Super-thin portable PCs, a new Windows version for mobile devices and customisable Internet clouds will lead a major computer show in Taiwan, opening on Tuesday, as the global tech industry charts its way through a difficult year.
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Top-brand exhibitors at Computex Taipei 2012 will showcase ultrabook models pioneered late last year by Taiwan-based PC makers Acer and Asustek. The notebooks resemble Apple's MacBook Air, but run on the Windows Operating Systems and sell for less.
Many of the big names at the annual show are expected to come out with tablet PCs that use a soon-to-emerge Windows 8.
Earlier Windows versions have lagged behind Google's system and Apple's iOS in smart phones and tablet PCs.
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“At the end of 2012, Microsoft will officially release Windows 8, so at Computex we're getting a lot of related products, and a lot of Taiwanese companies are keenly interested,” said Thomas Huang of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council.
Developers at the show will roll out servers and services that allow users to build their own clouds to store data without a hard drive.
Clouds are virtual corners of Internet where users could, for example, begin a game on a home PC and continue it later through mobile phone because the player's position and other details of the play would be stored in cyberspace instead of on the devices.