The missing WMD from Android PCs: full Chrome

I've been watching with great interest the recent surge in Android PCs we've been seeing at CES. Unlike Chromebooks, they are capable of running far more than Chrome, and unlike traditional Windows, you don't have to run Windows. ( pure shopping )

At the top of the balance sheet, of course, leaving out Windows means reducing the cost of goods sold for manufacturers, which drives the price of these machines down considerably to consumers and enterprise buyers. ( pure shopping )
Secondly, unlike iOS devices, Android devices are infinitely "moddable" and tweakable, which means they can be made to fit individual user and corporate needs far more easily than iOS devices (and much more like the Windows machines we're all so familiar with). ( pure shopping )
But there is one current -- and I believe temporary -- fatal flaw in Android PCs that, if remedied, could explode like a nuke over Redmond: full Chrome. ( pure shopping )

Windows and Android on one PC? Here's how AMD and Intel plan to do it

Intel didn't make a big deal of it at its CES press conference, but the chip giant announced that, with the help its OEM partners, the company will soon release PCs that run both Android and Windows 8.1 at the same time. They weren't  the only ones with dual operating systems. AMD announced that with its partner BlueStacks, it will bring the complete Android experience to Windows- based tablets, 2-in-1s, notebooks and desktops.

AMD, with BlueStacks, will let you run the full Android interface, on top of Windows 8.

With Intel, AMD, HP, Lenovo, and Asus all throwing their weight behind Android on the desktop, this isn't just a shot in the dark. Serious businesses believe that Android has a real role on the desktop. For that matter, Microsoft—of all companies!—seems to think people will want a dual-boot Android/Windows smartphone. ( pure shopping )

Android vs Windows: Now the battle for the desktop really begins

In an alternate universe, last week's CES was overflowing with Windows RT devices (and probably featured a keynote by a new Microsoft chief executive). (pure shopping)
Alas, for Microsoft at least, in this universe, at CES it was the year Android desktops began to gain momentum — shaping up to be the first genuine threat to Windows' dominance of the desktop. (pure shopping)
PC sales have been in decline for a number of years thanks to the rise of tablets and smartphones, most of which run Android.

How tech's giants lost the tablet and smartphone war, even if they don't know it yet

Next year (maybe even this year) more tablets will ship than PCs (325 million versus 268 million, according to Gartner) and smartphones will continue to dwarf both  — nearly two billion during 2014. And some 1.1 billion of those devices will be running Android, compared to 360 million Windows devices. (pure shopping)
So it's no surprise that PC makers, desperately searching for new ways to generate sales (Charles Arthur at The Guardian has done some nice work on the current pressure on PC vendor revenues) are  experimenting with Android. (pure shopping)

Australians turn away from contracts for new phones: Study

Australians turn away from contracts for new phones: Study

Australians are moving away from signing up for lengthy mobile contracts in order to get a new phone, according to research released by technology analyst firm Telsyte. (pure shopping)
The report, with research sourced from the financial reports of telcos and device companies, interviews with the industry, and an online survey with 1,018 respondents, found that 43 percent of Australians over the age of 16 received their smartphone as part of a contract with a mobile telco, compared to 57 percent in 2012.
The research found that 30 percent of Australians were buying their phone outright. The remaining 27 percent obtained their smartphone either through their work, as a gift, or as a hand-me-down. (pure shopping)

Middle-aged people using smileys make you want to throw up. But emoticons are here to stay :p 

 It’s getting hard to say anything genuine online any more. I sat at the keyboard for ten minutes yesterday trying to thank someone for their help without it looking like I was taking the p*ss. Properly punctuated, everything just looks angrily sarcastic or offhand.

That probably explains why emoticons (or “smileys” if you like, they both sound offensively cutesy) have conquered the world. I’m talking about colons followed by a closed parentheses which sometimes turn to actual cartoon, usually yellow, faces:

We use them to indicate we are being nice. If you don’t know what I mean then you’re probably unwittingly offending people every day.
Not long ago emoticons were just another bit of computer nerdery. Like “cookies” or “firewall settings”, you knew they existed but you never touched them. I was a teenager when these little yellow faces were popularised (the first digital one was in 1982 and in written form they go back to the 19th century, but they’ve spread thanks to instant messaging) and I couldn’t imagine any adult ever seriously using them. They belonged in gaming forums and emails between hopelessly wet teenyboppers.
More by Jack Rivlin:
•Pure shopping
Looks On Campus: Ellie – Colorado State University
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Surely, I predicted, by the time I reached full-time employment I would never see an emoticon again. In fact, the opposite has happened – as I’ve got older, they’ve got more and more common. Adults are the chief offenders. In email discussions about investment agreements and company valuations, you’ll see high-powered businessmen chucking in the winking face and, perhaps most sickeningly, the sticking-tongue-out-face :p in a bid to soften sentences.