iFixit Cracks Open the Microsoft Surface Pro, Slowly.

Microsoft only launched the Surface Pro tablet a few days ago. It didn’t take long for the guys over at iFixit to get their hands on one of the tablets and proceed to take it apart. iFixit does this to show how repairable the tablet is if you should happen to damage it, or want to expand or modify it – and because they’re just as curious as you are about what it looks like inside.

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I think we all know it’s just cool to see the parts that are on the inside of some the most desirable gadgets on the market. Unfortunately, cracking the Surface open required the removal of a veritable crapton of screws (90 to be exact) and a heat gun to melt the copious amounts of adhesive used to hold the tablet together. In fact, it took them over an hour to figure out how to get the screen out of the tablet. iFixit said, “We are starting to miss the old Surface, as we find a metric duckload of adhesive holding the screen in place.” The battery is also glued into place, behind the motherboard.

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Removing the screen appears to have been the most difficult part of the delicate operation. After the screen was removed, all of the hardware on the inside can be seen, which is surprisingly minimal. Highlights include a Intel Core i5-3317U Processor, the Intel Mobile HM77 Express Chipset, 3x Atmel MXT154E Touchscreen Controllers, 4GB of Micron RAM, a teeny tiny 1.8″ Micron RealSSD unit, and a Wacom W9002 chip for pen-based input. It also features two of the tiniest cooling fans you’ll ever see:

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Overall, the Surface Pro tablet scored a miserable repairability rating of just 1 out of 10. That means if you break it, you probably just need to buy a new one. You can check out the detailed teardown over on iFixit.

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SlashGear Morning Wrap-up: February 13, 2013

It’s time for some HTC One action with a confirmation from the very source – coming up quick! This year’s USA State of the Union address saw a massive 1.36 million tweets – and one awkward follow-up response. Rumors of a Samsung smart watch have begun to surface after many Apple iWatch tips have taken hold. Be sure to check our Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 Review for great justice – pen and dock included!

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There’s a large Slacker Radio overhaul going on in their efforts to take on Pandora and Spotify. A bit of a break appears to have happened with Flickr as sets of private pics have been pushed publicly. The Intel Web TV plans revealed this week have been given an addendum: this setup will be always watching!

You’ll be glad to find MacBook Pro Retina and Air price slashes along with boosted specs in the mix this week – a perfect combo for massive Apple sales! The Microsoft Surface Pro has been given a break-down and take-apart session by the folks at ifixit. An update of the A&E iPhone app has given users free access to many of the network’s programs.

The British military has admitted hundreds of lost drones that they’ll have to answer for more than once in the near future. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made it clear that their Microsoft search deal has failed to deliver. The service known as Jawbone MyTALK has been hacked – names, emails, and encrypted passwords have indeed been stolen. Pluto’s moons now have a Vulcan name option thanks to William Shatner.


SlashGear Morning Wrap-up: February 13, 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Apple cuts MacBook Pro Retina and Air prices, boosts specs

Apple has slashed the price of its MacBook Pro with Retina display notebooks, throwing in some updated specifications along the way. The tweaked 13-inch MBP with Retina now starts at $1,499, a $200 saving from the old price, while the newest 15-inch MBP with Retina gets a spec boost, and the 13-inch MacBook Air has also seen a price cut, down to $1,399 from $1,499 for the 256GB flash version.

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As for the specification bump to the Retina-blessed MacBook Pro line-up, they see Intel’s latest processors slotted inside. The $1,699 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display kicks off with a 2.6GHz processor paired with 256GB of flash storage, for instance.

There are more changes for the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, with the entry-level model now getting a 2.4GHz quadcore processor instead of the 2.3GHz chip previously used. Its more expensive sibling now gets a 2.7GHz quadcore processor and 16GB of memory, up from the 2.6GHz and 8GB of RAM previously specified.

All of the new models are available to order from Apple’s online store, retail stores, and resellers from today, with customization options also available if you build-to-order online. More on the notebooks themselves in our 2012 reviews; you can find them in the timeline below.


Apple cuts MacBook Pro Retina and Air prices, boosts specs is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard for iPad Mini: GTD on Teeny Keys

After using an iPad, I had a hard time understanding the need for a smaller tablet, until I played with an iPad Mini at an Apple Store. They are very light and compact compared to a regular-sized iPad. If you’ve been itching to GTD, but were missing a physical keyboard for your iPad Mini, check out this one from Logitech.

logitech ultrathin keyboard ipad mini

The Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Mini magnetically attaches itself to the iPad Mini, kind of like the version they make for the iPad. It’s supposed to transform the iPad Mini into a functional mobile computer. It also serves as a display stand.

