Computers | featured news

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who is fighting Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell's plan to take the struggling company private, is entering into a confidentiality agreement that would give him access to the computer maker's financial records.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is proposing an alternative to the $24.4 billion plan to sell slumping PC maker Dell to a group led by founder Michael Dell, saying it substantially undervalues the company.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is set to unveil a tablet computer for public schools on Monday at the SXSWedu education technology conference in Austin, Texas, Bloomberg reports. The $299, 10-inch tablet is the brainchild of Amplify, News Corp.'s education division, which is fronted by former New York City schools chancellor (and current News Corp. executive vice president) Joel Klein. A 2-year subscription will cost $99 per year. A 4G model will also be available for $349, for students without Wi-Fi at home, at an annual cost of $179. The device will come loaded with curriculum materials and apps, including a graphing calculator, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Merriam-Webster's dictionary. Some content will be provided by other News Corp. units such as HarperCollins.

The rumors you might've heard are true: Samsung's got a new 8-inch tablet, appropriately named the Galaxy Note 8.0, on the way. The new tablet will sit between the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note 2 smartphone and the 10.1-inch Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. It competes with Apple's 7.9-inch iPad Mini and Google's 7-inch Nexus 7.

Google has unveiled its first touchscreen-enabled laptop. The Chromebook Pixel runs Google's Chrome operating system and has been "largely built" by the web giant.

Dell Inc on Tuesday reported a 31 percent drop in profit, hurt by a shrinking consumer business, as investors weighed founder Michael Dell's offer to buy out the world's No.3 maker of personal computers.

Apple Inc was recently attacked by hackers who infected Macintosh computers of some employees, the company said Tuesday in an unprecedented disclosure describing the widest known cyber attacks targeting Apple computers used by corporations.

Dell's largest outside investor said it would vote against the proposed deal to take the company private.

Slumping personal computer maker Dell is bowing out of the stock market in a $24.4 billion buyout that represents the largest deal of its kind since the Great Recession dried…Click to Continue »

Microsoft Corp. is reportedly in discussions to help finance a buyout of struggling computer maker Dell Inc. According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a person familiar with the talks, Microsoft's investment "would likely be in the range of a couple of billion dollars." CNBC reported a range of $1 billion to $3 billion, citing sources close to the matter.