Tag Archives: Windows8

Windows 8.1 to ship with Skype pre-installed

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Windows 81 to ship with Skype preinstalled

We already suspected that Windows and Skype were going to get particularly cozy after Microsoft phased out Messenger, but it's now official: Windows 8.1 will ship with Skype pre-installed. Those who haven't already downloaded the messaging client will get it when they upgrade their OS (or buy a Windows 8.1 PC) after October. The move won't change much for existing Skype users, but it could easily lead to a jump in Skype adoption when the app will soon come bundled with the majority of PCs.

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Source: Windows Experience Blog

Microsoft confirms Windows 8.1 launching October 17th

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Microsoft confirms Windows 81 launching October 17th

Microsoft has announced that Windows 8.1 will be arriving on October 17th (well, in the US, anyway), confirming an earlier rumor of a mid-month launch. For some reason, the company's specified an exact release time of 12am on October 18th in New Zealand, which is 4am PT or 7am ET on October 17th. At that time, the free update will begin rolling out across local Windows Stores, and will be available "at retail and on new devices" from the 18th onwards, depending on your region. Check out our hands-on and subsequent coverage for an idea of what to expect from the update.

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Source: Microsoft

Lenovo Miix 10 Windows 8 tablet now on sale, slated to ship on August 16th

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Lenovo Miix 10 Windows 8 tablet now on sale, slated to ship on August 16th

Remember that "watered-down ThinkPad Tablet 2" we were able to ogle back in June? Eh, don't bother lying -- the Miix 10 name is hitting you as the freshest of the fresh, and honestly, there's no shame in that. Lenovo's latest Windows 8 slate is now officially featured on the company's site, with orders being accepted now and early shipments expected to commence on August 16th. For those curious, $600 nets you a 10.1-inch tablet, replete with a 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760 CPU, integrated graphics, 2GB of LPDDR2 memory, a 1,366 x 768 native resolution, 64GB of eMMC flash, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, 1MP front-facing camera and a two-cell Li-Polymer battery. Interested? You can part ways with your credit card number right here.

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Via: WPCentral

Source: Lenovo

Google adds touch controls to experimental version of Chrome

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Google testing touch controls in experimental version of Chrome

The latest build of Canary, the bleeding-edge test-bed for Google Chrome, reveals that the company is working on touch-centric features for its desktop browser. By swiping left and right, for instance, users will be able to avoid the chore of hitting the back and forward page buttons -- while pinch-to-zoom and on-screen keyboards are also available to try out. Now, of course, you just need some hardware to take advantage of the new features.

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Via: The Verge

Source: Google Chrome Canary

Switched On: The camera phone

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Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

DNP Switched On The camera phone

In that human-behavior lab known as the New York City subway, a vacationing family recently sought to get in a group self-portrait on their last day in the Big Apple. But the rocking train kept thwarting the capture of their jostled bodies. To frame the picture, they tried trading the quality of their smartphone's rear camera for the one above the phone's display so they could better preview the picture, but still had trouble composing the shot. Finally, a local passenger riding with them stepped in and offered to take their photo, which he did to their expressions of gratitude.

The incident served as an illustration of the often precarious situations in which we use our smartphone cameras. Had their phone been Nokia's Lumia 1020 and the stranger not intervened, the 41 megapixels of light-capturing prowess might have gone for naught as the family would've had to rely on the phone's middling front-facing camera.

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Twitter updates Windows 8 app with multiple account access

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DNP Twitter update for Windows 8

While the latest Twitter update for Windows 8 doesn't feature a major overhaul, it adds a handful of useful functions to the app. Perhaps the most notable addition is multiple account sign-in that gives you power to easily juggle several Twitter personas. Another nice new feature is the ability to pin users' accounts and lists to your home screen, so you can follow them closely. Seeing as you can now also view lists on profiles, the list you pin doesn't even have to be yours. This makes it easy to discover new users you might want to follow... unless having Twitter feeds in plain sight makes you feel even more alone.

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Source: Twitter, Windows

Nuforce Icon DAC and headphone amp arrives for Android, Mac and PC for $325

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Nuforce Icon DAC and amp arrives for Android, Mac and PC, makes digital tunes sound acceptable to audiophiles

NuForce has been pumping out high end audio gear for the digitally inclined for years, and its latest effort is the Icon DAC and amp for Android, Mac and PC. It shares the same aluminum construction as the Icon iDo amp aimed at iDevice owners that was released in 2011. However, the latest Icon adds a few new features. While it still has analog RCA and digital coax output, the new model offers RCA and 3.5mm analog input as well as a USB connection for pulling in audio. Additionally, it can drive 600-ohm headphones thanks to its 8V output amp, and its DAC supports sampling rates up to 96kHz, 32 bits of resolution and direct stream digital decoding. It's available now for $325 for folks with Windows 7 or 8 PCs, Macs and Android devices running 4.1.1 or higher.

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Strategy Analytics: Android beats iOS in Q2 tablet shipments, Windows gains ground

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All in all, global tablet shipments were up for Q2, according to new numbers released by analyst firm Strategy Analytics. Factoring in white-box units, the market saw 51.7 million tablets shipped in that time period -- that's up 43-percent compared to the same time last year. A lot of that good news can be chalked up to Android's success. The OS saw a healthy bump from 18.5- to 34.6 million units shipped, a number that has Google's mobile operating system holding 67-percent of the market. The news is a little less cheery on Apple's side of the OS wars, with shipments dipping from 17- to 14.6 million units, decreasing its marketshare to 28.3-percent, according to the firm. Microsoft, not surprisingly, saw a healthy increase in shipments from last year -- though it's still got a ways to go, calling around 4.5-percent of the market its own.

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12K gaming rig renders 1.5 billion pixels per second for just $17,000 (video)

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DNP 12K gaming brings frame rates and resolution to OMFGlevels

Think your gaming rig's impressive because it can run Metro: Last Light with maxed out settings at 60FPS? Well, Microsoft rounded up a trio of Sharp PN-K321 32-inch 4K monitors and wired them to a Windows 8 PC stuffed with three ASUS 7970 GPUs. The $17,000 experiment proved two things: Such tech is outside our price-range and it takes a huge amount of support to get it working. For instance, before AMD wrote custom drivers to make Eyefinity and multi-stream transport play nicely together, the framerate was a meager 8FPS. It's worth noting that even after all that, demos only lasted a few minutes before the computer's power supply would conk out -- but maybe the kinks will be fixed in time for us to play Battlefield Bad Company 5 on it.

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Via: Gavin Gear (Twitter)

Source: Extreme Windows Blog (Microsoft)

Acer Aspire S7-392 Ultrabook arrives in the US, starts at $1,450

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DNP Acer S7 ultrabooks US pricing info and availability

We first met Acer's Aspire S7 at Computex in 2012, and since then it's gone through a major overhaul to become the Aspire S7-392 -- a Haswell-equipped Ultrabook that's now available in the US. You can choose between two models up for sale at retail outlets and on Acer's online store, with the cheaper $1,450 package toting a 1.6GHz Core i5 processor and a 128GB SSD. The $1,700 variant comes with a more powerful 1.8GHz Core i7 processor and double the storage space, but their other specs are identical. Both Windows 8 Ultrabooks boast a 13.3-inch 1,920 x 1,080 touchscreen display, an HD webcam, an 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a bigger battery that promises up to 7 hours of power. It's too bad the European version's 2,560 x 1,440 screen didn't make it stateside, but at least the US incarnations are a bit easier on the wallet.

Update: We've revised the post to reflect that the higher-end model comes with a Core i7 processor, and not a Core i5.

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Source: Acer (1), (2)