Hasta La Gadget!

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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]