Hasta La Gadget!

Windows 7 might be a massive commercial success and an undeniably rock solid piece of software, but Microsoft is apparently unwilling to rest on those soft and cozy laurels. Asked about the riskiest product bet the Redmond crew is currently developing, its fearless leader Steve Ballmer took no time in answering “the next release of Windows.” His interviewers sadly failed to probe any deeper on the subject, but it might be notable that Steve calls it the next release rather than simply Windows 8, while the idea of it being risky also ties in with previous indications that Microsoft is aiming for a revolutionary leap between iterations. We’ll have to just be patient and wait for more on that, though if you’d like a peek at Steve dodging question on tablets and the potential for Windows Phone 7 appearing on them, you need only jump past the break for the video.

Update: It’s also worth noting that Ballmer may not have been talking about revolutionary leaps as much as he’s referencing the past issues the company has had when it’s issued a major OS update (hello, Vista). The idea that making any big change to the operating system most of the world runs would invite a certain amount of high risk makes sense to us.

Continue reading Ballmer: next release of Windows will be Microsoft’s ‘riskiest product bet’ (video)

Ballmer: next release of Windows will be Microsoft’s ‘riskiest product bet’ (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Oct 2010 11:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you think wireless carriers in North America charge too much, you are right. An analysis of cellphone plans worldwide found that consumers in the U.S., Canada and U.K. pay the highest for voice and text service on their phones, while those in India, Hong Kong and Japan pay the least.

Receiving phone calls is free in most countries, except U.S. and Canada–that’s why the rate per minute is doubled for these two countries, say Chiehyu Li and Bincy Ninan in a paper published by the think-tank New America Foundation.

The cheapest postpaid voice plan is available in Hong Kong at $8.50 for 600 minutes a month (a penny a minute), while in Canada the cheapest plan is $38.70 for 250 minutes. By comparison, the least expensive postpaid voice plan in America costs $39.99 for 450 minutes.

Even when it comes to texting services, American and Canadian consumers pay more than almost every one else worldwide.

“The United States tends to fall in a band of countries that charge higher prices to individual wireless consumers for everything except pure voice service where prices are comparable,” say Li and Ninan in their report. “It is essential we consider steps that could be taken to encourage competition or impose regulation such that the U.S. becomes an engine of innovation for better and more competitively priced service offerings.”

This is not the first time that an analysis has shown that American users pay more for service on their mobile devices. In July, an analysis by Tableau Software showed American users pay some of the highest prices in terms of dollars per gigabyte (GB) of data on the iPad. (Check out their amazing interactive chart here.)

The New America Foundation’s analysis threw up some surprising results with respect to texting and data services.

Texting is Expensive But Data is Not

Texting is becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. but it comes at a stiff price–though if its any help, U.S. consumers can take heart that their counterparts in the U.K. pay more.

For postpaid text plans, the U.K. provides the most expensive plan at $7.70 for 75 texts a month (10 cents a text). The U.S. is a close second at $5 for 200 texts a month.

The cheapest text rate offered is in Sweden at $17.80 for 5500 texts. India and South Korea charge only a penny for every text sent.

Not surprisingly, when it comes to unlimited data plans on mobile phones, the U.S. does much better –landing in the middle tier of service rates. American users can get $30 a month plan, which is cheaper than Canada’s $72.90 a month for unlimited data.

But Sweden’s unlimited data plans are among the best, coming in around for $13.80 a month, followed by India at $19 a month.

If you want a detailed breakdown of how countries compare for voice, text and data, check out the analysis on New America Foundation’s web site.

See Also:

• How Google Could Have Changed the World With Nexus One — and Still
• Virgin Mobile Offers Unlimited 3G for $40
• Five Ways To Slash Your Cellphone Bill
• Is It Possible to Live Without a Cellphone?

Charts: New America Foundation

The attentive newshounds over at AnandTech have picked out a golden nugget of disclosure from AMD’s earnings call last night, citing CEO Dirk Meyer as saying “we will be launching our second-generation DX11 graphics offerings next week.” What he’s talking about, of course, is the highly anticipated refresh of the Radeon HD 5000 series, which some recent spec leaks suggested would bring a healthy bump in performance. After announcing the new product line next week, AMD promises to flood the market with “hundreds of thousands of units,” which will be shipping before the end of this quarter — meaning you’ll have a Radeon HD 6xxx in time for the holiday gaming craze if you really want it. Can’t ask anymore than that, now can we?

AMD launching next generation of Radeon graphics cards next week, shipping by end of the year originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 02:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Want to know where the next breakthrough in mobile technology will come from? Well, if Elpida and Sharp have their way, the answer will be the usual suspect of Japan, where they’re working away on new memory chips said to be capable of four orders of magnitude faster performance than the ordinary NAND flash storage of today. Dubbed ReRAM, or Resistive Random Access Memory, this project targets a 2013 date for commercialization and counts the University of Tokyo and Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology among its development team. Details on how such blinding speeds will be reached aren’t readily available, but the Nikkei reports power consumption will be down to “virtually zero” when the memory’s not in use. So with ReRAM and HP’s memristors both set for three years from now, can we schedule NAND’s funeral for 2014 or what?

Elpida and Sharp team up for ReRAM in 2013: 10,000x the speed of current NAND flash chips originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The whole world and his neighbor’s dog may already know when Windows Phone 7 will be announced, but when are the actual phones going to hit actual shelves? If you’re in the US, that time still looks to be a month away, but the UK release window has just been narrowed down from late October to a single, albeit still speculative, date: October 21. Our tipster forwards the above snapshot from a Three UK document showing a “Windows 7Phone” nestled in between the BlackBerry Torch and Samsung Europa. Its Super AMOLED display tells us we’re definitely looking at a Samsung handset, while the 4-inch diagonal suggests it’ll be the Cetus (SGH-i916/7). This sheet of revelation also finally gives us a hint as to the number of apps WP7 will start off with, enumerating them at “over 2,000 at launch.” We don’t know why Microsoft’s been so shy about that number — 2,000 good apps are more than enough.

UK carrier’s roadmap points to October 21 release for Windows Phone 7, over 2,000 apps at launch originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 09 Oct 2010 08:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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