Oct 25

Find out if you’re in the Xbox Live Update Preview Program right now

Posted in: console, Microsoft, minipost, Today's Chili, update, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, Xbox360, XboxLive

We already got an early look at Microsoft’s soon-to-launch revision of the Xbox 360 dashboard, but for the general public early access is possible via the preview test program. Those who signed up for it can see if their applications were accepted now, right back at the official Microsoft Connect page. If you’re in, you’ll see information and get access to a private Xbox.com forum so you can help sort out any bugs before it officially drops; if not, relax and play some Battlefield 3. Win / win.

Find out if you’re in the Xbox Live Update Preview Program right now originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink @Major Nelson (Twitter)  |  sourceMicrosoft Connect  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 25

Windows XP turns 10, enjoys its golden years and slow transition into retirement

Posted in: Microsoft, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows XP
Windows XP

It’s hard to believe that it was ten years ago today that Windows XP first hit retail shelves. It’s even more astonishing when you realize that it was still the most popular operating system in the world until the beginning of this month. The sun may finally be setting on the stalwart OS that has powered countless home and business PCs (it crossed the 400 million mark way back in 2006), but it’s still number two — right behind it’s youngest brother Windows 7 and well ahead of the black sheep, Vista. Sure, our relationship with Microsoft’s OS has had its ups and downs, but it’s clear we’ve developed an attachment to the ol’ bird. After all, consumer demand kept it shipping on PCs until late 2010 and Redmond has pledged to support it until April 8th of 2014. If nothing else, XP will be remembered for its incredible resilience.

[Thanks, Jacob]

Windows XP turns 10, enjoys its golden years and slow transition into retirement originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Tom’s Hardware  |  sourceMicrosoft  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 25

Leaked Pics of Three New Nokia Windows Phones Surface

Posted in: meego, Microsoft, nokia, Phones, Today's Chili, windows phone

A leaked shot of the Lumia 800 shows a familiar form factor. Photo: WinRumors

Nokia needs a swift injection of relevance — badly. Compared to Google’s and Apple’s mobile OS offerings, Nokia’s Symbian software is positively prehistoric. And Nokia phones overall are little more than handheld curiosities, at least in the U.S. consumer market.

Indeed, pulling a Nokia out of your jeans pocket is somewhat akin to pulling up to the curb in an old Citroen. Onlookers must inevitably ask, “Why?”

But we’re finally seeing hard evidence of a much-needed sea change at Nokia. This Tuesday, screenshots of three new Nokia devices running the Windows Phone OS — the first of many promised devices to run the software — finally surfaced. The phones will most likely make their official debut on Wednesday morning at the Nokia World conference in London.

WinRumors was the first to report the story.

From what we can tell, the Nokia Lumia 800 looks exactly like the N9 model we played with earlier this month, save for the fact it’s no longer running the Linux-based Meego operating system.

The companion Lumia 710 smartphone differs aesthetically from the 800 in that it’s less boxy, instead boasting rounded edges and a flat-looking face. According to details in the leaked images, the phones both come with 512MB of RAM and no SD card slots. Further details are scant.

Little information leaked on the Lumia 710, outside of RAM and SD card specs. Photo: WinRumors

Additionally, The Nokia Blog received a spec sheet for a third device, the Nokia 900. With a 4.3-inch display and a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor backed by a gig of RAM, the 900 looks to be the star of Nokia’s show.

Once considered the smartphone market leader, Nokia’s industry cred has flagged over the past few years as the company has failed to sufficiently update its Symbian operating system. Though Nokia shipped upwards of 450 million handsets in 2010, its marketshare dwindled by almost 7 percent last year. Meanwhile, user adoption of Android and iOS continues to skyrocket.

Nokia is betting its future on Microsoft’s mobile OS. Earlier this year, Nokia made a major deal with Microsoft to transition from the antiquated Symbian software to Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS.

We’ll be on site at Nokia’s Northern California offices on Wednesday for the official announcement.