While the keys aren’t full-sized, this is still a good option if you really need tactile keys to get your work done.

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The Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Mini sells for $79.99(USD) and will start shipping later this month in both black and white versions.

logitech ultrathin keyboard ipad mini side

[via Dvice]

NVIDIA grasps “Free to Play” explosion with GeForge F2P Bundles

Having found some of the most recent Free to Play games out on the market today to be undeniably awesome, NVIDIA has decided to stoke the fire with a set of F2P Bundles with their GeForce GPUs. When you purchase a GeForce GTX graphics card (as long as it’s 650 or above) you also get a set of in-game credits for three of the most excellent FPS games in play today. These games are Planetside 2, World of Tanks, and everyone’s favorite mech warrior free-for-all: Hawken!

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Each of the games included in this release are and continue to be free for you to download and play with or without a purchase from NVIDIA – what you’re getting here is cash inside each game. Each of the games here is free to download and play, making a profit from in-game purchases that include feature upgrades, personalization of in-game elements, and oddities galore.

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But it’s not just the free-to-play fad’s popularity in and of itself that NVIDIA is aiming for, it’s the situation this inflicts. Millions of users play these games with below-recommended hardware, meaning they’re nowhere near the optimal experience these games are able to present. With a GeForce GPU, they’ll get heavy bumps.

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With World of Tanks you’ll be getting a big boost in graphics power – not that you’d need to be working with a top-power GeForce card to make this game work, but with an upgrade to a GeForce GTX GPU, you’ll have much more realistic gameplay and, when you get down and dirty with the stats, straight up higher FPS. Planetside 2 is a game you’ll be jumping into with massive boosts in usability as you jump into the GTX range of processors – there’s really no comparing 10FPS and 60+FPS when you’re hunting on alien worlds.

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Then there’s Hawken, which benefits directly from NVIDIA’s own PhysX technology. Have a peek at the difference in gameplay with PhysX on and off in the demonstration video below. Also be sure to check our Hawken review to find out more about this beastly game.

The two deals up for grabs here are as follows: purchase a GeForce GTX 650 / 650 Ti and you’ll get $25 for each of the three games, equaling $75 in-game credit total. With a purchase of a GeForce GTX 660 or higher, you’ll get $50 in in-game credit for each of the three games above, that equalling out to be $150 USD. In both cases that credit is at least 75% of the original cost of the card – so if you’d have otherwise been spending that cash in-game, you’re golden!

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NVIDIA grasps “Free to Play” explosion with GeForge F2P Bundles is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

SlashGear Morning Wrap-up: February 11, 2013

This morning we’re looking toward the future with a rather enticing self-driving car timeline of five years – soon and very soon! There’s currently a Sustained Attack happening on the USA – did you know? It’s a hacking attack, mind you. Over at the FCC a Samsung Wireless Charging Pad has made clearance with a possible Galaxy S IV in its sights.

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This week’s State of the Union Address in the USA will have a lovely fireside chat happening directly afterward – join in! Two new Samsung smart cameras have hit the shelves – these are the same units we saw at CES 2013, and they’re hot! It would appear that we’re low on Surface Pro tablets out there in the wild market. Check out the concept for the Apple Willow Glass “iWatch” to blow your mind.

The new HTC One has leaked with both a rendering of its front and a sample photo. It would appear that the non-planet Pluto has a series of moons that need naming. In the hunt for Christopher Dorner, several unmanned drones have been deployed – gotta catch em!

Don’t miss our HP EliteBook 2570p Review by Craig Lloyd – it’s solid!

The first primetime Google Nexus 4 advertisement has been released – after all this time! The Samsung Galaxy Tab Keyboard Dock has been killed here in 2013 – that’s it, that’s all, that’s all there is! Carriers here and there across the planet have been having iOS 6.1 issues both inside and outside of enterprise use. Watch out for the NASA MAVEN spacecraft soon as Lockheed Martin has completed assembly.


SlashGear Morning Wrap-up: February 11, 2013 is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

PSA: How to free up space on your Microsoft Surface Pro

This week we’re hearing quite a few responses from the public on their surprise at the amount of actual usable hard drive space on the new Microsoft Surface Pro. While the standard ways to free up the space taken up by apps, photos, and videos that you don’t necessarily need, there’s also a slightly more dangerous route you might take. One of the largest space-users on the Microsoft Surface Pro (see our full review here) is the Windows 8 on-board recovery partition.

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If you’re going to be wanting to delete this bit of code, you should know right away: if you do delete it and your computer crashes (in any of a variety of different ways), you could potentially have a completely bricked machine. The nice thing about Windows 8 is that you’re free to create a backup bootable USB stick with great ease. Once you’ve got a recovery USB stick, you’ve only to start your machine up holding down the volume button to boot into advanced options and recover from there.

