Home » Posts filed under Microsoft
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts

Top 10 Gadgets of 2013

Posted by Unknown Monday, 9 December 2013 0 comments

10. Nokia Lumia 1020

Harry McCracken / TIME

Every modern wireless phone is a cameraphone, but this Lumia is something new: a phonecamera. Its oversized sensor packs 41 megapixels of resolution; you can capture the most detailed phone snapshots you’ve ever seen, and zoom in without reducing your pictures to a blocky mess. (You have to download the high-res versions to a computer via USB cable, but it’s worth the effort.) Even iPhone and Android fans who thought they couldn’t care less about Windows Phones might find themselves smitten with this one.

9. Leap Motion Controller

Leap Motion

This pint-sized USB accessory for Windows PCs and Macs is an $80 preview of where man-machine interfaces may be headed. Plug it in, plop it on a flat surface, and you can perform tasks — from playing games to reading New York Times stories — by waving your hands in the air. It can even detect the angle your palms and how many fingers you’re sticking out. The technology is also being built into laptops, starting with HP’s Envy17 Leap Motion SE.

8. Nest Protect

Nest Labs

Silicon Valley startup Nest Labs specializes in making the most mundane household devices a lot less mundane. In 2012, it introduced a Web-savvy touch-screen thermostat. And its new product is Nest Protect, a $130 smoke and carbon-monoxide detector. Rather than emitting an eardrum-shattering squeal, Protect alerts you to hazards in a calm female voice which says helpful things like “There’s carbon monoxide in the den.” If it mistakes your smokey cooking for a fire, you can set it wise with a wave of your arm.

7. Amazon Kindle Fire HDX

Amazon

Amazon’s third-generation Kindle Fire tablets — a $239 seven-inch model and a $379 8.9-incher — are the first ones which felt truly polished and pleasing from the day they debuted. As always, they make it as simple as possible to consume mass quantities of Amazon content — video, music, books, games and more. And they’ve got one feature that’s a ground-breaking dazzler: Mayday, which lets you get tech support from a real live Amazon rep who appears on screen and can take control of your tablet.

6. Microsoft Xbox One

Microsoft

Officially, Microsoft’s Xbox One is a game console, but its aspirations go far beyond play. With built-in video calls via Skype, integration with cable and satellite TV boxes and an interface derived from Windows 8, it’s really a living-room PC. The most intriguing technology is built into the new Kinect sensor, which understands spoken commands, recognizes faces and can even measure your heart rate. Some aspects of the One are still rough around the edges, but it’s going to be fascinating to see where it goes.

5. Apple iPhone 5s

Apple

iPhones with an “s” at the end of their model numbers are supposedly snoozers, because they focus on refinements to the previous year’s model. But the iPhone 5s introduces two of the best smartphone features which Apple or anyone else has ever come up with. The Touch ID sensor lets unlock your phone with a quick press of your finger or thumb. And the camera sports a unique dual-LED flash which provides subtle, custom lighting for an array of picture-taking scenarios.

4. Pebble Smartwatch

Pebble

Whether smartwatches ever turn into a booming business to rival smartphones or tablets remains anyone’s guess. But Pebble is off to a promising start. The $150 wearable gizmo acts as a satellite for your iPhone or Android handset, receiving snippets such as text-message notifications via Bluetooth and displaying them on its power-efficient E Ink display. Third-party developers can write programs to let it do everything from playing games to tracking your fitness. Did we mention that it tells time?

3. Oculus Rift Development Kit

Virtuix Omni / YouTube

At the moment, Oculus Rift is only available in a $300 kit aimed at game developers. But once you strap on this virtual-reality headset onto your noggin and experience it in action, you’ll get itchy for the consumer release, which is scheduled for 2014. Used with a PC or Android device, Rift will let games create 3D worlds which surround you — you can even look over your shoulder for enemies lurking behind. If the games live up to the hardware’s potential, it could be an epoch-shifting landmark.

2. Apple’s new iPads

Apple

Do you want a powerful iPad or a portable one? How about both? At just one pound and .29-inch thick, the 9.7-inch iPad Air is much svelter than previous full-sized models. And except for the smaller screen, the 7.9-inch iPad Mini with Retina has almost exactly the same potent components as its big brother, as well as the same ten-hour battery life. Both benefit hugely from the App Store’s 475,000 iPad-optimized apps. It’s best tablet you can buy, in two convenient sizes.