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Oct 25

Nokia 800 gets pictured, ready for its close-up

Posted in: exclusive, mango, Microsoft, mobilepostcross, nokia, Today's Chili, Windows, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7
Thus far, evidence of the Nokia 800 has been the stuff of slow but reasonably steady leaks in the form of ads, product shots and dev stats. This latest one doesn’t do much to change the state of things, but its real world setting should help hold some of the Mango faithful over until the handset formerly known as Sea Ray gets officially official, most likely in the very near future.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Nokia 800 gets pictured, ready for its close-up originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 25

The Nokia World keynote is tomorrow — get your liveblog here at 4AM ET!

Posted in: cellphone, cellphones, LiveBlog, london, meego, Microsoft, mobilepostcross, nokia, phone, Phones, smartphone, Smartphones, Today's Chili, uk, Windows, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7

What will the future hold for a post-MeeGo Nokia? Sure, we have a fairly good idea, but you have mere hours to wait until the rumors are confirmed. We’ll be coming to you live from the company’s keynote at Nokia World in London, where we’re expecting not one, but multiple Windows Phones to make an on-stage debut. The show kicks off at 9AM local time, and we’ve included a handy list of round-the-world start times below. Bookmark this page right here and find out as it happens.

Psst… and toss your own time zone / day in comments below!

10:00PM – Hawaii (October 25th)
01:00AM – Pacific (October 26th)
02:00AM – Mountain (October 26th)
03:00AM – Central (October 26th)
04:00AM – Eastern (October 26th)
09:00AM – London (October 26th)
10:00AM – Paris (October 26th)
12:00PM – Moscow (October 26th)
05:00PM – Tokyo (October 26th)

The Nokia World keynote is tomorrow — get your liveblog here at 4AM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 10:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oct 25

Want folders on your Windows Phone? There may soon be a way (video)

Posted in: hack, hacking, Microsoft, mobilepostmini, Today's Chili, Windows, windows phone, WindowsPhone

Take that, live tiles. The idea of having folders on a Windows Phone Start menu has long been a dream that may soon come true. Successfully demonstrated in the above video by WindowsPhoneHacker, these folders look just like live tiles, but pressing them will instead take you into a customized menu full of whatever apps you want. Of course, the project’s still in early stages and has a ways to go before it’s ready for primetime, but it’s supposed to be released sometime soon. Go ahead, click those heels together three times and make a wish — just make sure your device runs Mango and is developer-unlocked first.

Want folders on your Windows Phone? There may soon be a way (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 08:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SmartKeitei  |  sourceWindowsPhoneHacker  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 25

Bringing Back Classic Menus and Toolbars to Office 2007?

Posted in: Apple, Microsoft, Newly Released, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on April 11, 2007 by CyberNet.

Office Classic Menus

By this point most of you have probably had the opportunity to either tinker around with or at least see pictures of the new Office 2007 user interface. It is a huge change from the normal toolbars and menus that we were accustomed to in the previous releases of Microsoft Office, but most people who actually sit down and use it believe that the change is for the better.

To replace menus and toolbars, Microsoft is using what they call Ribbons. There are hundreds and hundreds of commands in Office, and these Ribbons make it easier to find those commands. They are much more intuitive than needing to dig through menus to make sure you had the right toolbar enabled.

A company called Addintools has developed a product that might interest those non-Ribbon fans out there. I haven’t tried “Classic Menu for Office 2007” myself, but from the screenshots it appears to bring together the ease of navigation from the ribbons and the traditional menu/toolbar layout from previous versions of Office.

Unfortunately this does come with a price-tag, and that’s $29.95 for all the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint add-ons or $15.99 for each individual program that you want. I am not surprised to see something like this come out because they are obviously trying to capitalize on people who don’t accept change very well.

Personally I think that Microsoft could have very easily included a feature like this, but they are probably trying to inch us closer to a more drastic redesign in future versions of Windows? I could be way off with that, but Microsoft obviously spends millions of dollars in usability research for their applications and I would think that they are trying to show us that a change in design can be very beneficial in terms of productivity.

Source: ComputerWorld

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 24

Microsoft Teams with HP to Boost Live Search

Posted in: Microsoft, Software, Today's Chili, Yahoo

This article was written on June 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

hp and windows team up.pngIn an attempt to gain market share in the search arena, Microsoft has just announced a partnership with HP that will make their Live Search the default on Hewlett-Packard computers that are shipped in the United States and Canada. For first-time Internet users or casual users in general, they may not take the time to change the default to something else which could help Microsoft gain some ground in search.

