The Android laptop is coming. Does that mean more market-share pain for Windows PCs?

Hewlett-Packard's upcoming notebook offerings speak for themselves. For $480, there's the SlateBook x2 Android "notebook". At $800, we have the Windows 8-based Split x2.

For me, the choice gets easier every time I pick up the Nexus 10 tablet that I've been using for the last month. In other words, if I'm spending about 50 percent of my time -- and doing limited-productivity stuff -- on the Nexus 10, it's not a giant leap to an Android laptop.

Nor … Read more

With a project called Portable Native Client now making its way into Chrome and potentially onto the Web itself, Google is violating its own principles for its Blink browser engine, a Mozilla programmer said Friday.

Portable Native Client, or PNaCl, is a Google technology to let Web apps run specially created software at nearly the speed of the native apps that run on operating systems like Windows or iOS. It plugs into the browser with an interface called Pepper.

Mozilla representatives have been frosty toward Native Client for years, but one programmer, Robert O'Callahan, issued a new criticism Friday, … Read more

Google continues to revamp the appearance of many of its services, this time turning its redecorating eye on Gmail.

The company unveiled on Wednesday the new look and automatic labels for Gmail on the Web, as well as in Gmail's Android and iOS apps.

The new default categories, based on Gmail's existing Label system, are Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums. They appear as large tabs on the Gmail site, easy to use for touch screens and fully customizable. You can also drag-and-drop messages between them, and Google will automatically "learn" how you want them filtered. … Read more

As Adobe Systems tries to ride out a storm of customer criticism over its move to subscription-only pricing, rival Corel is swooping in with a new discounted pricing plan for customers at schools and universities.

The company said the revised education discount plan was already in planning before Adobe changed its sales approach. But the company clearly is trying to capitalize on its rival's woes: last week, it announced Corel software discounts of up to 60 percent for Adobe customers making the switch.

The education discount covers all Corel's graphics-related software, including the CorelDraw Graphics Suite, PaintShop Pro, … Read more

There's much more to climbing Mount Everest than the trek to the summit, mountaineer David Breashears would tell you.

To help emphasize that point, the filmmaker and explorer has teamed up with Microsoft to build an interactive examination of the mountain and the Greater Himalaya region, which have enthralled imaginations since Edmund Hillary made his successful ascent of the Everest summit 75 years ago this week.

Everest: Rivers of Ice is a new Web site open to the public on Tuesday night built in HTML5 and CSS3 for touch screens. Created by the Internet Explorer 10 team, Microsoft Research, … Read more

Anyone disappointed with Adobe Systems' switch to sell most of its software exclusively through subscriptions will have to remain disappointed.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company will make some changes to its $50-per-month Creative Cloud subscription to accommodate photography hobbyists and those who need access to files after they stop paying monthly fees, David Wadhwani, general manager of Adobe's digital media business, said in an interview Tuesday. But it won't turn back the clock to sell perpetual licenses to its software alongside the subscriptions, he said.

"We understand this is a big change, but we are so … Read more

Adobe Systems still has a lot of work to do convincing its customers it was a good idea to switch its Creative Suite software to its $50-per-month Creative Cloud subscription.

That's one of the messages from a poll of 1,642 readers conducted by CNET and analyst firm Jefferies. Of 740 people using the CS6 generation of Creative Suite products, 76 percent said they planned never to move to the Creative Cloud. And of the 612 respondents using CS5.5 or earlier, only 8 percent said they'd decided to move to the Creative Cloud.

"You should be … Read more

Influential and long-time Microsoft analyst Rick Sherlund argued in a May 28 research report that it's time for Microsoft to get rid of Bing and/or Xbox.

The title of Sherlund's note -- "Pressure Building to Realize Greater Shareholder Value" -- makes it plain where he's coming from.

"We think there are a number of things that could be done to improve the return of cash to shareholders and improve the profitability and cash flow of the business," Sherlund, an analyst with Nomura Research, said in the note. He added, "We think … Read more

Not only is Google Translate not dead, its powers of mildly accurate, often-amusing, and on-the-fly translations are in the process of being gifted to Chrome 28 Beta for Android.

If you load a foreign language Web site in the beta, which landed in the Google Play Store on Thursday, a bar will appear at the bottom of the screen with a button to translate the site. Tap the button, and voila! It will appear in a different language.

The accuracy of the translation is another issue. However, Google spokeswoman Roya Soleimani said, "Google Translate works through statistical machine translation. … Read more