Stories about: NEC

For some users, the new generation of ultraportable notebooks comes close to embodying the Holy Grail for road warriors. Their laptop-like keyboards make them more usable for typing tasks than smart phones, but they are lighter and cheaper than traditional laptops. The original Asus Eee PC, for instance, cost about US$400 and weighed about two pounds when it was introduced last October.

A tech vendor-backed company that buys up patents in an effort to protect the Linux community from intellectual property litigation will soon launch a Web site to help inventors file defensive publications -- documents that make details of an invention public, preventing others from later making patent claims on it.

The cable is part of an advanced monitoring and alert system that could provide warning should a destructive earthquake occur close to Japan.

The global battle to control the smarts in your smartphone escalated this week when some of the combatants redeployed their forces in two big moves.

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.

Verizon Wireless is throwing its support behind mobile Linux, becoming the first US operator to join the LiMo Foundation, a group developing mobile Linux technology.

NEC's rugged ShieldPro laptops are made to survive rough treatment but the biggest challenge is about to come: battling more established competitors in the harsh international market.

Linux is expanding its influence outside of the world of smartphones, and is poised to take a significant share of the mid-range mobile phone market as well, according to a new study from ABI Research.

Electronic paper in Japan, Google Maps host videos, divorce via YouTube, NEC's Lui PC, Apple's iPhone comes down in price, Willcom creates the first device based on Intel's Atom, the Library of Congress goes digital experience and Sony recycles TVs.

NEC's new media-centric PC/entertainment system is expensive and struggles to offer a complete feature set in the face of digital rights limitations.

If there's one thing the digital revolution has taught us, it's that we shouldn't get too attached to anything. Technology has a way of seizing long-held ideas and entrenched industries and turning them upside-down.