According to supply chain sources Surface tablet sales remain fairly slow-- DigiTimes claims Microsoft has already cut tablet orders for the year by half.

The Taiwanese news site says Surface orders are now 2 million units (down from 4m) as "sources from the upstream supply chain believe [Windows 8] may not perform as well as expected in the market."

Demand is also not too hot for Windows 8 tablets from Asus, Samsung and Dell the site reports.

The Digitimes sources also say Microsoft considers Continue reading...

Amazon sells a record amount of Kindle devices as it introduces Black Friday in the EU-- Kindle sales from Amazon.co.uk were "more than three times higher" on 23 November than the previous record.

Keep in mind Amazon fails to provide hard sales numbers, giving only statements like " Black Friday was the biggest sales day ever for the Kindle Family" and "Kindle Fire [was] the bestselling product across all of Amazon.co.uk on Black Friday."

During 23-26 November the Kindle Fire cost £99, down from t Continue reading...

With Steam soon available for the Linux operating system, some gamers might want an appropriate laptop-- such as the Bonobo Extreme from open-source machine builder System76.

The base Bonobo Extreme model has a 17.3" display and carries an Intel i7 3630Qm 2.4GHz processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 670MX 3GB GPU, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB 7200 RPM HDD, 8x DVD drive and an 8-cell battery.

The keyboard is backlit (with a variety of colours) and the trackpad comes from Synaptics.

Ports include HDMI, DisplayPort, Continue reading...

The American election might have come and gone, but not before an interesting piece of news came to our attention-- a Microsoft Surface tablet found use as a voting machine in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Part of a test by electronic balloting company Democracy Live, the tablet runs "LiveBallot," a cloud-based browser application built the Microsoft Windows Azure platform.

LiveBallot allows voters to access, mark and print a ballot, before printing out results for counting by a separate machine. Continue reading...

According to DRAMeXchange ultrabook shipments may exceed 30 million units in 2013, growing by 30% Y-o-Y thanks to price declines of components such as SSDs, displays and cases.

Also helping further ultrabook growth is increasing focus on processor development from Intel.

Pointing out 2012 as a challenging year for the general PC market is hardly news-- the analyst forecasts 2012 as the first year with negative growth for notebooks, with shipments reaching 186m units with -4.6% Y-o-Y decrease.

Android tablets gain global marketshare during Q3 2012 as Apple iPad shipments slip below analyst expectations according to IDC, leading to solid growth for the top Android tablet vendors.

iPad shipments for Q3 2012 total 14m, the result of a combination between weak economy and consumers preferring to wait it out for the awaited iPad mini. As a result, Apple tablet share is down-- from 65.5% in Q2 2012 to 50.4% in Q3 2012.

"We believe the [iPad mini]'s relatively high $329 starting price leaves plenty of room for Android vendors to build upon the success they achieved in the third quarter," IDC remarks.

Acer delays its Windows RT tablet roll out from Q1 to Q2 2013 as it decides to take a close look at the competition instead-- or more specifically, see how the Microsoft Surface will fare on the market.

"Originally we had a very aggressive plan to come out very early next year," Acer President Jim Wong tells Reuters. "But because of Surface... we are much more cautious."

The recent Surface launch was met with mixed (if generally positive) reviews from analysts and the specialist press.

The Acer Continue reading...

Not even the mighty Google can stand up to the wrath of nature-- the company cancelled its New York October 29 Android event at the face of Hurricane Sandy, before revealing the Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet on the Official Blog...

The grapevine already revealed what Google had in store for the launch event mind, even if a surprise Nexus 7 update joins the 2 new devices.

The Google trio runs on the latest Android "flavour"-- 4.2, with features such as Photo Sphere (allows users to create 360-degree panoramas), wireless display connectivity (via Miracast), gesture typing and multiple user support.

First revealed is the Nexus 4 smartphone. A collaboration with LG, latest Android flagship is a 4.7-inch device with a 1280 x 720 (320ppi) display, Qualcomm S4 quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 8MP rear-facing camera and either 16 or 32GB of storage.

Connectivity options include HSPA+ and NFC, while wireless charging also features.

Google also reveals its take on the iPad killer with the Samsung-made Nexus 10-- a full-grown tablet with a monstrous 2560 x 1600 (300ppi) 10-inch display. It carries a 1.7GHz Samsung Exynox dual-core processor, 2GB RAM, front-facing stereo speakers and built-in NFC, as well as a micro-HDMI port.