The rumors are true, Dell has officially revealed that it will merge with data storage giant EMC in the following months. The company today announced that an agreement totalling $67 billion in cash and stock has been confirmed - making it the largest privately held technology company that exists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The acquisition aims to diversify Dell's business even further away from primarily PC's, where it instead hopes to penetrate markets including:

• Servers
• Storage
• Virtualization via VMware
• Converged infrastructure (EMC owns VCE)
• Hybrid cloud
• Mobile
• And security via RSA, which is owned by EMC.

In a talk at Code/Mobile, Android founder Andy Rubin said that he believes the next major wave of computing will be in the realm of artificial intelligence. Rubin, who left Google to start a hardware startup incubator called Playground, said that after spending some time in robotics at Google, he believes the next big frontier is in devices that don't have screens like traffic lights or your dishwasher. "Robotics and automation are going to permeate our lives," he said, adding that intelligence from the cloud will be the new thing. Seeing as Playground has invested in companies like castAR, which makes projected augmented reality glasses, and Connected Yard, which provides detailed chemical analysis of swimming pools, it appears he's putting his money where his mouth is.

 

Of course, he hasn't forgotten about mobile either. Indeed, he's particularly proud that his team at Google decided to make Android an open operating system and didn't put any restriction on screen sizes, because that allowed for greater consumer choice (he isn't a fan of the word "fragmentation" because it has a negative connotation). Now, in a world where Android and iOS are the two major phone operating systems, he says there's a danger in sticking to a duopoly especially if their announcements are parallel and are in lockstep.

Microsoft has announced the Surface Book, its first laptop, during the ongoing Windows 10 devices event. It promises huge performance enhancements, a 13.5-inch 267 ppi display screen and a 12 hour battery life.

 

 

A research team at Microsoft has revealed an idea that it thinks will help greatly extend the battery life of Windows laptops and tablets, which it hopes to see put inside consumer projects at some point in the future.