Latest Technology News

Despite poor sales for the first gen model, Microsoft is pushing forward with its Surface tablet. While other manufacturers build Windows 8 devices, the Surface serves as a reference tablet, spotlighting the right way to produce the hardware, and that is a good a reason to continue production.

And continue it does, with the second generation sales kicking off tonight, including midnight openings at select Microsoft locations around the US. "Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 and the new accessories go on sale at 12:01am Tuesday, and Microsoft is hosting midnight events at 10 Microsoft retail stores across the country to celebrate", the team announces.

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More and more business users are shunning a traditional desktop or laptop for tablets and smartphones. While tablets are great for consuming information, with the help of keyboard attachments, they are sufficient at creation too. However, tablets and smartphones are very personal devices; they are not optimized to handle a conference call for multiple users. Today, Logitech announces a product designed to solve this dilemma -- the Mobile Speakerphone P710e.

The company says, "with the Mobile Speakerphone, you can be more productive with hands-free access to your mobile device of choice and an integrated experience for video conferencing and conference calls. Whether you’re hosting your noon conference call using your mobile device in a hotel room or joining a call from a conference room in your local office with your PC, the Logitech Mobile Speakerphone is the ideal travel companion for the mobile employee or small business owner".

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Last week my colleague Mihaita Bamburic explained how to install the freshly released Windows 8.1 in VMware Player and Workstation, and I wanted to follow that up by showing how to set up the new OS in my personal favorite virtualization software -- Oracle VirtualBox.

There are many reasons why you may want to try out Windows 8.1 before committing to it as your primary operating system -- if you used Windows 8 and hated it, you may want to see exactly how much better the updated release is. If you’re thinking of upgrading from an old OS but aren’t sure about the Modern UI, this a good way of trying it out first.

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With Android handsets and iPhones taking the lion's share of the smartphone market, Windows Phone is quite often overlooked by most consumers in their purchasing decisions. The popularity, or lack thereof, of devices running Microsoft's mobile OS likely plays an important part but it also detracts folks from getting the smartphone that may be right for them. Ask yourselves how many of your acquaintances have been in this position.

Many do not even take Windows Phone into consideration and the ones that do easily find a couple of reasons to dismiss the platform and jump on the Android or iPhone bandwagon. Yes, Windows Phone may not be the right answer for everyone but it might be for more people than naysayers think. And I have got 10 good reasons why consumers should give Windows Phone a chance.

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The name "Maxthon" likely evokes some memories for long-term Windows users. The browser, that was once known as MyIE 2, is among the oldest of its kind, having launched on Microsoft's OS more than a decade ago. It has never risen to the popularity of Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer, but it has been a perennial alternative ever since. To keep up with the changing computing landscape, the company behind Maxthon has also launched the browser on Android and iOS.

And, now, Maxthon arrives on Windows Phone 8 as well where, once again, its biggest rival is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which the former has long struggled to surpass in market share. But, this time around, the balance can tip in Maxthon's favor as smartphone users are not as enamored with (or, better said, glued to) Internet Explorer as Windows PC users used to be. But there is one barrier to overcome: Maxthon has to clearly best Internet Explorer. And that may prove to be, once again, a difficult task.

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Few places scream mountain biking louder than Utah. With locations like Canyonlands National Park, the entire state has become a mecca for thrill seekers, and served as the backdrop for the real-life situation that became the movie 127 Hours. Red Bull, famous for its energy drink and its sponsorship of sports, uses the state to stage its Rampage mountain bike challenge.

The event, which took place October 11-13 in Virgin, Utah, was streamed live online and will be shown on NBC December 21st in the US. However, Red Bull is also partnering with Microsoft's Internet Explorer to bring it to you sooner.

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Apple's first TV ad for the iPhone 5s shows off the gold version of the phone, but fails to mention the existence of the space gray and silver models. Backed with Goldfrapp's Ooh La La, the commercial seems to draw inspiration from the liquid metal effects seen in Terminator 2. There have already been ads for the cheaper iPhone 5c but this is the first time the premium version of the iPhone has been showcased on television.

