My Apple iPad Pro adventure begins [first in a series]
The first thing you notice about iPad Pro is the size. The tablet is ginormous. Its 12.9-inch screen lays before you like a chalk slate -- a blank canvas demanding typed text or drawings made with Apple Pencil. Yet something also feels wrong about the thing. During the so-called Steve Jobs era, refined designs were smaller -- like iPod nano. Apple is no stranger to larger; 27-inch iMac today or 17-inch MacBook Pro of yesteryear are examples. Perhaps. But there's big, and BIG.
The giant tablet arrived around 2:50 p.m. PST on Groundhog Day 2016, marking a bold computing adventure for February: Using iPad Pro as my primary PC, and hopefully only one. Perhaps you read my recent obituary to Apple love lost and might wonder why buy anything Apple? I like to experiment and am paid to try out new things (so you won't have to). By sheer size, PC replacement -- not companion -- is the only sensible use for iPad Pro. Can it meet the demands? I want to find out.
AMD officially releases A10-7860K APU, Athlon X4 845 'Excavator' CPU, and new coolers
As a system builder, I am constantly looking for new hardware and good value. While Intel makes a fine processor, I often find myself choosing AMD solutions for builds. Why? The company makes great bang-for-your-buck processors and graphics chips. Its APUs are a phenomenal value, while its traditional CPUs are powerhouses. Gamers in particular should take a look at its offerings.
Today, AMD officially unveils two new processors -- the A10-7860K APU and Athlon X4 845 CPU. The latter is particularly notable as it is the first-ever CPU to feature the 'Excavator' architecture. To keep temperatures on these new chips low, AMD has revealed new coolers too.
Twitter tries to appeal to people who don’t like Twitter
It has been suggested that Twitter is on a downward spiral, losing users, popularity and significance. Twitter would clearly disagree, but that's not going to stop the company from attempting to make its site more appealing -- even to people who don’t have a Twitter account.
Despite the ubiquity of hashtags and the prevalence of references to tweeting, there is something of a problem with Twitter. Visit Twitter.com and you'll immediately be prompted to sign into your account. Not a problem if you have one, but if you don't have an account it means that you’ve hit something of a wall. Twitter is now tearing down this obstacle, transforming its homepage into a valuable source of news and information regardless of whether you have an account or not.
NSA's lead hacker offers security tips
An interesting talk happened recently during the Usenix Enigma security conference in San Francisco. It was held by Rob Joyce, basically the number one hacker of the US. He is the head of NSA's Tailored Access Operations, or TAO. That's pretty much the government's hacking team, tasked with breaking and entering into the systems of its enemies. Or allies, if need be.
This man, who assumed the position of hacker-in-chief just a few months before Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the whole ordeal, spoke about a lot of things which Wired summed up in one smart sentence -- he explained how to keep people like him out of your systems.
Microsoft accused of Iowa Caucus voter fraud with hashtag #MicrosoftRubioFraud
Here's the deal, folks. As I said in a previous article, open source is a necessity when it comes to voting. I praised Bernie Sanders' campaign for questioning Microsoft's motives in providing the platform for the Iowa Caucuses. With that said, Microsoft was ultimately not the problem, closed source was.
Unfortunately for Microsoft, as could be expected, it is now being accused of voter fraud by apparent Donald Trump supporters. Since Ted Cruz won last night, you would think the claim is that the Windows-maker fraudulently boosted him. Nope. Actually, conspiracy theorists are claiming Microsoft increased the number of votes cast for Marco Rubio, who placed third. This movement is using the hashtag #MicrosoftRubioFraud.
Download files from a script with fGet
Foolish IT has released fGet, a freeware portable tool which enables downloading files from a script.
The program uses Internet Explorer components to handle the tricky bits, which means the fGet executable can be a tiny 51.1KB.
How to block the Windows 10 'recommended' update on Windows 7 and 8.1
Microsoft has changed the Windows 10 update from "Optional" to "Recommended". And by "Recommended" it means "You’re getting it whether you want it or not".
If your Windows 7 or 8.1 PC is set to install recommended updates automatically (because -- more fool you -- you just wanted it to be up to date and safe) then Microsoft will cheerfully download the new OS and start the installation process for you. Don’t want that to happen? Here’s how to stop it.
