A recent article from Fortune really makes it clear that the majority of people who go out to buy a computer have a budget of under $1,000. It also makes it clear that Apple is seeing pretty significant growth. Let me explain...

The digital future appears to be one that embraces touch-screen technology, or so Microsoft thinks. Last year they showed off the $10,000 Surface, which is a large touch-screen table that can interact with things that are placed on it. For example, the Surface has started showing up in AT&T stores as a way for users to compare and contrast devices that they sell.

Bad news for gamers who relied on Dell's XPS line of computers to power their favorite games. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dell will soon start the process of phasing out its XPS line of desktop game machines. The reason? Well, if you'll recall, back in March of 2006, Dell acquired Alienware known for their high-end gaming systems.

This morning I woke up and saw that we had received a tip from someone pointing to this article by the Inquirer. It caught my attention because it was talking about a new set of upgrades to Apple's MacBook Pro line of computers. As the day went on we received a few more tips on this, and a few of them linked to some gadget websites who had also written about it.

Can you imagine having 20 billion dollars plus in cash, just lying around? Microsoft for many years has been one company in the tech industry that always had at least that on hand. In fact, four years ago they had a whopping $64 billion dollars sitting around.

Ever wonder who makes the most "reliable" laptop? Before we even dive into which computer company is the most reliable, maybe we should determine what reliable is.

Over the last several months, there has been a lot of buzz around the Internet regarding a 3G iPhone coming soon from Apple. We haven't mentioned a thing about it yet because we weren't quite convinced that it was actually going to be coming as early as some have predicted.

We knew it would come sooner or later, and from the looks of it widespread 64-bit computing might be on the horizon. Just yesterday we posted the results of our poll asking whether you're running a 64-bit operating system, and only about a quarter of you are. That could be changing as more PC manufacturers start to push 64-bit machines.

There were some doubts about how real the Psystar Open Computers were, but reviews are starting to pour in from the gadget sites that have received the machines. That's definitely good news since it adds some reassurance to those who purchased the computer, but it looks like some quirks are already starting to come out of the wood work.

They say good things come in small packages and Lenovo is out to prove that at Apple's expense. Back in March we wrote about how Lenovo was going head-to-head with Apple's MacBook Air with their ThinkPad X300. Now they've come up with a rather funny parody that makes fun of some of the MacBook Air's limitations. Lenovo really did a good job with it, take a look:

Last week in our MyFive article titled "Computers We've Owned," we left out a "5th Generation" of computers that we've owned in the past because we hadn't yet purchased them. In the article, we mentioned that we've been looking at different models and manufacturers to see what would be best. We finally made our decision after lots of research, and the purchases were made.

Ever since Apple switched to Intel processors, they've seen the sales of their Mac computers go up, and up, and up. Part of this is probably due to the fact that former PC users feel comfortable making the "switch" knowing they can run Windows if need be. Apple's fiscal second quarter just ended, and as the trend has been going lately, sales of Mac computers were up once again.

It's pretty crazy the things geeks can come up with when they get an idea. A group of undergraduate students over at Texas A&M have obviously been playing too much Guitar Hero, and decided that they could make a robot to conquer the game for them. After much thought they have named their dubious creation Slashbot.

We already know that Steve Jobs is on the verge of being a control freak, so the news coming from Forbes today that Apple has agreed to purchase a microprocessor design company makes sense. The company is P.A. Semi, and it's rumored that Apple is willing to spend $278 million dollars in cash to acquire them.

As promised, Microsoft Surface is now available in five different AT&T retail stores including two stores in New York City, and one each in San Francisco, San Antonio, and Atlanta. We just got done viewing a video of the Surface Table in action, and it's actually really impressive.

It seems as though Apple has been getting a lot of good publicity lately, and it's definitely got to be helping their sales. The latest example is a benchmark and usability test done by the reputable Popular Mechanics lab.

It's coming up on one year since Dell started selling computers that are preinstalled with Ubuntu Linux. Towards the end of last year some stats started rolling in saying that Dell had only sold 40,000 Ubuntu machines, which equates to about 220 units per day. That's not too shabby considering the only form of advertising for the Dell Ubuntu machines is by word of mouth.

Back in October of 2006, Microsoft filed a patent for a new type of mouse and recently that patent was just published. Thanks to it being published, we now have a glimpse into what a future mouse from Microsoft might look like. It's a wearable design and not only does it look kinda cool, it's actually pretty clever and practical as well.

Remember the Psystar company that we wrote about yesterday? They are the ones who make the Open Computer that is capable of running Mac OS X, and they'll even go as far as to preinstall it for you. Because their prices are surprisingly reasonable there has been some concern raised as to whether the company is a scam.

Well, Blockbuster has apparently decided that it won't be sitting on the sidelines when it comes to distributing digital media.