• BYOD is driving IT 'crazy': Gartner

  IT managers grappling with bring-your-own-device policies can expect to see an explosion in the number of smartphones and tablets used by employees in the next few years.

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  Google to sell Nexus smartphones, tablets direct, report says

  Google is reportedly moving to more direct sales of its Android smartphones and tablets in an apparent move to wrest control away from wireless carriers that install their own services on Android gear or block Google apps like Google Wallet.

• Microsoft anti-bloatware service to apply to Windows 8 PCs, too

  A Microsoft in-store program that scrubs "bloatware" from Windows PCs will also be offered when Windows 8 machines reach the market later this year, a company representative said Wednesday.

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  Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 on sale Sunday for $400

  Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is set to go on sale at retailers nationwide Sunday for $399.99, furthering the variety of tablet sizes from the vendor.

• Interop panelists debate future of physical WAN optimizers

  The need for a dedicated physical appliance to handle WAN optimization tasks, in many cases, is a thing of the past, according to experts who participated in a panel discussion Tuesday at Interop in Las Vegas.

• Today, printers. Tomorrow, 'integrated peripherals'?

  Out went 42 aging black and white copiers with interface boxes that let them serve as printers. In went 42 new networked multi-function printers (MFPs) that could do color printing and copying and scan directly to e-mail, fax or files. And the owner, the Park Hill School District in Kansas City, MO, saves $19,000 yearly.

• Smartphone screens are getting bigger

  Smartphone screens are getting larger, although vendors will likely continue to offer many sizes to woo a wide variety of users.

• The future of the $200 tablet

  Spending $150 to $200 on a tablet won't get you much these days: In most cases, you're looking at an off-brand Android product with a single-core processor, barely any RAM and a low-resolution, low-quality display. Depending on the device, you might not even have access to Google's app market or other basic services -- and while that approach may work with retailer-backed, limited-use products like Amazon's Kindle Fire, when it comes to more traditional Androidtablets, it doesn't usually lead to the best user experience.

• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) review: A nice price, but where's the 'wow'?

  Android devices - both smartphones and tablets - are getting increasingly affordable. With its new Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0) tablet, Samsung is obviously hoping to claim its piece of the budget-price pie.

• In crowded tablet market, brand identity will matter

  When it comes to the bevy of new tablet computers coming to market, a tablet maker's brand will take on more significance than ever.

Whitepapers about hardware

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  Case Study: BNP Paribas Deploys Oracle Exadata to Accelerate Information Processing - The Hardware Perspective

  Datacenters are an aggregate of very heterogeneous elements interacting with each other and incurring a complex chain of dependencies, particularly around the point of contact between hardware and software. Against this backdrop, IDC is observing a great push from suppliers and end users alike toward a consumption model based on pre-integrated blocks of optimized hardware and software that IT departments need only to fine-tune, as opposed to build out of a collection of different components. Read on.

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  A Whitepaper on Cloud Computing

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  NEWS AND VIEWS ON REAL-TIME UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

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  SHOULD UNIFIED MESSAGING STILL BE A KEY PART OF YOUR UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY?