Global PC market suffers record decline in 2013

Want China Times, CNA 2014-01-11

The Asus Transformer Book T100. (Photo/Tu Chih-hao)

Worldwide personal computer shipments for 2013 fell 10% from a year earlier, marking the steepest year-on-year decline in the sector's history, due to rising demand for mobile devices, according to statistics by Gartner.

In a report released Thursday, The US-based information technology market research firm said 2013 global PC shipments totaled 315.97 million units, down from 351.07 million units in 2012.

Shipments by Acer dropped 28.1% and those by Asustek dropped 17.7%, in 2013, Gartner said.

Last year, Acer shipped 25.69 million PCs, ranking as the world's largest PC vendor, with a market share that fell to 8.1% from 10.2% in 2012.

Asustek was in fifth place in 2013, with shipments of 20.03 million units and a global market share of 6.3%, compared with 6.9% in 2012.

China's Lenovo Group emerged as the world’s largest PC supplier, shipping 53.27 million units, up 2.1% from a year earlier and a market share that grew from 14.9% in 2012 to 16.9% in 2013.

US Hewlett-Packard with a market share of 16.2% and Dell with an 11.6% share, ranked second and third, Gartner said.

HP's 2013 shipments fell by an annual 9.3% to 51.25 million units, while Dell shipped 36.79 million PCs last year, down 2.2% from the previous year.

In the fourth quarter of last year, global PC shipments dropped 6.9% year-on-year to 82.63 million units, marking the seventh consecutive quarterly decline.

In the October-December period, Acer shipped 6.47 million units, down 16.0% from a year earlier, holding a 7.8% share of the global market, which was the fourth largest in the world but a year-on-year drop of 0.9 percentage points.

Asustek was the fifth largest PC vendor in the fourth quarter, shipping 5.40 million units, down 19.0% from a year earlier. Its market share fell to 6.5% from 7.5%.

Lenovo took first position in the fourth quarter, with shipments of 14.93 million units, accounting for 18.1% of the global market, ahead of HP with 16.4% and Dell with 11.8 %.

Acer loses world's No. 3 notebook-maker spot in Q4

Want China Times, CNA 2013-01-14

An Acer laptop at a store in Taipei. (Photo/Wang Chueh-wei)

Taiwan's Acer lost it's world No. 3 title with a 10% global market share to Dell in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to local research firm Digitimes Research.

Acer shipments dropped by more than 15% annually in the fourth quarter of last year due to rising inventory levels, leading to the loss of the spot to the US rival, the Taipei-based firm said.

In fifth place was Taiwan's Asustek Computer, behind Acer by only 0.2 percentage points, the firm noted in a statement released on Jan. 11.

China's Lenovo Group, on the other hand, shipped a record high in the company's history of 8 million notebook computers in the fourth quarter due to strong overseas market performance, but it did not beat Hewlett-Packard to the world's No. 1 position, given HP's steady performance over the last two quarters, the Taiwanese research firm explained.

Global notebook computer shipments reached 48.51 million devices in the fourth quarter of 2012, an increase of 2.5% from the third quarter, because of Windows 7 sales at year-end, it said. The figure is better than its estimated 0.7% increase, it added.

Global shipments in 2012, however, reached only 194 million devices, posting a negative 4.5% year-on-year growth, according to the firm.

Meanwhile, global shipments of personal computers for 2012 fell 3.2% to 352.42 million devices from a year earlier as smartphones and tablet computers stole the market spotlight, market information advisory firm International Data Corp. said on Jan. 11.

Acer was the fourth-largest PC vendor worldwide with 33.49 million global shipments of PC devices, while Asustek finished in fifth place with 24.13 million devices.

HP remained the world's largest PC vendor in 2012, shipping 58.13 million devices, while Lenovo ranked as the second-largest PC vendor last year, shipping 52.45 million devices.

Dell was third, with 38.72 million devices.

Dell and Baidu tie up for smartphones in China

BBC News, 6 September 2011

Related Stories 

• Baidu and Microsoft team up again
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Dell has confirmed it is one of a number of companies partnering with Baidu, China's top search engine, on mobile devices.

Chinese internet companies such as
 Baidu are looking to increase their
presence in the mobile market

A Dell spokesperson said the company was developing smartphones that would run Baidu's new software platform for the Chinese market.

Baidu announced the platform, Baidu Yi, on Friday.

Many Chinese internet companies are trying to increase their presence in the mobile market.

"The partnership is to provide users with an out-of-box experience, so Baidu Yi will be installed," said Dell spokesperson Adeline Lee.

Baidu Yi is Android-based, but Ms Lee did not say with operating systems would be installed on the Dell smartphones.

Baidu executives have not ruled out the possibility of releasing their own operating system at a later date.

Baidu's announcement also said that it was working with a number of developers and handset makers as part of an alliance to support the Baidu Yi platform.

Ms Lee would not give a date for the release of the Dell smartphones

Dell unveils Android-based Mini 3 smartphone

CNet News, by Jonathan Skillings

Dell said Friday that it's ready to enter the smartphone business with the Android-based Mini 3.

Long rumored to have such a device in the works, Dell said that the first two carriers to sell the Mini 3 will be China Mobile and Brazil's Claro.

The Mini 3 will apparently use OPhone, China Mobile's customized version of Google's Android operating system. "We are excited for Dell to be among the first manufacturers to introduce new technology based on the OPhone platform," an unnamed China Mobile representative said in Dell's press release.

We've got a call out to Dell to seek clarification on the operating system software.

Dell did not provide technical specifications or pricing information for the phone, saying those would be revealed when the device arrives in stores--probably late November for China Mobile and by year's end for Claro. It also did not say when the phone would arrive in the U.S. or other markets.

Michael Tatelman, a Dell sales and marketing executive, told the Associated Press that the phone has a 3.5-inch high-definition touch screen. The Mini 3 sold in China won't have Wi-Fi at the start, but Tatelman said that would come later.

Similarly, Apple's iPhone just made its official debut in China sans Wi-Fi.

China Mobile has more than 500 million customers, and Claro serves more than 42 million people in Brazil as part of the America Movil network, Dell said.

Dell did tout its "existing agreements with other leading global telecom providers," including Vodafone in Europe; AT&T and Verizon in the U.S.; M1 and Starhub in Singapore; and Maxis in Malaysia.

The Texas-based PC maker also played up the Internet connectivity angle of small mobile gadgetry.

"Our entry into the smartphone category is a logical extension of Dell's consumer product evolution over the past two years," Ron Garriques, president of the Dell Global Consumer Group, said in a statement. "We are developing smaller and smarter mobile products that enable our customers to take their Internet experience out of the home and do the things they want to do whenever and wherever they want."

But does the world need a smartphone from Dell? The device will have plenty of company: Android phones have begun arriving on the market in larger numbers in recent months.

Most notably, U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless last week began selling the much-hyped Droid, made by Motorola, and the more modest Droid Eris, made by HTC.

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Acer overtakes Dell in PC shipments

Cnet, by Erica Ogg

Turns out Acer President Gianfranco Lanci wasn't just idly boasting earlier Wednesday when he said his company would pass Dell in the PC rankings "very soon." By very soon he clearly meant "today."

IDC released its PC tracker report Wednesday afternoon for the third quarter of 2009 and for the very first time, Acer is indeed the No. 2 producer of PCs in the world, with 14 percent. Hewlett-Packard remained on top with 20.2 percent of PCs shipped, and Dell dropped to 12.7 percent.

While not a total surprise considering that Acer's and Dell's momentum have been headed in opposing directions for some time, Acer's rise is indeed impressive. Just a few years ago most people would probably not have been able to recognize the Taiwanese brand, but that changed when it scooped up Gateway and began its aggressive attack on retail laptops in the U.S and Europe. Meanwhile Dell has fallen from the top vendor of PCs as recently as mid-2006 to No. 3 today as it navigates the changing PC market.

"It's a pretty amazing transition in market leadership by Acer," said Loren Loverde, the program director of IDC's PC Tracker. "It's reflective of the changes in form factors and channels and pricing--the way we've shifted to lower cost portables, particularly in consumer and retail, which is where Dell was not as strong."

There was more disappointment for Dell. Besides falling to third worldwide, Dell also dropped from first to second place in shipments in the U.S, according to IDC. HP sold the most PCs in the U.S in the third quarter, with 25.5 percent of shipments, compared to Dell's 25 percent.

When reached for comment, a Dell representative said only, "As we've said for some time, we're focused on profitable growth, not simply share results."

There was also good news for companies not named Acer. For the first time in a year, PC makers' shipments grew. During the third quarter, they shipped saw 2 percent growth compared to the same quarter a year ago. It's an encouraging sign, especially when IDC analysts were anticipating a 3 percent decline for this quarter. Consumers have been a huge driver of that as the sales of notebooks and mini-notebooks or Netbooks have continued apace. Commercial purchases of PCs, however, are still slow to pick back up. That will change over the next couple of quarters, according to IDC.

One of the main variables has been the looming retail launch of Windows 7. IDC has said it does not anticipate a huge bump in PC purchases directly related to the operating system release, at least immediately.

"We didn't really expect a large reaction in a sense of shipments being synchronized around Win 7," said Loverde. However, fourth-quarter growth in 2008 was negative, and the growth during the upcoming fourth quarter of this year as the economy improves is likely to be better, but not necessarily directly tied to Windows 7.

"The fact we're seeing this growth now, ahead of Win 7, means they're buying systems and planning to upgrade (when it comes out later this month) or they're buying systems because there's a lot of demand and that can only improve with Win 7," said Loverde.

Rounding out the top 5 PC makers after No. 3 Dell was Lenovo with 8.9 percent and Toshiba with 5.2 percent of PCs shipped. In the U.S. only, after HP and Dell, was Acer with 11.1 percent, Apple with 9.4 percent, and Toshiba with 8.1 percent, according to IDC.

Rival market researchers at Gartner have the numbers counted slightly differently. Gartner has Dell at No. 1 in the U.S. still, with 26.2 percent of PCs shipped, HP with 25.7 percent, Acer with 13.9 percent, Apple with 8.8 percent, and Toshiba with 8 percent. The discrepancy between the two firms' counting is derived from Gartner including x86 servers in its count of PCs and IDC only counting revenue from PC vendors' factories; Gartner looks at the revenue from the vendors as well as their sales and distribution partners.

'Free' Win 7 Upgrades Have Fee

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld, Oct 4, 2009 5:14 pm

The free Windows 7 upgrades that Microsoft has promised buyers of new PCs powered by Vista are not always free, a consumer watchdog Web site says.

"To me, whether it's $12.99 or $17.03, the charges are all outrageous," said Edgar Dworsky, the editor of Consumerworld.org and Mouseprint.org. "It's just a single disc they're sending, and with media mail rates, it costs just over a dollar to mail."

Last June, Microsoft kicked off a marketing campaign dubbed "Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program" to keep PCs sales ticking. The program, a rerun of a similar deal in 2006 before Windows Vista's launch, gives people who buy a PC equipped with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate a free or nearly-free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional or Ultimate once the new operating system ships Oct. 22.

Consumers who purchase an eligible PC between June 26, 2009 and Jan. 31, 2010 qualify for the upgrade.

Dworsky, however, found that while some computer makers are giving away Windows 7 upgrades, others are charging fees as high as $17 for what's characterized as "shipping, handling, and fulfillment fees."

"The problem is that a lot of this information is hidden, or impossible to find," said Dworsky today. "Disclose it, let the consumer know."

Only one major computer maker, Acer, charges nothing for the upgrade, Dworsky determined after spending hours tracking down information on vendors' Web sites and nagging public relations people to cough up numbers. Other brands -- Dell, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Sony and Toshiba -- wave the fee for some users, but not others, with total charges for the latter running from $11.25 to $14.99.

Lenovo, on the other hand, nails every buyer with a $17.03 fee for the Windows 7 upgrade.

The mystery over who pays what is frustrating, said Dworsky. "Both HP and Sony ... [said] that they negotiated with big retail chains offering them the opportunity to allow their customers to receive completely free upgrades," he said. "[But] neither would provide a list of which retailers signed up, nor what retailers had to pay or agree to. And retailers say the manufacturers decided pricing. So they are each pointing fingers at the other. Who's caught in the middle? The consumer."

Dell, which notes on its Web site that "select countries will be offering the upgrade for free," told Dworsky that it would not, in fact, charge U.S. customers.

"Someone seems to be profiting," Dworsky charged. "The fees are way beyond the actual cost to fulfill. It would be different if it's a boxed copy with a manual, but it's not."

Most computer makers have been vague about when customers will receive the Windows 7 upgrade. If history is any hint, it could be months before buyers see it. During a similar promotion in 2007 that provided Vista upgrades to people who purchased an XP PC, users grew increasingly frustrated by delays. A month after Vista's January 2007 launch, for example, Dell and HP customers slammed those vendors for failing to deliver timely upgrades.

"You would think that they'd all do this free," said Dworsky. "Consumers are really doing the computer manufacturers and retailers a favor, helping them get rid of inventory. You'd think they would bend over backwards."

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Dell Seeks to Expand Services in $3.9 Billion Perot Deal

The New York Times, by DAVID JOLLY and ASHLEE VANCE, Published: September 21, 2009

Dell announced on Monday that it would acquire the information technology provider Perot Systems for $3.9 billion as it seeks to expand beyond its core personal computer business.

Michael Dell, the company’s founder and chief executive, has spent much of the recession talking about directing his company’s cash stockpile toward acquisitions, particularly in the services arena. By agreeing to buy Perot Systems, for $30 a share in cash, Dell has made just such a purchase. But even with the acquisition, Dell’s services arm would remain far smaller those of rivals Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M.

Customers look at a Dell computer at a Miami store (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Perot Systems, based in Plano, Tex., handles a wide range of technology services, including data center management, software and consulting.

Perot Systems is “a premium asset with great people that enhances our opportunities for immediate and long-term growth,” Mr. Dell said in a statement. “There will be efficiencies from combining the companies, but the acquisition makes such great sense because of the obvious ways our businesses complement each other.”

Dell and Perot Systems, which was founded in 1988 by H. Ross Perot, said that the terms of the deal had been approved by the boards of both companies. Perot Systems, which had revenue last year of $2.8 billion, will become Dell’s services unit and be led by Peter Altabef, the Perot Systems chief executive. Ross Perot Jr., the chairman, is expected to join the Dell board.

“Today’s announcement is the next step in formalizing a relationship that has flourished for some time,” Ross Perot Jr. said in the statement. “When my father founded Perot Systems, he envisioned a global information-technology leader. The new, larger Dell builds on that promise and its own successes by taking Perot Systems’ expertise to more customers than ever.”

The combined heft of Perot Systems and Dell’s own services organization should result in about $8 billion of services revenue annually, according to Dell’s statement. Services deals tend to have far higher margins than selling things like PCs and computer servers.

Since its overall business has slowed significantly in recent years, Dell has been exploring more profitable growth areas. It has been slowly building up its own services division through smaller acquisitions over the last two years. It has claimed to offer lower-priced services than its larger rivals and India-based services firms.

But the acquisition of Perot Systems now places Dell in much the same arena as its competitors.

Dell, based in Round Rock, Tex., is one of the world’s largest computer makers, with a customer base that includes corporate, government and home users. Dell said in late August that its profit fell 23 percent to $472 million in the three months through the end of July, as businesses reduced their computer purchases and prices tumbled. Revenue fell 22 percent to $12.8 billion.

For the fourth straight quarter, Dell, the No. 2 PC maker by shipments after Hewlett-Packard, posted a drop in sales and profit from a year earlier. But in a sign Dell’s business may be stabilizing, it said sales rose slightly from earlier this year.

Dell posted earnings for its fiscal second quarter ended July 31 of $472 million, or 24 cents a share, down from $616 million, or 31 cents, a year earlier. Revenue was $12.76 billion, down 22% from a year ago.

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Michael Dell: IT-Driven Innovation a Key to Economic Recovery

Strategic, Focused Investment in IT Carries Additional ‘Green’ Benefit
High-Performing, Energy-Efficient Technology Can Help Define Post-Recession Leaders

Finance.yahoo.com, Thursday March 26, 2009, 1:30 am EDT

BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Strategic use of information technology streamlines businesses and governments and makes them more effective, especially in the midst of economic weakness, Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell told members of the international news media here today. Mr. Dell was in Japan and is visiting China this week, meeting with customers, business leaders and government officials.

“Leaders will continue to tap into IT for innovation and efficiency, and doing so now will help organizations set themselves apart as the global economy inevitably improves,” said Mr. Dell. “We’ve seen that many times before, including in the 1980s and following softness in 2001.”

IT a Common Thread for Winning

Mr. Dell said many of the most successful organizations will share three approaches:

• Increasingly standardizing IT in part by applying virtualization, a highly efficient technology that allows one server to do the work of many.
  
  
• Employing IT to unlock innovation, freeing resources that in the past have been consumed by maintaining technology.

“Forward-looking businesses are using IT to target unnecessary cost and complexity,” said Mr. Dell. Unlocking time, money, and human resources, he said, enables organizations to create new and higher levels of customer value; and,

• Creating a competitive advantage even as their organizations become greener. Dell, for example, is currently saving approximately $3 million annually and avoiding 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide through facility improvements and a global power-management initiative that turns computers off when not in use.
  

Driving Innovation

• Dell is helping small and medium businesses, large enterprises and public-sector organizations worldwide achieve improved performance and increased efficiency. Mr. Dell today made reference to a breakthrough portfolio of next-generation enterprise products and services that enable businesses to be more efficient and maximize people, time and money.
  
  
• The company’s new 11th Generation PowerEdge servers and Dell Precision workstations give customers outstanding performance, world-class management capabilities and thermals that can help them make the most of their IT infrastructure. The new PowerEdge portfolio offers optimal virtualization, system management and usability capabilities while providing exemplary power and thermals for overall energy efficiency.
  
  
• Last week, Dell introduced the world’s thinnest laptop, the first product from the new Adamo by Dell brand. Adamo is the flagship in a range of beneficially disruptive computer systems that combine leading design aesthetics, personalization and technologies.
  
  
• By listening to customers, Dell is also setting the standard for environmentally-responsible IT. Since 2005, Dell has enabled customers using Dell OptiPlex desktop systems to save an estimated $3 billion in energy costs and avoid more than 32 million tons of carbon dioxide through power management and energy-efficient features. Last September, Dell announced that all of its new notebooks would come with energy-efficient, mercury-free LED displays within 12 months.

Dell Adamo: a first look

Dan Ackerman, CNET, 17 Mar 2009

The 13.in. Adamo, toe-to-toe with Apple's MacBook Air (which is about 440g lighter).

One of the most buzzed-about new notebooks of 2009 is Dell's Adamo, a high-end, ultra-thin 13in. model that starts £1,649 and shares a design sensibility with the MacBook Air and HP's Voodoo Envy 133.

After teasing the system at CES 2009, Dell formally announced its availability for preorder online on 17 March, with shipping from 26 March. We've managed to get our hands on pre-production version of the hardware to bring you our initial impressions.

ZDNet UK's colleagues at CNET.com in the US have looked at a pre-production example of Dell's much-anticipated Adamo notebook.

At first glance, the Adamo, is a stark break from Dell's recent notebook designs, built into an aluminium case with unibody construction — similar to the current MacBooks. The model we have is black (Dell calls it 'onyx') and a white 'pearl' version is also available. The back of the lid and the keyboard tray are split between brushed metal and a fingerprint-attracting glossy finish.

About 1.65cm thick, Dell claims this is the thinnest notebook in the world. It's certainly thin, but going toe-to-toe with the MacBook Air, the true 'thinnest' title is open to interpretation. The tapered Air is thinner at its narrowest point, but slightly thicker at its widest point. In either case these are both very slim systems.

Picking up the Adamo, we were surprised at how heavy it felt. At 1.8kg, it's certainly lightweight, but based on the size, we were expecting something closer to the 1.36kg MacBook Air.

Dell is pitching the Adamo as a 'luxury brand notebook design for the luxury conscious consumer', which may not seem like the most timely of ideas, considering the current economic climate and the resultant growth in low-cost netbooks. While the timing may be unfortunate, products such as this generally have long, multi-year production cycles, from concept to release.

As a luxury notebook, the Adamo has plenty of high-end visual touches. The pearl finish has a wavy pattern etched into it, while our black model has a more traditional brushed metal look. Notably, the usual brand and regulatory stickers have been removed, in favour of etching the information directly into a panel on the bottom of the system.

Instead of the typical Christmas tree of lighting effects found on notebooks in all price ranges, the Adamo has only a handful of small LED lights — for the power button, the touch-sensitive media controls and the caps-lock button, as well as a backlit keyboard. Besides Adamo-branded desktop wallpaper, Dell also created a custom Windows Vista theme for the system, called Adamo Ice. Along with branded accessories Dell plans to offer, it's all part of a concept for the Adamo 'brand ecosystem'.

The keyboard itself is a big change from the typical Dell notebook keyboard, which has always had tall, tapered keys. This borrows more from the Dell Mini 9, with flat, closely spaced keys, similar in style to what you might find on a MacBook or Sony VAIO. We found the keyboard easy to use, but there's a little wasted space at either side of the keyboard tray that could have been used to space out the keys more. The keyboard itself has too much flex in the middle, and the keys are a little clacky — but these could be issues with our prototype hardware. The metal touchpad was very good — sometimes using non-traditional surfaces on a touchpad can add uncomfortable friction and finger drag, but that was not the case here.

