Search Results for: xp

One reader of this column in particular has been urging me to abandon for a moment my obsession with IBM and look, instead, at his employer -- Hewlett Packard. HP, he tells me, suffers from all the same problems as IBM while lacking IBM’s depth and resources. And he’s correct: HP is a shadow of its former self and probably doomed if it continues to follow its current course. I’ve explained some of this before in an earlier column, and another, and another you might want to re-read. More of HP’s problems are covered in a very fine presentation you can read here. Were I to follow a familiar path at this point I’d be laying out a long list of HP mistakes. And while I may well do exactly that later in the week, right here and now I am inspired to do what they call in the movies "cutting to the chase", which in this case means pushing through bad tactics to find a good strategy. I want to lay out in a structural sense what’s really happening at both HP and IBM (and at a lot of other companies, too) so we can understand how to fix them, if indeed they can be fixed at all.

So I’ll turn to the works of Autodesk founder John Walker, specifically his Final Days of Autodesk memo, also called Information Letter 14, written in 1991. You can find this 30-page memo and a whole lot more at Walker’s web site. He has for most of this century lived in Switzerland where the server resides in a fortress today. We may even hear from Walker, himself, if word gets back that I’ve too brazenly stolen his ideas. Having never met the man, I’d like that.

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Many (OK, most) people use Google to conduct their web searches, and why not? It is a great search engine which I use regularly too.  However, it is important to remember that there are other choices available too. While some talk up the privacy benefits of DuckDuckGo, I find its results to be lacking. For me, besides Google, the only other worthy search engine is Bing. Not only does Microsoft's search engine offer great results, but it is pretty too. While Google's search interface is bare-bones, Bing offers a more visually pleasing experience with beautiful photos.

If you are a Bing fan like me, you would probably like to visit the Bing Headquarters for a tour right? Of course you would; that would be friggin' awesome! Guess what? This can become a reality. Simply enter the Ultimate Bing Experience III sweepstakes and you and a friend might win a trip to Seattle on August 10, 2015.

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Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook is more usually associated with social networking, but the company has its fingers in plenty of other pies as well -- including Internet.org. Now the company is expanding its Facebook AI Research (FAIR) program to help with the automatic sorting and analysis of pictures, videos, text, and other data.

Facebook already has research teams looking into artificial intelligence in Menlo Park and New York, and the expansion sees the creation of a new team in Paris. The aim is create system that make it easier to manage the ever-growing quantities of data that are generated day in, day out by Facebook users.

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Most current user interfaces rely on some form of two-step interaction, point and click, or tap and lift, or press and hold for example.

The latest development from Quantum Interface promises to deliver a more seamless experience by using predictive navigation to infer user choices before they're made.

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You’ve found a strange file. Maybe it has no extension. Perhaps it’s an unexpected email attachment. Could it be malware? You’d like to see what it contains. Sounds like a case for Binary Viewer.

This free program is a tiny download, with no installation required, and if you’ve ever used a hex editor you’ll immediately feel at home. Open your target file, it’s displayed in the usual Hex/ ASCII views, and you can browse the contents as required.

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After months of not really doing much, Windows 8.x finally gained a decent amount of usage share in May, according to web analytics firm NetMarketShare.

This gain came at the expense of Windows 7 and Windows XP, which both lost share, resulting in Windows 8.x leapfrogging XP for the first time in six months. The last time the tiled OS was more popular than XP was in December 2014. At the time a run of usage gains lead me to predict it was on course to break the 20 percent barrier. Yeah, talk about being overly optimistic.

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Hackers stole personal information from more than 104,000 taxpayers this spring, the International Revenue Service (IRS) just revealed.

Commissioner John Koskinen said in a press conference that the information included several years' worth of returns and other tax information filed with the IRS, and explained exactly what happened.

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If you need to know more about a Windows executable then there are plenty of low-level tools which can help: PEStudio analyses the file itself, Resource Hacker gives you access to its icons and images, Process Monitor records what it does, and so on.

Flash files -- SWFs -- aren’t as well supported, but you do have a few options, and JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler is one of the best.

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While the likes of HTC, LG and Samsung all have new flagship smartphones for 2015, Sony is still trying to sway consumers with last year's Xperia Z3. While it is not exactly dated, it is showing its age in a time when the competition is rocking newer and more impressive hardware, as well as more attractive designs.

So how is Sony answering? The Japanese maker has decided that the flagship it needs to compete against rivals like G4 and Galaxy S6 is actually a rebranded version of the Japan-only Z4 that it unveiled in mid-April. Sony is either crazy or dropping out of the race.

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LG's G4 lineup is growing, as the South Korean maker just announced G4 Stylus and G4c. The two new smartphones look similar to their flagship sibling, G4, but sport much more modest hardware.

G4 Stylus is the proper phablet in the lineup, while G4c is the compact offering -- if it can be called that, given that its display is as big as some of G4's rivals. Both smartphones can be considered mid-range offerings.

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It's always the way with technology that it starts out expensive then tumbles in price as more manufacturers enter the field. With smartwatches that fall in price has come pretty quickly as Chinese manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon.

The last budget smartwatch we looked at proved pretty impressive for the price. The GV18 Aplus is cheaper still and yet packs in even more features. So, is it cheap and cheerful or cheap and nasty? Let's find out.

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Even though it reigns supreme in one of the world’s largest markets, China, Alibaba wants to expand globally. If it fails to do so, it might not survive, the company’s new CEO said recently.

In a speech given to employees on Wednesday, the new Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said Alibaba will heavily invest in "new and existing overseas operations".

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It’s been a month since the last Windows 10 for phones Insider Preview arrived -- Build 10052 -- but the good news is Microsoft is preparing a new release and Insiders on the Fast ring could receive it as soon as this week.

According to Gabriel Aul, head of the Windows Insider program, Build 10080 is the current candidate and it’s this which will be making its way onto phones, provided it passes Microsoft’s internal testing.

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Freeware developer NCH Software has released Express Animate, a key frame-based animation tool.

The program can import videos, images, text, shapes and audio tracks. Objects may be moved, resized or rotated, while key frame support gives smooth, high quality results.

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Low-end Windows Phones make great first smartphones for those on a budget. They deliver a solid user experience, offer expandable storage, are dependable and feel fast, generally at sub $100 prices. The low cost also makes them good backup smartphones.

There are a couple of very-affordable, interesting Windows Phone 8.1 devices around, like Lumia 530 and Lumia 635, but Microsoft just added the newer Lumia 435 to its online store lineup. Should you get it?

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