ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

IDC forecasts the WW PC market will grow by 5% Y-o-Y in 2012, a "challenging year" with shipments reaching 383 million units amidst intense competition from mobile devices, global political uncertainty and bumpy economic roadmaps.

Headwinds from the Euro crisis are even affecting the outlook for emerging markets, including CEMA territories.

Mature regions such as W. Europe also face rising consumer saturation-- most consumers and businesses already have PCs, and see no reason to upgrade or expand their devices.

Will Windows 8 help reinvigorate a tired consumer market? Perhaps, but questions remain pending regarding release dates, functions and pricing, limiting the contribution the new OS may make in 2012.

Go IDC WW Quarterly PC Tracker

Windows 8 operating system will NOT feature built-in support for DVD or Blu-ray playback.

For the first time in 14 years, if you want to play discs, you’ll need to buy an aftermarket program. That's right: your customers will have to buy the right to play DVDs.

The main official reason Microsoft cites... "Our partners have shared clear concerns over the costs associated with codec licensing for traditional media playback..."

Micosoft says its costs "a significant amount" of money for the DVD codecs. From our point of view, for years most partners complaints have focused on the high price of Microsoft OS and Microsoft Office...and Redmond has not responded to that challenge.

The Technology Academy of Finland awards Linux creator Linus Torvald with the 2012 Millennium Technology Prize, an award one can describe as the tech equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Torvald shares the prize (a pair of silicon crystal-tipped trophies and a €1.2 million award cheque) with stem cell pioneer Yamanaka Shinya. Torvalds and Yamanaka were named as prize finalists on April 2012, but the joint award remains a bit of a surprise.

As a result Torvalds joins the ranks of pioneers in obscure yet critical innovations, such as stem cell development, DNA fingerprinting, organic LEDs and the ARM 32-bit RISC processor.

Work on Linux started at the University of Helsinki, where Torvalds was a student. He posted the original system kernel on Usenet back in 1991, and since then the Linux kernel is found in every kind of device-- from network routers and servers to PCs, tablets, smartphones and supercomputers.

Even Microsoft-- whose Steve Ballmer once described Linux as a "cancer"-- runs Skype off Linux servers, and offers a Linux version of the Azure cloud service.

Torvald now works from home in Portland, Oregon, but remains something of a celebrity in his Finnish homeland.

Go Millennium Technology Prize 2012 Winners

At a glitzy Los Angeles event Microsoft unveils its next big step as a hardware maker-- Microsoft Surface, a family of 2 Microsoft-branded Windows tablets complete with clever keyboard covers.

The purpose of the Surface tablets is to "prime the pump" for the imminent Windows 8 release, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says.

The Surface comes in 2 varieties-- one running Windows 8 on Intel 22nm Ivy Bridge chips, and the other running Windows RT using an ARM chipset.

The Windows 8 Surface is 13.5mm thick, weighs 860g has a 10.6-inch "ClearType HD" display of unknown resolution and comes inside vapor-deposited (PVD) magnesium case. It carries USB 3.0 and DisplayPort ports and supports stylus input.

The Windows RT version nearly identical in size, only slightly thinner (9.3mm) and lighter (6.6g). It has microSD, USB 2.0 and Micro HD ports and also comes with either 32 or 64GB of storage.

Both tablets carry front- and back-mounted cameras, an integrated kickstand (also made in PVD magnesium), full-size USB ports and dual wifi antennas.

Microsoft also offers 2 varieties of keyboard-equipped magnetic cover-- the Touch Cover (3mm with integrated pressure-sensitive keyboard) and the Type Cover (5mm thick with physical keys and multi-touch trackpad).

Readers with longer memories should remember Microsoft using the Surface name for its table-sized multitouch surfaces... now the Samsung-made "big-ass tables" get quietly rebranded with the name "PixelSense".

No details on pricing are yet available, and Microsoft says the Surface for Windows RT should launch when Windows 8 does (around Q3 2012), with the Windows 8 Pro version to follow after 3 months. Will Microsoft manage to become more Apple than Apple?

Go Microsoft Surface