The 1,366 by 768 LED-backlit display is behind a sheet of edge-to-edge glass, again similar to the current MacBook line. It's a sleek look, but very susceptible to glare and reflections. The screen hinge is set back about 2.5cm from the rear of the system, leaving what looks a bit like a small handle when the display is open.

Other than a headphone jack and a user-accessible SIM card slot on the right side, all the other ports and connections are on the rear edge. There are two USB ports, a USB/eSATA port and an Ethernet jack, plus a DisplayPort video output (although dongles to other video connections will be available).

Inside, this prototype unit has a 1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U9300, 2GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD hard drive — these components could change in the final shipping version of the Adamo, and we hear that a 128GB SSD will be standard.

With a low-voltage version of Intel's Core 2 Duo, it's not meant to be a speed demon, however, in anecdotal hands-on use, we found the Adamo to be perfectly fine for normal multitasking — web surfing, working on office documents and media playback — and we'll run a complete series of benchmark tests on the final shipping version. We haven't had time to run a full battery drain test yet, but the battery icon in the system tray claims more than three hours of battery life on a full charge at the default power settings.

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IBM to beef up multilingual BPO in RP

By Lawrence Casiraya, INQUIRER.net, 14:41:00 03/04/2009

MANILA, Philippines--IBM said it will boost language capabilities of its outsourcing operations in the country to cover more markets while introducing new services.

The company announced a seven-year outsourcing deal with consumer products firm Sara Lee Corporation.

IBM will manage a portion of Sara Lee's North American and European finance and applications development and maintenance requirements.

IBM said its global delivery center in Manila has been selected as one of the locations to deliver the finance and accounting services.

As a result of this deal, IBM said it will increase the capabilities of its delivery center here in order to provide multilingual services in German, French, and Spanish, in addition to English and local dialects.

"This pact allows us to further grow our local F&A (finance and accounting) business process services, and at the same time kick off our new supply chain management services locally,” said James Velasquez, IBM Philippines country general manager.

Sara Lee manufactures consumer and household brands like Ambi Pur, BallPark, Douwe Egberts, Hillshire Farm, Jimmy Dean, Kiwi, Sanex, Sara Lee and Senseo.

The company employs more than 44,000 employees worldwide.

IBM employs more than 7,000 workers across all business units in the Philippines, a bulk of which is in its call center and business process outsourcing operations.

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Hello Windows 7, adios Vista

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, The Jakarta Post,  JAKARTA  |  Mon, 02/09/2009 12:14 PM  
 

 Windows 7 fixes a lot of the problems found in Windows Vista. Still in its beta version, it can even run on a netbook with only 1 GB of RAM. JP/Zatni Arbi

Still remember the comments I made in my review of Dell Mini 12 last month? I found that I could hardly use it because the pre-installed Windows Vista made it run like a Toyota Avanza hauling a home trailer. 

Still, I loved the netbook because of its large screen, stylishness, lightweight and, especially, comfortable keyboard. 

At that time, I actually knew that the solution for the sluggishness was already on the horizon. It was certainly not a downgrade to Windows XP, as the days of the XP were already numbered. Instead, it would be an upgrade to the next version of Windows. 

Yes, I knew about the performance remedy, because I had seen it running on a Lenovo S10 netbook. Unfortunately I was under a non-disclosure obligation then, so I was unable to reveal it in my article. 

Now that Microsoft has gone public with the product and the beta version of Windows 7 is already available on Microsoft’s website for download, I can share with you my first impression of it — it is quite impressive. 

During a media outing two weeks ago, Microsoft Indonesia gave each journalist, including myself, a DVD containing the beta version of Windows 7 Ultimate, Build 7000. Back home, I took the Dell Mini 12 and my LG external DVD-RW out, put the DVD into the drive and ran the setup program. 

Strangely, it took more than three hours to install it with the Upgrade option. A couple of times I thought the computer hung, but it never did. The great thing was that the installation process hardly required any interference from me. Microsoft said that the installation, which is far more streamlined than Windows XP’s, should normally take 30 minutes or so. 

