Windows laptop sales sink -- but that's just part of the problem

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Will businesses and consumers spring for a Windows 8 hybrid priced at $849 that's powered by a relatively pokey Atom processor?

Will businesses and consumers spring for a Windows 8 hybrid priced at $849 that's powered by a relatively pokey Atom processor?



(Credit:
Hewlett-Packard)


Windows 8 PC sales aren't trending well, according to a new report. And consumers' addiction to low cost may be a factor.


A blurb on Friday from the NPD Group said
Windows 8 holiday sales continue to not impress.


"The launch of Windows 8...did little to boost holiday sales or improve the yearlong Windows notebook sales decline," NPD said.


More specifically, Windows laptop "holiday unit sales" were down 11 percent year-to-year, the market researcher said.


Want more deets? The average selling price of a Windows laptop rose a hair -- $2 to $420, according to NPD.



Meanwhile, the average selling price of a MacBook rose almost $100 to $1,419 on a sales drop of 6 percent.


Upshot: Both Windows lappies and MacBooks saw sales decrease, but Apple made a $100 average selling price gain versus a couple of bucks for Windows.


Maybe a bigger part of the Windows sales problem is that the mix of systems has changed compared with the glory days of
Windows 7.


That is, Windows 7 was accompanied by a crush of ultracheap netbooks, according to an analysis at the Supersite for Windows -- which had some harsh words for netbooks.


"Many of those 20 million Windows 7 licenses each month -- too many, I think -- went to machines that are basically throwaway, plastic crap. Netbooks didn't just rejuvenate the market just as Windows 7 appeared, they also destroyed it from within," Paul Thurrott wrote.


"Now consumers expect to pay next to nothing for a Windows PC. Most of them simply refuse to pay for more expensive Windows PCs."


And, by the way, shipments of systems powered by Intel's power-efficient-yet-lower-performance Atom chip -- the same class of processors used in netbooks -- are barely a trickle at this point. And to make matters worse, some, like the $849
HP Envy x2, are priced way above the $399 netbooks of holiday seasons past.

There is a counterpoint to the NPD report, however. Analysts have told CNET that demand for touch-screen Windows 8 PCs in the U.S. is strong. Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, told CNET last month that some vendors can't keep touch-screen PCs on the shelf.

So, if supply of touch-screen displays eases and system prices drop a bit, that could drive more sales. And prove to be an advantage over Apple, which doesn't have any touch-screen MacBooks.


At $749, Samsung's Intel Atom chip-based ATIV Smart PC is about $300 more than a Windows 7 Netbook.

At $749, Samsung's Intel Atom chip-based ATIV Smart PC is about $300 more than a Windows 7 Netbook.



(Credit:
Samsung)

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Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners

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City Answers Gang-Rape Cover-Up Allegations

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As Steubenville, Ohio, prepares for the high-profile rape trial of two high school football players, officials, battling allegations of a cover-up, announced the creation of a new website today to debunk rumors and create what they said would be a transparent resource for the community.


"This site is not designed to be a forum for how the Juvenile Court ought to rule in this matter," the website, called Steubenville Facts, said.


A timeline of the case, beginning with the alleged gang rape of a 16-year-old girl at a party on Aug. 11-12, 2012, is posted on the site. Summaries of Ohio law relating to the case and facts about the local police force including statistics on how many graduated from Steubenville schools, is included.


The case gained national attention last week when hacking collective Anonymous leaked a video of Steubenville high school athletes mocking the 16-year-old female victim and making crude references to the alleged rape.






Steubenville Herald-Star, Michael D. McElwain/AP Photo







"It's disgusting, and I've had people calling, numerous people call here, upset, they have seen it, one woman, two women were crying, because of what they witnessed," Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said. "It really is disgusting to watch that video."


Anonymous has called for more arrests, however Steubenville Police have said their hands are tied.


"Steubenville Police investigators are caring humans who recoil and are repulsed by many of the things they observe during an investigation," the website said, addressing the video. "Like detectives in every part of America and the world, they are often frustrated when they emotionally want to hold people accountable for certain detestable behavior but realize that there is no statute that allows a criminal charge to be made."


Occupy Steubenville, a grassroots group, estimated 1,300 people attended a rally today outside the Jefferson County Courthouse, where rape victims and their loved ones gathered to share their stories.


The father of a teenage rape victim was met with applause when he shared his outrage.


"I've tried to show my girl that not all men are like this, but only a despicable few," he said. "And their mothers that ignore the truth that they gave birth to a monster."


Authorities investigated the case and charged two Steubenville high school athletes on Aug. 22, 2012.


