Windows 7 will help users save on electricity bills, Microsoft Taiwan Corp (台灣微軟) said yesterday, with potential annual savings of NT$400,000 for a company with around 200 computers.
“Windows 7 RC [release candidate, the trial version currently available] contains most of the features that will be included in the final version of the OS [operating system], and has gone through extensive hardware and software testing with our vendors,” Jeff Liu (劉建宇), product marketing manager of Microsoft Taiwan’s Windows 7 Client Business Group, said at a briefing yesterday to announce the trial version’s launch.
By applying research conducted by British company PC pro Labs, “Windows 7 can save up to 11 percent in electricity bills compared with Windows Vista,” said Cathy Yeh (葉怡君), head of the company’s Windows 7 Business Group. “Taking as an example a company with 200 computers, this translates into NT$400,000 in savings annually.”
In addition to lower electricity bills, the new version offers safe upgrades without losing personal data and increased productivity in searches on the Internet and closed intranets, the company said.
Yeh said “businesses that rely heavily on ... e-commerce in order to service an extensive clientele” would benefit from switching to Windows 7, citing companies in the financial service, telecoms, public works, high-tech manufacturing, retail and import/export sectors as examples.
She said Windows 7 would allow average users to work without being in the office, corporations to be flexible and information technology personnel to respond quickly to critical situations.
After Windows Vista met with harsh criticism, Microsoft hopes its new OS version will attract corporate customers and private users alike to help it recover Vista losses and rebuild its image.
Market researcher International Data Corp (IDC) said that by 2011, global PC shipments were forecast to surpass 322 million units.
Notebooks will increase from this year’s 54 percent of the total PC market to 61 percent by 2011, Helen Chiang (江芳韻), IDC’s PC and peripherals research manager, said at the same press briefing.
With a wave of hardware renewals expected in the second half of this year, consumers demand stability, security, mobility, performance, after-sales service and, most importantly, reasonable prices, Chiang said, adding that Windows 7 offered the same security for individual users and corporations.
“What [should be] even more attractive to local corporations is that this new generation of operating system does not even require a hardware upgrade, which really caters to companies with tightened IT budgets in this environment,” Chiang 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