Say what you like about Microsoft, but their Research arm certainly know how to put together an eye-catching demo. Chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie has been doing a tour of US colleges showing off a prototype next-gen computer – among other things – that has a transparent glass display and can be controlled by pen, voice, touch-free gestures and eye-tracking.
Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Wireless N Networking Adapter has been spotted gracing the virtual shelves at Costco, and if their listing is correct it’s set to go on sale come November 10th. The adapter – which was initially tipped to be around $100 – was priced at $87.99 with free shipping; however the listing has since been taken down.
Microsoft’s Courier project – a dual-display “book” style electronic journal – has been intriguing us since it first leaked back in September, and the latest spillage of UI details courtesy of Gizmodo’s mysterious tipster is doing nothing to temper our interest. The twin screens are both multitouch-capable and respond to fingers and the special stylus, the latter having two side-buttons (the upper one being an “undo” key), an eraser on the other end, and a rotating barrel that flips between different pen modes.
With LCD displays and even consoles being reasonably common among upmarket cars these days, you need to go a little further if you’re going to attract significant amounts of attention. For Toyota and the Microsoft Xbox team, that meant seemingly crashing a Toyota Tacoma truck first through a Jurassic Park themed paint display before throwing all the gaming and custom hydraulics to hand at the tricked-out interior. Even then, you’ve still got some way to go to match the Toyota Tacoma All-Terrain Gamer (ATG) concept shown at SEMA this year.
Some people go to the park or Starbucks to people watch, I prefer an outing to Best Buy. I love checking out all the newest gadgets and tech under one roof (more than I should even let on), but I often get distracted by watching people who seem totally confused about which PC to buy. More often than not, I see them peruse the notebooks and desktops on display and struggle to figure out the difference between, let’s say, a netbook and a full-size notebook. And when they approach a Blue Shirt, the answers I have heard can be quite comical. No kidding, it’s the size of the netbook that makes it different!?
NVIDIA’s Ion LE promises to deliver the same 1080p HD playback as its regular Ion sibling, but at a cheaper price; to do that, it drops DirectX 10 support in favor of solely accommodating DX9. It turns out that the limitation is, in fact, an arbitrary one and that the Ion LE seems to have been artificially crippled by NVIDIA themselves; MyHPMini forum member runawayprisoner found that by slightly modifying HP’s own Ion drivers he could get them to install for the Ion LE.
Leading computer manufacturers along with Intel and Microsoft have inadvertently created a monster. And like Frankenstein, it is a monster they’d like to destroy. Although the industry’s hot-selling brainchild is physically quite small –perhaps more analogous to a gremlin in scale— with its small 10-inch screen, underpowered Intel Atom processor, cheaper version of Windows and under $400 price, netbooks are devouring corporate profit margins.
If you’ve dipped even the tiniest of toes into the tech world this past twelve months, you’ll likely have noticed the cookie-cutter spec sheets for netbooks. Intel and Microsoft’s policies on exactly how big a hard-drive, how much RAM and other elements of a netbook’s make-up have hamstrung what could’ve potentially been a hugely innovative segment into little more than a matter of aesthetics. Unfortunately neither company plans to lift those regulations any time soon, but we’re hearing at least that with the advent of the Intel Atom N470 the bar will be raised somewhat.
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Back in September, Microsoft offered students the ability to purchase Windows 7 for only $29.99. I am sure that there were gobs of students who pre-ordered the OS to be digitally delivered via Digital River when the OS launched last week. PC World reports that "hundreds" of Windows 7 buyers who purchased digital copies are getting errors when they try to install.
It feels like its been a long path to Windows 7; close to a year ago today we were looking at early screenshots of Vista’s replacement, and the months in-between have been punctuated with test builds, broad RC distribution, eight million beta testers and tentative enthusiasm. Now, October 22nd 2009, Microsoft have officially launched Windows 7, along with a number of partnerships integrating the OS with CBS, Netflix, Amazon and more.
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