Bad news for Dell. Despite the fact that it’s looking like IT spending is increasing, Dell is still suffering from lackluster sales. iSuppli, the company that tracks worldwide PC shipping, reports that in the ongoing battle for dominance in the PC marketshare, Dell has staggered, and almost slipped down to number three.
The news isn’t all bad though, because as one company falls, another will rise. Surprisingly, the company that’s rising to the top happens to be Acer. In 4Q2009, Acer almost managed to top Dell in units shipped for the first time ever, with a impressive 11.86 million PCs sold. HP of course is still king of the hill, but for Acer to come that close could spell bad news for Dell in 1Q2010.

A rather surprising article hit the front page of the BBC on Tuesday: the next generation of hard disks could cause slowdowns for XP users. Not normally the kind of thing you'd expect to be placed so prominently, but the warning it gives is a worthy one, if timed a bit oddly. The world of hard disks is set to change, and the impact could be severe. In the remarkably conservative world of PC hardware, it's not often that a 30-year-old convention gets discarded. Even this change has been almost a decade in the making.
The problem is hard disk sectors. A sector is the smallest unit of a hard disk that software can read or write. Even though a file might only be a single byte long, the operating system has to read or write at least 512 bytes to read or write that file.
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Razer announced today that they are going to be releasing Mac drivers for all of their future products. This comes on the heels of the announcement that Steam is coming to the Macintosh as well.
Razer specifically mentioned the upcoming line of StarCraft II peripherals, which makes sense in light of the fact that Blizzard has always released a Mac version of their games at the same time as their PC versions. From the press release:
RAZER™ REAFFIRMS COMMITMENT TO SUPPORT MAC® USERS
Game Developers Conference, San Francisco, Calif. – March 10, 2010 – Today at the Game Developers Conference, Razer, the world’s leading manufacturer of high-end precision gaming and lifestyle peripherals, announced an effort to increase support for Mac users by issuing driver support for all upcoming Razer products, including the Razer StarCraft® II peripheral suite.
“I’m very proud to say that at Razer, we are committed to supporting both Mac and PC gamers,” said Robert “Razerguy” Krakoff, president, Razer USA. “We are constantly working to increase driver support for Mac with our existing Razer products and have plans to release all of our new products with dedicated Mac and PC drivers. This is a really exciting opportunity to expand the gaming industry and make it more inclusive for Mac users by providing the same level of support that we give to our PC users.”
In April of 2008, the Razer DeathAdder™ for Mac was revealed, crafted specifically to provide Max OS X users with the same legendary ergonomic form factor and precision enjoyed by the PC gaming community. Complete with lunar white accents to accentuate the crisp, clean lines customary to Apple® products, the Razer DeathAdder for Mac is loaded with 1000Hz Ultrapolling™ technology and five independently programmable Razer Hyperesponse™ buttons.
Today, Razer is proud to offer several options for the Mac gaming community, providing full Mac support for the Razer Naga™, the world’s best selling MMO gaming mouse, as well as the Razer DeathAdder, a cult favorite among the right-handed gaming community. Razer is completely committed to supporting Mac users and will be releasing drivers to equip existing products with Mac compatibility. Basic Mac support is already available for the Razer Orochi™, Razer Mamba™ and Razer Imperator™, with further updates scheduled for later this year.