The teenagers face trial on Feb. 13, 2013 in juvenile court before a visiting judge.


Attorneys for the boys have denied charges in court.



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Graphic in-car crash warnings to slow speeding drivers

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Paul Marks, chief technology correspondent


142093734.jpg

(Image: Cityscape/a.collection/Getty)


"You would die if you crashed right now." Would such a warning make you take your foot off the accelerator? That's the idea behind a scheme to warn drivers of the consequences of speeding developed by engineers at Japan's Fukuoka Institute of Technology and heavy goods vehicle maker UD Trucks, also in Japan. They are developing what they call a "safe driving promotion system" that warns drivers what kind of crash could ensue if they don't slow down.






Their patent-pending system uses the battery of radar, ultrasound sonar and laser sensors found in modern cars and trucks to work out the current kinetic energy of a vehicle. It also checks out the distance to the vehicle in front and keeps watch on its brake lights, too. An onboard app that has learned the driver's reaction time over all their previous trips then computes the likelihood of collision - and if the driver's speed is risky, it displays the scale of damage that could result.


The warning that flashes up could vary from something like a potential whiplash injury due to a rear-end shunt to a fatal, car-crushing collision with fire. The inventors hope this kind of in-car advice will promote safety more forcefully than current warning systems, which merely display the distance to the vehicle in front. "A sense of danger will be awakened in the driver that makes them voluntarily refrain from dangerous driving," they predict.




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Singapore, Turkey reaffirm excellent bilateral ties

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ANKARA: The foreign ministers of Singapore and Turkey reaffirmed the excellent state of relations between their countries during talks in the Turkish capital, Ankara on January 4.

Singapore's Foreign Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam and his Turkish counterpart, Professor Ahmet Davutoglu, also discussed ways to further broaden and deepen bilateral cooperation.

In particular, they looked forward to enhancing trade and investment flows, as well as more high-level exchanges, between their countries.

Mr Shanmugam welcomed Turkey's interest to step up its engagement of ASEAN.

Mr Shanmugam, who is on an official visit to Turkey from January 3 to 5, also welcomed the opening of Singapore's embassy in Ankara.

- CNA/fa



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Library of Congress digs in to full archive of 170 billion tweets

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The U.S. Library of Congress said today that it has completed a process of collecting a full, ongoing stream of tweets, and that it has begun work to archive and organize more than 170 billion tweets.




Under an agreement struck between the government institution and Twitter in 2010, the microblogging company is providing the Library of Congress with a full stream of all public tweets, starting with 21 billion generated from between 2006 and April 2010, and now supplemented with about 150 billion more posted since then.


In an announcement about the status of the project today, the library wrote that:


Twitter is a new kind of collection for the Library of Congress but an important one to its mission. As society turns to social media as a primary method of communication and creative expression, social media is supplementing, and in some cases supplanting, letters, journals, serial publications, and other sources routinely collected by research libraries.


Though the Library has been building and stabilizing the archive and has not yet offered researchers access, we have nevertheless received approximately 400 inquiries from researchers all over the world. Some broad topics of interest expressed by researchers run from patterns in the rise of citizen journalism and elected officials' communications to tracking vaccination rates and predicting stock market activity.


The Library of Congress isn't entirely clear how the ongoing archive will be utilized, but it has issued a white paper (PDF) outlining the project.


This project, of course, is different than Twitter's recently announced initiative to make every user's full tweet history available to them. That effort is under way, though only some users have been given access to date.


Interestingly, the Library of Congress reported in the white paper that its two full copies of the entire archive of 170 billion tweets comprise about 133 Terabytes of data. Each tweet, the library wrote, contains about 50 accompanying metadata fields.


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Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners

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Pilot Suspected of Being Drunk Stopped From Flying

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An American Eagle pilot who was preparing to fly from Minneapolis to New York City was arrested today after failing a breathalyzer test.


Kolbjorn Jarle Kristiansen, 48, of Hollow Lane, N.C., was taken into custody by police at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, according to an arrest report.


Officers and a TSA agent smelled alcohol on Kristiansen as they passed him waiting to enter an elevator, the report said.


Airport police were notified and started an investigation. In the mean time, the pilot went to the plane and started his pre-flight checks before his scheduled flight from Minneapolis to New York's La Guardia airport.


Kristiansen completed his checks and was exiting the plane when officers took him into custody and administered a breathalyzer test, which authorities said the pilot failed.






Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Police Dept.











Pilot Arrested After Failing Breathalyzer Test Watch Video









Suspected Drunk Pilot Not Allowed to Board Plane Watch Video







Pilot Fatigue: 'Crash Pads' Threaten Safety of Airline Passengers


A blood draw was completed at a local hospital, said Patrick Hogan, spokesperson for Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. The pilot's BAC wasn't released by authorities.


