This year’s Computex is expected to provide visitors the earliest opportunities in the world to put their hands on a variety of Windows 8 devices, an executive of the show’s co-organizer said yesterday.
“As Windows 8 works across a number of different platforms, visitors can expect to see a variety of Windows 8 devices at the upcoming Computex,” Taipei Computer Association (TCA, 台北市電腦公會) deputy secretary-general Chang Li (張笠) said on the sideline of a product award ceremony. “Visitors can also expect to see devices running the operating system’s preview version, such as tablets for medical, military and security purposes.”
Taiwanese information technology companies are good at making tablet and notebook PCs and that is where they have focused in developing Windows 8 devices, Chang said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
More than 10 brand vendors and original design manufacturers across platforms will debut their first Windows 8 devices at this year’s Computex, which is set to be held at the Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Halls 1 to 3 and the Taipei International Convention Center in Xinyi District (信義) as well as Nangang Exhibition Hall, from Tuesday through Saturday next week.
Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) plans to unveil a number of 10.1-inch tablet PCs running on the touch-enabled Windows 8 operating system at Computex, with a 1366x768 resolution, which is lower than what Asustek’s current premium lines use. This is because Microsoft has asked manufacturers to follow certain specifications when producing the first wave of Windows 8 tablets, according to the company.
Unlike in the past few years, British investment bank Barclays PLC expects this year’s expo to generate more excitement, as in 2007 when netbooks were first introduced.
“We will, for the first time, be able to see actual working PCs running on Windows 8 [preview version], in addition to various models of Ultrabooks running Intel Corp’s Ivy Bridge CPU,” Kirk Yang (楊應超), an analyst at Barclays in Hong Kong, wrote in a note.
TCA, the co-organizer of the annual trade show, yesterday hosted a pre-show conference that showcased winning products of the 11th Best Choice Award BC Award.
There were 425 product entries for this year’s BC Awards selection and 37 of them were recognized as winning products, with nine crowned the Golden Award. TCA said this year’s winning products feature thin-light, portable and mobile computing qualities.
The nine Golden Award winners include AAEON Technology’s (研揚科技) IP65 Rugged Tablet Computer, Asustek’s Transformer Pad TF700 series and PadFone, and Elan Microelectronics Corp’s (義隆電子) Smart-Touchscreen.
Asustek’s Transformer Pad TF700KL is the company’s second tablet computer supporting 4G wireless broadband communication. The tablet will hit stores in the US and Europe next month.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
Taiwan is attracting a growing number of foreign jobseekers as companies increasingly recruit overseas talent to ease labor shortages and expand global reach, recruitment platform 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said yesterday. More than 40,000 foreign nationals searched for jobs in Taiwan through the platform last year, a 28 percent increase from a year earlier, the company said. Malaysians accounted for the largest share of overseas jobseekers at 12.2 percent, followed by Indonesians at 11.9 percent and Vietnamese at 10.8 percent. Indonesian applicants surged more than 50 percent year-on-year, while Vietnamese jobseekers rose by more than 30 percent. Applicants from the
RSS