It hasn’t been a good week for Microsoft’s updates to Office . Today, Microsoft came clean on some problems with a recently released seven-patch update for Excel. Apparently, users are seeing Chinese where they’d normally expect to see English. This comes on top of an early faux pas in an update for Office 2007 that caused it to crash under certain circumstances
For the full story, go to Maximum PC
Nobody really talks a whole lot about Nokia anymore, not with sexy smartphones like the Motorola Droid and Google’s Nexus One stealing all the spotlight. Part of the problem is that Symbian, even though it dominates the market, hasn’t kept pace with other OSes. Look for that to change with Symbian 3. According to Nokia, “it is about renewal” with the upcoming OS and the new phones that will be built around it. Symbian 3 should be “functionally complete” by the end of Q1.
For the full story, go to Maximum PC
The filthy rich have a new poster boy. According to the latest Forbes World’s Billionaires list , Mexican telecom magnet Carlos Slim Helu is the richest man alive , with his $53.5 billion fortune proving just about enough to win him the top spot ahead of Bill Gates. Gates may have spent a substantial part of his life atop the list but this year he missed the top spot by a whisker with an estimated worth of $53 billion.
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Microsoft might well be right–the Internet does go “bing”! comScore’s reporting that Microsoft’s Bing search engine saw a jump in use in February . More a lower-case “b” jump than a capital “B” jump, but a jump nonetheless. comScore’s Core Search Report for February shows Goggle by far in the lead of search providers with 65.5 percent of all search queries, edging up slightly from its January total of 65.4 percent. Yahoo! was in second place with 16.8 percent of all search queries, down from 17.0 percent. Number three Bing was still number three with 11.5 percent of all searches, which was 0.2 points higher than in January.
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Connecting people to what they want (or alternately helping people more easily spend their money), just got a bit easier with Google’s new “in stock” notifications . The process is simple. If you do a search for a product that is sold by participating retailers, and one of those retailers is nearby, and has that item in stock, the search results will be displayed with a blue dot. With “My Location” enabled, you’ll even know how far you have to drive to acquire your coveted item.
For the full story, go to Maximum PC
See what you can accomplish if you whine about something enough? Even the mighty Apple, which lords it above consumers with it’s ‘my way or the highway’ software approach, will capitulate and give the customer what he wants: the iPhone is getting multitasking . Not right away, mind you. And, if the sources AppleInsider uses are not as reliable as they claim, maybe not at all. But, should it come to fruition, it will be in version 4.0 of the iPhone OS, for which there is no projected release date
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We’re not the least bit surprised that OCZ has come out with yet another solid state drive (SSD), but here’s something you probably weren’t expecting: It costs less than $100. OCZ’s new Onyx SATA II 2.5-inch SSD series looks to tackle the mainstream market by putting more focus on price than it does with raw performance or high capacity. Available initially only in 32GB form, the Onxy drive offers up to 125MB/s read and up to 70MB/s write speeds, so it’s not going to knock out the competition. But it will make a solid argument for a netbook or boot drive.
For the full story, go to Maximum PC
During CeBIT, Mushkin was spotted showing off a new line of memory modules. Dubbed “Ridgeback,” the upcoming memory kits will sport a redesigned heastpreader with ridges along the back (imagine that). News and rumor site Fudzilla says the Ridgeback heatsink will be available in gaming and enthusiast grade memory kits in both DDR3 and DDR2 trim. These will include: 4GB DDR3-1600, 6-8-6-24, 1.65V 6GB DDR3-1600, 6-8-6-24, 1.65V 6GB DDR3-1600, 8-8-8-24, 1.65V 4GB DDR2-1066, 5-5-5-15, 2.1V Mushkin didn’t say when it plans to bring these kits to market or what they will cost, but given the specs, we suspect these will trend towards the higher end
For the full story, go to Maximum PC
Google CEO Eric Schmidt has hinted that the company’s negotiations with the Chinese government may be drawing to a close. The parleys began in January after the search engine giant announced it was no longer willing to censor its search results in China. Eric Schmidt told reporters at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that “something will happen soon.” However, Google has chosen to remain mum until it concludes negotiations with the Chinese. Schmidt also revealed that the company is working alone on resolving this issue and hasn’t “coordinated with the U.S.
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ARM is looking at the future of tablet PCs, and is liking what it sees. ARM is expecting over 50 tablet PCs, a goodly number of which will be running on ARM chips, to be launched globally in 2010 , thanks in part to the interest stirred up by the introduction of Apple’s iPad. Says Roy Chen, ARM’s manager for worldwide mobile computing: “The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers. You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter.” A lot of this activity, Chen says, will take place in China, and he expects there’ll be products offered by the top ten telecommunications network operators.
For the full story, go to Maximum PC
