Computer vendors are offering competitive Vista upgrade packages during the ongoing IT Month exposition in Taipei, hoping to boost sales ahead of the official worldwide launch of Microsoft Corp's new operating system.
"We are concerned that consumers may adopt a wait-and-see attitude ... and that could affect computer sales at the annual expo," said Benjamin Ou (
As the long-awaited Vista operating system will be launched worldwide on Jan. 30, Ou said consumers might choose to hold their purse strings for now, and opt to buy a newer machine next year.
Microsoft announced on Oct. 26 that it is offering users who buy a PC running the latest operating systems -- including Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) -- to be eligible for a free upgrade to Vista until March 15.
But users will still need to pay a minimal shipping and handling fee to various computer brands in order to receive the Vista upgrade CD next year.
Consumers who buy HP's laptops running on MCE or XP Pro will have to pay a handling fee of NT$450 (US$14) to receive a Vista CD, Ou said.
Those who purchase PCs from Acer Inc or notebook computers from Asustek Computer Inc (
For those considering a purchase, the Consumers' Foundation (
"Promotions come in handy at the exposition and consumers are advised to shop smart by comparing their budget and needs and the product prices before splurging," it said last Friday.
They should make sure which operating systems the PCs they buy are running on, and how much they have to pay to upgrade to Vista, it said.
"I could always upgrade to Vista later and the charges are only a couple of hundred dollars," Kurt Hsu (
He brought home two Acer special-edition laptops tailor-made for fans of New York Yankees pitcher Wang Chien-ming (王建民).
But to Cindy Chen (
The 35-year-old tour guide still finds her Apple Computer Inc's PowerBook laptop, which she bought three years ago for over NT$120,000, is working just fine.
"I love to edit videos and images on my PowerBook, and I enjoy the high stability of the Macintosh operating system. I am not switching to Windows OS now," she said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained