Panasonic announced a Windows 8-powered 20″ tablet with 4K resolution at CES in early January this year and has since shown it off a few more times. The company has announced what it will also be bringing its products to IFA and a 20″ 4K tablet is on the list.

So, why is Panasonic showing the same tablet over half a year later? Read more »

Microsoft sent out the finished version of Windows 8.1 and RT 8.1 to manufacturers and announced that users will have to wait until the official October 18 launch date to get it (even MSDN and TechNet subscribers). Well, you don’t have to wait, Windows 8.1 RTM has leaked (but it’s the Simplified Chinese version).

If you don’t read Chinese and can wait three weeks until the official version is out, you can just put on one of the 8.1 wallpapers. Read more »

Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 have hit the RTM stage, meaning Microsoft has sent them out to device markers and with their help will do the finishing touches to the updated OS. The update will be released to the public on October 18.

Windows 8.1 is part of Microsoft’s new strategy – instead of waiting years to deliver new major features to their flagship OS, the company will move to a quick release schedule. And so, just 10 months after the initial launch of the OS comes its first major update. Read more »

Gameloft has announced its plans to launch a total of 15 games for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 by the end of this year and throughout 2014. Headlining the list is Asphalt 8: Airborne, which hits Android and iOS tomorrow.

Four of the games will be new for the Windows Phone 8 platform, while all 15 will be hitting Windows 8. Read more »

A Nokia Windows RT tablet has been spotted in the wild. The device has the familiar Verizon and 4G LTE logos on the back and the red color to go with the branding. The tablet will also be available on AT&T at launch.

In terms of specifications, the Nokia tablet is said to have a 10.1-inch display, quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and obvious LTE support. Read more »

We had heard rumors that the Windows 8.1 update would be arriving some time in October this year but now we finally have the proper release date.

According to a blog post on Microsoft’s Windows blog, the Windows 8.1 update would be released to the general public on October 18 at 12:00 a.m New Zealand time. The Windows 8.1 would also be available at retail outlets and pre-installed on new devices on the same date. Read more »

According to sources close to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 update will be released to end users by mid-October.

The RTM version will start seeding in the beginning of August and after manufacturers have fiddled and optimized it for their varying hardware it’s expected to be available to the general public by mid-October. Read more »

Poor sales performance of the Windows RT platform, which Microsoft hoped would making a dent in the tablet market, has made ASUS announce it’s ceasing making slates running it.

The company is currently only offering the VivoTab RT tablet, powered by the Tegra 3 SoC. Read more »

Market analysts IDC has released its report on tablet shipment numbers for the second quarter of this year. Although Apple retains top tablet spot and shipped more tablets than Samsung, ASUS, Lenovo and Acer combined it controls only 32% market share of the entire quarter.

Compared to Q2 of 2012 when Apple saw 60.3% market share of tablet shipments it saw a 14.1% drop in shipments year over year. Samsung saw an increase of 277%, Lenovo had its sales explode by 313.9% and ASUS extended its shipments by 120.3% with Apple the only one seeing a negative trend. Read more »

After recently dropping the Surface RT prices by a cool $150, Microsoft has now announced that the Surface Pro will be receiving a $100 price drop, which means prices for the 64GB model now start at $799.

The offer is only for a limited time between August 4 and August 29 and is only available to customers in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the US. Read more »

We’ve been down this road before so take this with a pinch of salt. A Windows RT tablet by Nokia showed up in GFXBench scores. The device carried the model name RX-114, RX-108 was a model name associated with Nokia tablet early this year (maybe this Tegra 3-powered tablet).

The benchmark reported a resolution of 1371 x 771 pixels for the screen, presumably a minor error with the real resolution being 1368 x 768, the standard 10.1″ Windows RT tablet resolution. Read more »

The Android platform continues its dominance in tablet market with its shipments reaching 24.2 million in the second quarter of 2013. According to a research from Strategy Analytics, Android currently has 67 % of the tablet market, while the Apple owned iOS has declined to 28%. Windows is also on the rise, but has only managed to secure a 4.5% slice so far.

The tablet market has seen a new rise with the overall shipments reaching 36.2 million in Q2, 2013. That’s of course, a significant gain over the same period last year, when 24.6 million tablets were shipped. Read more »

We got a first glimpse of IE11 when Microsoft released the preview of the Windows 8.1 update. Now, Microsoft has released a developer preview of the upcoming browser for Windows 7 users as well.

IE11 aims to improve the performance and security of your existing IE10 browser. New features like ability to render web images as well as text using the GPU, support for W3C resource priorities, SPDY network protocol and an updated JavaScript engine improves page loading performance over its predecessors as well as its rivals. In SunSpider benchmark, IE11 Developer Preview was 4 percent faster than IE10 and nearly 30 percent faster than Chrome 28. Read more »

Windows’ native cloud storage service, SkyDrive, will allow you to have access to files even without an internet connection with the upcoming Windows 8.1 update.

The update lets you indicate which files you want to be available offline (even all of them), and downloads them to your devices automatically. Read more »

It looks like the Google Chrome App launcher is finally out of its developers preview mode, as the app is now available for all Windows users.

The Google Chrome App launcher will place an app on the start page, taskbar and desktop for Windows 8 and in menu bar for Windows 7, which allows you to quickly access the browser, Chrome store, Gmail or any other application that works with the Google’s browser. Read more »