Just before the end of each current graphics generation, ASUS puts the cherry on top of it and demonstrates its sheer technological power by presenting a limited-edition card to take the throne of t...
As we predicted in a recent article dealing with AMD’s new graphics cards from the HD 7000 series, after the high-end models were presented, miniature chips would follow, replacing the very popular ...
“Smart TV”, or in its popular spelling, SmartTV, is something that the leading LCD and plasma manufacturers seem to be emphasising pretty heavily lately, in parallel with the omnipresent 3D technolo...
Recently, we have devoted much attention to the APU, which is one of the largest inovations that AMD has introduced to the IT industry. Placing a serious graphics system inside a processor is the gr...
Although we’re a bit disappointed not to have received the new Radeon graphics up to now, we still didn’t have to wait for too long to get one. As usual, this was taken care of by AMD, but chips are...
As far as accessible coolers of decent performance go, we’ve been enjoying the company of Cooler Master’s Hyper 212 and Hyper TX3 models for a while now. The first mild redesign of both these model...
Microsoft has been working on its own streaming TV plans of sorts that would feature exclusive content. Apparently, however, despite building out its Microsoft TV and Microsoft TV infrastructure to deliver this exclusive streaming content, plans are now in a holding pattern. The reason boils down to cost. Microsoft was apparently more than a bit surprised at how much it actually costs to deliver exclusive broadcast content. Once they found out what kind of money it would take they have apparently decided that they will work on partnerships with other providers to stream their content to the Xbox 360.
While Microsoft has issued a statement on the subject, it is nothing more than what we have told you here: they will continue to work with content providers and partner with them to get their content to the Xbox Live platform, but Microsoft does not comment on rumors and speculation. While we assume that you will continue to see more entertainment coming to the Xbox platform, we are not sure that it will be exclusive Microsoft-driven content till they can find a model to make it work for them.
Well, this 11.11 release doesn't list any performance improvements unfortunately. It contains just one new unexciting feature and a few fixes, but still has quite a long list of known issues. The new feature is Adobe Flash Player 11 hardware accelerated graphics support, including the A-series and E-series APUs. Fixes include things like Rage texture corruption, bezel compensation working correctly in Far Cry 2 and a screen tearing fix for displays in clone mode. Therefore, if your setup is working fine, there's no rush to update to this driver in case it breaks something. Note the following CAP 1 profile updates added to this release:
- Battlefield 3: Tweaks to the CrossFire profile - Global Ops: Commando Libya: Improves CrossFire performance - Driver San Francisco: Disables CrossFire
Futuremark, the world leader in performance benchmarking software, today announced development of a new version of 3DMark, the company's flagship benchmark for gamers. 3DMark for Windows 8 (working title) is designed for gaming performance measurement and comparison across all Windows 8 devices from tablets and notebooks to high-end desktop gaming systems. The announcement was accompanied by an atmospheric concept image for the new benchmark showing an elemental rock warrior brandishing two blazing swords.
Jukka Mäkinen, CEO of Futuremark said, "With Windows 8 gamers will be able to enjoy their games on a wide range of devices from lightweight tablets to heavy-duty desktop rigs. Faced with so much choice it will be hard to work out which devices offer the best value for money. Fortunately 3DMark for Windows 8 will be our most wide-reaching 3DMark ever, able to accurately measure and compare gaming performance across all devices and graphical feature sets available with Windows 8."
Google Translate for Android is expanding its Conversation Mode with support for twelve new languages, adding Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Russian and Turkish to the existing English and Spanish support.
It’s not quite ready for widespread usage, factors like background noise and regional accents may affect accuracy. But in true Google fashion, the more that people use this early version of Conversation Mode, the more data the Google Translate team is able to collect to improve it.
Other new features in this update include Android tablet optimization, the ability to correct voice-generated input before you put it through the translator, the ability to put translated text in full-screen mode to make it easier to show people, and the ability to add unrecognized words to a personal dictionary.
The new version is available on the Android Market app store for devices running version Android 2.2 and above.
If StatCounter's data (which is collected from over 3 million sites) is correct then these first half of October has seen Windows 7 surpass Windows XP to become the number one operating system worldwide, with a market share of just over 40% (up from 39.04% in September).
Despite becoming dethroned, the immortal OS, Windows XP, is still going strong, having a 38.62% share while way behind, on third place, there's Windows Vista with just 11.18%. The fourth spot in the OS charts is taken by Apple's Mac OS X with 7.3%, while on fifth we find iOS with 1.1%.
