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Nokia to release a Snapdragon-powered 10″ Windows 8 tablet in Q4

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We’ve heard so many rumors of Nokia jumping on the tablet bandwagon that we are not sure what to believe anymore, but this latest bit sound rather plausible. The Finns are reportedly working on a 10″ slate running Windows 8, which should arrive to the market by the end of the year.

The Nokia tablet will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset, featuring a couple of Krait CPU cores. The production of the device itself will be outsourced to the Taiwanese company Compal Electronics and initial volumes are said to be the rather modest 200,000 units. Read more »

Office 15 goes Metro UI, brings many improvements

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We’ve already had a peek at the Metro-styled Office 15 running on ARM, but since Microsoft is testing the Technical Preview of their highly popular office productivity suite, we can have a closer look at the desktop version of the apps.

Word, Excel and the rest have gotten touch friendly and with many new features to simplify editing and reading documents. Read more »

Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 15-inch ultrabook announced along with three V3 Series laptops

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CeBIT is underway and Acer just unveiled a new ultrabook – the Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 – along with three laptops for non-ultra users – the Aspire V3 Series. The M3 is a 15″ ultrabook and features an un-ultrabookish DVD drive. The V3 Series on the other hand come in 14″, 15.6″ and 17.3″.

The Timeline Ultra M3 measures just 20mm thick (not bad for 15″) and is made of an aluminum alloy. In the fairly thin package you get enough room for a HDD+SSD combo. You can go SSD-only if you want. Read more »

This is what Windows 8 on the desktop should have looked like

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I don’t know about you guys but when I saw Metro UI for the first time on a desktop PC, the first word that came to my mind started with ‘W’ and ended with ‘TF’. Sure, Metro is a beautiful user interface but when put on a 22-inch monitor it looks terribly out of place and doesn’t feel right when operated with a mouse. It looks even worse when placed alongside the old Windows 7/Vista UI, which will also be part of Windows 8. I wished Microsoft had come up with a way to make the existing Windows 7/Vista UI look more like Metro instead of having them simultaneously in one OS.

Unfortunately, my wish was left unfulfilled by Windows 8. But there is a designer out there who took almost exactly what I had in mind and made a mockup out of it. This, according to me and that designer, is how Windows 8 should have looked like. Read more »

ViewSonic unveils two Android tablets and a Windows 7 one

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Along with the three Android phones, ViewSonic also announced three new tablets, two droids and one Windows 7 slate. The Android tablets come in two sizes – 7″ and 9.7″, while the Atom-powered Windows 7 slate is a 10-incher.

The ViewSonic ViewPad E100 has a 9.7″ IPS screen with 1024×768 resolution and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Read more »

Windows logo gets redesigned for Windows 8

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The Windows logo has gone through several changes over the years. What started as a simple, monochrome 2D logo with Windows 1.0 slowly became more complex as more colors were added along with a bit of depth, until it started resembling a flag by the time XP came out. That ‘flag’ then got ensconced inside an orb with Vista and has been the same ever since.

With the Windows 8 logo, Microsoft has attempted to move away from this flag shaped logo towards something that goes well along with the ‘Windows’ name, as well as fit with the new Metro style of the UI. For this they hired the designers at Pentagram and thus the new Windows 8 logo was born. Read more »

Microsoft showcases upcoming Office 15 for Windows 8 on ARM

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While demonstrating Windows on ARM (WOA), Microsoft also showcased the next version of its office suite, Office 15. This new version of Office will be fully compatible with WOA and come with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

As you can see from the video below, Office 15 has a new flattened look, which is tune with the look of Windows 8. Office 15 will run in desktop mode on Windows 8, which is why the UI resembles apps like the new Explorer instead of the Metro apps. Read more »

Microsoft to release Windows 8 Consumer Preview on February 29 during Mobile World Congress

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Microsoft has announced that they will be launching the beta version of Windows 8, called the Consumer Preview on Wednesday, February 29 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The fact that Windows 8 has been designed from the grounds up for tablets suggests why Microsoft would want to announce its next operating system at a mobile event.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s application store for the Windows 8 is also expected to go live on the same day. As you may know, the Windows Marketplace will be the only place to download Metro-style apps on Windows 8. Read more »

Microsoft to remove Start button from Windows 8

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A screenshot from the upcoming build of Windows 8 has been leaked and although it seems similar to the developer preview available right now, conspicuous by its absence is our long time friend, the Windows Start button.

