Coffee shops target WiFi hogs

By Neal Augenstein


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WASHINGTON - Would you like free WiFi with your coffee?

The question goes unspoken, but in local coffee houses the answer is clearly yes.

Most coffee shops in the Washington area offer free WiFi as a perk, in hopes of bringing in customers.

"Being able to get away from your office or home routine and find a place where you can concentrate without your coworkers or kids interrupting is priceless," says Elias Montilla, general manager of Tryst, in Adams Morgan.

"The majority of our customers do have a laptop or tablet or other device with them, whether they're using it to study, complete work or just personal enjoyment," says Jim Hilson, co-owner of Saxbys Coffee, a longtime favorite for Georgetown University students.

In a college environment, Hilson says WiFi use is part of his business model.

"It can even be a social experience. We'll often see a couple of students come in and sit down at the tables, take out their laptops and start doing their work together," says Hilson.

Not all coffee houses share Saxbys' WiFi welcome.

With smartphones and mobile devices facilitating mobile offices, some customers take root in coffee shops and gobble up bandwith, without buying drink or food.

Customers use the shop's free WiFi for large file downloads, while sipping free water.

Enough is enough Some business owners are setting time limits, requiring an access code fo the WiFi network, or even covering electric outlets to discourage laptop use. Continue reading...

Learn to build a PC in under two minutes?

The comments are interesting.

Via  by Nick Barber

Building a computer is a great way to get a custom configuration, save some money and have fun. In this how-to video, we'll show you how to build one in less than two minutes.

PC components

• Asus Z87-A motherboard - $140
• Intel Core i5-4430 Haswell 3.0GHz quad-core processor - $190
• G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB DDR3 SDRAM - $80
• Radeon HD 5450 graphics card - $30
• Rosewill wireless card - $10
• Seagate Barracuda 1TB hard drives (x2) - $70 each
• Optical drive - $20
• Antec 550W power supply - $65
• Corsair 400R mid tower - $100
• Asus PB278Q 27" LED monitor with speakers - $550
• Logitech M705 wireless mouse - $40
• Logitech K120 keyboard - $11
• Windows 7 Home Premium - $75

Total: $1,451

New Dell won't abandon the PC

Post buyout, the company can push into the high-margin products and services business without Wall Street meddling, Michael Dell says.
By Chris Kanaracus and Agam Shah

Computerworld - Dell will continue making acquisitions and will remain committed to its struggling PC business once its $24.9 billion deal to go private is complete, according to company officials.

The long, twice-delayed purchase of Dell by CEO Michael Dell and investment firm Silver Lake Partners was finally approved by shareholders earlier this month. Once the deal closes, likely by Nov. 1, Michael Dell will hold a 75% stake in the company he founded in 1984.

As a private company, Dell will be able to recapture the "entrepreneurial spirit" of its early days and more effectively execute a strategy of moving heavily into the high-margin products and services business without pressure from Wall Street, Michael Dell said.

Dell's post-buyout plan emulates the strategies of publicly held companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, which package software, hardware and services into integrated offerings.

The new owners also plan to invest heavily in research and development, expand the sales staff, broaden the scope of partner programs and expand the company's presence in emerging markets, according to Michael Dell.

But company officials also vow that the personal computer will remain a core part of the business, dismissing reports in recent years that Dell was planning to exit the market where it got its start.

"We will continue to make large investments in R&D in enterprise solutions and services," said Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden, but then quickly added, "By no means is that a statement of our lack of commitment to the PC business."
Read more >>>

"Hybrid Memory Cube" HMC -- 70 Percent Less Power, 8x the Transfer Rate of DDR4

Via <DailyTech>

FPGAs, ASICs, and other high performance commercial applications will be targeted by next year at volume

Today, vertical NAND (v-NAND) flash memory is in production and bumping storage densities in mobile devices to new highs.  Yet while many players -- including Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) -- are actively producing v-NAND, vertical DRAM -- stacked volatile memory -- remained unsampled until now.

I. HMC -- 70 Percent Less Power, 8x the Transfer Rate of DDR4

Micron Technologies Inc. (MU) this week announced the industry's first stacked DRAM.  While Micron describes the stacked chips as a "hybrid memory cube" (HMC) (also known as vertical DRAM (v-DRAM), the structure appears more like little stacks of poster board on a circuit board.

Micron's hybrid memory cube is finally sampling. [Image Source: Micron]

Each layer features a 4 Gb (Gigabit) die, and there are four layers for a total capacity of 2 GB (Gigabytes) for the stack.

Micron is claiming to get 160 GB/s (Gigabytes per second) of bandwidth for the chip.  That's an incredible data transfer rate, compared to the approximately 11 GB/s DDR3 gets and the 21-24 GB/s DDR4 is expected to get.  Moreover, the packaging cuts power consumption by 70 percent by reducing the distance signals have to travel between chips.

The Boise, Idaho-based chipmaker sees potential demand for HMC chips in "data packet processing, data packet buffering or storage, and computing applications such as processor accelerators."  The latter sounds like the new DRAM could be targeted at graphics processing units (GPUs), among the most memory-hungry components of a modern PC.
But HMC stock for consumer devices such as GPUs or smartphones won't be available for "three to five years", according to Micron.   Read More>>>