PC manufacturer Acer announced three unnamed tablet PCs for 2011 this week. Two of these are Android-powered (a 10.1" and a 7") and the third runs on Windows. The company said that the latter will feature a next-generation AMD platform. According to DigiTimes Systems, this next-generation AMD CPU is believed to be AMD’s Ontario APU (accelerated processing unit) codenamed C-50, which is a dual core CPU that also boasts an integrated Radeon HD 6250 graphics chip. DigiTimes stated that the Android-running 7" model will sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon-based CPU with the 10.1" model boasting an Nvidia Tegra 2-based CPU.

 

 

According to AFP, an Apple I computer (sporting a CPU a thousand times slower than the iPad) sold for a whopping £133 250 (almost R1.5 million) on Tuesday afternoon at Christie’s auction house in central London. The computer also came with its original packaging and a signed sales letter from Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and CEO. The Apple I was introduced in 1976 by Apple and sold for $666.66 (around R4740) before being discontinued in 1977.

 

 

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch isn’t the only entrepreneur working on a publication solely meant for Apple’s iPad, with his newspaper The Daily, as British tycoon Richard Branson will reportedly also be announcing his soon. The founder of Virgin will apparently on Tuesday be unveiling a digital magazine designed to be read exclusively on Cupertino’s iPad tablet computers.

 

 

 

Novell, which is a leading workload management firm, announced this week that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement, which will see it being acquired by the Attachmate Corporation in a transaction valued at around $2.2 billion. Novell also announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets for $450 million in cash to CPTN Holdings LLC, which is a consortium of technology companies organised by Microsoft. According to Cnet, Novell will however continue to be the owner of its copyrights to Unix computer operating systems.

 

 

Last week social networking behemoth Facebook (FB) announced that it will be updating and improving its messaging service during a special press event in San Francisco, with which it will be taking on the likes of Google’s Gmail. The company will ramp up its Facebook Messages service, looking to combine texts, online chats, as well as emails into one central location (FB Messages). Google also revealed a tweak to its Terms of Service this month, meaning that any company that accesses Google’s Contacts API (which enables them to easily import their list of friends’ and co-workers’ email addresses into their service) will need to offer reciprocity. Facebook doesn’t comply with this and this week TechSpot noted that FB has removed Gmail from its list of third party e-mail providers on the ‘Find Friends’ page. Users can still pull in your Gmail contacts into FB though, via the ‘Other email service’ link.