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Since the release of the first iPad, consumers have been trying to use tablets as PC replacements. They retrofit them with keyboards trying to make them laptop-like. It's hard to blame them -- after all, the battery life of most tablets is very attractive.

Sadly, most tablets have proven to be companion devices to the PC, rather than a replacement. Luckily, Microsoft released the Surface line of tablets, which melds fun and productivity into a true PC replacement. This is because, well...it sort of is a PC. Today, the 32GB RT variant is being sold for a super-low $299 -- will you buy it?

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The Syrian Electronic Army is no stranger to the headlines, and the group's latest exploits have gained it further attention. This time the target is Microsoft, specifically Skype. The SEA target the Skype Twitter stream, as well as Facebook page and blog in what may be the first high-profile hack attack of the New Year.

The group defaced the blog with a message to Microsoft that read "Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.. Stop Spying!". A message posted on the Skype Facebook page read "Don't use Microsoft emails (hotmail,outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the governments."

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A quick look at the Windows Phone market portrays an interesting picture, a landscape that is dominated by a single maker, Nokia. Competition is practically non-existent, as the Finnish company takes the lion's share for both sales and usage. How can other vendors challenge it?

Nokia's market share for Windows Phone usage exceeds 90 percent and dwarfs that of HTC, Samsung and Huawei which struggle to overcome their near-anonymity on the platform. Sales reveal a similar tale. And, as soon as Microsoft takes control of Nokia's phone-making arm, this problem will grow even larger. Consumers will suffer and so will Microsoft, which will find itself in a very difficult spot trying to convince manufacturers that it's OK to play and, despite its role as the sole developer and main vendor, there will be no backfire. That is a tough sell. So what can be done?

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You may only think of Opera as a web browser, an alternative to the bigger players like Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, but the company does a lot more. In fact, the Norwegian browser maker is invested heavily in the entertainment market.

Today Opera announces it has reached a deal to bring its TV Store to select Samsung Blu-ray players, adding hundreds of apps to the living room.

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If your PC is very unstable -- perhaps with blue-screen crashes or regular file corruption -- and all your usual troubleshooting tricks have failed, then it’s often a good idea to check for RAM issues. The Windows Memory Diagnostic tool does a reasonable job of identifying these, but you’ll probably get better results from a specialist third-party tool, like the open source MemTest86+.

Now almost ten years old, this fork of Chris Brady’s original MemTest86 has been regularly updated to support new hardware, and the most recent version saw some major additions (handles up to 2TB RAM, SMT support for up to 32 cores). It’s still ridiculously small, though, arriving as a 58KB download which unpacks a tiny 1.75MB ISO file.

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Kingsoft Software has seen in the New Year with major updates to its range of free and paid-for office suites for Windows. Despite minor version number changes, Kingsoft Office Suite Free 2013 users gain the ability to save documents in the later Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx) formats, a feature previously restricted to Kingsoft Office Suite Pro 2013 users.

Other new features across both builds include improved encryption options, a slew of new and improved features for Writer and Spreadsheet components and better stability.

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Today is the second day of 2014, so everything from last year is now obsolete (I kid, I kid). While only a few months removed from the iPhone 5s and 5c launch, it is never too early to begin dreaming about the next iteration of Apple's smartphone.

2013 was the year of Android from a market-share perspective, but its ongoing dominance isn't entirely assured. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Blackberry led the smartphone market. Google's Android isn't likely to lose market share any time soon (there are too many manufacturers and models for that to happen) but I do think there's a chance for Apple to win big this year. Though I am an Android user, I am not opposed to switching to the iPhone 6 or iPhone Air (or whatever Apple calls it) and I think other Android users could feel the same way -- if Apple makes the following changes.

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Motorola's New Year's resolution gives notice to Apple and other Android phone manufacturers: We don't need stinking subsidies. Today, the Google subsidiary cut Moto X's off-contract to $399, even personalized, on all carriers. The permanent discount is $50 more than Motorola's glitchy Black Friday sale.