Risk of malware infection growing in UK
UK's businesses have had a bigger chance of being attacked by a malware than those in the US or the Republic of Ireland in December 2015, a new report by security researchers suggest.
According to a report by Check Point, in December 2015, UK was the 99th most attacked country globally, surpassing the US (122nd) and the Republic of Ireland (116th).
New cloud solution offers one-stop backup, archive and recovery
As businesses adopt the cloud for increased flexibility and reliability, public cloud services are increasingly being used as a protection platform to provide backup, archiving and disaster recovery.
Data protection specialist Druva has recognized the importance of this market and is adding disaster recovery capability to its Phoenix product to offer a converged cloud solution.
Microsoft forcing Windows 10 onto people is wrong
Microsoft says it wants to get people to a "safer place" and that’s why it’s so aggressively pushing Windows 10. But it’s one thing to advertise the new OS on someone’s computer, and another thing entirely to force them to upgrade to it.
Microsoft Marketing Chief Chris Capossela, says a lot of people are putting off upgrading to Windows 10 ("constantly kick[ing] the can down the street" in his words), and so the software giant is taking steps to give them a "push" into taking action. But not with a gentle reminder, or even full on nagging, but by downloading and then starting the OS installation without permission, and that sucks.
Gmail and WhatsApp boast over one billion monthly active users each
There are many products that have hundreds of millions of active users in a single month, but there are few that have passed the billion mark. However, the select group, which includes the likes of YouTube and Facebook, has just gotten bigger.
And it is Google and Facebook which once again add new members to that list, with Gmail and WhatsApp, respectively, joining the pack. Both services passed that milestone in January, with one taking longer than the other to reach it.
A 7 step security checklist for migrating from on-prem SharePoint to Office 365
Microsoft Office is the tried and true solution for work, so it’s no surprise enterprises moving to the cloud look to a familiar face in Office 365. Despite the cloud services’ significant adoption numbers -- 87.3 percent of organizations have at least 100 employees using Office 365 -- the vast majority of companies have yet to migrate all users to the cloud: 93.2 percent of employees still use Microsoft on-premises solutions.
The transition to cloud leaves companies puzzled on how to safely and effectively migrate extensive on-premises SharePoint environments to SharePoint Online. Once content is successfully migrated, companies must have controls already in place to properly enforcing security, compliance, and governance of sensitive data. Microsoft has significantly invested in the security of Office 365. According to Gartner, however, 95 percent of security incidents involving cloud will come from customer vulnerabilities rather than the service provider. Companies need to worry less about Microsoft suffering a breach and more about their own users’ high-risk activity within Microsoft applications. It is ultimately up to the enterprise to secure their data in Office 365, and the greatest threats frequently come from within.
New cloud service helps organizations meet document preservation requirements
Companies increasingly face demands to keep documents in order to satisfy legal and compliance requirements. This can present problems in deciding what to keep but also in keeping up with the latest regulations.
The latest EU/US Data Transfer negotiations for example are causing businesses to re-think their current business processes and data governance strategy in order to address these changes.
Snooper's Charter is vague and confusing
A group of MPs has criticized plans put forward in the Draft Investigatoy Powers Bill after consulting with several top technology firms, including the likes of Apple, Facebook and Google.
The Science and Technology committee has slammed the bill as being vague and confusing, issuing a 43-page report outlining its views on key issues such as encryption and data collection.
Windows 10 is extremely popular among gamers
Windows 10 appears to be making good progress as, in January, it overtook Windows 8.1 in terms of usage share. Its lead varies, but no matter which web analytics resource you choose to go by, the new operating system is still very close to its predecessor at this time. Meanwhile, the gap between it and Windows 7, while no doubt getting smaller, is shrinking at a very slow pace.
The difference in usage share, when looking at NetMarketShare's and StatCounter's numbers, comes from the fact that both analytics companies sort through web traffic. But, if we look at how all the major Windows releases fare on the popular gaming platform Steam, things are very different -- Windows 10 comes quite close to Windows 7, which may surprise many.
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