Stories about: Acer

Dell on Friday extended sales of PCs equipped with Windows XP by a week, citing customer demand.

XP is beginning that last long walk toward retirement on June 30, with its end-of-life due date staring it -- and you -- in the face.

A new breed of extremely small and light (2 pounds or so) laptop has emerged just in time for summer travel. Called mobile Internet devices (MIDs), and also known as mini-laptops, mini-notebooks, or mini-notes, these lightweight laptops are practically naked, stripped of all extraneous features. And starting at around US$400, they're far cheaper than other mobile PCs.

Three of the top four PC sellers worldwide plan to sell systems with Windows XP right up to the Microsoft-mandated deadline of June 30.

PC vendors Hewlett-Packard and Acer on Monday announced the settlement of all patent disputes between them, putting to rest three federal court cases and two investigations by the US International Trade Commission.

Toshiba on Wednesday introduced laptops powered by the new Puma-based processors recently announced by Advanced Micro Devices.

At the logic level, MacBook, the benchmark for success in mainstream notebooks, is unremarkable -- indistinguishable from every PC notebook built on Intel Core 2 and its chipset-integrated graphics. Why, then, can't anyone with the same parts list emulate Apple's growth in an otherwise stagnant notebook market? Because Apple painstakingly hand-optimized its OS for a tiny variety of hardware architectures, presently Intel Core 2, while Microsoft wrote Vista to run on absolutely everything. No PC notebook maker can take the proprietary route that Apple plays to such advantage.

Small-size laptops are the talk of this year's event and on Tuesday Intel's Sean Maloney unveiled a wall-full of mini machines based on its Atom processor.

Acer is looking to be part of what the company hopes will be a hot new market - the mini laptop.

Laying money on the market for small laptops and desktops, Intel Tuesday announced new Atom processors for what it's calling netbook and nettop computers.

Ultraportable laptops will be a major focus at next week's upcoming Computex exhibition in Taipei, but a flood of pictures released online in recent weeks have spilled the beans for many companies, revealing key details of the most anticipated systems.