In the ad, ribbons of liquid gold swirl and intertwine before converging and melding together to form the body of the iPhone. Shortly after airing, the advertisement was also uploaded to Apple's YouTube channel. As is the norm with Apple, comments are disabled, but it's likely that views and shares will rocket over the coming day.

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Combined shipments of devices -- PCs, tablets and mobile phones -- are set to reach 2.32 billion units in 2013 according to technology research specialists Gartner. This represents a 4.5 percent increase over last year, but much of the growth is driven by a shift to lower priced devices.

Traditional PCs are forecast to show an 11.2 percent decline, which drops to 8.4 percent when ultramobiles are included. Mobile phone shipments are forecast to grow 3.7 percent to around 1.8 billion units. It's tablets that are still the darling of the consumer though, shipments are expected to be up a whopping 42.7 percent this year reaching 184 million units.

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My relationship with Chromebook and Chrome OS has been rocky. When Google first announced the concept, I was highly dubious. After all, I had done all of my computing on Windows and Linux -- locally installed apps were all I knew. Ultimately, curiosity got the best of me and I bought the Samsung ARM Chromebook. The simplicity of the platform melted my heart and I became an enthusiast.

Sadly, I outgrew the Samsung model due to its poor performance -- it is slow on certain websites, like Google+. I decided to postpone the upgrade until the Haswell models would arrive. However, in the midst of the Haswell-Chromebook revolution, HP and Google threw a curve-ball and released the wonderful Chromebook 11, that has an ARM processor, which took an Apple approach to laptop design.

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Just about everyone with a desktop, laptop or even a Surface Pro running Windows 8 has been busy updating to Windows 8.1 over the past couple of days.

But things aren’t so rosy for anyone with a Surface RT. After a number of users took to Microsoft forums to complain about problems updating their tablet/laptop hybrids to the latest version of Windows, the update was pulled from the Windows Store.

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Mobile malware tends to make news on a regular basis, most notably targeting Android. As Microsoft has learned with Windows, being the market share leader also means presenting the biggest target.

Russian virus researchers at Dr. Web are releasing new research around the latest volley from cyber-criminals, this one being dubbed "Android.Spy.40.origin". The Trojan is currently only prevalent in the southeast Asian geographic area, specifically in South Korea, where it's spread by means of unwanted SMS messages containing a link to an APK file.

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Oh dear. If you try and search using Google in Windows 8.1 there’s a very good chance the results page won’t display properly. Whatever you search for will generate a mangled page that works, but makes finding the results you want rather tricky.

This problem doesn’t affect searching using Google in Chrome, or Firefox, it only affects IE11 in both Modern UI and Desktop modes.

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This was another week in which Microsoft managed to steal the show, this time with the public release of Windows 8.1. Here at BetaNews we were fully prepared for the upgrade and showed off what's new. While we're generally impressed with the update, there's still a little room for improvement. Of course the Start menu (or lack thereof) is still a sticking point, but you can get this back. The operating system update was preceded by a raft of updates to Window's built in apps.

Windows 8.1 may be where it's at right now, but there are still plenty of people running Windows XP. Google announced that Chrome users on XP would be supported for a year after the OS is retired.

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Google has an operating system for the desktop and laptop form-factors called Chrome OS. However, the company also has the Android operating system, which is designed for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This prompts many pundits to posit "why not just have Chromebooks run Android, as that OS can run the Chrome browser, and much more". And you know what? They are kind of right.

Sadly though, those people are mostly wrong; bless their hearts. You see, less is more in this case, and a lack of local apps breeds out of-the-box web app thinking, which is good. However, despite this, a number of manufacturers have released Android laptops but none of them took the world by storm. Today, Lenovo hopes to change that and releases the A10 -- an Android laptop with a 10.1-inch screen.

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Microsoft is using an interesting technique to ensure that websites such as BetaNews (or FileForum in particular) list only the latest versions of its software. Rather than just contacting websites who link to software that is no longer available, Microsoft is invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to force websites to remove the links. BetaNews has been contacted by Google after one such complaint from Microsoft.

In the complaint -- which can be read on the Chilling Effects website -- Microsoft refers to our listing for Microsoft Project (although the page is no longer live). Microsoft contacted Google who in turn contacted us to say that "Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others".

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