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Dell is preparing a raft of tablets, hybrids, and ultrabooks for the Windows 8 launch later this year.

"The addition of capacitive touch capability into Windows 8, we think, will be a welcome addition...and will have a full complement of products at time of launch," Michael Dell said today during the company's first-quarter 2013 earnings conference call, in response to an analyst's question.

"We're totally lined up with Windows 8. You'll see us introduce tablets," he added.

And he suggests that Windows 8 touch-centric interface means that current PCs will not … Read more

Do Google and other search engines have a constitutional right to control their own search results?

The answer is yes, at least in the opinion of UCLA law professor and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh.

In a report commissioned by the search giant (PDF), Volokh asserts that search results are a type of "opinion" based on what information the search engines believe would be most relevant to their users, according to news site PaidContent. Therefore, the results are protected by the First Amendment.

"Google, Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo Search and other search engine companies are rightly seen … Read more

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently made some public statements about Google that the Web giant says don't really pan out, according to 9to5Google.

During a panel discussion put on by the Milken Institute last week, an audience member asked Stephenson why there's such a delay in updating Google's operating system on devices carried by AT&T. Basically Stephenson blamed Google for delayed updates.

"Google determines what platform gets the newest releases and when," Stephenson replied. "Oftentimes, that's a negotiated arrangement and that's something we work at hard. We know … Read more

I have no idea why people feel the desperate need to tell others about their likes.

Perhaps it is something to do with suppressed childhoods. Perhaps it is something to do with a longing to find others with the same predilections, so as to believe that one isn't entirely batty in one's preferences.

But a court case might lead some to wonder whether it's worth expressing your fondness for, say, the collected works of Karl Marx or the troubling designs of Ann Taylor.

For, as the New York Times reports it, a judge in Virginia has ruled … Read more

Samsung's smartphone shipments soared over the same period last year, allowing it to easily grab the lion's share of the global market, while Nokia's share plummeted, a market researcher said Thursday. Another market researcher put Samsung No.1 in the overall cell phone market.

The South Korean electronics giant's share went from 12.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011 to a whopping 30.6 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to Strategy Analytics (see chart below).

Apple's growth isn't too shabby either: it jumped from an 18.1 percent … Read more

The City of Boston tacitly acknowledged today that arresting a man for recording a police officer in public may not exactly have been the wisest -- or most constitutional -- choice.

That acknowledgement comes in the form of a $170,000 payment to Simon Glik, a Boston attorney who was prosecuted under criminal wiretap laws for using his cell phone to record police arresting someone on the Boston Common. They prosecuted the wrong fellow: Glik himself specializes in criminal defense.

A spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department told CNET this afternoon that the city has taken steps to ensure arrests-for-recording … Read more

I can't find much precedent for a court telling someone they must post Facebook apologies.

It seems like a very light punishment. Copy and paste has come a long way. Perhaps judges don't know that.

However, Mark Byron of Cincinnati, Ohio, was told to post a daily Facebook apology to his wife, after he had previously written such things as: "If you are an evil, vindictive woman who wants to ruin your husband's life and take your son's father away from him completely -- all you need to do is say you're scared of … Read more

It seems that everyone in authority wants to get into your virtual underbelly.

Employers in Maryland seem to think they have the right to search potential hires' Facebook profiles.

And now the Minnewaska school district in Minnesota stands accused of coercing a 12-year-old girl into giving up her Facebook and e-mail passwords, so that a school could spy with their little eye.

CNN reports that she was also twice punished for things she wrote on Facebook.

A lawsuit on behalf of the girl--brought in conjunction with the ACLU--declares that her First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated.

The girl--referred … Read more

The last time I took a look at the Razer Blade, it was sitting amid the crowded show floors and weird wireless networks of CES 2012. Razer's bold, somewhat experimental foray into gaming laptops has finally begun shipping, and we have one here at CNET to check out at long last.

First off, the Razer Blade is hardly cheap; $2,799 places it at the higher end of gaming laptops. Regular laptop shoppers would quake in their boots at those prices, and rightfully so. However, the Blade does incorporate some design and technology that make it a design piece of sorts.

It's a bit like a collectible Nike shoe: not completely practical, but sexy for a certain kind of person. The matte black, solid-metal construction has an attractive if fingerprint-collecting appeal, and the Blade does have some solid specs, with a 2.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 processor (3.5GHz in Turbo mode), Nvidia GeForce GT 555M graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 17.3-inch 1,920x1,080-pixel display.… Read more