Pc, Tablet Computer | featured news

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer can't afford to be wrong about Windows 8. On Thursday in New York, Microsoft unveiled a dramatic overhaul of its ubiquitous Windows operating system. It will go on sale Friday, fused into more than 1,000 PCs and other devices. If it flops, the failure will reinforce perceptions that Microsoft is falling behind competitors such as Apple, Google and Amazon as its stranglehold on personal computers becomes less relevant in an era of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) hints at Windows RT tablet prices and their release dates. Another one of Redmond's mammoth blog posts is getting the reading-between-the-lines-analysis treatment today, as the company announces more details of Windows 8-on-ARM PCs.

Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest cellphone company, is dropping nearly all of its phone plans in favor of pricing schemes that encourage consumers to connect their non-phone devices, like tablets and PCs, to Verizon's network.

Hewlett Packard says it has reviewed a plan to sell-off its personal computer division and it now intends to keep it.

In a dramatic reshuffling, Hewlett-Packard Co. said it will end its tablet computer and smartphone products and may sell or spin off its PC division, bowing out of the consumer businesses.

Tablet computers are selling fast — but it’s starting to look like the stripped-down computers won’t eat the rest of the PC industry alive anytime soon. Worldwide shipments of so-called media tablets into sales channels fell 28% in the first quarter of 2011 to 7.2 million units during the first quarter, according to tech tracker IDC.

The obsession with tablet computing will be on full display Tuesday as Computex, the world's second-largest computer show, begins its annual five-day run in Taipei. The prominence of tablets underscores a dramatic shift under way in the personal computer industry — and keenly felt in Taiwan, which is home to some of the world's biggest PC manufacturers — as many consumers opt to buy a tablet rather than a new PC.

Microsoft Corp is set to report a dip in earnings on Thursday, a year after the launch of its Windows 7 operating system blew away Wall Street estimates, as sales of personal computers lag expectations and Apple Inc's iPad eats away at the fringes of its core market.

Gartner cut its global personal-computer shipments forecast for 2010 and 2011 as consumers rein in spending and interest grows in tablet devices such as Apple's iPad.