Computers

Dell released three new additions to its XPS range at this year's IFA in Berlin: the XPS One 27 all-in-one and the XPS 10 and XPS Duo 12 laptop/tablet hybrids. Dell's Sam Burd; VP, Global Product Operations at Dell demo'd the One 27's 'Quad HD' touchscreen, saying that Dell disagrees with the idea that you "don't touch a screen this good." The swiveling mechanism of the XPS Duo 12 was the real talking point, however.  Read More

With Windows 8 due to be officially launched in October, Samsung has pulled back the curtain on their ATIV suite of devices based on Microsoft's OS, including two hybrid tablets, at the IFA trade show in Berlin. The Smart PC and Smart PC Pro hybrid tablet/laptops, the Tab tablet, and the S smartphone were all shown off, with the fifth, a Windows 8-flavored refresh of the Notebook Series 9, also getting some air time.  Read More

If the Samsung Notebook page on Facebook is anything to go by, we should soon be seeing a new Windows 8 hybrid tablet from the company. It will apparently be making its debut in just a few days, at the IFA 2012 electronics trade show.  Read More

Most people don't think about it, but in a typical office the filthiest object in the room is the computer keyboard. Go ahead, pry off the keys behind any keyboard you've had for a few months and you're likely to find a mess of dust, food crumbs, sticky coffee stains, and other debris. Cleaning this grimy mess is a tedious task at best, unless of course you're packing the likes of Logitech's new K310 - a washable keyboard designed to be submerged in water so that cleaning it is as easy as doing the dishes.  Read More

Having a baby is perhaps the most life-changing event one can experience, so it’s only natural for proud parents to share the news on their social network of choice. However, in the quest to spread infant-related joy to the world, some parents over-share. Chome-only browser extension Unbaby.me provides a solution to this distinctly modern problem by removing baby photos from your Facebook News Feed and replacing them with pictures of cats, dogs, bacon, or whatever else you'd prefer to see.  Read More

From HAL 9000 in Arthur C Clarke's Space Odyssey science fiction saga to Eddie and Deep Thought from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, or even Dr. Theopolis from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, voice interaction with computers was very much the stuff of science fiction when I was growing up. These days, of course, I can use my voice to tell an iPod touch to change music or get convincingly beaten in a TV game show by IBM's Watson but when shopping for a new computer, available options still depend on physical touch for input and visuals for output. The folks behind the ubiquitous computer (or Ubi for short) are hoping to change that by launching an affordable, unobtrusive and useful little box that's always ready and waiting to tell you what you need to know.  Read More

BERG's Little Printer, a box-sized device announced last November, is ready to ship. The pint-sized printer, which connects wirelessly to the Internet, takes inspiration from traditional halftone lithography as well as pixel art. It gathers its user-defined content via a cloud-based system to deliver a personalized mini newspaper with puzzles, friend’s birthday reminders, weather info and messages from friends appearing alongside the daily news.  Read More

Game developer and distributor Valve has announced that come September 5, its online distribution platform Steam is to begin selling non-game software.  Read More

We have seen wooden-framed computers before, although those have generally been off-the-shelf machines that have simply received a steampunk makeover. A team of engineers from Ireland’s MicroPro Computers and Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration have gone considerably farther, however. Their wood-bodied iameco (“I am eco”) v3 touchscreen computer reportedly has 70 percent less carbon footprint than a regular desktop PC with a monitor.  Read More