Stories related to: computer hardware

Though the Pulse digital pen has won hearts of gadgeteers looking to transcribe written notes to their PCs, David Pogue, in the New York Times , finds the special paper needed to use it limiting, and turns to a pair of pens that can write anywhere. In a side-by-side comparison, "the Dane-Elec ZPen makes the Iogear Mobile Digital Scribe look like an amateur." More »

Qualcomm might be looking to unseat industry top dog Intel with its new Snapdragon chip—which uses half the power of Intel’s new Atom, will likely be cheaper, and is due out next year. As personal computers and mobile Internet devices continue to converge, the need for speed has shifted to a need to power-sip, reports the New York Times —and Intel is falling dangerously behind More »

A microbiologist studying computer keyboards discovered that some of them harbored more bacteria than the average toilet seat, the Guardian reports. The dirtiest—which had to be removed from an office—had 150 times the level of acceptable bacteria, putting the user at risk of catching bugs that cause diarrhea and vomiting. "It was off the scale," the researcher said. More »

Scientists in England have created the world’s smallest transistor, the BBC reports. At 1 atom thick and 10 atoms wide, it could be the key to creating microchips beyond the power of silicon. The transistor is made of graphene, a single layer of graphite and an excellent conductor of electricity. And unlike with silicon, the smaller a graphene transistor is, the faster it works. More »

Advanced Micro Devices will shed 10% of its workforce this year and predicts a 15% first-quarter revenue drop, down to $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Slumping desktop sales and the company's line of defective chips and have hurt AMD, which will lay off workers worldwide at "all levels within the company," a spokesman told the San Jose Mercury News today. More »

Intel will bring a bigger—and faster—solid state drive to market in the second quarter that will heat up the competition between chipmakers and launch a new generation of laptops and PCs based on SSDs rather than hard drives, reports CNET. Intel’s 80-160GB SSDs are twice as fast as current hard drives and outpace rival Samsung’s 100mbs SSD. More »