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Sharp To Quit Making Personal Computers

Posted by timothy on from the used-to-have-the-coolest-laptops dept.

cylonlover writes "Sharp has reportedly decided to pull the plug on their PC operations — not entirely shocking given that the company has not released any PCs at all in the past year. The company will apparently 'focus on marketing its Galapagos tablet devices coming out in December, along with providing content such as e-books, music and video for these products.'"

10 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sharp made PCs?

    1. Re:Huh? by antifoidulus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually a lot of different Japanese companies make computers that are for the most part only released in Japan. Which is actually a far cry from the situation 20 years ago where lots of different Japanese PC manufacturers exported their stuff overseas.

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      Monstar L
    2. Re:Huh? by antifoidulus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wow, I didn't know Glen Beck used slashdot.

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      Monstar L
    3. Re:Huh? by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, and I burst out LAUGHING when he couldn't even get basic history right. It was one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen. I mean people are stupid enough to actually believe this guy? Thats infinitely funnier than any sitcom about really dumb characters.

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      Monstar L
    4. Re:Huh? by TheLink · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not so funny come voting time.

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  2. In other news by RedACE7500 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Microsoft to stop making automobiles.

    1. Re:In other news by GumphMaster · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wouldn't that be the iGly Device?

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      Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
    2. Re:In other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      As long as you are a female, than it is fine... Remember... HAVE FUN!

  3. Dont trust their tablets either by fredrickleo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apparently they're going to focus on a new line of tablet PCs.

    I'm still very unhappy with the amount of software support and updates we got for the Zaurus SL-6000 (zero support and updates) which was a very expensive piece of kit.

    Because of my experience with the Zaurus I no longer take chances with hardware and would rather go with the established leaders even if it's technically inferior.

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    Yay me! ^^
  4. Sharp X68000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Before they got into making x86 PC "clones" like everyone else, they had an 8-bit computer line as well as the X68000 which was basically the high end gaming PC of the late 80s. It shipped with Human68K which was on the surface similar to MS-DOS except that it used a 768x512 text display with kanji. The interesting part was the hardware. It had dual 1.2MB 5.25" floppy drives, a YM2151 (4 op, 8 channel stereo FM synthesizer like the one used in Capcom CPS1 arcade machines and many others) and ADPCM chip for sound, and a 10MHz 68K. Then for video it had 512KB of memory for "text" arranged as 4 bitplanes (like the Atari ST or Amiga), another 512KB for bitmapped graphics which could hit 512x512 with 64K colors, and 32KB of SRAM for 4bpp character based graphics (2 independantly scrolling background layers and 128 16x16 sprites). In other words, it rocked, and it cost 400,000 yen.