However, once the installation was finished, I got a series of nice surprises. First, almost all of the programs and utilities that Dell had already installed on the Mini 12 were kept intact. These included Dell Dock, Dell WebCam, Dell Video Chat, even Microsoft Works. They all ran smoothly. The Wi-Fi worked well, too, and the netbook automatically got connected to my LinkSys access point without requiring any help from me. 

The only things that did not work in the new environment were Windows Desktop Manager and the McAfee antivirus software. That was to be expected and McAfee will for sure make its products fully Windows 7-compatible. 

More critical was the responsiveness. Booting up and shutting down still took some time, but it was far quicker than Windows Vista. When the boot up process was completed, the netbook was almost as responsive as a netbook running Windows XP. 

As the accompanying picture shows, I can open multiple Internet Explorer windows, a Microsoft Works document, the Dell WebCam and a couple of gadgets without any sign of memory overload. I can switch from one program to another in a blitz. 

No doubt about it, the programmers at Microsoft have done a great job. The new operating system is not as resource hungry as Windows Vista. Even in its beta version it is very stable; it has not crashed since I installed it. It can easily take the place of Windows XP as one of the ideal operating systems for a netbook with an Intel Atom N270 processor and only 1 GB memory. 

We should also keep in mind that the version I installed is a beta version. It is bound to be plagued with bugs. It will be several months before we can buy the release version. After that, there will be a Service Pack and incremental upgrades to iron out the bugs, and the performance will be improved further. 

Faster performance and lower hardware requirement are not the only strong points of Windows 7, though. During the media outing, Lukman Susetio, Microsoft Indonesia’s Product Manager for Windows, demonstrated just a small number of new features found in it. 

One of the most interesting and very useful features is the capability to set up a wireless network using the computer’s Wi-Fi. This allows us to share an Internet connection without the help of a router or an access point. 

So, for example, if several people are within the Wi-Fi range and one of them has a 3G or HSDPA USB modem that connects them to the Internet, the others can share it through their Wi-Fi network. 

Other very useful features in Windows 7 include a search engine, which it inherits from Windows Vista. The user interface is improved and can be personalized more than in its predecessor. For example, gadgets can now be placed anywhere on the screen, whereas in Windows Vista, they can only sit on the upper right hand corner of the screen. 

Windows 7 was developed with the needs of users of mobile computing devices in mind. Therefore, in this version we can make more adjustments to the power consumption of the various hardware components so that we can increase the maximum battery life. 

DirectAccess is a feature that will benefit enterprise users, as it makes Virtual Private Network no longer necessary. When combined with Windows Server 2008 R2, they can use all the available bandwidth to access their intranet without fear of being snooped on. 

According to Microsoft, even today a lot of hardware vendors have prepared the right drivers for Windows 7. Software makers are also developing the next version that will work seamlessly with Windows 7. 

But you may have to live with Windows Vista, for now. My guess is that Windows 7 will become available toward the end of this year at the earliest.

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Mac or PC: Making the Big Switch

Our analyst looks back on 25 years of switching between the Mac and the PC. 

By Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine, 23 January 2009 

The Mac vs. PC "war" has been going on since many of us were still in grade school. As for me, I've been torn between the two for about that long. But switching back and forth for me was in large part a combination of necessity and desire. Let me explain.

I learned to run PC-DOS, program BASIC, and write Pascal programs on the original IBM PC in 1982. In those days, you got text with a text graphics card and bare-bones color graphics with a CGA adapter, and I thought it was the height of cool that I could play Microsoft Flight Simulator during downtime. I was so smitten with the new tech that when the ill-fated PCjr came out, I almost convinced my parents to get us one. 

Soon after that, my buddy John showed me an article in Creative Computing magazine about an upcoming computer called Macintosh from the company that produced our "ancient" Apple II computers. I didn't think much about it, since Apple was obviously yesterday's news, and the future of the PC was all in IBM's hands. Apple II was a dying, closed-off system, while the IBM PC was the system that both businesses and consumers thought of when they thought of computers. 

Then I got a summer job at a local Computer Depot, and consequently got some hands-on time with the Macintosh. The first-generation 128K Mac was underpowered, to be sure, but the new graphics interface sure beat having to type DOS commands just to get to the word processor and modem terminal program. Call me fickle, but when I "got it," the way was clear: Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were the wave of the future. For college, I chose a brand-new Apple Macintosh Plus. It had the power the original Mac lacked, and by that time there were enough software packages to make it useful. I mean, MacPaint and MacWrite were cool, but you need to do other things like connect with CompuServe, right? That 

Mac saw me through college, with an 800K floppy disk drive, a 20GB SCSI hard drive, various modems, Apple ImageWriter printer, and 4MB memory upgrades along the way. I upgraded to a Mac Performa 400 while in grad school. But, alas, the real world waited. 

