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It may be time for the Consumer Electronics Show, but Microsoft no longer maintains a presence at the big event. The days of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer keynotes are long gone now. That does not mean the company has nothing to announce, though.

Today Larry Hryb, also known as Major Nelson and the head of Xbox Live, is unveiling a set of new bundles for the gaming console.

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Password manager provider LastPass has unveiled LastPass 4.0, a major new release of its cross-platform tool for securely storing and syncing passwords using the cloud.

Version 4.0 unveils a major new redesign, focusing on a simpler, more visually pleasing vault, plus unveils two new tools of interest: Emergency Access for trusted contacts, and a new Sharing Center.

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Sysinternals has developed some of the best Windows troubleshooting tools around, and if you’ve the tiniest technical interest in PCs then you’ve probably downloaded some of them already.

But there are more. Lots more. And if you regularly work on other people’s PCs, you’ll need speedy access to these at any time -- one-off downloads just won’t do.

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First a look at my predictions from one year ago and how they appear in the light of today:

Prediction #1 -- Everyone gets the crap scared out of them by data security problems. Go to the original column (link just above) to read the details of this and all the other 2015 predictions but the gist of it was that 2015 would be terrible for data security and the bad guys would find at least a couple new ways to make money from their hobby. I say I got this one right -- one for one.

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While some people like to poke fun at Apple for always focusing on thin and light products, the truth is, it matters. Sure, it should never be at the expense of the overall user experience, such as battery life or performance, but if you can make a product svelte, why not?

Today, Toshiba delivers a very slim Windows 10 tablet. Actually, at 0.27 inches thin and 1.28 pounds, the dynaPad is the thinnest and lightest 12-inch Windows 10 tablet in the history of mankind. It isn't a one-trick pony, however, as it features a Wacom drawing and writing experience, with 2,048 levels of pressure too.

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Lenovo has decided to relaunch the MIIX 700 tablet and the Yoga 900 convertible with added security to appeal to business consumers. The company is hoping to target users whose workplaces support the BYOD movement by offering Business Editions of these two devices.

The MIIX 700 Business Edition offers the portability of a tablet with a detachable keyboard which will entice users who prefer a physical keyboard. Lenovo has positioned the device as an alternative to Microsoft’s Surface. The Business Edition of this device retains the design of the original version but now includes a TPM chipset to allow for enterprise-level security. It also has support for Intel’s RealSense R200 3D camera.

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Overall mobile app usage grew by 58 percent in 2015 according to the latest figures from Flurry, Yahoo's mobile advertising and analytics platform, which tracked over 3.2 trillion sessions over the course of the year.

With the exception of games, which showed a one percent drop, every app category posted year-on-year growth. Personalization leads the way, up 322 percent, news and magazines are up 135 percent, and productivity also shows triple-digit growth up 125 percent.

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Unlike other countries, notably the UK and China, that have been busy passing laws to allow them to snoop on encrypted communication, the Dutch government has decided that strong encryption is vital to the health of its digital economy and the privacy of its citizens.

The country's minister of security and justice Ard van der Steur writes in an official statement that the Dutch executive cabinet endorses, "...the importance of strong encryption for Internet security to support the protection of privacy for citizens, companies, the government, and the entire Dutch economy. Therefore, the government believes that it is currently not desirable to take legal measures against the development, availability and use of encryption within the Netherlands".

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"Copyright" isn’t a concept that means much online, and we’re not just talking about the latest movies: put your own photos on the web and people will be reusing them in no time at all.

GFXMark Free is a versatile Windows application which can protect your copyright with a range of image watermarking tricks.

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CES is quite possibly the trade show with the highest number of new Windows products showcased. Lots of such devices fly under the radar, however, as they tend not to have many, if any, standout features. HP's new Spectre x360 laptops are an exception.

What makes the 13.3-inch and 15.6-inch Spectre x360 worth bringing to your attention is HP's choice of (optional) displays. The smaller model can be had with an OLED panel, which is a very rare option in this market, while its bigger brother can be specified with a super high resolution screen, a 4K display to be exact.

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Phones have been gradually getting bigger in the past few years. That makes for better displays for watching videos and viewing documents and web pages, but there’s a downside too.

For many people it makes them more awkward to carry around and can mean they’re harder to use as a phone because you need two hands to operate them.

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Readers love predictions so for 15 years or so I’ve been making lots of them during the first full week of each new year. The first time I did a predictions column it was because I couldn’t think of anything else to write about that day and the reaction from readers was so strong that I’ve been stuck doing them ever since. What started as one column per year filled with about 10 predictions has expanded over time to as many as 10 separate predictions columns because as I age I am becoming ever more long-winded. Sorry. It’s reached the point this year where this introductory column won’t even contain predictions, just a guide to the several columns that will follow in the next few days.

They will begin, of course, with a look back at my predictions from a year ago to see how smart or stupid I was. Historically I’ve been about 70 percent smart and 30 percent stupid in my predictions with that number more or less dependent on how vague I can be. Sorry again.

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While Windows 10 is a solid operating system, it is nowhere close to being perfect. Actually, for 2015, I am comfortable saying Ubuntu was the superior operating system. The Linux-based OS is rock solid, while being straightforward -- no confusing privacy settings, silly live tiles, or aggressive upgrade tactics. Quite frankly, Ubuntu 15.10 with Unity is currently my favorite operating system. This is saying a lot, as I have historically preferred Fedora with GNOME.

Today, the first official Alpha of the upcoming Ubuntu 16.04 'Xenial Xerus' becomes available for download. By the way, a Xerus is apparently an African squirrel; you can see an image of one above. Before you get too excited, however, Unity is not available, nor is GNOME or KDE. No, this is exclusively a LXDE, MATE, and Kylin (for Chinese-language users) affair.

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There's already a lot of noise coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, even though the actual event hasn't yet begun. It seems almost every company will have at least some sort of representation present in Sin City.

Set-top box maker Roku will be there to unveil its plans for 2016. The company claims it has grown its smart TV market from zero to eight percent this past year.

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The various privacy concerns surrounding Windows 10 have received a lot of coverage in the media, but it seems that there are ever more secrets coming to light. The Threshold 2 Update did nothing to curtail privacy invasion, and the latest Windows 10 installation figures show that Microsoft is also monitoring how long people are using the operating system.

This might seem like a slightly strange statistic for Microsoft to keep track of, but the company knows how long, collectively, Windows 10 has been running on computers around the world. To have reached this figure (11 billion hours in December, apparently) Microsoft must have been logging individuals' usage times. Intrigued, we contacted Microsoft to find out what on earth is going on.

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