Articles by Jay Lyman

Dell looked beyond its usual volume business to speed and style this week, rolling out three new XPS entertainment and gaming PCs, including a hybrid desktop-notebook with 20-inch screen that can stay in the office or hook together to go That computer, the XPS M2010, was rounded out by the XPS 700 gaming desktop and XPS M1210 ultra portable noteboo...

Advanced Micro Devices officially launched its bid to get into the living room this week, touting technical capabilities and a team of supporting computer manufacturers as it rolled out its "Live" media PC platform Describing Live PC as a "full-featured, easy-to-use media center PC," AMD said the computers would run Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor...

Sun Microsystems partnered with a somewhat unlikely ally as it announced Tuesday that the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system (OS) would run on its latest Sparc servers, the 'Niagara'-based Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 enterprise servers The two may combine for a powerful server punch, as Sun's Ultra-Sparc T1 servers provide for multi-core, multi-thr...

China's standards body is crying foul over the rejection of its wireless encryption technology by the International Standards Organization (ISO), claiming an alternative from U.S. standards groups and Intel was railroaded through the international standards procedure Reports from China indicate the Chinese standards group is appealing to the ISO ov...

Hollywood's movie studios and major television networks filed a lawsuit this week claiming copyright violations from Cablevision's planned remote-storage digital video recorder (DVR) service, demanding an injunction to ban the service Cablevision's plans, announced in March, are to store content aired on its cable network on company servers, and th...

Mobile phone giant Nokia released its S60 mobile browser source code under the open source BSD license this week, claiming the move will promote handset platform consistency and avoid the fragmentation that has held back mobile browsing The source code for the S60 WebKit browser engine is being made available to open source developers on the Webkit...

Confirming wide speculation on the price of its next-generation console, Nintendo said this week that its new Wii gaming machine will retail for under US$250 The Japanese game company also said it would aim to ship six million of the new consoles during the first fiscal year of its availability....

The new Internet top level domain ".mobi" went online this week, promising mobile device users a better, more reliable Internet experience with sites ending with the domain designed specifically for the smaller screens and other restraints of handsets However, some industry observers claimed the wireless Web -- in the form of faster, more capable m...

A network of companies collecting patents and pledging them to defend the Linux operating system and environment recently acquired more patents, but doubts linger as to the effectiveness of the effort and corporate support for it The Open Invention Network, an entity formed last year with support from IBM, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL), Philips, Red Hat an...

Advanced Micro Devices unveiled new desktop processors this week that feature a new chip socket platform aimed at easing the update to newer DDR2 memory technology and processor virtualization AMD said its new socket AM2 platform makes use of AMD chips -- such as the new Athlon 64 X2 5000 dual-core processor -- easier for motherboard and systems ma...

Internet encryption pioneer Phil Zimmermann has expanded his software solution to encrypt voice communications over the Internet to include the widely-used Windows PC platform The Zfone Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) encryption comes at a time when privacy advocates and security-conscious companies are calling on the Internet-based voice commu...

Dell announced along with its lackluster first quarter financial results this week plans to sell enterprise servers powered by Advanced Micro Devices processors The new high-end, multi-processor servers from the world's largest PC manufacturer will feature AMD Opteron chips and will be available before the end of the year, Dell said....

Chip maker Micron Technology touted its new image sensor silicon this week, calling it the world's first 8 megapixel image sensor packaged in a standard-sized 1 by 2.5-inch optical format, widely used in today's mainstream digital cameras A camera using the sensor, unveiled by Micron in prototype form, would be capable of snapping 8-megapixel digit...

Search giant Google, playing the odd role of challenger when it comes to Internet searches for video, updated its video upload service this week, promising users the ability to easily post, e-mail and embed video on Web sites and blogs Google dominates the advertising-lucrative Internet search business, but it is playing catch up in video to YouTub...

Server computers used by businesses have certainly gotten slimmer, lighter and more energy efficient in recent years. So have notebook PCs. Now it's the desktop's turn, asAMD,Intel and other chipmakers roll out silicon for sleeker desktop designs AMD this week unveiled its roadmap for more energy-efficient chips, which includes a plan to pick out t...

Hoping to gain the same market success with the Palm operating system (OS) as it has with the Microsoft Windows version of its Palm Treo smartphones, Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) has released the Treo 700p, featuring version 5.4.9 of the firm's original operating system in a new device The Treo 700p bumps up wireless bandwidth with its EvDO wireless capabil...

Microsoft this week made available its first ever software patch for another vendor's product, plugging a critical Windows hole that endangered users of Adobe's Flash Player Microsoft signaled the third-party patch may be the first of more to come, which has broad implications for security and other software vendors. The move comes after Microsoft'...

Microsoft took sides with console competitor Nintendo at the E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles this week, highlighting the significantly lower price tags on both Nintendo's Wii and the Microsoft Xbox 360 compared to gaming powerhouse Sony's Playstation 3 The renewed fight for gamers' attention is marked by innovation in gaming graphics, networked...

You'd never know the latest gaming notebooks from Alienware, featuring new wireless and multi-core processor technology, were actually coming from the world's largest PC maker, Dell, and that is just the way Dell wants it The computer giant does not want to drain down the boutique factor of Alienware's high-end hardware and customizable configurati...

Sony is flexing its muscles at this week's E3 gaming conference in Los Angeles, showing off a motion-sensory controller and announcing pricing details for its much-anticipated Playstation 3 console. Sony Computer Entertainment President Phil Harrison announced the details of the next-generation PS3 on Monday, along with a launch date of November o...