New market research numbers from iSuppli show Hewlett-Packard extending its lead over Dell in worldwide PC shipments during the first quarter of 2007—but the real story may be Taiwan’s Acer, which has taken over the number three spot from China’s Lenovo.
“Acer conquered the No. 3 position in notebook shipments in the fourth quarter, and captured the third position in the overall PC market in the first quarter,” said Matthew Wilkins, iSuppli’s principal analyst for compute platforms. “Acer has momentum, is competing aggressively, and its strong channel presence is clearly paying dividends for both desktop and notebook shipments.”
Acer showed the strongest growth performance among the top five PC makers during the quarter on a year-by-year basis, with PC shipment rising by 45.6 percent to 4.2 million units. Lenovo, conversely, say shipments rise 16.3 percent to almost 4 million units, but those figures weren’t enough to prevent Acer from taking the number three slot.
Hewlett-Packard saw its worldwide shipments increase by 26.5 percent during the quarter to 10.7 million units, accounting for a 17.2 percent market share for the quarter. However, Dell actually saw its year-on-year shipments decline by 6.8 percent, dropping from 9.6 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2006 to 8.8 million units in the first quarter of 2007. Dell was the only one of the top five computer makers to see a decline in shipments, with the drop particularly impacting its desktop computing segment. The company is hoping to boost sales through new retail initiatives, which include selling computers through mega-retailer Wal-Mart.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.