According to both IDC and Gartner, HP has retained their spot as the top seller of PC hardware, beating out Dell for the second quarter in a row. During the fourth quarter of 2006, HP sold more than 11 million PCs, compared to Dell’s 9.5 million. In terms of yearly totals, the two companies appeared to be tied, both having sold somewhere between 15.9 and 17 percent of the total number of PCs shipped worldwide (IDC and Gartner differ on these numbers). While Dell remains the top seller of …

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> Buying a computer that’s Vista-ready and future-proof to boot. Article
> Honda’s Asimo makes its North American debut. Video
> The NSA helped Microsoft with Vista’s security. …

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> File this under completely unnecessary but somehow still cool: a laptop-carrying messenger bag that streams MP3s and videos from your computer via Bluetooth or USB. Article
> Dell unveils a new brushed-aluminum look for their flat-panel LCDs. Sound familiar? …

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It was a big year for HP in the news. Now, granted, most of that news was bad, centering on the HP spying debacle that incriminated the company’s board of directors. Yet, somehow, HP marched on, taking down Dell to become the world’s largest PC retailer, making a series of high-profile acquisitions and …

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> Skype 3.0 is now available. Article
> Check out ZDnet‘s year in tech photos. Photos
> Dell’s CFO will step down in January. Article
> The dawn of 2007 may mark a turning point for Linux. …

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Strapped for cash but longing for more monitor real estate? Listen pal, I know how you feel. I’ve long lusted after Apple’s elegant 30″ beast but unfortunately, my multi-million dollar contract with DailyTechRag won’t quite cover the bill. There are other options, however, and as LCD display prices continue to plummet, some manufacturers are passing on those savings to consumers. Dell, whose UltraSharp displays have been garnering great reviews, just revealed a new 22-inch, …

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It’s not often that a standards body moves quickly on anything, so when one does, you had better take notice. Spurred, no doubt, by a summer full of exploding laptop batteries, the IEEE has decided to accelerate the schedule for its Standard for Rechargeable Batteries for Portable Computing. The group working on the standard met for the first time last month and announced that a new standard …

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These days, it’s hard to imagine a time when Microsoft and Apple didn’t get along in some sense. You’ve got Microsoft Office running natively on OS X and iTunes running on Windows—heck, you can even boot Windows XP on a Mac with both Microsoft’s and Apple’s blessings. It’s hard to imagine that there ever was a time when Microsoft and Apple were entrenched in a bitter war, for both mindshare and marketshare. The copyright infringement lawsuit, the near demise of Apple, the truly Orwellian image of Bill Gates on the big screen at MacWorld Boston in 1997—they all seem like distant memories. However, I was reminded by the excitement surrounding a Dell vs. Mac pricing story last week that some old rivalries never die. To that end, let’s relive some of the highs and lows of the Apple vs. Microsoft war, shall we? Read more…

AMD must really be hurting right now. Not only did Intel successfully launch a quad-core product (what’s in a name?) first, but AMD’s long-awaited 4×4 platform got whipped by Intel’s dual-core Kentsfield in benchmarks. And now this: Intel has announced that they’ll drop yet another quad-core part …

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It’s no secret: energy efficiency has become a top priority in the server room. Whether you’re trying to save the planet or just trying to shave costs from the bottom line, power efficiency is an important issue. In recent months, we’ve seen vendors scrambling to make the data center more efficient; marketing everything from …

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