn't until personal computer-based technology started to creep in that we began to see, quite literally, what we had been missing. This isn't to say that the PC industry had it right, either. Both industries have a ver...
I had a chance to chat with the recently promoted director of IT from Cummins awhile back on a large deployment of Windows XP machines. She saved her company around US$10 million, which resulted in promotions for her and her team. I thought it would be interesting to explore this because it represen...
I come from a time when getting ready for school meant buying a couple of binders, some pencils and some new clothes you wouldn't be caught dead in. Transportation was a one-speed bicycle (no I didn't walk 10 miles in the snow, that was my grandfather), and high tech was a circular slide rule. My fi...
One of the biggest questions a person will deal with in his or her life, regardless of the career path, is ethics. We make trade-offs when we "borrow" a stapler from work, take a sick day to go fishing or play golf, and take credit for something that was done by someone else. In the wake of the Enro...
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