fix

Owners of ultrabooks face a variety of technical woes, from limited battery life to poor screen quality, according to a new study from FixYa.

Tracking questions and complaints from its site users, FixYa narrowed its scope to seven different ultrabooks, shining a light on the key problems found in each one.

Low memory was the top complaint among users of Apple's popular MacBook Air, followed by thermal shutdown, which automatically turns off the computer if it gets too hot. Some owners also said the Air was difficult to repair and that the speaker quality was poor.

To deal with … Read more

The European Union's executive arm confirmed today that Apple and four e-book publishers have offered up a settlement deal on e-book price-setting that could be approved in the coming months.

According to the European Commission, Apple, Harper Collins, Hachette Livre, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster (which is owned by CBS, the same company that publishes CNET) have agreed to terminate e-book agency pricing contracts and allow retailers to set their own prices on titles for a period of two years.

The proposed deal, which the EC did not offer an opinion on, will now be open to public comment, … Read more

The U.S. Department of Justice has reined down hard on a Taiwanese LCD screen maker in court, demanding $1 billion in fines and significant jail time for two former executives.

According to the Associated Press, AU Optronics carried out an extensive price-fixing scheme that feds said was the most significant ever prosecuted in the U.S. During a federal trial in March, the jury found both AU Optronics and two of its executives, Hsuan Bin Chen and Hui Hsiung, guilty of price-fixing.

The original complaints for the case alleged that the company worked to create an international "cartel&… Read more

ARO 2012 is the latest version of a longstanding Registry cleaner and optimizer. The look is familiar, but ARO 2012 offers several upgrades over previous versions, such as improved browser cleaning and user-friendlier settings as well as new tweaks that can yield better NTFS performance, faster startups, and improved CPU utilization. ARO 2012 also backs up and optimizes the Registry. You can schedule automatic cleanings, too.

ARO 2012's installer informed us that it would scan our PC as soon as it closed. The first scan is always important with software like ARO since it establishes a baseline, and ours … Read more

The Auslogic Registry Cleaner is an application for cleaning up problematic and error-filled files or folders on your computer, making it run more efficiently.

This is a good application to have, and it is pretty easy to use. You don't have to be a very advanced computer user to use it properly. There are a few scan options for more advanced users, but this Registry Cleaner already selects a default list of the drives and items it will search and repair. The Scan and Repair processes were very quick. It took half a minute to scan a little over … Read more

Three major U.S. e-book publishers have agreed to a deal that will see them pay a significant sum for alleged e-book price-fixing.

Connecticut State Attorney General George Jepsen yesterday announced that he, "along with 54 attorneys general in other states, districts, and U.S. territories," have signed a $69 million deal with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, and Simon & Schuster (which is owned by CBS, the same company that publishes CNET) to settle antitrust claims over an alleged conspiracy to artificially inflate e-book prices.

"While publishers are entitled to their profits, consumers are equally entitled … Read more

Those of you running Adobe Flash, Reader, and/or Acrobat are advised to download the latest updates. Adobe yesterday rolled out new and critical security fixes for all three products.

The update for Flash patches a vulnerability that could cause the software to crash and allow someone to remotely take control of an infected computer.

This hole has already been exploited through limited attacks, Adobe said. Deployed through a malicious Word document, this exploit attacks the ActiveX version of Flash Player installed as a plug-in on Internet Explorer for Windows.

Windows and Macintosh users can update Flash through the Adobe Flash Player Download Center. … Read more

New York Sen. Charles Schumer reprimanded the Department of Justice today for filing its e-book antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Using strong language in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, he wrote that "the suit could wipe out the publishing industry as we know it."

The Department of Justice brought the lawsuit against Apple in April alleging that the tech giant and a group of book publishers colluded to illegally fix e-book prices to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its discount pricing.

The suit also alleges that Apple and the publishers pushed an "agency model&… Read more

LG Display agreed to pay $380 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of conspiring to fix prices in the liquid crystal display market, the largest sum among its fellow defendants in the case.

Collectively, three companies agreed to pay $571 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleged LCD manufacturers colluded to drive up the price of screens used in televisions, laptops, and other electronics, according to a Reuters report. AU Optronics and Toshiba agreed to pay $170 million and $21 million, respectively, according to a plaintiffs' attorney.

A separate case involving seven other companies, including Samsung, Sharp, and … Read more