Smartphone use may make you wussy, says Harvard study

Your reputation as a tough, hard-nosed business go-getter may take a hit if you spend a lot of time using your little smartphone. A study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School suggests that using devices with small screens can cause people to behave less assertively than those using larger screens.

"Grounded in research showing that adopting expansive body postures increases psychological power, we hypothesized that working on larger devices, which forces people to physically expand, causes users to behave more assertively," reads the abstract of the paper, titled "iPosture: The Size of Electronic Consumer Devices Affects Our Behavior."… Read more

Samsung goes big with Windows 8-powered Ativ line

The Ativ name may be silly, but Samsung Electronics is betting heavily on it as the namesake for anything related to Windows.

In a showcase Thursday that featured a slew of products, Samsung's Ativ line played a central role. Ativ has become the umbrella brand that includes laptops, tablets, all-in-ones, and smartphones, and some of the devices were on display.

Samsung is hoping history repeats itself with Ativ. It previously poured its resources into developing the Galaxy brand for anything associated with Android, and its flagship Galaxy S line of smartphones is a smash hit, with the Galaxy name … Read more

Steve Jobs expected to be forgotten by history

In 1994, while at Next, Steve Jobs gave a 20-minute interview to the Silicon Valley Historical Association (SVHA) in which he spoke about his legacy. Interestingly, at that point, he expected that he and his accomplishments would be more or less forgotten within a few decades.

A clip from that interview has just been posted to YouTube for the first time this week to help promote the SVHA's 60-minute documentary on Jobs, "Steve Jobs: Visionary Entrepreneur."

"All the work that I've done in my life will be obsolete by the time I'm 50," … Read more

Hilarious mockups of Apple's new Mac Pro

Apple's new Mac Pro features a striking and quite innovative design -- instead of multiple heat sinks, there's a shared thermal core in the center that helps cool the CPU and twin GPUs at the same time.

As the fan is located right at the top of the thermal core, the Mac Pro features a large hole in its circular frame that's quite unheard of, especially when compared with your normal PC cases.

The unique design has prompted amusing comparisons to trash cans and Darth Vader, and spurred the creative Photoshopping crowd from around the world to innovate further on Apple's new machine. Click on our gallery for some of the funniest mockups we've seen. … Read more

Apple's new Mac Pro looks like Darth Vader: Yea or nay?

With its six Thunderbolt ports and a "unified thermal core," Apple's new Mac Pro doesn't just sound like a futuristic piece of alien machinery, it also looks like something out of science fiction.

Far from the boxy designs of early personal computers, the new Mac Pro is compact, sleek, and nearly edgeless. The resemblance of the Mac Pro, which is aimed squarely at creative pros, to a tiny nuclear reactor is in part due to that heat sucking "thermal core" design. Heat generated from the Intel Xeon CPU and new solid-state drive (SSD) storage dissipates out through the core as the hot air rises -- a change from the typical front-to-back system of air flow in most consumer desktops.… Read more

Apple unveils new MacBook Air, gives Mac Pro sneak peek

Apple on Monday updated some models of its PC line with faster processors and improved battery life.

During a keynote address at the company's developers conference, Phil Schiller, Apple's head of marketing, unveiled a couple of new versions of the MacBook Air laptop and also gave developers a sneak peek of an updated Mac Pro desktop PC.

The new MacBook Air models are available Monday and start at $999. They include Intel's fourth-generation Core processor, dubbed Haswell, as well as a faster Wi-Fi known was 802.11ac.

Battery life is an area with significant improvement. The 11-inch … Read more

Get a refurbished Gateway all-in-one system for $249.99

I've always had a (some would say strange) fondness for all-in-one PCs. Though they're sometimes underpowered and frequently difficult to repair or upgrade, they afford the luxuries of a desktop (big screen, roomy keyboard, and so on) without the space-hogging, wire-splaying hassles of a separate case.

Today only, and while supplies last, Geeks.com has the refurbished Gateway One ZX4250G-UW308 all-in-one desktop for $249.99 shipped. That's one of the lowest prices I've ever seen for an all-in-one; Fry's sells it new for literally twice the price.

Update: Rats. It's already sold out.

This … Read more

The entire history of Windows in one video

Windows has come a long way over the decades from the now antiquated-looking boxes of Windows 1.0 to the layers upon layers of desktops, start screens, charms, tiles, and whatever that bar on the left is in Windows 8.

Now, you can spend a little over an hour watching the entire evolution of Windows unfold in the video below. For some reason, someone spent what looks to be a few hours (the video seems to have been sped up) upgrading Windows using a virtual machine all the way from Windows 1.0 to the latest Windows 8 Pro.

… Read more

Acer's new Haswell PCs include S3 and S7 ultrabooks, 8-inch Iconia W3 tablet, and new Z3, V7, and V3

(Updated 11 pm PT June 3 with additional PCs and Intel processor specs)

The time has come for PC manufacturers to start unveiling new hardware in association with Intel's forthcoming fourth-gen Core i-series "Haswell" processors, and some are doing it earlier than others.

Acer, recently busy with its "Star Trek"-inspired Aspire R7 unveiling, has announced even more PC products: a new 8-inch Windows 8 tablet, a second slim S3 ultrabook to accompany the also-updated S7, and a refreshed Aspire Z3 all-in-one desktop PC. Some of them feature Intel's newest fourth-gen "Haswell" … Read more