The deal that Microsoft just made is by no means new. Those of you who recently purchased Dell computers know this first-hand because Google has partnered with Dell. Similarly, Yahoo has an agreement with Acer to provide various tools to the users and make Yahoo search the default. Previously Yahoo also had a deal with HP but now Microsoft is coming in and likely paying more than Yahoo to snag HP away. And here we thought there was going to be more computer companies moving away from installing bloatware. Anything for a buck, I guess…

For HP buyers in the U.S. and Canada that purchase a computer starting in January, here’s what to expect. First, Live search will be the default search engine in the browser on the computer. Secondly, and probably more annoying is that a custom version of Internet Explorer will come pre-installed that has a Live Search toolbar installed. The toolbar will make searching “more convenient” and it will also have links to some of HP’s services like Snapfish (digital photo service).

In the official Microsoft Press Release, Kevin Johnson who is the president of the Platforms and Services Division said, “This is the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done, and we are very pleased to be partnering with HP to help bring live Search to millions of consumers across North America.” Significant it is because Microsoft has struggled to gain search users. This could certainly help…

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Oct 24

HTC Radar 4G gets November 2nd launch date on T-Mobile with $100 price tag

Posted in: HTC, mango, Microsoft, mobilepostmini, official, t-mobile, Today's Chili, windows phone, windows phone 7, WindowsPhone, WindowsPhone7, Wp7
“In time for the holidays” has now been clarified to mean November 2nd. Nearly a month after T-Mobile initially unveiled the US version of the Windows Phone 7.5-containing HTC Radar, its Facebook page trumpeted the date along with its accompanying $100 cost attached to a two-year contract and after $50 mail-in rebate. So if this little 3.8-inch darling with 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 5MP rear camera and 4G network compatibility is on your wish list, you don’t have to wait much longer.

HTC Radar 4G gets November 2nd launch date on T-Mobile with $100 price tag originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink TmoNews  |  sourceT-Mobile, Facebook  | Email this | Comments

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Oct 24

Windows Home Server for $190 on Newegg

Posted in: Microsoft, Newly Released, Release Date, Software, Today's Chili, Windows

This article was written on October 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Windows Home Server Newegg just setup the Windows Home Server product page, and they will be selling the OEM version for $190 starting October 12th. Microsoft will not be selling a retail version of this in stores, so OEM is the only way you can get it besides for buying a pre-built Home Server device. Because it is OEM there is no fancy packaging and it doesn’t include much (if any) paperwork, so don’t be disappointed if all you receive is a CD and serial number when you order it.

There’s also supposed to be a 120-day evaluation version on the horizon, but there has been no news of that yet. Here’s a list of the requirements needed if you decide to roll your own:

  • 1.0 GHz Intel Pentium 3 (or equivalent) processor
  • 512 MB RAM memory
  • 80 GB internal hard drive as primary drive
  • 100 Mbit/s wired Ethernet

Extremely positive reviews are already starting to roll in on the Newegg Home Server page from a small handful of people who had been testing the operating system. One comment in particular caught my attention:

I was lucky enough to beta this and it has become indispensible. It is a lot more than just a NAS [Network Attached Storage] box sitting on my network, the silent backup of host PCs is awesome and the simplicity of install and use is somewhat of a shock compared to most MS server products. Apple would have been proud to release something this intuitive! Amazingly for a v1 Microsoft product it has behaved flawlessly from day one and the ability to access all my host PCs and documents from anywhere in the world is something I now consider absolutely essential. I can’t wait for v2.0!

If you don’t feel like building your own then just hold out for one of the many third-party solutions that will be coming from Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, HP, Iomega, Lacie and Medion. The most prominently advertised has been the HP MediaSmart computer starting at $599 with 500GB of storage.

So who plans on building their own Home Server, and who’s going to pick up one of the third-party options?

Newegg Windows Home Server
Windows Home Server Website
Source: Windows Connected

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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