Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft has announced it will be launching Windows 8 on Thursday, October 25, pushing out its new OS baby officially and kick-starting its next generation of PCs, laptops, and tablets. The event, to be held in New York City, is something of a mystery going by the invite – which merely shows a happy laptop user, presumably mesmerized by Windows 8′s tiled UI – but we’re expecting to hear more on the upcoming Surface tablets.

The biggest omission in our understanding of those slates – one of which runs Windows RT on an ARM-based processor, the other which runs full Windows 8 on an Intel x86 chip – is exactly how much they’ll cost. Microsoft has hinted at pricing roughly akin to the rest of the tablet mainstream and to ultrabooks, respectively, but exact figures will give us a far better idea of how the Surface models hold up to Apple’s best-selling iPad.

There are still plenty of other Windows 8 details still to be gleaned, and more than a few OEMs who will be wanting to show off their latest wares. Tablets have made the most headlines to-date, though the bulk of Windows 8 purchases are certain to be more traditional desktop and laptop models.

Then there’s gaming, with far greater integration between Windows 8 machines and Xbox, something which Microsoft hopes will encourage 360 owners to consider picking up a PC (and maybe even a Windows Phone 8 smartphone). We’ll know it all on Thursday, October 25, though there’s still plenty of time for leaks to steal Microsoft’s thunder.

Windows 8 October 25 launch will hopefully spill Surface pricing is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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What’s this? Just another USB 3.0 thumbdrive at IDF 2012? Not quite. You’re looking at Kingston’s DataTraveler Workspace, a storage device that incorporates bona fide SSD technology not usually found in thumbdrives — like a bunch of ultra speedy flash memory and a SandForce controller that supports TRIM and S.M.A.R.T commands. As such, it shares more in common with Kingston’s line of SSDs. It’s not really designed for data storage — instead, it’s meant to be used as a certified Windows To Go fixed drive, “a fully manageable corporate Windows 8 workspace on a specially configured, bootable USB drive”.

The idea is that corporate IT can deploy these thumbdrives to employees who can then run a secure, managed instance of Windows on a variety of PCs with a bootable USB 2.0 (or faster) port. Another interesting feature of Windows To Go is that Kingston’s DT Workspace thumbdrives can be removed for up to 1 minute without crashing Windows — the OS simply alerts the user to “keep the USB drive plugged in” and continues where it left off. Pricing remains a mystery, but the device will be available for business customers in 32, 64 and 128GB capacities when Windows 8 launches. Until then, you’re invited to peek at the gallery below and to watch our hands-on video past the break.

Continue reading Hands-on with Kingston’s DataTraveler Workspace at IDF (video)

Filed under: Misc, Storage

Hands-on with Kingston’s DataTraveler Workspace at IDF (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 06:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today’s business jargon gem: TAM, Total Addressable Market. AMD feels that Windows 8 comes with plenty of the stuff, so it sees no commercial need to make its forthcoming tablet chip — codenamed Hondo — play nice Android as well. Speaking to The Inquirer, corporate VP Steve Belt said it was a “conscious decision” not to go after compatibility with Google’s OS, because AMD doesn’t want to spread itself into “other markets.” What could this mean for us tablet-buyers? No dual-booting Windows / Android magic on AMD devices, for one thing, which is perhaps a shame now that ASUS has shown off the combo’s potential. On the other hand, Belt made it clear that Honda will support Linux, which — for now, at least — is more than can be said of Intel’s rival low-power silicon, Clover Trail.

Filed under: Tablets

AMD’s Hondo tablet chip will happily run Windows 8 and Linux, but not Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 16 Sep 2012 08:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s potentially bad news ahead if you’re hoping to wipe the drive on that future HP Envy X2 and load Ubuntu — Intel reportedly claimed at IDF that Clover Trail-based Atom processors “cannot” handle Linux properly. As outlined in The Inquirer‘s account of events, the issue is more a matter of optimization than an outright block: Linux doesn’t yet know how to cope with all of Clover Trail’s power state changes at the kernel level, which would put any penguin-powered PC at a disadvantage. Intel would really, really prefer that you run Windows 8, as the new Atom and Microsoft’s OS are tuned to work hand-in-hand. Linux might catch up, but the Windows-only emphasis is a sharp break from Intel’s tendency to shower love on open-source OS projects across the board, including ongoing work like Intel-native Android builds or Tizen.

Filed under: Laptops, Tablets, Software

Intel claims Clover Trail-based Atom won’t properly run Linux, points us to Windows 8 instead originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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For all the explaining that Microsoft has done, there’s still a fair bit that’s not clear about what Windows RT will actually look like when it ships next month. The company has filled in one of those gaps today, though, detailing what it hopes will be one of the operating system’s big selling points: Office for Windows RT. Perhaps the biggest news is Microsoft’s confirmation of earlier reports that the productivity suite will actually ship as a preview release on Windows RT devices, with a free upgrade to the final version promised between early November and January depending on the language. What’s more, Microsoft has also confirmed that Office for Windows RT will unsurprisingly be a bit stripped down compared to its standard Windows 8 counterpart — there’s no macros, for starters, and you’ll have to make do without add-ins and some other features like the ability to record narrations in PowerPoint. It’s also only going to be available as a pre-installed component of Windows RT — no standalone release is planned. You can find a full breakdown of the differences at the link below.

Filed under: Software

Microsoft details Office for Windows RT: shipping on devices as a preview release, upgrade coming later originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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