Business / Technology

The tablet revolution that was supposed to kill the PC industry is fading and people are buying new computers again.

There is a silver lining in the struggles of the PC industry.

Acer is adding some depth to its line of Windows 7 computers appearing today: The company is introducing a laptop with a 3-D display. The $780 Aspire 5738DG “delivers cinematic images that literally pop from the screen,” the company said in its release. Why? Acer said it’s in anticipation of more 3-D games and movies, but the…

IDC’s latest PC market report said second quarter sales fell less than expected — down 3.1 percent vs. the 6.3 percent it had predicted. It’s a great followup to Intel’s blowout earnings that goosed Wall Street today, and a setup for Microsoft’s earnings report next week. IDC said “portables,” including netbooks, helped, as did consumer…

Somebody’s not going to get their laptops featured in the PC vs. Mac ads: Namely Acer, which may have spilled the beans on the Windows 7 launch date. This comes just as Microsoft released a near-final test version. An Acer exec dropped the date on British tech publication Pocket-lint while discussing an upcoming all-in-one touchscreen…

PC sales weren’t as bad as expected in the first quarter, research firm IDC said in its quarterly hardware report. This tracks with Intel’s earnings comments yesterday about the PC market bottoming out in the quarter, and suggests Microsoft may provide similar outlook in its April 23 earnings report. Unit sales were down 7.1 percent…