News on Personal Computers

Several PC makers said Friday they were voluntarily including China's controversial Internet filter software in new shipments despite Beijing's decision to postpone making it mandatory. The government had been set to introduce the Chinese-made "Green Dam Youth Escort" programme but announced the delay hours before its implementation on July 1. Customer service staff at PC makers including Taiwan's Acer Inc and China's Haier Group said they were nevertheless installing or packaging the software with all new PCs -- but added it was easy to uninstall. "You will ...

Several PC makers said Friday they were voluntarily including China's controversial Internet filter software in new shipments despite Beijing's decision to postpone making it mandatory. The government had been set to introduce the Chinese-made filtering program -- called the "Green Dam Youth Escort" -- but announced the delay hours before its implementation on July 1. However, customer service staff at PC makers including Taiwan's Acer Inc and China's Haier Group, said they were installing or packaging the software with new PCs, adding it was easy to uninstall. "You ...

Several PC makers were including controversial Internet-filtering software with computers shipped in China on Thursday despite a government decision to postpone its plan to make such a step mandatory. Beijing's decision this week to delay the requirement that the filtering software — known as Green Dam — be pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the United States and Europe. But the move by some makers to ...

In a rare reversal, China's government gave in to domestic and international pressure and backed down Tuesday from a rule that would have required personal computers sold in the country to have Internet-filtering software. Just hours before the rule was to have taken effect, the government said it would postpone the requirement for the "Green Dam" software. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it made the decision partly because some PC manufacturers were having difficulty meeting the deadline. It did not say whether the plan might be ...