ALICANTE, Spain -- How much are you really willing to pay for a tablet?  It's a question Betanews has asked readers before, and the majority disapprove of $500-plus -- even $400 -- as simply too much. How would you like to pay something less than $500? It's the price, at least according to yet a third Taiwanese company that's just made its way into the exploding tablet market with an eye to laying claim to a "sweet spot," that will motivate you to say "Yeah" and make a purchase.

Along the way to presenting its line to about 300 journalists and bloggers gathered here for a preview of Berlin's IFA consumer products trade show in September, one of HannStar Ltd.'s officials offered candid insight into why it and other companies haven't been rushing to embrace Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb, a version of the operating system especially for tablets: It drives up product costs, and hence selling prices, too much.

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Microsoft has released a portable standalone security tool designed specifically to scan for and remove viruses, spyware and other threats. Microsoft Safety Scanner comes in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions for PCs running Windows XP or later.

The download package weighs in at a hefty 70MB, largely due to the fact it includes all the virus definitions it needs. Once downloaded, the tool will work for 10 days before expiring, forcing the user to download a fresh version with the latest updates included.

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The first sighting of next year's security suites is something we still associate with the autumn, along with cooler weather, shorter daylight hours and the uncomfortable realization that Christmas isn't so very far away. Symantec seems determined to change that, though, and even though it's only a few months since Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security 2011 were released, the 2012 product range has released to public beta today.

These are clearly very early versions, then, but if wasn't for the word "BETA" on their consoles then you'd find it difficult to tell, at least initially. Installation is as quick and easy as ever: you don't even have to reboot once the process is over. The core Norton Internet Security 2012 process required only a little under 14MB of RAM (Private Working Set) on our test PC, so they're not exactly demanding. If the suite is missing any features, then it's hard to tell: you get on-demand antivirus scanning, strong real-time protection, a very configurable firewall, phishing protection, password management, accurate spam filtering and a whole lot more.

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Even by the standards of alpha browsers, Internet Explorer 10's Platform Preview is rather lacking in features. There's no toolbar, no sidebar, no security, no real configuration options, and it's little more than a window for browsing Microsoft's latest HTML5 demos.

Of course it's a brand new project, so that's no real surprise. If you look beyond the basics, it turns out that IE10 does have one very practical feature in its diagnostics tool, a handy stand-alone troubleshooting tool that you can use to diagnose IE 8 and IE9 issues on any Windows 7 PC.

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The Mozilla Foundation has released a new alpha build of its open-source browser. Firefox Aurora, currently at version 5.0a2, is designed to represent the first public glimpse of future versions of Firefox in an early, unstable form.

The release of Aurora coincides with Mozilla's announcement of its new rapid release development cycle, which brings it into line with rival browsers like Google's Chrome. Having taken two years to deliver Firefox 4, Mozilla aims to release versions 5, 6 and 7 by the end of the year.

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If you're an avid or occasional gamer, how many hours -- days, even -- of hard work and effort are locked up in your game save files? All those monsters defeated, puzzles solved and bonus levels attained are stored in a handful of files or Registry settings, which are as vulnerable as any other file or setting on your PC.

Most backup tools can, with a bit of research and hard work, be configured to back up the folders and settings of your favourite games, but a far easier solution is to use a dedicated free tool called GameSave Manager. It supports nearly 800 games, with more added regularly in the form of database updates. It's simply an essential download for any gamer.

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There are many tools around that will mount disc images as virtual drives, allowing you to browse them in Explorer without having to burn the image to a blank disc first. So news that PassMark Software has produced yet another may not, at first, appear too interesting. OSFMount isn't just another "me too" utility, though--it's an extremely useful tool with features that you won't find in most of the competition.

The good news starts with the program's wide support for many image standards. As well as mounting the usual ISO and BIN images, it can also work with IMG, DD, 00n, NRG, SDI, AFF, AFM, AFD, and even VMWare VMDK images, reportedly (although the latter didn't always work in our tests).

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Microsoft is showing off pieces of the next version of Windows (we're all calling it Windows 8) but I'm wondering if anyone cares anymore about Windows in the tech enthusiast space.

