As expected, the Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012 RTM builds were made available for download to Microsoft MSDN and TechNet subscribers Wednesday afternoon, giving developers early access to the "first final" build of Microsoft's flagship operating system and development environment.

This round of releases focuses on getting developers the tools they need to get Windows 8 apps ready for sale when the OS goes commercially available on October 26. As such, the new Windows Store is a major focus of updates today.

Samsung on Wednesday officially unveiled its new Galaxy Note 10.1 to the United States. The device is an update to Samsung's part-phone-part-tablet Galaxy Note which debuted last year and was met with equal amounts of fascination and derision.

Unlike its 5.29 inch predecessor, this device will not be confused with a phone in any light because it has a full 10.1 inch (1280 x 780) LCD display like the Galaxy Tab family. It's equipped with a 1.4 GHz quad-core Exynos processor, 2GB of RAM, Android 4.0.4 (ICS), and has a 5 megapixel rear camera and 1.9 megapixel forward-facing camera. It comes in 16GB and 32GB variants and has a microSD slot for additional storage.

You can’t have failed to notice that Windows 8 is attracting a lot of negative press. Some commentators, such as myself, have said it will flop, others that it will be the new Vista.

But not everyone thinks the updated operating system is a disaster. Thomas Koll, CEO of Laplink, is actually pretty positive about Windows 8's chances, and took the time to sit down with me and share his views about that and other topics, including flat PC sales, Microsoft Surface and tablet adoption in the enterprise.

Chinese software developer EASEUS has updated its ToDo Backup software range to version 5. All versions, including EASEUS ToDo Backup 5 Free, gain Windows 8 compatibility, a tweaked user interface, support for large hard drives and the ability to specify file types for backup.

Paid-for versions of EASEUS’s all-encompassing backup and restore tool, including EASEUS Todo Backup Workstation 5.0, also benefit from new backup options involving Windows 7 Libraries and Outlook.

If you’d like to find out which programs load along with Windows on your PC then Autoruns is a great place to start: it’s small, portable and produces a very detailed report, yet remains very easy to use.

Silent Runners is an interesting alternative, though. It also itemises your Browser Helper Objects, shell extensions, “shell execute” hooks, context menu handlers, print monitors, autoplay handlers and more. And it tries to highlight entries which look suspicious. But the key difference is that the program comes in the form of a VBScript, so you can see how it works, and perhaps tweak the code to suit your needs.

Remember RealPlayer? The media player that was once, quite some time ago, one of the go-to media players for online media disappeared into relative obscurity, shouldered out of the limelight by the likes of Silverlight and HTML5 video. For desktop platforms, RealPlayer has all but vanished, but it is trying to make headway into the mobile market. RealPlayer for Android is out of beta and officially released.

Rather than just audio and video, RealPlayer for Android can also be used to play slideshows of photos, but movies and music are really where it’s all at. There is support for playlists so you can create mood music for every occasion and access it with ease. Aside from RealVideo and RealAudio, support for which can be added through and in-app purchase, the app can playback any file that is supported by your phone or tablet.

While click fraud and identity theft are probably the most common forms of larceny on the Internet, I just heard of a company that sets a whole new standard of bad, lying to advertisers about, well, everything.

Click fraud is when a website either clicks on its own ads to increase revenue, gets someone else to click on them with no intention of buying or works with botnets to generate millions of illegal clicks. I wrote a few months ago how longtime YouTubers were suffering income drops as Google algorithmically eliminated their botnet clicks. But click fraud requires a third-party ad network to work. What I am writing about here is something completely different.

Even if I may not come across as a Research in Motion fan, I actually like the Canadian smartphone manufacturer more than you'd think. RIM is the underdog in the smartphone race and after I wrote the article on the new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook I thought to myself "yeah, this is nice; I'd actually have one over a Nexus 7". The specs pointed to a very capable 7-inch tablet that is better than typical, run-of-the-mill, BlackBerry PlayBook in almost every single way. What's not to love about a new, strong entry on the market? Well…

I didn't expect to like the tablet, since I didn't expect it to be launched in the first place, given the financial context being most unfavorable in a long time for RIM. The 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook is a miracle in its own way, being released at a time when RIM shares plummeted harder than a Tic-Tac falling from a skyscraper. Then I saw the price: CAD549.95, in Canada, at Bell, Rogers and Telus; I'm still left wondering: "What are they thinking?" That's about $554 for the folks south of the Canadian border. Since both the Canadian and United States BlackBerry shops have the same prices for the PlayBook, it's fair to assume the 4G LTE BlackBerry Playbook will too.

Cloud security has been a hot topic in the news lately. While most of the hacks reported in the press have affect consumers and popular free services, there’s no question that some businesses will be concerned, in the light of all these negative reports, about just how safe their off-site data actually is. It’s one thing for an individual like Mat Honan to lose his digital identity, but if a business loses the data it has stored in the cloud (or worse still, if it should fall into the wrong hands), that can have truly catastrophic consequences, both in terms of monetary loss and damage to reputation.

The perceived risk of cloud storage might have some small-and-medium businesses rethinking their strategy and looking to return to the old days of just backing up locally. But doing so could actually put company data at far greater risk. If the firm’s servers fail as a result of a cyberattack or a natural disaster, it’s going to be much harder to affect a speedy recovery.

Growl is an excellent notification system for OS X that makes it easy to keep an eye on the status of a range of different applications without the need to switch between apps. But there is one problem, particularly for anyone who is keen to jump on the latest version of OS X -- there is currently no support for Mountain Lion and its new Notification Center. Mountain Growl can help here.

The Notification Center is in line with the same feature that is found in iOS and is the latest in a series of changes to OS X that blurs the lines between the mobile and desktop versions of Apple’s operating system. If you have been a Growl user, you’ll have noticed that when you upgraded to Mountain Lion that you have to endure Growl notifications alongside those from the Notification Center.

Many programs require that you have the correct version of the .NET Framework installed before they’ll work. And so it’s important to understand which versions of .NET are installed on a system before you start installing new software.

Microsoft haven’t provided any straightforward way of finding this out, unfortunately, but that doesn’t have to be a problem: the .NET Version Detector provides everything you need.

End of summer typically means slower news cycle and with it more ridiculous rumors and positively pathetic punditry than ever. For example, the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists squirms and squeals like a pack of hogs rolling in fresh mud -- they can't get enough of the Samsung trial under way in Northern California. Then there is Microsoft and the mini-revolt over the Surface tablet. Acer whines, Toshiba gives up Windows RT plans and everybody who is no one guesses just how low Microsoft will sell its tablet.

The problem is one of conflicting objectives. Apple's iPad sells faster than bacon cheeseburgers (let's keep to the pig metaphor shall we) during the County Fair. Total shipments topped 85 million in July -- in about 27 months. Today, IHS iSuppli put Apple's second quarter tablet market share at 69.6 percent globally -- that's up 44.1 percent, or 11.5 points, sequentially. Yeah, from 58.1 percent in Q1. (Pop those eyes back your head now.) Meanwhile, Windows starts essentially from zero. Microsoft can't close distance on iPad fast enough, and sure-fire, proven way is offering a compelling alternative for much less.

Toshiba is the third Microsoft OEM to pass on Windows RT, saying Tuesday that it has cancelled all plans for devices based on the platform for the foreseeable future. The announcement follows the very public comments of Acer CEO JT Wang, whose comments on Surface suggest his company isn't interested either, and a similar move by HP back in June.

"Toshiba has decided not to introduce Windows RT models due to delayed components that would make a timely launch impossible. For the time being, Toshiba will focus on bringing Windows 8 products to market", a company spokesperson tells BetaNews.

Tuesday, Microsoft announced it has begun a major update to its consumer cloud storage service SkyDrive, which includes a new Web interface to the service, updated apps for desktop and new ones for mobile, and some new APIs for developers.

Two weeks ago, Microsoft opened its newest webmail brand and design upgrade on Outlook.com, and over a million people signed up in the first 24 hours alone. The update to the SkyDrive interface will be similar, and it will bring the same clean appearance, and will utilize the tile-based interface formerly known as "Metro" that is common among most current-generation Windows properties.

At the end of 2011, Microsoft released Office OneNote for iPad, bringing the cult favorite note-taking application to all of Apple's devices.

But major shortcomings with the freemium OneNote for iPad app have earned it a significant number of negative reviews in the iTunes App Store. Third-party iPad app Outline+, released at the end of July, seeks to provide fixes to these complaints. So far, the app tackles two of the major issues plaguing the iPad version of OneNote: syncing and formatting.