pc

Upgrade your Eee PC with add-on SSD chips

Love your Eee PC but hate its skimpy 4GB-20GB of SSD storage? Our most recent Eee PC, the 9-inch Eee 901, had a 12GB SSD chip (you can get 20GB in the Linux version), but even that makes it hard to install apps or store photos, music, and so on. The new 10-inch Eee PC will sport up to 40GB of SSD storage, but we're already talking about a $699 laptop there.

As an alternative, memory maker Buffalo is working on 32GB and 64GB SSD chips that can plug right into the PCI-E slot on the Eee's motherboard (… Read more

Invasion of the Netbooks: New systems from Asus, Acer, and Sylvania

Sure, it's a popular new form factor, but we've been hit by a literal flood of new Netbooks in the past few days.

This tiny laptop tsunami includes the new 10-inch version of the Asus Eee PC, plus a 7-inch system from Sylvania (yes, the lightbulb and microwave company, although it looks like someone just licensed the name), and Acer's 9-inch Aspire One. We're testing all three systems right now, but here's a quick rundown in the meantime.

Asus Eee PC 1000: The 10-inch version of the Eee PC has a few new tricks up … Read more

Report: Asus bringing 'whole-day' battery life to Eee PC

It's been a slow week in Eee PC news--it's Friday and Crave has seen only one post thus far--so let us quickly share information from a report on DigiTimes today. According to the report, Asus expects to bring "whole-day" battery life and Internet storage to its Netbook by the end of the year. I'm not sure what a whole day's worth of online storage amounts to, but presumably it's more than the 20GB you get now with the solid-state hard drive in the Eee PC 1000.

The report doesn't specify how many … Read more

Sam's Club hires its own squad of geeks

If you're going to be serious about electronics retail in the U.S., it looks like you have to be serious about employing professional geeks.

Beginning Saturday, 20 Sam's Club stores in Virginia and Maryland will offer tech support from PC repair services company Geeks on Call as part of a pilot program set to last three months. Sam's Club has 394 stores in the U.S. with several similar pilots running right now, according to a company spokesperson, who declined to elaborate.

Just last week, parent company Wal-Mart announced it would offer Dell-branded PC repair kiosks … Read more

Neil Young to tech industry: You can do better

HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--"Hey hey, my my, the state of PC music quality makes me wanna die."

So said singer-songwriter, Neil Young--though not in those exact words--to wrap up the Fortune Brainstorm conference today. Young's earnest entreaty to the technology execs gathered here didn't mince words as he pushed for more sophisticated digital-to-analog converters in PCs that deliver better sound quality.

"I don't know. We've been here three days and we've never heard the quality of music mentioned...which is what made music great," he said during a one-on-one … Read more

Eee PC 1000HD: The mix and match continues

Asus--the PC maker that in the space of seven months brought you the Eee PC 701, Eee PC 900, Eee PC 901, Eee PC 904HD, Eee PC 1000, and Eee PC 1000H--has another trick up its sleeve.

If you love the size and ample screen of the Eee PC 1000 Netbook series but want to retain a little old-school charm in your devices, the Eee PC 1000HD could be for you. Who needs SSD anyway? An 80GB SATA hard disk has much larger storage and gives added heft for security. It has a 10-inch display, and boasts up to five … Read more

TV star puts Apple product placement into his stand-up act

Eddie Izzard, the star of TV's The Riches and a face you might recognize from George Clooney's Ocean's Twelve and Thirteen, last night decided to make the Apple vs. PC battle part of his act.

Izzard, an Englishman who wears his transvestitism on his sleeve, is perhaps one of the greatest stand-up performers in the world.

Like the best of performers, he allows his thoughts to ramble spontaneously over such subjects as the impracticality of the Latin language and Americans' inability to find original names for its cities.

Last night in San Francisco, his act was curiously … Read more

E3 2008: Prince of Persia

The 'Prince of Persia' series found much success in the previous generation of video games. Now Ubisoft is back with a new 'Prince of Persia'--complete with a unique art style and a brand-new fighting mechanic. You'll also be joined by a Elika, a female character who helps you fight enemies and solve puzzles. 'Prince of Persia' is set to release by year's end for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

The Mac owns the U.S. Windows owns the world. Nary the two shall meet?

Correction, 10:45 a.m. PDT: This blog initially misstated Apple's global market share. It was 3.3 percent in the second quarter, according to IDC, up from 2.9 percent a year ago.

Gartner and IDC both see the global computer market rising, 16 percent and 15 percent, respectively, with Hewlett-Packard (18 percent market share) and Dell (16 percent market share) winning big, as The Wall Street Journal reports.

U.S. growth, however, was somewhat tepid at 4.2 percent, according to Gartner. (IDC pegs it at 3.6 percent.) As demonstrated in the earnings calls for Sun, … Read more

E3 2008: Mirror's Edge

'Mirror's Edge' is a unique first-person game where you assume the role of Faith, a woman constantly on the run. The game offers a graphical style unlike anything seen before, where you must constantly scan your surroundings for items colored in red in order to progress seamlessly. 'Mirror's Edge' is scheduled to be available this year for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.