In Minnesota, the legal BAC limit for pilots is .04 -- much lower than the limit for drivers of .08.


Hogan said he had not heard any reports of people witnessing Kristiansen drinking alcohol.


He was released to airline personnel on own recognizance at 10:29 a.m., the arrest report said. It was not yet known whether Kristiansen had a lawyer.


The flight was delayed by two and a half hours while a replacement pilot was located.


American Eagle said it has a "well-established substance abuse policy that is designed to put the safety of our customers and employees first."


"We are cooperating with authorities and conducting a full internal investigation. The pilot will be withheld from service pending the outcome of the investigation," the airline said in a statement.


ABC News' Candace Smith contributed to this report



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Unique meteorite hints Mars stayed moist for longer

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A scorched rock bought in Morocco turned out to be a diamond in the rough. The unusual meteorite may be the first sample of the Red Planet's crust ever to hit Earth, and it suggests that Mars held on to its water for longer than we thought.












The meteorite, dubbed Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, is strikingly different from the 111 previously discovered Martian meteorites. "You could look at meteorites for the rest of your life and not find another one like this," says Carl Agee of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who was part of a team that has recently analysed NWA 7034. "This is in its own new group."













The most distinctive difference is its mineral content. Previously found meteorites had unearthly oxygen isotopes that marked them as being from another planet, and their volcanic origin made Mars the most likely culprit. But compared to these meteorites, surface rocks studied by Martian rovers and orbiters are much richer in light metals such as potassium and sodium. This suggests the known meteorites came from deeper inside the Red Planet.












"We're watching data coming back from Mars, and everything that comes back doesn't look like the Martian meteorites we have in our collections," says Munir Humayun of Florida State University in Tallahassee, who was not involved in the new study. "That's kind of a bummer."











By contrast, NWA 7034's chemistry closely resembles the rock and soil studied by NASA's Spirit rover. Preliminary measurements from the Curiosity rover, which landed in August 2012, suggest its landing site also has a similar composition.












Drying era













"Finally, it looks as if we have a sample that is very similar to the rocks that the rovers are seeing," Agee says. What's more, the Moroccan meteorite may come from a period in Mars' history when the planet was drying out.











Mars is thought to have once been much warmer, wetter and more hospitable to life. Then it morphed into the dry, cold desert we see today. The oldest known Mars meteorite, called the Allan Hills meteorite, is 4.5 billion years old. The other 110 meteorites are much younger – 1.5 billion years old at most – and formed after Mars is thought to have lost its water.













NWA 7034 is 2.1 billion years old, making it the first meteorite that may hail from the transitional era. Intriguingly, it has as much as 30 times more water than previous meteorites locked up in its minerals. "It opens our mind to the possibility that climate change on Mars was more gradual," Agee says. "Maybe it didn't lose its water early on."











Hot deal













The 319.8-gram rock found its way to Agee's lab via an amateur collector named Jay Piatek. He bought it for what turned out to be a knock-down price from a Moroccan meteorite dealer, who recognised its scorched exterior as a sign that it fell from space. "It didn't look like a Martian meteorite, so it didn't have the Martian meteorite value at the time," Agee says, adding that Mars rock can go for $500 to $1000 per gram.












Piatek brought the rock to Agee's lab to find out what it was. "Honestly, I had never seen anything like it. I was baffled, initially," Agee says. "Now, about a year and a half after the first time I set eyes on this thing, we are convinced that it is Martian, a new type, and has important implications for understanding the history of Mars."












Humayun says the results so far are exciting, and that the rock's carbon content could also yield valuable insights once other researchers get their hands on it.












"What's the most exciting thing you would want to do with a rock that comes from the near surface of Mars, especially one that seems to be loaded with water?" he asks. "I would say, what about life?" Agee and colleagues found organic matter in the meteorite, he says, but it will take more work to determine whether it was of Martian or terrestrial origin.












If it's Martian, "that would spark a lot of excitement", he says.












Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1228858


















































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1,684 COEs available for first open bidding exercise in Jan

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SINGAPORE: Details for January's first open bidding exercise for Certificates of Entitlement (COE) have been released.

The total quota available for this tender is 1,684.

There will be 410 COEs for Cat A (small cars), 363 for Cat B (big cars) and 462 for Cat D (motorcycles).

For Cat E (open), 256 COEs will be available, while Cat C (goods vehicles and buses) will have 193 COEs.

The tender opens on January 7 at noon and closes at 4pm on January 9.

-CNA/ac



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