Articles about Post-PC Era

In child psychology there's a concept called the middle child syndrome, where the kid in-between feels unloved by the parents or jealous of attention given the older and younger siblings. Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9 might just be that middle child. I'm not loving it.

Best Buy has started taking preorders for the tablet nestled between Tab 7/7.7 and 10.1 and for surprising price: $469.99 for the 16GB model, or just $30 less than the 10.1. From a price perspective, Best Buy isn't giving buyers much reason to choose Tab 8.9 over 10.1, other than smaller size. But is it really small enough for the price?

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As if Research in Motion's co-CEOs haven't done enough, shareholders inflicted serious pain overnight and early today. RIM shares plummeted, following yesterday's dire earnings report -- by about 22 percent in after-hours trading.

RIM opened at $22.89 this morning, off yesterday's close of $29.54. The stock is fairing better in mid-morning trading, well if down nearly 19 percent could be called better. Shares are down 66 percent from their February 52-week high.

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Whatever sort of life you lead, there is no avoiding finances. We all have some form of bills to pay each month and bank accounts of one sort or another to keep track of. Keeping on top of what’s coming in and what’s going out and when can be tricky, often meaning having to visit one website after another, each with their own login requirements. Manilla is a great online service that enables you to access details of all your accounts and bills from one place. There are also apps available for iOS and Android devices.

The Manilla website is almost obscenely useful. At its most basic you can use the service to monitor the various bank accounts you have, making it possible to get all of your balances in one place without the need to log into multiple websites. For this reason alone, Manilla is well worth checking out, but the fact that the service could also save you money by helping you to avoid late fees is also a great draw.

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AT&T said Monday that it will begin selling the 10.1-inch Acer Iconia Tab A501, becoming the latest 4G-capable device on the carrier's network. Running Android 3.0 "Honeycomb," the tablet will be available in stores beginning on September 18.

As if Android fragmentation wasn't enough already, Android 3.0 puts Iconia behind the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 (with v3.1) and Motorola XOOM (with v3.2), for example. Potential buyers must ask: Which matters more? 4G, or newer Honeycomb?

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Damn, if only some analyst firm other than IDC supported my long-standing position about cloud-connected mobile devices displacing PCs. After all, I dissed IDC's crazy forecast about Windows Phone being No. 2 smartphone OS in 2015. Now the firm is back with another 2015 prediction, which I must agree with.

Spurred on by smartphone and media tablet adoption, more US Net users will access the Internet through wireless mobile devices than those wired to PCs; within four years. IDC predicts stagnation and then decline in number wired Internet users. Stated another way: Decline of the PC, since -- c`mon -- who really uses one without the Internet.

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As a software developer I do lots of market research into the current trends of both software and hardware. I read, read, read as much as I can about what is going on in the industry, for starters. There's a whole lot of hype about iPad, and near silence about Windows tablets. But there are plenty of them out there.

Windows 8 will be a boon for tablets, particularly with ARM support and the new Metro UI, but it's still a future release product. Windows 7 is here now. What is its value as a tablet PC operating system? This week, Windows 8 will have big tablet buzz at Microsoft's Windows BUILD conference. Is there really reason to wait? I'd like to offer my impressions of what's here right now, from a developer's viewpoint, about Windows 7 tablets.

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If you’re a data-heavy smartphone user, you belong on Sprint. That’s the findings of Validas, a company that specializes in tools to analyze cellular plan usage and spending. The average Sprint user spends about eight cents per megabyte, Validays says, which equals 12.5 megabytes for every $1 of data.

Sprint's numbers may be skewed though: its customers enjoy unlimited data plans, and a larger number are on its 4G network. Both factors likely contribute to higher data usage overall.

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What happens when there's no Internet?

Yesterday, afternoon I feverishly worked on a commentary about Florian Mueller's ridiculous commentary (it doesn't qualify as analysis) on Google actions in relationship to Android OEMs, based on documents from a lawsuit with Oracle. I had real writing flow, likening Mueller to Santa Claus bringing Apple Fanclubbers and their anti-Google kin a heap load of presents. They've been blogging, tweeting and sharing about how evil is Google; they're giddy as can be. But I explained the bag contained nothing but coal, and that Mueller had cast a spell over them, as they were trying to do to others. I never finished that missive, and won't now. At 3:38 p.m. PDT, the electricity went out. The outage was massive -- parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Northern Mexico, all of San Diego County and sections of Orange County, which is just south of Los Angeles.

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If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, the chances are that you frequently connect to the internet using a 3G connection. The same is true for some iPad users, although there are more WiFi-only Apple tablets in circulation. Whether you are working with a device that only offer WiFi connectivity, you are out of range of a 3G signal or you just need faster Internet access, there are numerous reasons you might want to find a wireless Internet connection when you are out and about, and this is something that Wi-Fi Finder can help with.

The app is available for iPhone, iPad and Android, and native versions have been released for each type of device. If you do have a 3G connection, you can use the app online and check in the area for the availability of wireless networks. The database of hotspots includes both free and paid-for networks and you can use filtering to track down particular types of establishment offering WiFi -- you might want to avoid hotels, for instance.

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The simple fact that iPhone, iPod and iPads have been designed specifically with portability in mind, they are perfectly suited for use as task management tools. As you are likely to have your iOS device with you at all times, it makes sense to store details of upcoming appointments, information about the projects you are working on, and to keep track of everyday data such as income and expenditure. Two of the most well received iOS apps in this category are Weave and Calvetica. We decided to put them head to head to see which comes out on top.

From the offset Weave is at a major advantage by virtue of being free. This gives the app instant appeal, and the fact that trial versions of iOS app do not exist, save for so-called ‘lite’ versions of apps, it is more likely to be installed by someone browsing the App Store.

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The good news: Facebook 3.5 for iOS is available, packing some new privacy controls. The bad news: There's still no dedicated iPad app. For now we’ll have to content ourselves with a less major updates. The v3.5 app reflects some of the privacy changes that have been made to the Facebook website, as well as bringing in tagging and location options.

New privacy settings are in place that can be configured to control who will be able to see and comment on the posts you make. You can choose to make posts public, limit them to your friends list or a particular group you have already set up. The settings you choose for a particular post remain in place until you change them for a future post, so be sure to check before making more status updates.

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