Latest Technology News

One of the worst tragedies a person can experience is a home fire. If the flames themselves don't destroy your belongings, the smoke, and water from hoses probably will. In other words, it is a very serious thing and should not be taken lightly.

Sadly, Nvidia's Shield tablets are a fire-hazard. If you own one of the affected tablets you should stop using it immediately. Do not charge it and do not power it on other than to verify if it is affected. Not sure if yours is impacted? Read on to learn more.

Continue reading →

Windows 10 has been officially out for less than a week and the news it has generated doesn't seem to stop. From download numbers to new devices, things keep pouring in. Now HP is heading in a different direction, one aimed at businesses.

HP is announcing a full suite of products geared towards the enterprise market. "HP, a Preferred Provider of Microsoft cloud productivity and mobility solutions, now offers the most comprehensive portfolio of services available for the Microsoft enterprise ecosystem which includes Enterprise Services for Office 365, Readiness Workshop for Office 365, Enterprise Mobility Suite, Skype for Business and the new Windows 10 enterprise suite of services", the company states in the announcement.

Continue reading →

Struggling to return strong profits, Samsung has slashed the retail price of its flagship smartphones -- the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge -- by €100. After the deduction, the revised cost of the 32GB variant Galaxy S6 is €599, whereas its Galaxy S6 Edge counterpart will slightly break the bank at €699. The smartphones were launched just four months ago.

For now, the price reduction only seems to be visible in Netherlands, but as Samsung pointed out earlier during its quarterly earnings call, it will be “adjusting the price" of the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge everywhere. The company is also rumored to launch two new smartphones, namely the Galaxy S6 Edge+ and the Galaxy Note 5 in the coming days.

Continue reading →

Windows 10 is now available to all. During the testing period, numerous preview builds were released, each bringing its own set of problems.  This post was originally written to help fix audio problems in build 10041, but the suggestions still work in the final release.

If you have problems with the installation of a Realtek driver, don’t get the full audio experience with VIA HD Audio, or have issues with Conexant audio, there's a workaround for you to try.

Continue reading →

Few people like to be told what to do, and this is certainly the case online. If you're told that you're not allowed to visit a certain website, it is only human that you question why -- it may well increase your desire to visit said site. Around the world, governments have taken it upon themselves to try to police the internet. It's something many would describe as an exercise in futility, and it seems they are correct.

The implementation of restrictions on access to certain websites can be seen in many countries, but it is something that the UK government has shown itself to be particularly keen on. So how successful have initiatives to block access to the likes of the Pirate Bay, KickAssTorrents et al actually been? Not very. One site that helps users to get around web restrictions is proving more popular than both Skype and Spotify.

Continue reading →

There has been so much confusion surrounding the release of Windows 10 -- is it free or not, what version do you get, who is eligible to upgrade? -- that you may well be wondering if your copy is properly activated. Perhaps you performed a clean install of Windows 10, maybe you upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8, or perhaps you’ve remained on the Insider program; you still want to be activated.

It is quite easy to check that you have a legitimate and fully activated copy of Windows 10 installed. Just use the steps below and you can check activation status in next to no time.

Continue reading →

You may have bought yourself a new computer with Windows 10 pre-installed, or you may have manually upgraded your older machines. Whatever route you have taken to Windows 10, the chances are that you will end up in the Store at some point in order to download apps.

We've already looked at what you can do fix the 0x803F7003 error that can plague the Store, but this is not the only issue that can arise. When you try to install an app you may see an error message that reads Device limit reached. Not a problem -- here's what to do.

Continue reading →

With Windows 10, Microsoft is pushing apps more than ever, and this means that users are being encouraged to spend more time browsing through the Store. For anyone upgrading from Windows 8 to Windows 10, using the Store will probably be nothing new, but for those moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10, it is a different story.

Just as with any piece of software or service, the Windows Store can prove problematic from time to time. One error that frequently crops up is error 0x803F7003. If you've seen this when trying to download apps from the Store in Windows 10, here's what you need to do to fix it.

Continue reading →

In today's television market Comcast is the bully -- the 600 pound gorilla. The cable provider owns NBC, which arguably should not have been allowed, but what's done is done. The carrier also doesn't seem to be above using it's status to fight off rivals, especially those in the new TV market that it knows is coming, but would prefer to prevent.

That is apparently the case recently with Sling TV, a service that works just like cable, but comes in over the internet, which turns Comcast into a bandwidth provider and takes away that lucrative TV business. With that in mind, Comcast-NBC has begun blocking Sling's ads.

Continue reading →

For many people Google Chrome is their browser of choice. It may be popular, but most users would concede that Chrome has something of a memory problem -- it will gobble up resources like they are going out of fashion. To get around this issue, all manner of extensions have sprung up offering tab suspension -- but there's a hidden Tab Discarding option built in that does the same job.

As revealed by Google's François Beaufort, the Chrome development team is working on bringing the feature, which is already used by Chrome OS users, to the Windows, Linux and Mac versions of the browser. The Discarded Tabs feature works by unloading tabs from memory when resources are running low, and reloading them if and when they are next clicked. If you install the latest nightly builds, this is already available to you -- here’s how to use it.

Continue reading →

It has been mentioned ad nauseum that Windows 10 is free. While retailers would normally make a killing through sales of a new version of Windows, this time around they are missing out. Not a company to shy away from raking in a few bucks, Best Buy has come up with a money-making solution to keep its finance department happy.

The secret formula involves taking advantage of the ignorance of people who are not particularly computer literate, and squeezing them for every cent possible. The chain might not be able to make much money selling copies of Windows 10, but it can sure as hell try to monetize the installation process and training.

Continue reading →

NetMarketShare has released its monthly desktop operating system usage share figures, showing the fluctuations of the various iterations of Windows. All versions of Microsoft’s operating system registered drops in July, except of course Windows 10 which was launched at the tail end of the month.

Only being available for a few days meant the new OS was never going to shift the needle significantly, but there were enough upgraders (Microsoft says 14 million in the first 24 hours) to double the operating system’s share.

Continue reading →

If you can't make it to Lollapalooza this year, there's no need to be jealous of your friends who are attending. At the music festival, Facebook has started testing a new feature that allows people to live stream events on the social network, taking on the likes of Snapchat head-on.

Music festivals are far from cheap -- a full weekend pass costs $275 and that's before you factor in travel, food, and so on -- so the prospect of a social powered livestream will appeal to many... particularly those to whom the idea of camping is abhorrent. Facebook's Place Tips feature can be used by those in attendance -- including performers -- to post videos, photos and updates that can be enjoyed by those who chose to stay at home.

Continue reading →

What do you do if a story appears in your Facebook that you're not interested in? You might just ignore it, or you might try to train Facebook about your preferences by selecting the 'hide' option.

But if you're the sort of person who hides a lot of stories, Facebook might start placing less importance on your dislikes. This might sound counter-intuitive, but Facebook is convinced that it makes sense, saying that for some people opting to hide a story "isn't as strong a negative signal". So who are these people?

Continue reading →

Microsoft is no stranger to controversy when it comes to web browsers. Internet Explorer has been the butt of jokes for many years, and the company also found itself in trouble in Europe as part of an antitrust case. With the release of Windows 10, history could be about to repeat itself.

Mozilla CEO Chris Beard penned a letter to Microsoft the other day expressing his disappointment that people upgrading to Windows 10 have their default browser choice overridden and changed to Microsoft Edge. While some may feel that Mozilla is whining, it could be argued that the company is right to be pissed -- and Windows 10 users should be just as pissed at the liberties Microsoft is taking.

Continue reading →