Google has a long history of selling unlocked, off-contract phones, starting with Nexus One four years ago. But in 2012, Nexus 4 brought the price down to something mere mortals could afford: $299. The Android's successor costs more, starting at $349.

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Winamp was a massively popular media player in the nineties, but it withered under AOL’s ownership, and failed to move with the times. Few people were surprised when a month ago AOL finally decided to cut its losses, announcing that, starting December 20 2013, the site and associated cloud services, including Shoutcast, would no longer be available to the public.

A petition to save the media player garnered close to 50,000 signatures, and Spotify created a fun tribute called Spotiamp, but the writing looked to be firmly on the wall for Winamp, despite rumors that Microsoft was interested in saving the service. Today it appears that Winamp has indeed found a savior, but it’s not one that anyone was expecting.

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While services like Grooveshark and Torch Music manage to survive, the Recording Industry Association of America is on a more or less constant attack of similar streaming sites. Now it seems the RIAA has managed to pull off a victory, strong-arming one service out of business.

HypedMusic calls it quits as a result of the cease and desist threats it has received. "I am not in any way condemning the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) for what they did or claiming that in some way they 'wronged' me; they had the right to send me a cease-and-desist and I immediately complied", the developer laments.

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Great news for fans of Windows 8 and 8.1, Microsoft’s divisive operating system has finally claimed 10 percent of the desktop market. According to NetMarketShare, which monitors such things, in December Windows 8 lost 0.01 percent share, but Windows 8.1 grew by 0.86 percent. Windows 8 now has 6.65 percent of the market and Windows 8.1 is sitting on 3.5 percent, bringing the OS’s combined share to 10.15 percent. Great job Windows 8.x.

However, as seems to regularly be the case, the new operating system’s gain was dwarfed by that of its elder sibling. Windows 7 put on a growth spurt that’s nothing short of stunning.

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While they were originally designed for extremely dull automotive applications, QR codes have gone very mainstream in the past few years, and now appear just about everywhere. It’s easy to see why, as they’re just so convenient: scan one with your smartphone and you can immediately head off to whatever link they contain.

Creating QR codes for your own purposes is also very straightforward. Websites such as goQR.me will do it for free, or you could use Alternate QR Code Generator to create codes on your PC.

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Movies are very important to me and to society overall. Seeing popular films gives the moviegoer a shared experience with other members of the community. This in turn allows you to understand references to the film in jokes and documentaries. For example, if you've never seen a film such as Star Wars, you would not understand the Family Guy and Robot Chicken parodies of it.

Sadly, for many people, a trip to the movie theater is not achievable due to extremely high prices. Where I live, New York, a couple going on a date to the movies can easily spend over $30.00 when drinks and snacks are factored in. Those same people may not be able to afford the premium movie channels. I am one of these people -- I typically wait years for a film to hit FX, USA or something similar, so I can see it in all its censored, commercial-riddled glory. The alternative is movie piracy -- something I do not condone nor take part of, for more reasons than one.

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Better last than never. Colleagues Ian Barker, Alan Buckingham, Brian Fagioli, Mihaita Bamburic, Wayne Williams, and Mark Wilson have all picked their favorite tech for the year. I join them. Only things I actually have used qualify for consideration.

My list focuses on one aspect: Value. Which products I see delivering the most value for money spent. Surely your value choices will differ. You can spend 25 cents and get loads of value from something or $2,500 and little at all. With that short introduction, I present my five favorite tech products of 2013 (and one from 2005, newly discovered).

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It’s the eve of 2014 and, let’s face it, tech news is scant on this day. Silicon Valley has taken a hiatus, but will return next week, with the kickoff of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But a holiday is always good for one thing -- checking the search engines to see how each is celebrating the event.

Google today has gone all 1970’s on us, with dancing and a disco ball. The animated numbers 2 0 1 3, are having a blast as the speakers pound out an unheard rhythm and the mirrored ball spins above. One would think we were on the verge of welcoming in 1977, and you can almost hear the Chic music playing in the distance, but actually it's 4 that's waiting impatiently for its chance to take over 3's spot on the colorful dance floor.

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