Computers, Operating System | featured news

IDC says PC global shipments of PCs fell 14 percent in the first three months this year, the sharpest plunge seen since the research firm started tracking the industry in 1994....

Sales of computers and tablets running Microsoft’s new operating system have been slow this holiday season, underscoring the challenges to the PC business.

Apple's got a new big cat on the prowl. Its name is Mountain Lion, and it's the next major release of Mac OS X. The software is being released as a preview to Apple developers today, with a commercial release to follow sometime this summer through the company's Mac App Store. Like Lion before it, Apple has imbued the new software with many of the top-billed features from the iPhone and iPad, all with the intent of making its computers more useful and approachable to the millions that have snatched up an iOS device in recent years. It's also a direct response to recently-added features on those devices that--for better or worse--make the Mac a less essential piece of the puzzle.

Android developers have released a version of 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich that can run on chips found in most personal computers, from netbooks and laptops to desktop towers.

Given the lack of an optical drive all of Apple's new MacBook Air and Mac mini models, the company has included a new "Internet Recovery" feature in its new operating system to reinstall Lion or initiate repairs on the latest Macs.

Whether you're a die-hard Windows fan or simply a Mac user required to occasionally use Windows, it's hard to argue against the fact that Mac OS X has some killer features. Here's how to get the best of them on Windows.

A tablet-optimized, Windows OS could be ready to see the light of day as early as next week, according to recent market chatter and media reports. The new operating system follows a smart move in January to ditch the older, problematic Wintel legacy and focus on new versions of Windows for the System on a Chip (SoC) architecture, many times more suitable for tablet devices, according to Sandeep Aggarwal at Caris. Trade The News goes so far as to report that these new products are being optimized to work on NVIDIA chips.

Mike Cleron, a Google software engineer for the Android operating system, made an ambitious pronouncement onstage at the company's annual conference last week.

Macintosh, Windows, or Google? Search engine giant Google finally unveiled the first "Chromebook" notebooks at the Google I/O conference on Wednesday, laptop computers from manufacturing giants Samsung and Acer that use Google's Chrome operating system and will go on sale in June.

Tablet operating system is set to make its debut on Motorola Mobility's Xoom.