Fast Technology

In the light of Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction of 6 more weeks of winter, Any Brand Appliance Service, Inc. reminds homeowners to avoid using a gas range or stove as a heat source as it decreases air quality, poses a fire hazard, and may cause carbon monoxide poisoning.

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, any fuel-burning unvented heat source, such as stove, increases exposure to combustion products in homes causing indoor air pollution with one of the major pollutants being colorless and odorless carbon monoxide.

As specialists in installation, service and repair of major household appliances, Any Brand Appliance Service, Inc. employees answer a lot of customer inquiries, including the questions about appliance safety.

“We perform many oven, range and stove installations and educate our customers about the importance of installing kitchen exhaust hoods vented to the outdoors to avoid concentration of harmful gases,” said Amjad Jamil, the owner of Any Brand Appliance Service, Inc..

Approximately 480 people die in U.S. every year due to unintentional carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the statistics from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Produced whenever fuel is burned, carbon monoxide can accumulate following prolonged use of the gas stove in poorly ventilated areas.

Symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning include headaches, nausea, fatigue, dizziness and are frequently confused with cold or flu symptoms. CDC emphasizes that these symptoms should not be left untreated, because they may cause loss of consciousness and death especially in sleeping or intoxicated people.

“Unattended operating gas stove is also a fire waiting to happen,” added Jamil. “We recommend professional HVAC installation by a certified and reputable company to ensure that all equipment is installed correctly and is safe to use.”

Jamil further explained that if a temporary gas pipe blockage or a certain circumstance (a sudden draft or a pet) causes the burner to extinguish, the concentration of gas in the air may increase to the point when it takes a phone call to ignite the explosion.

Both propane and natural gas have a strong odor unlike carbon monoxide, which makes the gas leak easier to detect. Suspected gas leaks have caused recent evacuations from Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md., and an apartment building in Rockville, Md.

Based in Falls Church, Va., Any Brand Appliance Service, Inc. has been providing appliance repair in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, DC for more than ten years and has worked on several cases involving a gas leak. The company pointed out that misuse and repurposing of appliances endangers not only the owners, but their neighbors and other tenants as well.

Apple has proclaimed for a long time that we are now in a post-PC era, in which people would no longer need traditional PCs and instead engage themselves with the digital world through iPhones and iPads. This theory seems to have gained strength as indicated by a recent report from Canalys.

According to the report, Apple has now become the largest global PC player and surpassed Hewlett-Packard to take the top spot. [1] Lenovo was the only other player to have gained market share in this market, while Dell and Acer lost considerable market share.

Our $550 price estimate for Apple stock is about 20% above market price.

See our complete analysis of Apple here

iPad lifting the whole PC market

The PC market, as termed by Canalys, not only includes the traditional desktops and laptops, but also the tablet PCs. Tablets helped PC market reach 120 million units in Q4 2011, a growth of 16% over Q4 2010. Apple shipped over 15 million iPads in Q4 2011, which helped it increase its share to 17% of the total PC market. If we exclude the tablets from the equation, the PC market actually experienced a decline of 0.4%.

Mac also helping Apple gain market share

A few weeks back, IDC came out with the U.S. PC market (excluding tablets) report in which it mentioned that the U.S. PC market declined for the first time in a decade last year hurt by a soft economy, supply shortages and the popularity of smartphones and tablets. [2]

The recent floods in Thailand resulted in a supply shortage of hard disk drives used in PCs. However, Apple saw 21% growth in Mac sales in the U.S. market compared to the year ago quarter, pushing past Toshiba and Acer to take the #3 spot behind HP and Dell.

We have always believed that Apple with its strong negotiating power over suppliers would be able to manage these supply issues better than rivals

In the process of reporting strong earnings for the fourth quarter on Tuesday, ARM CEO Warren East had some interesting things to say about Microsoft's coming Windows 8 release—namely, that it could propel more tablet sales than Google's Android mobile operating system has accomplished so far.

"Consumers are familiar with Microsoft and very familiar with Windows and they're less familiar with an Android environment," East said during an exchange with an analyst noticed by CNET. "Microsoft has an awareness advantage with consumers that the Android folks didn't have.

"It's up to Microsoft [and we'll see] how well they're going to exploit that advantage. But I think that's a fundamental difference."

East's comments add to the anticipation for Windows 8, expected to be released by Microsoft this fall and "accompanied by a tidal wave of tablets, hybrids, and convertibles," as PCMag.com lead laptop analyst Eric Grevstad put it recently.

Indeed, there's a lot for tablet fans to like about Windows 8, starting with Microsoft's recommended specs for a Windows 8 tablet. Grevstad breaks those down as "a 1,366-by-768-pixel screen with a minimum of five touch inputs; at least one USB 2.0 port; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; a three-axis accelerometer; power, rotation lock, and volume buttons; 10GB or more of free storage space when taken out of the box; and a Windows key button measuring at least 10.5mm in diameter in the center of the bottom bezel."

And it's no secret that Microsoft has been courting tablet and smartphone makers who in the last several product cycles have overwhelmingly selected ARM-based chips to run their devices over the x86-based parts made by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

In fact, Windows 8's release is likely to mark a pivotal moment in personal computing history as the long-running "Wintel" partnership of Microsoft and Intel takes a decidedly new turn. Not only is Microsoft tuning its next-generation operating system for non-x86 processor architectures, but Intel is concurrently optimizing its own Atom chips for Android, as it takes another shot at penetrating the mobile device market.

East did have some nice things to say about Android, of course. ARM's stellar growth, including a 45 percent increase in net income in its fourth quarter, owes a lot to the popularity of Android smartphones (Apple also uses ARM-based chips designed in-house in the iPhone and iPad).

If history is any lesson, he said, Android tablets just need "a little more time" to mature.

"Actually when Android phones were introduced, there was a lot of hype," East was quoted as saying by CNET. "And then, actually, they didn't take off in the sort of way that reflected that hype. Then a few years later—two years later—half a million units a day, 700,000 units a day. [Android phones now are] really ... a very successful product."

For more on Windows 8, see PCMag.com's testing of Microsoft's Developer's Preview edition and check out our handy-dandy Windows 8 glossary in the slide show below.