My first job out of college was as an IT dude at a major record label, where I serviced the art department, which, of course, worked with Macs. I got a crash course in Lotus Notes and saw how a mixed PC/Mac environment worked, which wasn't too well in those days. The lines were drawn between the creatives (Macs) and the corporate side (PCs). I still liked the Mac as a platform, but the incompatibilities were maddening. 

You couldn't reliably get a PC-written Word document to read right on a Mac if you'd done any formatting on it. Even keyboards and monitors were on different, noninterchangeable standards (PS2 versus ADB keyboards, VGA versus DB15 monitors, and the like), leading to walled gardens where the Macs played with each other and the PCs did the same. Networking was just starting to bridge the gap, but the gatekeepers (network managers) absolutely hated that work, so it got done only when necessary.

My next job was converting a whole major news organization from an old MicroVAX to Windows NT Server. That was hardly fun, but I finally saw how the real world worked (or so I thought), and I started carrying around a Toshiba Satellite notebook with a Windows NT and 95 dual boot and a dongle that let me use a Motorola StarTAC as a modem. The PC world was simply better connected than the Mac world: The only way I could connect to my office from the road without a landline was with a PC. Aside from the technical compatibility issues, I found that on the whole, Mac users were walled off by the corporation that headed the news organization. Unless you were a powerful household-name "talent" or high-ranking executive, you couldn't get a Mac onto the corporation's computer network. 

At my next job, which was at a graphics-intensive (read: Mac-loving) business, my work and home systems were a "reasonably priced" PowerMac 7300 and a PowerBook 2400c. I kept a few PCs running just so files could be exchanged reliably with the "outside world." It was fun (not!), transferring files on floppy disks between Macs and PCs, then e-mailing them from the PCs over our Mac- and IP-based network. After that company was acquired, I was back to Windows, this time with another Toshiba Satellite Pro and supporting Windows 2000 in the office, and I had to give up my Macs. This migration was less happy than one from the MicroVAX to Windows, since Mac users of the mid-1990s were even more rabid about "their" operating system than they are today. The entire staff rebelled, from the art department to the administrative folk. The in-house Mac database guys and our head of IT went off to start their own companies in the salad days of the dot-com era. There is always turnover in any business, but for many at that company, the Mac-to-PC conversion was even more of a reason to resign than the regime change or the acquisition. I was fine with the change, since PC developers and IT folk are easier to find and hire than Mac folk. For the time being, however, I was (again) a PC guy killing off the local Macs. 

Finally, in 2001, I came to PC Magazine, where at the time Apple coverage was an afterthought. Mac knowledge on staff was limited to the art department, and those guys didn't write articles for the magazine. We had an Apple expert freelancer who wrote about all things Apple from his own walled-off garden. I didn't try to evangelize the staff, even though that was the only way to get Macs into a business at that point. I accepted that I was a PC guy in a PC-based environment. Homebuilt PCs and trusty ThinkPads (first a 600x, then a T40) were my rides of choice. 

Then in 2002 , my wife got me my first iPod. It "worked" with my homebuilt PCs with FireWire cards, but there was something…lacking. I had to reformat the iPod way too often, and iTunes was a resource hog on the PC. I had to get a Mac so that I could have some stability in my music player. I was back to an Aluminum PowerBook G4, first a 12-inch then a 15-inch. The Intel transition of Macs happened in 2005, and now I carry both operating systems everywhere I go: a MacBook Pro that runs both Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard. Strangely enough, it's a working synergy: I use the Mac side for some tasks and the Windows side for others. I still have the ThinkPad, but it's relegated to e-mails that don't come through on Microsoft Entourage.

There are no more walled-off gardens: Using Parallels Desktop, I can even drag info back and forth from the Windows side to the Mac side on the MacBook. The future is Web-based, and all the popular Web sites look and act identically in a Firefox browser window. My iPod is now an iPhone, and even that works well with PCMag's Microsoft Exchange–based e-mail. It seems as if every time I switched from the Mac to the PC it was because I was forced to, while every time I switched back it was by choice. It's been a long road with many detours along the way, but in this case the two paths that diverged came back together, and that has made all the difference.

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