Computer Services News: HP has decided to move into a different direction, causing quite a stir in the technology community. HP announced last week that they are ending their development of WebOS, a phone/tablet OS developed by Palm, who HP had acquired last year. This was a shock as HP had put a lot of emphasis that this was the software they were going to use going forward; even going as far as saying it would be on all their PCs, laptops, and printers. But with extremely lackluster sales and having lost the market share that Palm had built before the acquisition due to long development times, HP had decided to axe the entire operation. It was rumored that Best Buy had sold only about 20,000 of the 270,000 tablet PCs they had originally bought, and wanted to return the rest, after these reports had surfaced it seems HP decided to stop supporting the platform and said little about its future, besides saying they were open to the idea of licensing the OS to other companies if interested.
A new yearlong study conducted by WDS, has found that Android devices are more likely to develop hardware problems than other brands of smartphones. This hasn’t been a huge surprise as Android has made a name for itself by bringing affordable smartphones to the masses on each network. Being Android is an open platform and is free to use by anyone, it is the ideal OS for lesser known cell phone manufactures who are want to release their first entry level phone. The unfortunate part of this is that these no name phones are bringing down the overall quality rating for android, which is something RIM and Apple can control as they develop their own hardware. The study does note that name brand Android phones, like HTC, Samsung, or Motorola, have much less returns due to hardware failure.
Hate having to sit down at someone’s PC just to find that they don’t have a common program you need in order to finish the job. PortableApps has you covered by allowing you to download and install a wide array of common programs onto a flash drive. PortableApps has a large library of preconfigured applications ready for install that can be taken anywhere with you. All you have to do is download the installer and choose any of the apps that have already been configured; this then installs them onto any flash drive you want and al the files are configured to work without needing any files from the Windows OS. Meaning that any app you use from the flash drive will run without needing to first install it on the computer your using, and it also won’t leave behind any data when you leave.
PortableApps has both Chrome and Firefox as supported web browsers, allowing you to configure your browser with all the extensions and settings you need without having to mess with your friends/clients computer. What makes this even more powerful is people with privacy concerns who need to access a public computer, but would rather not use the web browser installed on the computer in fear of having their person info stolen.
Looking for the some Essential Android apps for your phone, well look no further we have a list of 12 apps to help improve your productivity throughout the day.
Google Docs – Google has finally released a mobile version of their Google Docs program giving people mobile access to their uploaded documents and the ability to edit them from their mobile phone. One of the more unique features is you can take a picture of a word document on your phone and Google will analyze the text for you and put it in a word document for you.
As an Android user and Google fan, I have been waiting for quite a few months for Google’s new music service to finally debut. It is rumored to be a place where you can store your music in the cloud and then can be played from anywhere. Well after months of waiting it looks like Amazon has beaten Google to the punch with the debut of Amazon Cloud Storage. This new offering from Amazon allows users to place their music onto Amazon’s free 5gb of storage and then stream it to any computer or android device, with iOS currently not being supported. Amazon is looking to rival apple in many ways, with Amazon focusing on MP3 sales to combat Apple’s iTunes and just a few days ago Amazon releases their own App Store for the Android market. Now Amazon has added icing to the cake giving away 5gb of space to users to store not only music, but videos, photos and documents.