Why do I say that?

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Microsoft has released the first Service Pack for Office for Mac 2011 yesterday. SP1 updates Office to version 14.1.0. It fixes a number of security problems and includes enhancements for the various applications in the office suite. The overall stability of Office for Mac 2011 is improved and refinements to performance and reliability help to make the suite more enjoyable to use.

Across the suite a bug that allowed attackers to inject malicious code into memory has been patched, and the ability to add alt text to shapes, images, movies and other objects has also been added. Excel users can benefit from the Solver analysis tools which can be used to run 'what if' scenarios with data, and various problems with pasting, conditional formatting, printing and page settings have been fixed.

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Less than one month after arriving in beta, Opera 11.10 has been given a final release. One standout feature is an overhaul of Opera's Turbo function, which is designed to speed up browsing on slow networks such as dial-up connections, 3G networks and crowded WiFi hotspots.

Opera Turbo, which works by reducing the size of the web page being requested before its sent to the browser, now uses Google's new WebP image format. This helps speed up browsing further while better maintaining the quality of the page's images after compression. Opera claims that in testing the changes introduced in version 11.10 produce pages that are 35 percent smaller and subsequently 15 percent quicker to load than before.

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Rootkits are the ultimate in stealthy malware, burying themselves so deep into your system that they're often very hard to spot. If you're unlucky enough to encounter one then your antivirus package might detect it, but there are no guarantees, and so it may be wise to equip your PC with a second line of defence in Kaspersky's TDSSKiller.

As the name suggests, TDSSKiller is designed to target a few, specific threats (TDSS, Sinowal, Whistler, Phanta, Trup, Stoned). These can be very dangerous, though, so having another way to pick them up isn't going to hurt -- and the program can also detect hidden services, forged files, MBR changes and other suspicious signs that could indicate infection by a brand new rootkit.

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Once upon a time, not so very long ago, software firewalls would essentially carry out just a single task: monitoring your network, and blocking any unauthorised connections. That's no longer enough to make your product stand out from the crowd, though, and firewalls like Online Armor 5.0 now cram in so many other functions and features -- keylogging detection, behaviour monitoring, browsing protection, script blocking and more -- that they begin to look more like security suites.

The extra functionality is apparent as soon as you launch the Online Armor installer. This doesn't simply unpack its files; its Safety Check Wizard first scans your PC for known dangerous processes that might interfere with the program's operation. This takes a while -- 55 minutes on our test PC -- but is probably worth it, just to be sure that we were starting with a clean system (although if you know you're malware-free then the wizard can be skipped altogether).

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It was recently revealed that one of Windows 8's new features will be the ability of Windows Aero to automatically adapt the color of Aero Glass to match the desktop background, so, for example, if you set a background that's predominantly red, Windows Aero will adjust its color so your semi-transparent windows blend in with the new backdrop.

The good news for Windows 7 and Vista users -- particularly if you're the kind of person whose desktop changes with the weather (or at random intervals) -- is that this feature is available now for free. The tool in question is Aura, which was recently updated for a second beta release.

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Skype for Windows has been updated to version 5.3, with the latest release offering a number of enhancements including better quality video during calls received from mobile devices. Skype improved calling by moving the video rotation tasks from the mobile device to the computer receiving the call, making it possible to send higher resolution video and therefore producing a better overall video call experience.

Other new features include the return of the icon that appears in reduced-size contact cards, making possible to see the online stats of contacts at a glance. It is now also possible to change conversation topic by clicking the 'i' button that appears in the header of all conversations.

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There are many possible reasons why a PC might suffer from audio glitches, like pops, crackles or dropouts. And so troubleshooting the problem often becomes a matter of trial and error, where you'll maybe close down every possible background process that you can in an effort to find anything that might help.

LatencyMon offers a much simpler solution. The program uses Microsoft's Event Tracing for Windows technology to monitor what's happening on your PC, and in just a few minutes can produce a detailed report that will highlight some of the processes and drivers that are the most likely cause of your audio issues.

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