Next time I hear Coldplay festively crooning "May all your troubles soon be gone, Oh Christmas Lights keep shinin' on," I'd like to think that far from lamenting some lost love, they're paying solemn tribute to the humble but illuminating LED. The Light Emitting Diode celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. It's easy to …

The year of the Linux tablet is, like the year of the Linux desktop, destined never to arrive. That doesn't mean we won't see Linux on a tablet, but you'll see Linux on a tablet the way you see it on the desktop - clinging to a tiny percentage of the market. There is of course Android, which does use a Linux kernel somewhere …

The past year provided us with some wonderful tales of innovation and expertise, but we all like to see a car crash as much as success story, right? So here's a roundup of the most colossal cock-ups of the last 12 months, including face-plants by Google, Facebook, Apple, and others who succumbed to that most universal of human …

Video games are believed by many to be a waste of time - but this is something consistently being challenged by the people who love them. And despite the fact that video games just can't seem shrug off the label of "just for kids", new research (PDF) would suggest that you're never too old for them. And as the debate over the …

The transistor, the ubiquitous building block of all electronic circuits, will be 65 years old on Sunday. The device is jointly credited to William Shockley (1910-1989), John Bardeen (1908-1991) and Walter Brattain (1902-1987), and it was Bardeen and Brattain who operated the first working point-contact transistor during an …

Feature There’s been a right fracas in education this year, with the government proclaiming that ICT (Information and Communication Technology) teaching is dull and demotivating, and that kids need to be be taught more programming, and less use of applications. Into the fray like a white knight comes the Raspberry Pi, a tool designed to …

Marvel at the lavish Corian countertops and the shimmering metallic shelving forming a temple of Jobsian worship. Be still and know that you are in the hands of one of Apple's premium resellers. Around you are hushed voices discussing iPads and iMacs, and the occasional ripple of excitement from a fanbois. But there may be …

Every few days, Veronika Megler gets email from a stranger. Some thank her for teaching them English. Others acknowledge her role as an influence in their decision to pursue a career in computing. Megler was never a teacher, nor a mentor, to those who send the messages. But her correspondents remember her fondly as one of the …

The problem with trying to explain quantum computing to the public is that you end up either simplifying the story so far as to make it wrong, or running down so many metaphorical rabbit-burrows that you end up wrong. So The Register is going to try and invert the usual approach, and try to describe quantum computing at a more …

Archaeologic is an occasional column focus on retro tech and digital archaeology. Today, a look back at the events that went into motion 14 years ago and led to the foundation of the bedrock of UK TV, Freeview. Freeview, Britain’s free-to-air terrestrial digital TV brand, is ten years old. It formally launched at the end of October 2002, so …

Would there have been a PC revolution had Intel decided in the late 1960s to stick to making memory chips and turn its back on microprocessors? Almost certainly, but the company did get into CPUs and IBM chose its 8088 chip to build into its first Personal Computer, the 5150. The 8088 and its sibling, the 8086, evolved from the …

Feature The glint of alien sunlight on green body armour; the spark of purple crystal shards arcing their way across the battlefield; the roar of a Warthog’s engine as it bounces across uneven terrain; and the dull thud as the butt of Master Chief’s gun impacts Covenant skull… familiar enough occurrences these days given the impact Halo …

The long-anticipated release of Halo 4 and the latest Call of Duty, November is shaping up to be a great month for first-person shooters. Halo 4 We've decided to look back at the great FPS games of the past, so here are what we think to be the 20 most notable titles from the last 30 years. During that time, there have been …

Analysis Rumours refuse to die about a Surface-like smartphone coming from Microsoft. The Wall St Journal cites unnamed sources as (this time) saying Microsoft is working with component suppliers in Asia to test its own smartphone design. The paper reports Microsoft "is testing a smartphone design but isn't sure if a product will go …

Feature Personal computing may have originally been more ‘computing’ than ‘personal, but that changed in the late 1970s in the US and, in the UK, during the early 1980s. In the first part of ‘A History of Personal Computing on 20 Objects’, we saw how computing went from maths gadgets to first mechanical, then electromechanical and …

