'7 series'

USB 3.0 has gotten the green light for becoming a standard offering on Intel-based Windows PCs next year.

The USB Implementers Forum announced this week that the upcoming "Ivy Bridge" 7 Series Chipset and other Intel chipsets have achieved USB 3.0 certification. Chipsets are support silicon that work in tandem with the main processor.

USB 3.0, aka SuperSpeed USB, delivers up to 10 times the data transfer rate of USB 2.0, as well as improved power efficiency.

Intel's Ivy Bridge silicon, due to ship in Windows PCs in the April-June time frame, will … Read more

Remember when hybrids were humble little cars, like the hunchback Prius? Well, hybridization has certainly jumped the shark when ponderous BMW 7 Series arrives in our garage with an electric motor buried in its power train. Yes, it is a technically marvelous machine, but does it really accomplish anything truly desirable? Or is this, as they say, a "halo product"? Brian Cooley takes you for a drive to check the tech.

(CNET's full review of the BMW 7 Hybrid names it an Editors' Choice.)

Audi today announced the all-new Audi A8 will have a starting price of $78,050. The Audi A8L will start at $84,000.

Audi A8 gets 17 miles per gallon in the city, 27 mpg highway, which puts it on par with the Mercedes-Benz S400 hybrid. It's also better than the fuel-economy numbers for the BMW 7-Series hybrid and six-cylinder models, Audi said in a news release.

Audi also announced the R8 4.2 quattro, which gains 10 more horsepower for 2011 and will have a base price of $114,200--unchanged from the 2010 model price. The Audi R8 … Read more

With its Gran Turismo, BMW took the 5-Series sedan and beefed it up into something of an SUV/wagon hybrid. With the Gran Coupe concept, the automaker has done the opposite to its 7-Series, carving away at the upright proportions of the sedan and leaving us with a very sexy and coupelike profile.

Revealed at the 2010 Beijing Auto Show, it's unclear whether the Gran Coupe is a design study for an upcoming BMW four-door coupe that will challenge the likes of the Porsche Panamera and Aston Martin Rapide for your people hauling dollars or a thinly veiled sneak … Read more

Scream loudly enough and eventually they'll listen. Well, Microsoft listened anyway.

Responding to all the feedback (read: criticism) about the Windows Phone 7 Series name, the company revealed Friday that it's dropping "Series" from the nomenclature, and the new mobile operating system will simply be called Windows Phone 7 from now on.

Here's Microsoft's official statement on the matter:

Customers want a simpler way to say and use the name consistently. The important thing is keeping the focus on the Windows Phone brand, which we introduced in October and will continue investing in through … Read more

It's not exactly a shocker given Microsoft's recent moves, but Mozilla said on Tuesday that it is halting work on the creation of Firefox for Windows Mobile.

"Given that Microsoft is staking their future in mobile on Windows Mobile 7 (not 6.5) and because we don't know if or when Microsoft will release a native development kit, we are putting our Windows Mobile development on hold," Stuart Parmenter said in a blog posting.

Mozilla had been working on a version of Firefox that would run on Windows Mobile 6, part of a years-long effort to bring its browser to Windows CE. … Read more

At its Mix10 event this week, Microsoft released a software emulator for the Windows Phone 7 platform, but kept a lot of its own programs and features hidden.

However, with a bit of work, one developer says he has unlocked those features making them available for the world to see and play with.

"I still cannot believe it but I did it," Don Ardelean said in a blog post early Friday. "After a good idea, 6 hours of work and a lot a lot of digging I've unlocked the ROM image in the emulator CTP. I … Read more

LAS VEGAS--When it comes to copy and paste, Microsoft argues that there's a better way of doing things on the phone.

Rather than include the feature in Windows Phone 7 Series devices (something many users say they want), Microsoft argues that a better approach is simply to offer so-called smart links--which recognize a block of text, such as a hyperlink, phone number, or address, and allow a specific action to be taken. For a phone number, such "smart links" would allow the number to be dialed. An address might get pulled up in the mapping program, while … Read more

reporter's notebook LAS VEGAS--Microsoft's Clint Rutkas was sent a rather intriguing e-mail a couple weeks back. Could he use a phone he'd never held to control a robot he hadn't built to send T-shirts into the crowd at the Mix10 conference.

Ever the adventurous type, Rutkas readily agreed. And sure enough, when Monday's keynote rolled around, Rutkas' Windows Phone T-Shirt Cannon was ready.

Rutkas said he didn't even get a prototype phone in his hands until a couple days into the project. Although he was 90 percent sure he could just do things remotely … Read more