Personal Computing

The world has changed greatly for Apple in the past few years. As of their earnings statement released Tuesday, three quarters of all income comes from the iPhone and iPad and the number of users of iOS is already at least four times that of Mac users. After the under-the-hood tweaks and rationalizations of previous operating system update Snow Leopard, the mission for Mac OS X Lion was clear - make the Mac OS comfortable and familiar to the new Apple mobile user audience without putting off established Mac veterans. Can they pull it off? Read More

Just in case the release of OSX Lion and the unveiling of the updated MacBook Air isn't enough to satisfy your Apple cravings today, the company has also taken the wraps off its first Thunderbolt equipped display and revealed a beefed up Mac Mini line-up. Read More

An update to the MacBook Air line-up is among a raft of new releases announced by Apple today. The new 11-inch and 13-inch models get Mac OS X Lion (which has also just landed), the latest Intel Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors, Thunderbolt ports and a backlit keyboard. Read More

Most of the custom-built DIY PCs featuring unusual case mods are made just for fun or fashion. The LEGO-bodied PC by Mike Schropp is quite different, however, despite the fact it looks really impressive. It's a 12-core PC setup consisting of three systems in a single box made of LEGO, with its computing power being donated to medical research and humanitarian projects via IBM's World Community Grid project. Read More

Ideum has unveiled a new addition to its series of 55-inch, high definition LCD multitouch tables. Billed as the thinnest commercially-available multitouch table top on the market, the new MT55 Platform sports an optical touch system capable of handling 32 touch points simultaneously and comes with SSD storage. Like its older brother, the Platform comes with Wireless-N and Bluetooth connectivity, hidden physical ports, single button operation and LED under-table illumination effects. Read More

USRobotics has added to its line of USB 3.0 products that currently includes a 4-port USB 3.0 Hub, 2-Port ExpressCard Adapter and 2-Port PCI Express Card Adapter, with the introduction of its USR8420 All-in-One USB 3.0 Card Reader/Writer. The company claims the device is the first USB 3.0 card reader that allows data to be read from each of its five card slots simultaneously and is also the first to offer dual SD, MMC and Memory Stick slots. Read More

Taiwanese manufacturer MSI has announced a new motherboard Z68A-GD80 (G3), which according to the company will be the world's first motherboard to utilize the PCI Express Gen 3 (3.0) bus standard. Featuring a BIOS with a graphical user interface, the motherboard boasts two PCIe 3.0 slots (1x16, 1x8), which provide a 2x faster transfer rate than the 2.0 standard with a maximum bandwidth of 32GB/s, and support for 3TB drives. It is also equipped with an Intel Z68 (B3) chipset and supports the LGA1155 socket to work with Intel Sandy Bridge CPUs. Read More

As expected, Facebook has announced Skype-powered video calling for its users, who now number more than 750 million according to the company. The new feature was unveiled by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Skype CEO Tony Bates at a news conference at Facebook HQ on Wednesday where Facebook engineer Philip Su provided a walkthrough of the application. The social networking giant also launched a new chat sidebar and what Su says is one of the site's most requested features in multi-person chat. Read More

The more ways in which you can engage yourself with what you're reading, the more likely you are to understand and remember it. It's a practice known as active reading, and it can involve taking notes, highlighting passages, setting aside snippets of important information, or even reading text aloud. While some programs already exist that facilitate the active reading of digital documents, a team from the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed what they believe is a better approach. It's called LiquidText, and it was developed around touchscreen technology. Read More