Why ink a $40M contract as SGI collapsed?
By February, Silicon Graphics was in deep trouble. It was shedding employees and continuing to loose money -- yet it announced that it had just signed a $40 million deal with the U.S. Department of Defense. Read more...

Google's CEO predicts strong year for Android

Intel rivals gang up to make mobile chips

Full disk encryption comes to SSDs for mobile devices, laptops

NASA: Kepler begins search for other Earths

Mac U.S. sales fall year to year for first time since '03

Cisco reveals aggressive pricing for blade server system

Dell, HP launch netbooks for China's 3G standard

ING examines cloud computing, but finds licensing a problem

Report: Sun still open to an IBM bid

More Hardware Stories

First Look: Tweetie for Mac
Now that all manner of Twitter clients have perched on the iPhone's software branches, the Mac desktop market is exploding with applications for the social networking service. Tweetie is a new OS X Twitter client from atebits (makers of the iPhone app of the same name) that's due to be released this coming Monday. But why wait until then? We have a first look for you now.

Sharing USB devices easily
The scoop: Four-port USB Net ShareStation (model GUIP204), by Iogear, about $85.

Working with Places
Until recently, if you wanted to search your image library for a specific photo, you had to scan your library manually, remember the date you took the photo, or spend a lot of time up front tagging your photos with relevant keywords and titles. But thanks to iPhoto '09 Macworld rated 4 out of 5 mice , you can now also search by where you were when you snapped the shutter. The Places feature takes advantage of geodata--longitude and latitude coordinates embedded in a photo's metadata. Once iPhoto knows where your photos originated, you can use the information to quickly track down shots from a specific locale or show off your travels to friends.

Used IT gear: Good stuff cheap -- just not always
Used-tech gear can cost half of what new equipment sells for. But IT shops need to be careful about technology obsolescence, warranties, lack of documentation and the ability to get replacement parts.

Opinion: Microsoft ads continue to defy logic
There is a big difference between the price of purchasing a computer and the cost of owning one. That's a distinction that Microsoft carefully dodges in its latest round of commercials, but I don't think Microsoft is fooling many people.

I Love Stars 3.0
I try to rate all my iTunes music, mainly because ratings are useful for creating Smart Playlists. But it can be a hassle to rate tracks if I'm doing other things while listening. A few great iTunes add-ons--for example, CoverSutra and Synergy--let me rate tracks using keyboard shortcuts or pop-up displays, but I find that even these solutions aren't visible enough to remind me to rate each track.

Hands on with Honda's motion devices
I have not only seen the future, I have worn it.

Improving local storage capacity and flexibility
I said it years ago, but it's even more true today: you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much data storage. Now that you can buy hard drives holding a terabyte of data (1,000 gigabytes) for a little over US$100, you might think storage isn't a problem anymore. But upgrading storage across various desktops and laptops isn't really data storage, it's just data scattered. Organized storage takes some planning, so let's talk about three new products that will help you intelligently increase local storage capacity.

Living on Air: A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac
After living with Linux for two weeks, Windows expert Preston Gralla did the same with Apple's MacBook Air. Now that he's tried a Mac, will he ever go back?

Will the Nettop Kill the Traditional Desktop?
Sales of desktop PCs have been declining for some time now. In fact, notebooks now outsell their deskbound brethren worldwide. This trend isn't surprising, given the convenience, portability and growing affordability of portable PCs. Add to that the rapid ascension of the netbook, with its even smaller dimensions and prices, and shoppers are finding fewer reasons to purchase a bulky desktop unless they crave the ultimate in speed and storage.

Editors' Picks

Linux, Mac, Windows XP: Whatever your choice of operating system, we have some fun things for you to try. The operating systems of yesteryear weren't all sunshine and roses. Cyber cynic Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols names his picks for some of the worst OSs of all time. Apple's newest Mac Pro takes a significant step forward with the move to Intel's new Nehalem processor and an infrastructure that should be able to squeeze the utmost out of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6. Satellite radio will die soon anyway, but Apple will accidentally perform a mercy killing of Sirius XM Radio this summer, says Mike Elgan.

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Get Into Gear! Check out our new personal technology section -- TechGear -- for the latest on those cool gadgets that you just gotta have! Host Mike Elgan provides hands-on reviews and analysis of the stuff that makes IT fun. Head to TechGear