Interesting Information

Not everyone wants an iPad. In fact, many Apple haters would argue no one needs an iDevice, when there are so many other great options. Happily, if you’re looking for an alternative there truly are plenty of compelling options - many that cost less than Apple’s slates. Google and Amazon offer full-featured slates for US$199. Newcomer Hisense even comes in at a very compelling US$149. Those willing to spend more will find a host of versatile tablets, from models with detachable keyboards to those that offer pen input. There are even kid-friendly specific options for parents who want to raise a tech-savvy child. And while all of those options are Android options, there are Windows 8 tablets hitting the shelves that might worth a second look. Here are our top 10 iPad alternatives. Hisense Sero 7 Pro Hisense Sero 7 Pro features a rear-facing 5-MP camera with a flash and a front-facing 2-MP camera, plus it comes with a microSD card slot for expandable storage up to 32GB. I...

In today's computer processors, much of the power put into running the processor is being wasted. A research team at Case Western Reserve University came up with a novel idea called fine-grained power gating, which saves power and money in a couple of ways: less energy would be used, and less heat produced. "Using less power produces less heat. Less heat means less cooling is needed," said Swarup Bhunia, professor of electrical engineering and computer science and an author of the research. "That can avoid the need for a big fan to cool off the processor, which saves a lot of money." Processors are used in a variety of products, from computers to cell phones. Operational costs could be cut by more than one-third, the researchers say. Bhunia, PhD student Lei Wang and PhD alumni Somnath Paul, whose work was funded by the Intel Corporation; presented their idea at the 25th International Conference on VLSI (Very-Large-Scale Integration) D...

Carpe diem! Microsoft has seized the opportunity presented by Google's privacy policy changes to tout its online services as alternatives. Ads this week hit the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and USA Today suggesting that people concerned with Google's policies try Microsoft's Bing search engine, Internet Explorer browser, Hotmail email and Office 365 for business documents. "Google is in the process of making some unpopular changes to some of their most popular products," the ads read. "Those changes, cloaked in language like 'transparency,' 'simplicity' and 'consistency,' are really about one thing: making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search, send, say or stream while using one of their services."

PC sales fell 4.3 per cent in the fourth quarter despite the release of Windows 8, the latest independent figures have shown. In further bad news for the industry, which is struggling against growing smartphone and tablet sales, Gartner said worldwide PC shipments declined to 90.3 million units in the last three months of 2012, indicating that the sector was suffering from a shift in consumer habits as much as a weak global economy. The figures roughly agree with those released by rival analyst house IDC at on Friday. If said fourth quarter sales were down 6.4 per cent on 2011, the first slip for five years. "Tablets have dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs, not so much by 'cannibalizing' PC sales, but by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets rather than replacing older PCs," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.

A new Microsoft Office app will allow users to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on iOS. Microsoft's app is available free for subscribers to Office 365, a web-based platform that allows users to access Office via the cloud. The company released the app in the US today and will continue to launch Office Mobile across 136 markets in 29 languages over the coming days. Apple will take a percentage of subscriptions purchased from the iPhone, though neither company has said how much. The announcement, which follows news from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference that the default search engine for Siri will be Bing instead of Google, suggests the two companies are working closer together.