1. Google Chromecast


Instead of trying to do everything — like Google’s famously ambitious and unsuccessful Google TV — this thumb-sized gizmo does one thing, does it as simply as possible and does it for the impulse-purchase price of $35. Plug it into one of your TV’s HDMI ports, and you can fling videos and other content from your laptop, tablet or phone to the big screen, no wires involved. Lots of companies have built devices to do this; Chromecast is the first one that gets it right.

Apple iPad 5 vs Microsoft Surface 2

Posted by Unknown Sunday, 29 September 2013 0 comments

Microsoft Surface 2

Microsoft is unveiled two new Surface tablets, the Surface Pro 2 and the Surface 2, including a professional model that allows people to use it more like a laptop or a desktop computer. Microsoft Corp, the Redmond, Washington company is trying to boost its tablet business as sales of traditional desktop and laptop computers decline.

The Surface Pro 2, unveiled at an event in New York, is targeted at professionals who want the full power of a laptop in a tablet-style device. The kickstand built into the device is redesigned to make it easier to use on laps. In the past, it worked best on a flat surface such as a table.

A cheaper model, Surface 2, offers a better screen and other improvements over last year's Surface RT.  Microsoft plans to release an update to its Windows 8 operating system on Oct. 17. Among other things, Windows 8.1 will be usable on smaller touch screens, which have become popular because they are cheaper and easier to carry. The previous version of Windows 8 was limited to tablets with 10-inch to 12-inch screens. The screen on both new Surface models remains at 10.6 inches, measured diagonally. Microsoft didn't announce smaller Surface models. The redesigned Surface tablets come at a time of transition for Microsoft. 

At a time when personal computer sales are falling, the software giant is trying to become a more diversified software and mobile devices company. Earlier this month, Microsoft struck a deal to acquire Nokia's handset and services business for $7.2 billion.  In selling the Surface, the company became a competitor to its many manufacturing partners, which rely on its Windows operating system to power their machines. Microsoft began selling Surface tablets last October, but sales have been slow. The company shipped about a million tablets in the first three months of 2013, according to research firm IDC. That includes about 260,000 of the slimmed-down RT version of Surface and 750,000 of the Pro version, which is compatible with older Windows programs. The shipments gave Microsoft a meager 2 percent share of the tablet market in the first quarter. By the second quarter, Microsoft tablets dropped out of IDC's Top 5. Microsoft absorbed a $900 million charge in the April-June period to account for its expected losses from the Surface RT after it slashed prices to stimulate demand. The $150 cut brought the price of the Surface RT with 32 gigabytes of memory to $349. The Surface has a 10.1-inch screen measured diagonally. The RT version is 1.5 pounds. The Pro version is 2 pounds and starts at $799, $100 less than it was at launch.

Specifications

  • Microsoft says the Pro 2 also offers a 75 per cent improvement in battery life over the previous model. There's also a new cover accessory that extends battery life even further. An optional docking station allows the Pro 2 to be used like a laptop.
  • The Surface 2 is outfitted with Nvidia's Tegra 4 (T40) processor, a 1.7GHz ARM mobile quad-core CPU boasting 72 graphics cores. It's paired with 2GB of RAM.
  • The Surface 2 starts at $449, and the Surface Pro 2 at $899.
  • It is available starting on October 22 in the US and other markets.


Apple iPad 5



If there's one thing we can be certain on, it's that the iPad 5 is due imminently. It's been almost a year since the iPad 4 arrived in October 2012, just six months after the launch of the iPad 3.

The Apple iPad, is equipped with Apple's custom designed A6X processor, which is also an ARM processor, but this dual-core processor is supplemented with only four graphics cores. While it's tempting to read something into the raw specs of the processors

One of the best things about the iPad 4 is its amazing screen. With that in mind, most of the existing rumours suggest that the iPad 5 will have the same 9.7in screen size as its predecessor. We'd also suggest that it will have the same screen resolution of 2,048x1,536. According to Apple this is a Retina display, which means you can't see the pixels from a normal viewing distance; in other words, improving the resolution without touching screen size is pointless.

With the iPhone 5S, Apple introduced the Touch ID fingerprint scanner in the Home button, designed to improve security. The question is, will the company bring that to its tablets? Although Touch ID is currently locked to unlocking the iPhone and iTunes purchases, the bigger picture is that it will eventually be used for other applications and purchases.

Conclusion

It's worth noting that both tablets have tailored the hardware and software to work together, and Windows RT is a different beast than Apple's iOS. How the actual performance and user experience will compare isn't really known.

Copyright © et-Guruji. All rights reserved.

Super SEO created by Blogger Tuts From Jom Kenal Islam