Bottom line is that, two years after its retail release, Windows 7 is king, and will be for a few good years since Windows 8 is still pretty far off.
Flash 11 and AIR 3 deliver a host of new features, including hardware acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics, at least for desktops. Stage 3D support will be added to the mobile variants for Android, iOS and BlackBerry at a later date. AIR 3 will also be sprucing up connected entertainment devices, like Samsung SmartTVs, with the ability to deliver Flash-based games and content to your home theater system. What's more, Adobe has baked in support for both Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound. That means both 5.1 and 7.1 sound can be built into an AIR app, whether it be a game or streaming video, and pumped out at up to 512Kbps though your Blu-ray player or other connected theater component.
One of the new features Microsoft is adding to Windows 8 is the ability to login to your computer using a Windows Live ID. The primary purpose for this is sharing of Windows settings across multiple computers, all of which would have to be running Windows 8 of course. User can either select settings to share between computers or simply use Microsoft's default settings.
In addition, it will allow you to automatically load Metro style apps purchased from the Windows App Store and automatically login to websites which use Windows Live authentication. Shared settings will be divided into the following groups such as "Personalize", "Themes", "Passwords" and similar. If you have a regular Windows login, you will also be able to associate your Windows Live ID with it later on. There will be a password requirement in order to do that. They haven't clarified exactly how strong the password will need to be, but they've just said a blank password will be forbidden.
Adobe has announced that Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will launch early next month. It promises that the release will enable the next generation of immersive application experiences across devices and platforms including Android, Apple iOS (via AIR), BlackBerry Tablet OS, Mac OS, Windows, connected TVs and more. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will enable game publishers to deliver "console quality" 2D and 3D games over the Internet to nearly all PCs, and a host of other mobile devices.
According to Adobe, media companies can take advantage of new features to seamlessly deliver protected feature-length, cinema-quality HD video through the Web, in mobile apps, and even with surround sound for connected TVs. Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 are suppose to provide a cross-device entertainment platform, enabling the best in online gaming and premium video while helping content publishers to reach the broadest possible audience with highly-leveraged development investments.
Opera Software announced the acquisition of Northbrook-based Handster Inc, a company known for developing and running an application platform that targets everything from Android, iOS, Java and Symbian to Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, as well as tablets and netbooks.
Opera Software launched its own mobile app store in March and this purchase should help enhance and expand that solution. Unfortunately, the financial details of the Handster deal were not disclosed.
As planned/expected, yesterday at the BUILD conference in Anaheim, California Microsoft has revealed a developer preview version of Windows 8. Claimed to be a reimagining of Windows, Microsoft's upcoming operating system consumes less memory than Windows 7, it boots faster thanks to the fast startup mode, and features updated versions of Task Manager and Windows Explorer, a built-in app store, support for both touch and keyboard/mouse navigation, Internet Explorer 10, and the new Metro style UI which is specifically designed for touch-enabled devices (the OS will be able to run both "regular" desktop apps and Metro style apps).
Microsoft has already made available for download the Developer Preview version here - both 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images are provided, and the system requirements for this first public Windows 8 build are:
* a 1 GHz or faster processor
* 1GB of RAM for 32-bit, 2GB of RAM for 64-bit
* 16GB of drive space (32-bit) or 20GB (64-bit)
* a DirectX 9 graphics card
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If StatCounter's data (which is collected from over 3 million sites) is correct then these first half of October has seen Windows 7 surpass Windows XP to become the number one operating system worldwide, with a market share of just over 40% (up from 39.04% in September).
Flash 11 and AIR 3 deliver a host of new features, including hardware acceleration for 2D and 3D graphics, at least for desktops. Stage 3D support will be added to the mobile variants for Android, iOS and BlackBerry at a later date. AIR 3 will also be sprucing up connected entertainment devices, like Samsung SmartTVs, with the ability to deliver Flash-based games and content to your home theater system. What's more, Adobe has baked in support for both Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound. That means both 5.1 and 7.1 sound can be built into an AIR app, whether it be a game or streaming video, and pumped out at up to 512Kbps though your Blu-ray player or other connected theater component.
One of the new features Microsoft is adding to Windows 8 is the ability to login to your computer using a Windows Live ID. The primary purpose for this is sharing of Windows settings across multiple computers, all of which would have to be running Windows 8 of course. User can either select settings to share between computers or simply use Microsoft's default settings.
Opera Software announced the acquisition of Northbrook-based Handster Inc, a company known for developing and running an application platform that targets everything from Android, iOS, Java and Symbian to Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, as well as tablets and netbooks.