Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft has just rolled out a Chinese version of its online store, and not only that, they have also opened up pre-orders for their Surface RT tablet which we understand is already sold out in the US. It seems that the 32GB Surface RT sans the Touch Cover will retail for approximately $590 after conversion, which is slightly more expensive than if you were to purchase it in the US, while the 32GB and 64GB models that come with the Touch Cover will retail for $718 and $846, respectively.

Before the official Chinese online store was launched, Microsoft sold their products online in China via Tmall, which is an ecommerce site run by Alibaba. Of course, Microsoft is not alone in their attempt to bring the Surface RT to the masses in the world’s most populous country, where they have worked with Chinese retailer Suning to get the job done, although having their own online store in China would also help strengthen their case. Right now, it seems as though Microsoft is selling the Surface and Office via their online store, although there are links to what could be the future – Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, Skype and Bing.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Special Windows 8 SKU for China to combat piracy?, Lenovo S2 Windows Phone photos leaked,

The world is a strange place these days, and with the advent of social networks like Facebook, things have definitely gotten stranger. A court recently heard testimony of a husband who claims that he managed to track down the man who allegedly raped his wife as a schoolgirl using the most popular social networking site in the world today, Facebook. Andrew Marsh, 27, claims that through the organization of a surprise party for his wife on Facebook, he knew of Mr. Marsh, a greengrocer, and subsequently gave him quite a hiding after convincing his wife to make a police report concerning an alleged rape in 2001.

Mr. Marsh was subsequently arrested and charged with raping the lady in an alleyway when she was still a schoolgirl. The alleged victim’s name has been withheld for legal reasons, did mention to her husband that she was raped in one of their previous talks concerning relationship difficulties, as heard by the Maidstone Crown Court. She did have a relationship with Mr. Marsh in preceding years, where she claimed he raped her against a wall.

Mr Marsh of Rochester, Kent, who is married, has denied all counts of rape and indecent assault. Well, at least this didn’t end up in a double Facebook murder as reported in February this year.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Rockstar launches official Grand Theft Auto 5 Facebook page, No plans for Instagram for Blackberry 10 according to Facebook [Updated],

ASRock hits back by showing off their newest E-ATX motherboard, the Z77 Extreme11. Based on Intel Z77 Express Chipset, the board supports for Intel LGA1155 processors and features four DDR3 DIMM memory slots (up to 32GB RAM), three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot, three PCI-Express 2.0 x1 slots and one mini PCI-Express x1 slot. Connectivity-wise, it has two SATA3.0, eight SAS2/SATA3.0, four SATA2.0, twelve USB 3.0 and two Gigabit Ethernet. Pricing info is still unknown at the moment. [ASRock]

It’s Microsoft’s turn at quiet-before-the-storm quarterly results, and that’s evident in the fiscal first quarter earnings it just dropped on our laps. The Redmond team is reporting $16.01 billion in revenue, but a more modest than usual $5.31 billion in profit over the summer — while it’s healthier than the Q4 loss stemming from the aQuantive write-off, it’s not as impressive as the $7.2 billion profit from a year ago. While a tough PC market is partly to blame, it’s equally hard to say that Microsoft couldn’t have done better. There’s a real chance that some of its customers have been holding back on purchases in anticipation of the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 launches; it’s already setting aside $1.36 billion in revenue for Windows and Office upgrades. The company is unquestionably preparing itself for a giant spike in demand once at least Windows 8 rolls around later this month, so we’d say that the real litmus test will be the results we get after the holidays.

Continue reading Microsoft announces Q1 earnings with $5.31 billion in profit, braces for Windows 8 surge

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Tablets, Software, Microsoft

Microsoft announces Q1 earnings with $5.31 billion in profit, braces for Windows 8 surge originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seagate is an old hand when it comes to manufacturing hard drives, and today, we have a trio of new enterprise-class hard disk drives which were specially designed to cater to the varied needs of traditional data centers as well as emerging cloud infrastructures. Specially optimized for cloud bulk data storage, the Seagate Enterprise Value HDD delivers a maximum of 3TB of storage without consuming too much juice, making it ideal for efficient and affordable storage of unstructured data that is normally stashed away somewhere in the cloud.

Apart from that, Seagate also has its Enterprise Capacity 3.5 that features the industry’s widest range of capacities (1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB), making sure your data is stored securely in a robust data center environment, and the Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K HDD is said to offer best-in-class performance and security for optimize storage efficiency. I guess there is a little bit of something for everyone with the three hard drives made available to the masses by Seagate this time around. Which one suits your needs best?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Seagate Backup Plus devices introduced, Seagate to acquire LaCie ,