Questões de Concurso

    CES 2010 Predictions: What Will Be Hot Next Year?
    12.23.09
    The tech industry is gearing up for January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but what should we expect? Will recession woes continue to hinder major announcements or will someone surprise us? We asked our analysts to [VERB] a few predictions about [PRON] you can expect to see from CES.
    Laptops – Cisco Cheng
    Laptops and Netbooks at CES 2010 will be riding the coat tails of Intel, which has already announced new processors and chipsets in "Arrandale" (for laptops) and "Pinetrail" (for netbooks). So this year you'll see processor brand names such as Intel Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 instead of the soon-to-be exiting Core 2 Duos.
    With netbooks, it'll still be the Atom processor, but around it will be a different supporting cast and a more energy efficient one at that, promising over 10 hours of battery life.
    Not all clamshells will have an Intel processor, though. This year's CES 2010 will give rise to a new class of netbooks, called SmartBooks and tablets.
    SmartBooks will run some variant of an ARM processor, with Qualcomm being a heavy favorite. They will not run a Windows operating system (Linux, most likely) and promise to cost as little as $200 per device. The term tablet is similar to SmartBooks in parts and software, only it won't have a physical keyboard, or at least one that's permanently attached. Tablets will take the e-book reader space to the next level and hopefully have more success than MIDs − the previous term for touchenabled netbooks without a keyboard.
    Desktops – Joel Santo Domingo
    The netbook revolution of 2009 has benefitted the desktop space. The same power-saving processors and motherboard chips from netbooks are now showing up in a plethora of ultra small nettop PCs.
    While these desktops do not promise better battery life, they do promise smaller, quieter systems, which can be hooked up to large displays, like the 50-inch HDTV in your living room.
    Don't count "traditional" desktops out though: they're still the go-to PCs in a business setting, particularly since they're less fragile and easier to service than laptops. Besides, traditional workers who live in cubicles don't need the portability of a netbook or notebook PC. They're going to get smaller, but desktops will still be on workers' desks for quite a few years to come.

(Adapted from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357541,00.asp)

Is Windows 7 Worth It?
Harry McCracken, PC World
Monday, October 19, 2009 10:00 AM PDT

    Reading about a new operating system can tell you only so much about it: After all, Windows Vista had far more features than XP, [CONJUNCTION] fell far short of it in the eyes of many users. To judge an OS accurately, you have to live with it. Over the past ten months, I've spent a substantial percentage of my computing life in Windows 7, starting with a preliminary version and culminating in recent weeks with the final Release to Manufacturing edition. I've run it on systems ranging from an underpowered Asus EeePC 1000HE netbook to a potent HP TouchSmart all-in-one. And I've used it to do real work, not lab routines. Usually, I've run the OS in multiboot configurations with Windows Vista and/or XP, so I've had a choice each time I turned the computer on: [MODAL] I opt for Windows 7 or an older version of the OS? The call has been easy to make, because Win 7 is so pleasant to use.
    So why wouldn't you want to run this operating system? Concern over its performance is one logical reason, especially since early versions of Windows Vista managed to turn PCs that ran XP with ease into lethargic underperformers. The PC World Test Center's speed benchmarks on five test PCs showed Windows 7 to be faster than Vista, but only by a little; I've found it to be reasonably quick on every computer I've used it on - even the Asus netbook, once I upgraded it to 2GB of RAM. (Our lab tried Win 7 on a Lenovo S10 netbook with 1GB of RAM and found it to be a shade slower than XP; for details see "Windows 7 Performance Tests.").
    Here's a rule of thumb that errs on the side of caution: If your PC's specs qualify it to run Vista, get Windows 7; if they don't, avoid it. Microsoft's official hardware configuration requirements for Windows 7 are nearly identical to those it recommends for Windows Vista: a 1-GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of free disk space, and a DirectX 9-compatible graphics device with a WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. That's for the 32-bit version of Windows 7; the 64-bit version of the OS requires a 64-bit CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 20GB of disk space.
    Fear of incompatible hardware and software is another understandable reason to be wary of Windows 7. One unfortunate law of operating-system upgrades - which applies equally to Macs and to Windows PCs - is that they will break some systems and applications, especially at first.
    Under the hood, Windows 7 isn't radically different from Vista. That's a plus, since it should greatly reduce the volume of difficulties relating to drivers and apps compared to Vista's bumpy rollout. I have performed a half-dozen Windows 7 upgrades, and most of them went off without a hitch. The gnarliest problem arose when I had to track down a graphics driver for Dell's XPS M1330 laptop on my own - Windows 7 installed a generic VGA driver that couldn't run the Aero user interface, and as a result failed to support new Windows 7 features such as thumbnail views in the Taskbar.
    The best way to reduce your odds of running into a showstopping problem with Windows 7 is to bide your time. When the new operating system arrives on October 22, sit back and let the earliest adopters discover the worst snafus. Within a few weeks, Microsoft and other software and hardware companies will have fixed most of them, and your chances of a happy migration to Win 7 will be much higher. If you want to be really conservative, hold off on moving to Win 7 until you're ready to buy a PC that's designed to run it well.
    Waiting a bit before making the leap makes sense; waiting forever does not. Microsoft took far too long to come up with a satisfactory replacement for Windows XP. But whether you choose to install Windows 7 on your current systems or get it on the next new PC you buy, you'll find that it's the unassuming, thoroughly practical upgrade you've been waiting for - flaws and all.

(Adapted from http://www.pcworld.com/article/172602/windows_7_revi...)