The Windows Start button, which took the form of an orb since Vista, has been around since the days of Windows 95, so it would feel a bit strange for any long time Windows user to not find it in its usual place in the corner of your display when he or she upgrades to Windows 8. However, even if Microsoft may have done away with the actual button, some of its functionality will still be available to the user. Read more »

Latest Skype for Windows features 1080p video

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Windows users can now enjoy the benefits of high quality video, granted they have a webcam capable of recording HD video, as well as a fast enough internet connection.

This update also finally sees the integration of group screen share, which enables sharing your screen in conference calls, rather than with just one person at a time. Read more »

Microsoft shows off Windows 8′s advanced sensor support [VIDEO]

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Windows has been a mostly desktop/laptop OS with only the occasional slate. But with slates being one of the primary targets of Windows 8, devs had to tackle an interesting problem – what to do with all those sensors that smartphones and tablets have?

Windows 8 will feature support for ambient light sensors and also an accelerometer, compass and gyroscope, which will be mashed together into something Microsoft calls “Sensor fusion” to improve the sensor’s performance. Read more »

Windows 8 tablets hardware specification requirements are out

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Windows 8 tablets will be put through the same strict regime as Windows Phone 7 devices as to what hardware goes in them and what OEMs are allowed to put.

This was to be expected from Redmond, as the company has set a goal to keep solid user experience across its different devices. Interestingly enough, Microsoft seems to be allowing both tablets and convertibles (i.e. ASUS Transformer Prime) to run its tablet version of Windows 8. Read more »

Razer reveals Project Fiona, a tablet with controllers attached to it running on a Core i7 and Windows 8

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Razer piqued our interest a few days ago when they talked about the Project Fiona, promising a “PC gaming on an all-new form factor”. Little did we know it was going to be a tablet with controllers attached to it.

Razer’s Project Fiona is essentially that, a tablet with two PlayStation Move like controllers on the side. The controllers are fixed and so even when you’re not gaming you will still have them around. Each of the controller has a joystick on it with four buttons on the front and two shoulder buttons. The device includes force feedback, 3-axis gyro, magnetometer and an accelerometer. Read more »

Gigabyte keeps Atom dream alive with Cedar Trail powered T1006M convertibe netbook and tablet, Windows 7 on board

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Gigabyte is showing off two new devices at CES – the T1006M, a Windows 7 convertible netbook-tablet, and the S1081, a pure Windows 7 tablet. Both have 10.1″ capacitive multi-touch touchscreens outside and Intel’s latest Cedar Trail Atom dual-core processors inside.

Where they differ is the keyboard. The T1006M has one, but unlike traditional netbooks, you can quickly transform it into a tablet by turning the screen around. Impressively, its 10.1″ screen has a 1366×768 pixel resolution, typically found in larger displays. Read more »

Lenovo gets busy, announces no less than nine notebooks

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You’d think that with CES so close Lenovo would have held on to these a bit longer, but it seems they couldn’t contain themselves any longer so they just went ahead and announced nine, yes, nine notebooks all at once.

The first one is a rather interesting hybrid notebook called the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid. The beauty of this machine is that along with Windows as the main operating system it also comes with Android that powers the notebook’s ‘instant on’ mode. The Android installation on the ThinkPad X1 Hybrid is a highly customized version of the OS and although you cannot run Android apps on it you can browse the web, play videos and music, read your mail and add widgets to the three homescreens. Read more »