15 Things You Need to Know About Windows RT
by Mark Hachman

The progression from one Windows version to the next is always confusing: Windows XP gave way to Windows Vista, which in turn produced Windows 7, and each one had various Professional and Home versions to choose from. But this time things are even more unsettled, because Microsoft isn’t just introducing Windows 8, it’s also rolling out something called Windows RT — which is similar to Windows, but not exactly the same. Here’s what you need to know about Windows 8’s little brother.

Microsoft is being surprisingly tight–lipped about Windows RT, referring ReadWriteWeb back to the lengthy tome Windows chief Steven Sinofsky authored in February, describing development for the ARM architecture.

So for anyone trying to make sense of the differences between Windows 8 and Windows RT — these 15 questions will tell you everything there is to know — except maybe which new version of Windows is right for you. For that, you’ll have to wait until Wednesday for ReadWriteWeb’’s examination of how to choose between Windows 8 and Windows RT.

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first published week of:   08/20/2012

20 percent of U.S. PCs have no virus protection, McAfee finds

A McAfee study of PCs around the world found that 17 percent had no antivirus protection, and the United States outpaced the average with 19 percent of PCs unprotected. The study counted as unprotected machines those that had no antivirus protection installed, or whose antivirus subscription expired. In the United States, 12 percent of PCs did not contain an antivirus program, and 7 percent had expired software. McAfee analyzed data from voluntary scans of 27 million machines in 24 countries. According to the company, the study was the first to examine machines directly rather than polling their users. User polls typically found that 6 percent of PCs are not protected by antivirus software, McAfee's director of global consumer product marketing said

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first published week of:   06/04/2012

20 Worst-Named Phones and Tablets
by Avram Piltch, LAPTOP Online Editorial Director

These days it’s just not good enough to give your phone or tablet an unassuming name like the RX-5050 or M3420e. Instead, mobile device makers spend their days masterminding memorable monikers that are supposed to generate buzz. More often, though, they cause static or confusion. Here are the very worst of the lot. Here are the top 10 names, but read the details for the rest of the list and the reasoning for some real fun:

1. Ainovo Novo7 Swordman
2. HP Veer 4G
3. Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
4. LG Lucid
5. HP TouchPad
6. Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch
7. T-Mobile myTouch 4G
8. LG Ally
9. Samsung Brightside
10. The new iPad

first published week of:   07/09/2012

2011: The Year in Computing
Computing has becoming increasingly polarized, with many hardware and software efforts focused on either small mobile devices or vast data centers.
by Stephen Cass

2011 saw the personal computer continue to be marginalized. Although PCs are still the workhorse computing device in homes and offices, the most exciting innovations over the last 12 months were centered on very small–scale computing, very large–scale computing, and networked combinations of the two.

Developments in small–scale computing, in the shape of consumer mobile hardware such as the iPad2 tablet or Galaxy Nexus smart phone, were naturally the most visible. Most of these lightweight devices use ARM-based chips, prompting Intel, best known for its desktop and laptop processors, to develop prototype smart phone and tablet devices that will almost certainly herald the arrival of new challengers to Apple’s iPad and iPhone in 2012 and 2013.

The software that runs, and run on, these devices saw tremendous development activity as well. Hewlett-Packard tried (and failed) to break into the mobile market with an operating system, WebOS, that was generally judged to be better than the hardware it ran on. The jury is still out on whether Research in Motion can revive the flagging fortunes of the BlackBerry following the announcement of its new mobile OS. And there were major updates from the two heavyweights in the mobile OS world, Google and Apple, with Google releasing Android 4.0 (also known as “Ice Cream Sandwich”) in September. With Android 4.0, tablet and smart-phone makers no longer have to run separate versions of Android, and the operating system also boasts features such as facial recognition. In October, coinciding with the launch of the iPhone 4S, Apple released its iOS 5 operating system, featuring the Siri voice-activated digital assistant.

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first published week of:   01/02/2012

3 secrets behind the enterprise tech gold rush

Billions of dollars are being created under your nose. No, it’s not in the local, social, or daily deals market. It’s the upheaval in the $267 billion enterprise technology market. For years, enterprise software companies were focused on impressing purchasing managers at the expense of creating an enjoyable end-user experience. The result was software that felt like your grandfather designed it. Now, everything is changing.

There is a convergence today between the rise of the cloud, the consumerization of IT, and the adoption of SaaS models that’s caused new billion dollar companies to emerge. Just this week we saw Oracle acquire Taleo for $1.9 billion and in December, two other enterprise technology companies leveraging these trends had massive exits: Jive IPO’d to the tune of $700 million and SuccessFactors was acquired by SAP for $3.4 billion.

And these trends are far from over. There is still room for market creation and low-end disruption by leveraging these 3 trends.

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first published week of:   02/13/2012

4 Reasons Why IT Matters More Than Ever
The argument that IT no longer matters has resurfaced. In this age of consumerization, BYOD and the cloud, IT departments are, in fact, vital to any business, able to create value and sort the wheat from the chaff as stakeholders eye new investments or money-saving ideas.
By Jonathan Hassell in CIO.com

Ashlee Vance at Bloomberg BusinessWeek has declared that, after 10 years, IT simply doesn’t matter. He’s basing his current premise on the original conclusion reached back in 2003 by Harvard Business Review’s Nick Carr, who essentially argued that IT has become a commodity, a place where an increase in dollars spent represents no correlation in increased business result. Essentially, IT is a department to minimize whenever possible. “The point is, however, that&technology’s potential for differentiating one company from the pack—its strategic potential—inexorably declines as it becomes accessible and affordable to all,” Carr wrote nine years ago.

Although it’s impossible to know for sure, Ashlee might have been the victim of an overzealous headline writer. However, Carly “Let’s Make Everyone’s Cubicle Two Feet Shorter” Fiorina, the old chief of Hewlett Packard got it right when saying that Carr was, in fact, “dead wrong”—and everyone glomming on to that Carr-Vance sound bite is wrong, too.

Why? Consider the following four reasons.

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first published week of:   07/23/2012

Volume 31

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