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Creating a bootable recovery USB stick is easy in Windows 8: you’ll first need a USB stick that’s at least 256 MB in size. After you’ve inserted that USB into your Surface Pro, you’ll want to press your Windows Key and your “R” key at the same time, then type RecoveryDrive.exe – you could also open your Control Panel and click or tap on the “Recovery” icon, from there you’ll see an option to Create a Recovery Drive. If at this point you’re prompted by UAC, you’ll want to click or tap on “Yes.”

From that point on, creating a USB recovery drive is self-explanatory : the guide screens will make it quite simple for you. The one other thing you’ll want to make sure you’ve done before a final push to the USB stick is to empty out the USB stick itself – if you’ve got anything on there you want to keep, of course.

The actual deleting of the partition that takes up a chunk of your internal storage for recovery is extremely similar to what you’d have done in previous versions of Windows. You’ll find Computer Management under settings, click or tap Control Panel, System and Security, Administrative Tools, and finally “Computer Management.” You may have to type in your administrator password at this point if you have one.

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After that you’ll go to Storage (in the left pane) and click Disk Management. This screen is where you’ll be doing the most damage if you’ve not already created a USB recovery partition. If you delete the partition reserved for recovery at this point and lose your USB stick, you may very well be up a river without a paddle should your Surface Pro catch a bad bit of crash action.

Basically what we’re saying here is that you’re better off working with alternate storage options while this bit of space continues to be taken up by the Microsoft-added recovery. It’s there for a reason, and that reason is a good one. Stay safe!


PSA: How to free up space on your Microsoft Surface Pro is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Raspberry Pi Developer Board Gets a $25 Camera Module

If you’re the sort of tinkerer that enjoys making projects using devices like the Raspberry Pi, a new hardware product has been announced. Raspberry Pi has announced the availability of a new digital camera module for the low-cost computer-on-a-board. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is mum on the technical hardware details for the camera module.

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The sensor used in the digital camera module is rumored to be five-megapixels, but that is unconfirmed. The module can record HD resolution video and the foundation expects users will take advantage of the camera module for robotics, home automation, and perhaps aerial applications. At only $25, the camera sensor won’t break the bank, and may be usable in projects where the sensor is at risk of damage where users might not consider a more expensive option. That said, the camera is still nearly as expensive as the $35 computer itself.

It’s unclear exactly when the camera module will launch. Currently developers are working on drivers and hardware interface for the camera module with the Raspberry Pi developer board. “The picture quality is ‘pretty good’ at the moment, but we’re hoping to get it to ‘bleedin’ marvelous’ before we release the hardware,” the foundation said.

[via Wired]

Mauz Transmogrifies iPhones into a 3-in-1 Pointing Device

There are already a variety of apps that turn iOS and Android devices into wireless mice or trackpads or both. Some of them are even free. But a company called Spicebox thinks you’ll want to pay for a peripheral that does just about the exact same thing. Will you want to spend some dollarz for its Mauz?

mauz iphone mouse accessory

As shown in the image above, Mauz plugs into the dock connector of an iPhone 4, 4S or 5. It has three main modes, the first of which turns an iPhone into a mouse-cum-touchpad that has virtual left- and right-click buttons as well as a scroll wheel. Its second mode turns iPhones into a motion-sensitive controller, akin to a Wii controller. Spicebox says users will be able to map commands from various programs into gestures, from controlling your browser to your videogame character.

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Finally there’s the visual gestures, a Kinect-like control mode that lets you execute commands just by waving your hand above your iPhone’s camera.

Pledge at least $49 (USD) on Kickstarter to reserve a 30-pin Mauz and at least $59 for the Lightning-compatible Mauz. I’m quite intrigued at the possibilities of this so-called “appcessory”, but this is one of those gadgets that needs great complementary software to succeed.

[Mauz via Gadgetell]

PE Secure External Hard Drive Locks Down Your Secret Files

There are plenty of ways to secure your ahem naughty files, from using hidden folders and strange names, but if you’re really paranoid, you might have to do even more. The PE Secure Hard Drive takes securing your files to the next level, going beyond password and encryption technologies.

pe external secure hard drive

Jae-Hoon Lee designed this hard drive enclosure and it was designed to protect the hardware itself from getting into the wrong hands. It was inspired by “old school” security like padlocks and combination locks. The PE External Hard Drive will secure your data by toughening the hardware itself. The device would add a physical combination lock, partnered with an app, that will increase the security of your data.

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For now, this hard drive is just a concept, but I could definitely see something like this being made.

pe external secure hard drive design

[via Yanko Design]