computers

Apple is one step closer to being offered $89 million in tax breaks to set up a data center in Biggest Little City in the World, aka Reno, Nev.

The Nevada Board of Economic Development approved a deal on the plan today that was initially negotiated by Reno's city council, according to the Associated Press. Despite, the state being closer to inviting Apple to set up shop, there are still a few more logistics the government must sort out.

Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, who backs the deal, called the board's decision a "win" for the state, … Read more

Those of you who like a little Ice Cream Sandwich with your Raspberry Pi seem due for just such a treat.

Raspberry Pi is a $35 credit card-sized device that functions as a tiny computer. Outfitted with an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, two USB ports, and an SD card slot, it's powered by a 700MHz ARM chip and comes with 256MB of RAM.

The Pi also currently runs Linux, but its developers are adding Android 4.0 to the mix. The latest news from the folks behind Pi indicate "great progress" in porting over Ice Cream … Read more

Lots of tools claim to be useful for your PC. Whether an application cleans out junk files, duplicates, or other nasties, a lot of the time it wants to take a spot in your right-click menu. Supposedly, this is for "your convenience," but most of us know what's convenient and what's just more bloat for Windows.

CCleaner released a recent update that added a feature that allows you to clean out random application shortcuts from the right-click menu. This is useful for those apps that either didn't give you a choice in the matter, or … Read more

The PC market may see a new leader by the end of the year, says at least one analyst quoted by Reuters.

Currently in second place, Lenovo is set to overtake Hewlett-Packard as the top seller, making it the first Chinese vendor to grab the No. 1 spot in a key technology sector.

"It's just a matter of time before Lenovo becomes No. 1 and it won't be surprising at all if it happens later this year," Frederick Wong, executive director at Avant Capital Management (Hong Kong), told Reuters.

Lenovo stole the No. 2 spot from Dell … Read more

A computer's sleep process is helpful in a couple of ways. First, it reduces the power consumption of the computer, saving you a few pretty pennies in the long run. Second, it can prevent pieces of your desktop from getting forever burned into your monitor.

When your computer does not enter sleep mode like it's supposed to, it can become rather annoying. Really, who likes a glaring (literally) distraction while watching a movie or having a bright light on in the room when you're trying to sleep. Oh right, nobody. If your computer won't acknowledge its … Read more

The iPad display is capable of so much more than firing pin-sharp pixels at your face. They say there's an app for anything, and while many throw a wrench in your productivity gears, some can improve your workflow in unexpected ways -- such as rigging up your iPad as an external display over Wi-Fi.

A second monitor could sit next to your laptop as a simple widescreen mobile hub, or alongside your desktop computer as extra visual real estate to keep those heavyweight widgets off your main screen.

It's not just available for Macs either. We'll be … Read more

Condusiv's Diskeeper 12 Professional is the latest iteration of a premium file fragmentation utility that is suitable for home, enterprise, and server applications. It actively prevents file fragmentation and can defragment your drives regularly.

It doesn't defragment your SSDs, which shouldn't be defragmented, but they're not left out; a feature called Hyperfast optimizes I/O to maximize SSD performance and lifespan. Diskeeper also places our most frequently accessed files in the fastest area of the volume. Among the other new features in Diskeeper 12 are improved Alerting and Reporting mechanisms, a Disk Health feature that monitors … Read more

With an open-source project called Collide, Google has released remnants of a tool that brings a collaborative, browser-based interface to programming.

The software runs on a server, letting multiple programmers tap into a project at the same time. It's similar to how Google Docs lets members of a group simultaneously edit the same document and thus a new example of the cloud-computing approach to software that Google advocates so fervently.

But apparently Google wasn't so fervent about Collide, because the two programmers who announced it, Scott Blum and Jaime Yap, said it's actually an ex-Google Project now. … Read more

U.S. Army, welcome to the future.

If you happen to be in Farnborough, London, this week, you'll be able to see a demo of an Army pilot geared in the latest in wearable military technology -- a portable computing device that fits in a pocket and a display panel that can be strapped to a soldier's wrist.

The entire Aviation Warrior (yes, that's what it is called) system -- which includes a helmet equipped with a flip-down viewing monocle and taps into the cockpit's digital display -- may seem like something that belongs in Battlestar … Read more