The world still can’t get enough of computers as second quarter sales figures reveal a mighty 12 percent hike from the same time last year.
The wriggling bag o’stats from research firm Gartner and IDC put Hewlett-Packard at the front of the sales pack, grabbing the biggest share of the world’s PC market with unit shipments soaring by 37 percent.
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Hoping to tempt the kids to start playing the vinyl they’ve bought is Ion Audio who have knocked out two new versions of its popular iTT USB turntable.
There were unhappy faces around the Digi-Lifestyles office this week when our seven year old fridge freezer – keeper of the vital beer cans and supplies of cheese – went on the blink.
The Servis fridge freezer had been taking a somewhat jazz/funk approach to its duties in recent months, but at the beginning of last week it unilaterally decided to instigate Operation Meltdown.
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Research In Motion has announced its first ever multi-band phone to pack Wi-Fi, the BlackBerry 8820 Smartphone.
The slinkiest BlackBerry to date, the 8820 offers a good ol’ fashioned hardware QWERTY keyboard (we like them), a large 320×240 display, trackball controls, onboard GPS (Global Positioning System)and EDGE/GPRS/GSM cellular and Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g) connectivity.
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We’ve shouted at it. We’ve shaken our fists at it. We’ve even given it a kick when it starts playing up and sometimes felt like inflicting serious damage on the thing, but we’ve never gone as far as this particularly aggrieved chap in Hanover, Germany.
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Brit audio firm Pure Digital have announced a new affordable and rather dapper DAB and FM clock radio called the PURE Siesta, which offers market-leading standby power consumption and a host of green initiatives.
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Although vinyl was supposed to have gone the way of clicky-clunky 8 track cartridges, Betamax and clackers, the format refuses to die, with new figures showing that sales of 7in singles actually rose in first half of this year.
As sales of CDs continue to plummet, the tenacious 45 keeps on rocking, with UK industry group BPI, revealing that 7in vinyl sales were up 13%, with the White Stripes’ Icky Thump scoring up the highest weekly sales for a 7in single for more than two decades.
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Microsoft have confirmed that they will be releasing the Messenger Kit for the XBox 260 in the US this September, after a long period of building up anticipation for it.
As well as a headset for voice chatting – which have been around since the original Xbox – the interesting part is the introduction of a full-sized, if mini, qwerty keyboard, letting you IM your mates until your thumbs bleed.
While Microsoft aren’t disclosing any plans for Europe or the UK, they say it should retail at $29.99 when it goes on sale on 6th September.
I don’t what the people driving the European wing of Sony think that they’re up to, but they appear, of late, to be perfecting the art of making the wrong decision.
We learnt last week that Sony will be dropping the price of Playstation 3 in the the US by $100, but will not be offering a reduction in the UK or Europe.
Do they think that no-one in the UK reads the International press? Do they not realise that UK gamers already feel insulted by their action on the PS3?
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Writing about the announcement of the new PSP brought the following little ditty to mind – one we’ve been meaning to write for a while.
You may be thinking that the Sony PSP hasn’t been the hit that it might have been, because in and around Europe you don’t see many on the street.
It’s easy to lull yourself into a false state of knowledge when you’re in a major capital, leading you to think that the behaviours that you see around the street are representative of the world as a whole.
This was clearly show in our recent visit to Beijing, where PSP usage told a distinctly different story. There were tons of the things knocking around, primarily on the Beijing Underground.
Used mostly by the under 30s, but not limited to males, we often saw people playing games on them during the crushed morning rush hour (and it was a serious crush). The other frequent use was using them to catch up on TV or film programming.
Alongside the genuine PSPs, we also spied quite a few copy PSPs having a similar form factor, but a rougher, less-engineered finish.