Glosario

Microsoft Unveils Its First Desktop PC

Microsoft is trying to light a creative spark under the struggling personal computer industry.

On Wednesday, the company, which is based in Redmond, Wash., unveiled a desktop personal computer that turns into a digital drafting table. Surface Studio, as the new device is called, is the company’s first desktop PC, and a reminder of Microsoft’s growing presence in the hardware side of the industry that it once left entirely to its partners.

At an event in New York, Microsoft also announced an update to its Windows 10 operating system that is designed to make creating, manipulating and viewing 3-D objects easier.

The new Microsoft machine is a handsome specimen of the all-in-one PC category best exemplified by Apple’s iMac. It has a sleek aluminum body with 28-inch screen that rests on top of a stand. Microsoft also showed a new accessory device called the Surface Dial that augments computer mice, giving users a precise way to zoom in images and perform other actions.

“This is a product that we believe truly brings out the creator in all of us,” said Panos Panay, a Microsoft corporate vice president.

The new Microsoft PC will not be for everyone though, if only because of its $2,999 price tag. It will go on sale in limited quantities this holiday season, Mr. Panay said. Architects, product designers and engineers are among the likely targets for the product.

Surface Studio stands out from others in that its display is touch sensitive, effectively making it a gargantuan tablet that can be manipulated with hands and a stylus. A hinge in its stand allows users to position the screen at an angle so they can write and draw on it more naturally.

J.P. Gownder, an analyst at Forrester Research, thinks the new device allows Microsoft to participate in the high end of the PC market, where profit margins tend to be fatter. During its most recently reported quarter, Microsoft said it had $926 million in Surface revenue, up 38 percent from the same period a year earlier.

But like previous Surface computers from Microsoft, including a laptop and tablet, Surface Studio is also intended to inspire other PC makers, Mr. Gownder said.

“Without the vision that the Surface team has provided, frankly, the PC industry would be in worst shape than it is anyway,” Mr. Gownder said.

Sales in the PC market have been in a long slump. Shipments of new PCs in the third quarter fell 3.9 percent from the previous year, according to IDC, the technology research firm.

Microsoft said a new version of its operating system that would be released early next year, Windows 10 Creators Update, is aimed at responding to the interest in 3-D imagery inspired by new technologies like virtual reality. The company demonstrated how a 3-D image of a sand castle can easily be captured on a smartphone and then edited into a greeting card on Windows 10 with a new application that comes with the software.

The company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, said Microsoft’s new products were meant for the people who needed more than a regular consumer’s computer.

“We are the company that stands for the builders, the makers, the creators — that’s who we are,” Mr. Nadella said. “Every choice we make is about finding that balance between consumption and creative expression.”

Microsoft also said several hardware companies, including HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus, would release virtual reality headsets next holiday season that work with Windows 10 PCs. The headsets will start at $299, hundreds of dollars less than comparable headsets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/technology/microsoft-unveils-its-first-desktop-pc.html?ref=technology

COMPUTERS TERMS

Now, the VOA Special English program, "Words and Their Stories"

Computer technology has become a major part of people's lives. This technology has its own special words. One example is the word mouse. A computer mouse is not a small animal that lives in buildings and open fields.

It is a small device that you move around on a flat surface in front of a computer. The mouse moves the pointer, or cursor, on the computer screen.

Computer expert Douglas Engelbart developed the idea for the mouse in the early nineteen-sixties. The first computer mouse was a carved block of wood with two metal wheels. It was called a mouse because it had a tail at one end. The tail was the wire that connected it to the computer.

Using a computer takes some training. People who are experts are sometimes called hackers. A hacker is usually a person who writes software programs in a special computer language. But the word hacker is also used to describe a person who tries to steal information from computer systems.

Another well known computer word is Google, spelled g-o-o-g-l-e. It is the name of a popular "search engine" for the Internet. People use the search engine to find information about almost any subject on the Internet. The people who started the company named it Google because in mathematics, googol, spelled g-o-o-g-o-l, is an extremely large number. It is the number one followed by one-hundred zeros.

When you "Google" a subject, you can get a large amount of information about it. Some people like to Google their friends or themselves to see how many times their name appears on the Internet.

If you Google someone, you might find that person's name on a blog. A blog is the shortened name for a Web log. A blog is a personal Web page. It may contain stories, comments, pictures and links to other Web sites. Some people add information to their blogs every day. People who have blogs are called bloggers.

Blogs are not the same as spam. Spam is unwanted sales messages sent to your electronic mailbox. The name is based on a funny joke many years ago on a British television show, "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Some friends are at an eating place that only serves a processed meat product from the United States called SPAM. Every time the friends try to speak, another group of people starts singing the word SPAM very loudly. This interferes with the friends' discussion – just as unwanted sales messages interfere with communication over the Internet.

This VOA Special English program, "Words and their stories", was written by Jill Moss. I'm Faith Lapidus.