CyberLink Corp has launched PowerDVD 14, the latest edition of its universal media player.

The top-of-the-range PowerDVD 14 Ultra now includes a free year’s subscription to 10GB of space on CyberLink Cloud. There’s new support for syncing media between PC and mobile devices (iOS, Android, Windows 8), while auto-transcoding of videos, photos & music from PC to Cloud should improve performance.

Smartphones are very personal -- one device cannot fit all. Some people love the phablet craze, declaring enormous devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 as the best. However, others will say it is too big. Even more will decry the fact that it runs Android and not their favorite mobile OS of choice, iOS or Windows Phone.

So, in reality, if a reviewer says something is the best, or perfect, it is the best or perfect for them. For you, maybe it would be a poor choice. But, if you do prefer Android, the nice thing is, those devices come in many shapes and sizes, so you can make your own choice. With all of that said, for me, the HTC One (M8) is the best Android phone available and it is damn-near perfect, save for a few minor gripes.

Support for Windows XP comes to an end today. Despite that, there are still a fair number of customers continuing to run the aging operating system. While those customers may be a bit sad about the demise, not everyone is.

On the heels of my colleague Joe Wilcox touting Chromebook, Google does the same. The company is taking advantage of this situation to lure current Windows XP users over to its Chromebook platform. In fact, the search giant is using the company's own PR against it, stating "even Microsoft admits: it's time for a change". That statement is followed by an image of an aged computer, complete with CRT monitor.

Today Mihaita Bamburic bids "Goodbye, Windows XP!" Meanwhile, Wayne Williams walks down eXPerience memory lane. For good reason: This week, Microsoft pulls the life support plug -- following many, many, many delays. Henceforth, you use XP at your own risk, or forcibly march forward into the second decade of the 21st Century. You could follow Microsoft to Windows 8.1, or be truly courageous. Mac or Linux laptop are options, or you could go Chromebook. Yeah, you read right.

Here in the United States, Best Buy will trade in your XP clunker and give "minimum of $100 toward the purchase of a new Windows computer, Apple computer or Chromebook". The offer ends April 19, so hurry. The cash back will practically pay for a new Chromebook, which costs so little and does so much -- surely more than your XP wheezer. Someone from the Windows division once told me that O2, as in Oxygen, was one of the runner-up names for XP. How fitting. Your old machine has been living off oxygen for far too long. Pull the plug. I'll give you some reasons why Chromebook.

For many people, streaming video is a top means of entertainment. It is easy to see why -- services like Netflix allow people to consume mass quantities of movies and television shows for a paltry amount of money. There is even a whole market now to sell dongles and boxes for connecting the services to your TV, such as Roku, Chromecast and Amazon's new Fire TV.

Speaking of Amazon, besides its new streaming media box, the company has been on fire lately (pun intended) when it comes to its Instant Video service. Today, the company announces that it has swiftly surpassed both Apple and Hulu.

Windows 8.1 Update is out today, as if you didn’t know, and is a mandatory update for all users of the latest iteration of the tiled OS.

We’ve covered it in depth here, and Microsoft released a power guide for it yesterday, but if you still want to know more about what’s new, and why you might want to consider upgrading to "New Windows" Microsoft has rolled out a selection of introductory videos.

Cybercriminals are increasingly plotting for longer to pull off big heists rather than carrying out quick hits for smaller rewards.

Symantec's latest Internet Security Threat Report shows a significant shift in criminal behaviour as some of the most damaging attacks in history were carried out in the last year.

Google’s Chromecast has been getting a lot of media attention in tech circles, mostly due to the ever-evolving number of services and websites throwing support behind the little HDMI dongle. Price also plays a part of it -- retail is a mere $35, and Amazon offers it for a hair under $30.

All of this attention has kept the product at the top of the best-seller list in the electronics category for sometime now. But last week Amazon disrupted the market by announcing Fire TV -- a small set-top box designed to compete with Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV and the like.

Although millions of people will continue to use Windows XP after today, the 'end of life' milestone is still hugely significant. It’s the official end of a very long era for XP.

I remember the operating system’s launch clearly. It took place on Thursday, 25 October, 2001, with events coordinated globally across 63 cities. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates hosted the New York launch, while CEO Steve Ballmer presided over the London event. I attended the latter which was held at the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank. Security was very tight -- attendees were searched going in, and our bags were X-rayed -- this was a high profile event, and with the horrors of 9/11 still very raw in everyone’s minds, the organizers were taking no chances.

IBM's S/360 mainframe celebrated its 50th birthday on Monday. It was the machine that turned IBM into a corporate colossus, but because it was smaller and faster than other offerings of the early 60s it also put big-league computing power in the hands of businesses, not just governments and universities.

Since the personal computer revolution of the 1980s people have been predicting the death of the mainframe at the hands of distributed low-cost servers, but the big beasts continue to stalk the land of serious business computing.

Internet radio has become quite popular, with an ever growing number of services, including favorites like Pandora and Spotify, as well newcomers such as Beats Music. For the most part customers use these services on smartphones and computers -- thanks to Google Music All Access and a Bluetooth speaker on my desk, my Nexus phone gets me through the day.

But there are also stand-alone products designed just for this purpose. Grace Digital is one of the leaders in the field and the Encore is one of the top-of-the-line offerings from the company.

As I try to start this article with a bang, I realize how difficult it is to describe exactly how I feel about Windows XP as it is being put out to pasture today. On one hand the operating system is nearly 13 years old and long outdated, but on the other hand my early PC days are linked to it.

Around 2001, back when Microsoft introduced us to Windows XP, I was jumping back and forth between Windows 98 SE and Windows ME. I liked both, for different reasons. The former was fast and I had every driver that I needed for it. The latter felt more modern. (Well, anything felt more modern than Windows 98 to me, to be honest.) But after I had a taste of Windows XP, I never looked back. It looked like the future of PCs, and I simply could not resist the sight of that new UI.

One of the (many) new features that the Windows 8.1 Update -- out today -- adds to the OS is a PC Settings tile.

This tile opens the PC Settings screen, saving you having to go through the Charms, and provides access to settings for PC and Devices, Accounts, OneDrive, Search and Apps, Privacy, Network, Time and Language, Ease of Access, Update and Recovery and, most importantly, Control Panel. It also lets you personalize the Lock screen, your account picture, access the Picture Password and view recently used settings. The tile is available in the Apps screen, but isn’t displayed on the Start screen by default.

The Windows clipboard is useful, but limited, not least because it can hold only one item at a time. Copy in something else and the first has gone forever.

Clipboard managers can help, though, and at first CopyQ seems like a very typical example. It lives in the system tray; in a click or two you can be viewing a list of recent clipboard items (text or images); and any of these can then be selected or pasted into the current document.

It's doubtful there are many people out there at this point that don't already know that support for Windows XP will come to an end tomorrow, April 8th. Despite that, a number of individuals and businesses will continue to run the operating system.

This doesn't likely apply to those maintaining an HTPC, as this tends to be a more geek-savvy set, but no doubt a few are out there. For those users, XBMC has passed its judgment, and the verdict is Linux.