InsideTech

The crowds, the fluorescent lights, the sales clerks who ignore you and the lines, lines, lines. Some people love Christmas shopping. I assume they also like sleeping on a bed of nails. Here are 10 reasons you should consider shopping online. 1. Unique gifts: You can find the coolest and most unusual stuff online. From remote-controlled Ferraris at hipstergifts.com to Gummi ...

Have you noticed? The holiday bargain hunting has already begun for electronics gizmos. Major retailers like Wal-Mart, Sears and Best Buy are already into the "Black Friday" (day after Thanksgiving) sales frame of mind, in recent weeks offering crazy come-ons like name-brand Windows 7 portable computers for as low as $249, 10 megapixel digital still cameras under $100 and GPS trail ...

Nov. 22 - Feeling frugal this holiday season? It's OK, so are most American consumers, according to numerous surveys. As the shopping season gets into full swing this week, here are some ways to save - and some ways to be safe. First, the savings. Whether it's online or at the mall, there are lots of ways to trim your holiday ...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators Wednesday adopted a first-in-the-nation mandate to reduce electricity demand. On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient, beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, with only a quarter ...

Nov. 23 - The holiday season is as much a time for tech as for toys. Electronic gadgets are at the top of many wish lists and account for an ever-growing share of holiday shopping budgets. Fortunately for shoppers, tech gifts don't have to break their budgets. One big trend this year is sharp discounts on products in many of ...

Intel is suing NVIDIA in an effort to get them dropped from chipset licensing on Nehalem boards.  NVIDIA has filed countersuit against Intel.  NVIDIA has even gone as far as to sponsor cartoons lampooning Intel. NVIDIA particularly enraged Intel when it convinced Apple to dump Intel's integrated graphics from its product lineup in favor of NVIDIA designs.   Intel vows it ...

Nov. 10 - The target of thieves who stole more than $2,000 worth of gear last week at a Rock Hill hotel is a Fort Mill-based National Guardsmen leaving today for training and then Afghanistan. Sgt. Jimmy Butler, 28, who served with the Fort Mill unit in Iraq in 2003-2004 and has been in the guard for 10 years, said ...

Just about all of the gadgets that we take for granted each day from cameras to our notebooks and mobile phones use lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have been around for many years and for the most part are trouble free. However, last year and in 2007 a number of fires and explosions caused  by overheating lithium-ion batteries resulted in some of ...

In the early days of social networking, the dominant player was MySpace. As time went by, MySpace was joined by other players like Facebook and Twitter. MySpace has since lost the top position in the social networking world to Facebook. In October, traffic numbers for September 2009 for social networking sites came in and Facebook had over 300 million users, pushing ...

Most every computer user is a whiz at pointing and clicking with a mouse. If Microsoft has a say, you'll become equally adept at touching and tapping the PC screen directly with your fingers. As part of the company's recent launch of Windows 7, the vastly improved successor to Windows Vista, Microsoft hopes to usher in a new era for ...

A new company called Cranberry is claiming it can build a DVD that will last one thousand years. Cranberry's transparent DiamonDisc, with a non-reflective layer, has already passed key tests using the ECMA-379 temperature and humidity standards. Regular DVDs use dyes, adhesive layers, or reflective materials (like silver and gold) that can deteriorate over time. The DiamonDisc stores the standard 4.7GB ...

SEATTLE - Dell Inc. is officially jumping into the "smart" phone market this month in a deal with China's biggest wireless carrier, China Mobile Ltd. The Dell Mini 3, a keyboardless touch-screen phone that runs Google Inc.'s Android operating system, will also be available in Brazil later this year. The computer maker, based in Round Rock, Texas, would not say ...

Chief Engineer Andrew Farah and Battery Engineering Group Manager Bill Wallace recently gave members of the press an update on the status of the 2011 Chevy Volt and its battery pack.  Designed with the goal of providing a 40 mile range from a 16 kWh (8 kWh usable) charge, the pack and its supporting systems have evolved greatly over the past ...

TOKYO - Sony said it aims to be profitable in gaming and flat-panel TVs by the fiscal year ending March 2011, pushing 3-D technology as a way to showcase its strength in entertainment and surface from deep losses. "Our work is already bearing fruit," Chief Executive Howard Stringer said Thursday in outlining Sony's turnaround strategy at the electronics giant's Tokyo headquarters. ...

Apple has long opted for a system of closed computer hardware, disallowing third party OS X computers.  Nonetheless, small companies retailing cheaper OS X boxes have continually popped up, the latest of which is Psystar.  Legal pressure from Apple has typically succeeded in eventually killing such companies, but it typically isn't long before a new one pops up. Individual users also ...

It may only be early November but the holiday-themed ads are already on TV and the more excitable retailers are dusting off their decorations. Likewise, it may seem a little early to be making predictions for the coming year, but a lot of what is likely to happen can already be seen. It's a bit like the unlit Christmas lights that ...

The Fall is here and it is cold and nasty. So what's a better way to stop thinking about it than checking out some of the most interesting tech-related videos of the past few months? Lean back and watch these funny and innovative videos that have recently popped up on this site and others around the web. If you want us ...

NEW YORK -- You have good reason to be skeptical when someone says millions of ordinary television viewers are about to start surfing the Internet on the living room's electronic hearth. We've heard that Web-on-your-TV convergence promise for more than a decade, with ambitious efforts to make it happen including AOL TV and WebTV Networks. Each time, the optimists have ...

A countdown of the top 20 products and technologies that try harder.

SAN FRANCISCO - The first touch-screen BlackBerry phone, the Storm, got a few things right, but generally it was a chore to use. Good thing a lot can change in a year. Though not without flaws, the latest version of the device, the BlackBerry Storm2, is the phone Research In Motion Ltd. should have released last year: It's faster, smarter and ...