Notebooks take lion's share

Consumer demand for mobile computers remains strong in the US despite the severe economic downturn, with notebooks making up three out of four computers shipped to the US market during the second quarter of this year, says ITWire.

While the economic problems did dampen down the US PC market overall - including desktops and laptops - preliminary data from IDC shows the market in the quarter contracted by just 1.4% compared to an earlier projection of -3.1%.

According to IDC, of the four major PC markets assessed in the preliminary results - consumer portables, consumer desktops, commercial portables and commercial desktops - only consumer portables managed positive growth while the others had moderate to severe contraction.

Russian regulators initiated a case against some of the major notebook PC brands last month, charging that they are engaged in anti-competitive practices by preloading only Microsoft operating systems on their machines, reports The Inquirer.

The companies named by the Commission of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) are Acer, ASUSTeK, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Toshiba.

FAS Russia has also contacted Fujitsu and said it will also send enquiries to some other PC makers including Lenovo, Sony and Roverbook.

Dell has reinforced its commitment to lead the industry in energy efficiency by announcing the company's broadest line of US Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star 5.0 compliant desktops, workstations and portables, says Webnewswire.

The company also unveiled its Client Energy Savings Calculator, which allows customers to assess and optimise the power consumption and the potential energy savings of their client infrastructures.

Select configurations of Dell OptiPlex, Dell Precision, and Latitude commercial client product lines claim to offer customers the widest variety of Energy Star 5.0 compliant systems to help save money and reduce CO2 emissions.