Complimented on the cobwebs, skeletal remains and general stench of death in my flat the other day, I suddenly remembered it was Halloween this week, so here's another nostalgic slideshow to celebrate. This time it's a collection of 20 pant-cacking games, titles that raised the hair on the back of our necks or at least raised …

Review “It’s the ultimate expression of a Windows PC,” says Windows chief Steven Sinofsky... or “a compromised, confusing product”, according to Apple’s Tim Cook, who has not used one. This is Surface RT, Microsoft’s first own-brand tablet, which went on sale today. Along with the fact that it runs Windows 8, there are two notable …

Analysis More than two decades after the alliance of Intel and Microsoft drove ARM from the battleground of personal computing, Microsoft is warmly embracing the low-power processor designer for Windows 8. ARM was squeezed out of the then emerging and subsequently dominant platform of the time, the desktop PC, as computer makers …

As the latest James Bond game - 007 Legends - shoots its way to shop shelves this week ahead of Skyfall's release on 26 October, we decided jump aboard the nostalgia train with a look back at Bond-theme games from yesteryear. 007 Legends Get bent! Since the very first virtual 007 adventure - the Parker Brother's James Bond …

Analysis Microsoft has at last released some more details on its Surface tablet – including pricing – but based on what we've seen so far, Apple and Android-tablet makers don't have much to worry about. First the good stuff: Microsoft appears to have created a system that, on the face of it, could give Apple a run for its money – at …

Lovelace Day Ada Lovelace is a compellingly romantic figure, irresistible in today’s age of equal geeky opportunities. The daughter of "mad, bad and dangerous to know" Lord Byron, her mathematics-loving mother Annabella Milibanke purportedly beat the poet out of her with relentless studies in science, maths and logic. A beauty enthralled by …

Bond on Film A View to a Kill is generally regarded as one of the least successful Bond movies. Yet it stands out for two things: a suave villain who is deranged in an entirely believable way, and a villainous plot that appeared both logical and plausible. While its box office performance was passable at $152m, on a budget of $30m, even …

The ThinkPad is 20 today. Sort of. Launched by IBM and now made by Lenovo, the familiar black-clad, red-nippled laptop family quickly established itself as an icon, in many ways re-establishing Big Blue's reputation as a PC maker after years in the shadow of the clone manufacturers. The first three clamshell-styled ThinkPads, …

At Intel's developer shindig last week, chippery engineers spent a goodly amount of time conducting tech sessions that detailed the company's upcoming 4th-generation Core microprocessor architecture, code-named "Haswell." We thought that you, inordinately intelligent and tech-savvy Reg reader, might enjoy a deep dive into their …

Apple's iPhone 5 uses a nano SIM, the smallest SIM ever designed and, quite possibly, the last SIM we'll see in any mobile telephone. The nano SIM used in the new smartphone is tiny and its pattern of electrical contacts are about two thirds the size of the original SIM. It's almost too small to hold and certainly small enough …

Something for the Weekend, Sir Excitedly but carefully, I tore open the tough cardboard packing and slid out my latest purchase: an iPad keyboard. Not an Apple wireless keyboard, mind. That would be silly. That would be like buying a bicycle pump bigger than my bike. Instead, I purchased a keyboard the same size as the iPad, with the ability to click onto it …

Round-up Star Wars - there was no 'A New Hope' or 'Episode IV' back then - shot onto cinema screens on 25 May 1977, which means the franchise celebrates its 35th birthday today. A day for celebration, then, that might be enough of an excuse for you to revisit our Star Wars gift guide and snap up some Tatooine tat, much to the dismay of …

Feature Reg Hardware Mobile Week Gamers are everywhere nowadays. Often gamers who don't even consider themselves gamers. Take the woman beside me on the Sardine Express to London last week. Late-30s, attractive, suited and well-manicured – far removed from the stereotypical gamer. But there she was, 7:30 in the morning on a packed …

Product Round-up As the interest in this week's release of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition shows, remakes of classic videogames are all the rage. Developers are dusting off canvasses and applying a fresh layer of high definition paint to the hits of yesteryear. Halo is not the end of it. There are plenty more remasters on the way to …