Australian Supermarket Giant Drops Windows In Favor Of Chrome OS

Australian Supermarket Giant Drops Windows In Favor Of Chrome OSAs you might have heard, Microsoft could soon be slashing the licensing fee of Windows 8.1 in order to make it more appealing to OEMs, and according to reports, to compete against the likes of Google’s Chrome OS and the Chromebooks which the operating system is being installed on. Perhaps it might be a case of too little, too late, as far as Woolworths is concerned, as the company has recently announced that they will be undertaking a huge transformation which would see Google Chrome OS devices account for 85% of the business devices used by Woolworths staff, replacing the majority of Windows products in the process. (more…)

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  • Australian Supermarket Giant Drops Windows In Favor Of Chrome OS original content from Ubergizmo.

        



    XBMC: Installing Skins

    This article was written on April 27, 2012 by CyberNet.

    When you first get rolling with XBMC out-of-the-box, you may not be overly enthusiastic about the appearance. By default XBMC 11 ships with the Confluence skin that, while it looks clean, can easily be replaced by one of the other user-made skins. The most impressive one that I found is the Aeon MQ 3 skin which sports a very modern look that is sure to impress anyone that sets eyes on it. I can only imagine the amount of time that’s been spent on the skin given how polished it is.

    So how do you get an awesome skin like Aeon MQ 3 installed? For some of the skins they are offered directly through the official XBMC repository (Settings -> Add-ons -> Get Add-ons -> XBMC.org Add-ons -> Skin), and there are a couple of skins in there that are worth checking out. One of my favorites is probably Transparency, but I still prefer Aeon MQ 3.

    For Aeon MQ 3, the process is a bit different. For this particular one you’ll either need to download the skin manually or you can set up the developer’s repository. I’m going to show you how to set up the repository and install the skin that way because that means you’ll be able to get future updates a lot easier. Here’s what you need to do:

    1. Download the “Skin Aeon MQ 3 – Repository” file
    2. In XBMC navigate to Settings -> Add-ons
    3. Select the option to Install From ZIP File
    4. Browse for the repository file you downloaded and add it
    5. You should be automatically returned back to the Add-ons screen. From there go to Get Add-ons -> Repo Aeon MQ 3 -> Skin -> Aeon MQ 3. You should now see the Install button to install the theme.
    6. When the download finishes you should get a prompt asking if you want to switch to the new skin. Choose Yes.
    7. When you go back to the XBMC home screen you’ll be prompted with a short wizard that walks you through a couple of the basic configuration steps. You’ll also be able to choose how complex/customizable you want the skin to be. For myself I went with the Normal option, but don’t fret too much over any of the options you choose because you can always go back and change them in the skin settings.

    You should now be sporting a refreshed XBMC look and feel, but to really take advantage of it you’ll need to dive into some of the skin’s settings (Settings -> Skin). If you went with the Aeon MQ 3 theme you may want to enable some of the alternate views for your videos:

    1. In XBMC go to Settings -> Skin -> ViewTypes and browse through the different views that are available. Turn on any of the views you think you might want to use, but note that some of the views require other add-ons since they use artwork that the built-in TV/movie scraper doesn’t grab. This is what the view selection looks like:
      Xbmc 3d view
    2. Navigate back to one of your media folders in XBMC, and you should be able to either press the up/down or left/right arrow to make the view menu appear along the left side of the screen. From there you can switch between any of the views you just enabled as well as tweak certain aspects of each of the views.
      Xbmc banner view

    CyberNet’s XBMC Guides:

    Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

    HP ElitePad 1000 G2 hands-on: one massive tablet and accessory system

    This week the folks at HP’s tablet department have unveiled the HP ElitePad 1000 G2, a 10.1-inch tablet made for the business world – with a bunch of accessories to … Continue reading

    HP Pavilion x360 official: tablet, notebook, convertible

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    HP ProPad 600 G1 slate brings Windows 8.1 and Atom processor

    On the cusp of Mobile World Congress 2014, HP has introduced two new business tablets, the first of which is the HP ProPad 600 G1. With this slate comes fairly … Continue reading

    Windows Phone Qualcomm spread: LG, Foxconn on board

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    Pushing Vista & Mac OS X to the Limits

    This article was written on April 09, 2008 by CyberNet.

    It’s often a lot of fun to push things to the limits, and that’s one reason a year and a half ago we installed 200 extensions in Firefox to see how well it would perform. Needless to say Firefox became a little sluggish, and there was very little viewable space since the toolbars occupied a large portion of the screen.

    Well, what about putting the entire operating system to the test? Some crazy people decided to do just that. It started with a Mac OS X user who decided to open 150 applications simultaneously on his 2.2GHz MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM. I’m not sure if Expose or the Dock was made for handling this many simultaneous apps, but they still worked:

    mac stress test
    (Click to Enlarge)

    Of course a Windows user would have to come back with their own stress test, and one Gizmodo reader didn’t disappoint with his Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4GHz) with 4GB of RAM. He has a video of Vista running 108 applications which were supposedly eating up a mere 30% of his processor. Then after opening the 108 programs he got bored and gave up. Gizmodo has a video of the desktop in action, which really shows off how well Vista’s Flip3D performs.

    vista stress test

    What amazes me is that these people had that many applications to run! I think there are about 30 or maybe 40 different programs on my computer, and I wouldn’t be able to stand the additional clutter that 100+ apps would create.

    Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

    Windows prices tipped to drop for manufacturers

    In a bid against rival software, Microsoft plans to slash Windows 8.1 by 70-percent of its typical price tag — for manufacturers, that is. The information comes from unnamed sources … Continue reading