HP Launches New Touch-Enabled PCs, Notebooks And Signage

Palo Alto, California-headquartered Hewlett-Packard Development Company LLP has announced the launch of a set of new machines and devices that are touch-enabled.

In the PC segment, the company has launched three machines. TouchSmart 300 sports a 20” monitor and AMD Athlon II processor and costs USD 899. TouchSmart 600 comes with a 23” monitor and runs on Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and is available at USD 1,049. TouchSmart 9100 is tagged as a machine meant for businesses, comes with 23” widescreen display and Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and can be bought for USD 1,299.

In the notebook segment, HP has launched TouchSmart tx2, which comes with 12.1” WXGA (1,280X800) display and is touted as the world’s first notebook with touch-screen, runs on AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core processor, and has a price tag of USD 799.

In the signage segment, HP has come out with 4200tm, which has a 42” diagonal wide-aspect LCD Active Matrix display, 1,920X1,080 full HD native resolution, and can bought for USD 2,799.

All these products are scheduled to be available from November / December 2009.

Read about the latest launch of a slew of products in the touch-enabled domain by an IT leader, here.

Edit Photos On iPhone Using Photoshop From Adobe

San Jose, California-headquartered Adobe Systems Inc has introduced a new version of its software product Photoshop for the iPhone mobile.

iPhone users can now edit the images captured or downloaded by them on their mobiles, using Photoshop.com. The application can be downloaded free of cost from Apple’s App Store, and is called “Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone”.

The application allows iPhone users to edit their images using gesture-based editing. Essential functionalities such as cropping, rotating, flipping are seamlessly available in the software. Additionally, there are special effects possible such as transforming photos such that they look like drawings using the Sketch tool, giving a soft blur to the photos to impart them an artistic look. The color across the image can be adjusted to “saturate” or “tint” mode, besides converting images to black-and-white and back again. What’s more, users can always undo their experimentation, so that the original photo can be brought back.

Adobe offers its users a free account on Photoshop.com. iPhone customers can open an account on the website and use it to upload and store their images and build a library worth up to 2GB, which is roughly equivalent to 1,500 photos.

Read more about what more you can do using your iPhone device, here.

Samsung Introduces Secondary Displays For Notebooks

Seoul, Korea-headquartered Samsung Electronics Global has introduced a set of secondary display units target at Notebook users.

These display units are LCD monitors. Model LD220G is priced at USD 249.99 and has 1,920X1,080 resolution, while model LD190N is available for USD 149.99 and has  1,360X768 resolution. Also known as “Lapfit monitors”, these units are especially useful for small-screen users when they want to work on multiple screens simultaneously. The monitors provide 16:9 widescreen high definition format. In LD220G model, 1080p picture quality is available. There are inbuilt functions that allow settings such as brightness, backlight and color to be changed with ease.

While LD190N can be hooked to the notebook with a standard VGA cable, the LD220G can be also connected to the machine using USB. Samsung deploys its proprietary UbiSync technology that makes it possible to handle multiple monitors without having to install additional video cards or even to change system settings.

The display units weigh less than 10 pounds and come with an integrated kickstand that can be tilted from 10 to 40 degrees. The units have a thin profile that occupies minimal space on the desk, and which also makes them very portable.

Read more about the latest gizmo arriving in the notebook market, here.

Apple Clocks Most Profitable Quarter In Its History

Cupertino, California-headquartered Apple Inc has announced its Q4 2009 financial results, which incidentally has been its most profitable in the company’s history.

Apple has logged revenue of USD 9.87 billion, yielding a net profit of USD 1.67 billion for the quarter, which works out to USD 1.82 per diluted share. The gross margin has been 36.6%. These data compare quite well with the corresponding figures for Q4 2008.

The company has sold 3.05 million Macintosh computers in Q4 2009, which is a jump by 17% compared to the year-ago quarter. 10.2 million iPods and 7.4 million iPhones were sold across the world during the same quarter. While iPods registered a decline by 8% compared to Q4 2008, iPhone sales moved up by 7% over the year-ago quarter.

Coming on the heels of depressing results elsewhere in the industry, Apple’s performance has come as a relief. The management expects revenue for the next quarter – Q1 2010 – to touch USD 11.3 billion. Given its focus for creative and innovative product line-ups, it won’t be surprising to have the company unleash yet another game-changing product come next year, and add to its existing product portfolio.

Read more about the abundant profits coming Apple’s way, here.

IBM Announces Q3 2009 Results

A buoyant third quarter results were announced by IT big brother IBM Corporation, signaling that the worst of the economic crisis may finally be behind us.

Compared to Q3 2008, IBM has clocked an 18% increase in diluted earnings of USD 2.40 per share. The net income has jumped by 14% over Q3 2008 to touch USD 3.2 billion. However total revenue showed a decrease by 7% with a figure reaching just about USD 23.6 billion in comparison to Q3 2008.

Service contracts worth USD 11.8 billion were signed in Q3 2009, which is a decrease of 7% over the same period last year. Projects involving consulting and systems integration as well as integrated technology services touched USD 5.1 billion, which is again a drop from the previous year’s corresponding quarter by about 16%. Software sales too dropped by 3% to reach USD 5.1 billion. OS revenues managed to scrape past USD 520 million, which is again a decrease by about 12%.

A significant improvement was clocked in the sale of WebSphere family of software products, where a 14% jump has been reported in revenue.

The company ended Q3 2009 with a cash pile of USD 11.5 billion.

Read more about the business performance of a leading IT biggie, here.

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