Microsoft’s new wireless keyboard-and-mouse duo aims to thwart keystroke spies with full AES 128-bit encryption on over-the-air data — an improvement on older wireless models that have proven to be easy pickings for hacker-types.
You can pick up the Wireless Desktop 2000 now for $40, but that won’t buy you protection from more common threats like Shandong phishmongers, nor will it make up for security loopholes in your other peripherals.
Speaking of which, are you still using that seemingly innocent USB
Teased since Microsoft’s launch event for Windows Phone 7 back in October of last year and recently launched in Europe as the 7 Pro, HTC’s Arrive today becomes the very first CDMA device for the platform to be announced with a date and a price.
Sprint picks up the QWERTY tilt-o-matic this coming March 20th for $199.99 on a two-year contract after $100 mail-in rebate, featuring a 3.6-inch WVGA display, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 5 megapixel camera with flash and 720p video capture, 16GB of internal storage, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi – oh, and Sprint is quick to remind us that the phone will be launching with Microsoft’s anticipated copy and paste update, too.
In-store pre-orders begin today with the purchase of a $50 Sprint gift card; follow the break for the full press release. Read the rest of this entry »
We’d raised our own concerns in interviews with both Stephen Elop and Microsoft’s Aaron Woodman in the past week that Nokia could have difficulty pushing the Windows Phone platform low enough to fill the holes left by Symbian’s departure in the bottom rungs of the market, but the Nokia CEO is making it very clear that he thinks that won’t be a problem.
In a talk with Finnish journalists on Friday, Elop said that it has become “convinced” that it can hit “a very low price point” and do it “very quickly,” a strategy that will be key to converting significant swaths of Symbian market share into Windows Phone market share without losing it to other manufacturers or platforms.
Of course, something tells us the leaked design concept (pictured right) doesn’t represent the types of hardware Nokia has in mind for those low price points — but no single device or market segment is going to take Espoo to the promised land here.
Nokia’s fighting an uphill battle to retain its community of developers as it switches focus to Windows Phone and Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Tools from what was a joint Symbian / MeeGo smartphone strategy unified under the Qt development framework.
As such, Espoo just notified its Launchpad members that they’ll be receiving about $1,000 in free hardware in the form of Nokia’s new flagship E7 QWERTY slider and a “Nokia WP7 device” just as soon as it’s available.
Nokia’s also tossing in a few other incentives like free access to the next Nokia World / Nokia Developer Summit, three months free tech support for all Nokia technologies (limited to 10 tickets), a free User Experience evaluation for one app, business development assistance, and help publishing apps on the Ovi store.
This is also great news for us as the chance of seeing leaked pics of that first Nokia WP7 device have just increased dramatically.
- Author: admin
- Filed under: Laptops
- Date: Jan 31,2011
Notbook (n.) — An affordable ultraportable laptop, typically with a 11.6-inch or 12-inch display that is not a netbook. It packs more power than a netbook (i.e. can handle 1080p video and Flash at fullscreen) and provides a more comfortable computing experience than the typical, 10-inch underpowered, shrunken Atom-based laptop.
Most do not have optical drives, but do last for over five hours on a charge. Unlike pricey ultraportable laptops, notbooks are more affordable and start at around $400.
About six months ago, the 11.6-inch Dell Inspiron M101z arrived on my doorstep for review. The AMD Neo-powered system looked like a slightly enlarged netbook, but in a briefing with Dell, the product manager reinforced quite a few times that the system was absolutely “not a netbook.”
I can’t remember his exact wording, but he made it crystal clear — the $449 Inspiron M101z was so much more powerful than an Intel Atom netbook that it could be one’s primary machine. Obviously, I started calling these sorts of laptops “notbooks,” and over the next few months, more and more of them started popping up. Read the rest of this entry »
- Author: admin
- Filed under: Microsoft
- Date: Jun 14,2010
Today at its Xbox 360 media event in Los Angeles, Microsoft dropped a big piece of news: the launch of a slimmer version of the Xbox 360, which starts shipping today and will hit stories by the end of this week.
The new Xbox 360 comes in black, rather the current Xbox 360, which is white. It has 250 GB of disk space and comes equipped with built-in Wi-Fi, instead of using a direct Ethernet connection. And, best of all, it’s shorter and thinner than its bulkier counterpart.
The new console will cost $299 — for comparison’s sake, the PS3 Slim and the current 120 GB version of the Xbox 360 also cost $299 (that’s more or equal GB for your buck).
Microsoft is preparing for the Xbox 360’s biggest year yet as it puts all of its chips into Kinect, its controller-free gaming system. Formerly Project Natal, the new Kinect hardware addition will launch this November with 15 games and a ton of hype.
Making the Xbox 360 sleeker and more affordable has to be a priority for Microsoft in its quest to bring Kinect into living rooms everywhere. Releasing it now gives it a chance to permeate the market before it initiates the next phase of its plan for video game domination.
- Author: admin
- Filed under: General
- Date: Mar 17,2010
The cloud” isn’t some nebulous thing existing just beyond your computer’s consciousness. As Microsoft showed us, it’s stacks of hard drives packed into shipping containers, parked in secret data centers all around the world. Physically real, but still beautiful.
Microsoft’s cloud capability isn’t just interesting because Ballmer told us it was. It’s the only serious hardware company that also has a serious cloud capability. (Google can’t touch Microsoft’s hardware, and Apple can’t touch either in online services.)
As for these servers, you should get the basic concept: Networked storage with hot-swappable drives. Take that idea, extend it to power and cooling, and multiply it by thousands of drives, and you get what Microsoft is deploying for its cloud services—be it Exchange Server or Bing or Office 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
Microsoft just dropped its first press release of MIX 10 on us, and in addition to detailing the Sliverlight and XNA-based Windows Phone 7 Series development situation, we’ve also got a list of launch software partners and some screenshots of apps in action.
There’s some heavy hitters here, and everything from games to enterprise apps are represented — notables include the Associated Press, Citrix, EA Mobile, Foursquare, Namco, Pangeonce, Pandora, Seesmic, Shazam, and Sling. We’re slated to see some demos of these in action, we’ll let you know how things look. Full list after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
Bad news, HTC HD2 owners: Microsoft has finally come right out and confirmed our suspicions that the mighty HTC HD2 won’t be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 Series.
Joe Belfiore just told us that the HD2 is “not compliant with the Windows Phone 7 Series hardware specifications,” which should end any of the lingering doubt that’s clouded this issue since MWC.
That certainly puts a damper on the HD2′s upcoming launch on T-Mobile, but hey — every Microsoft employee here at MIX is carrying one, so it’s clearly the WinMo handset to get until it’s eclipsed by 7 late in the year.
Pour one out for the king, friends.
Well, there they are, the only three confirmed Windows Phone 7 Series prototype devices that currently exist.
From left, we have the new Samsung slate that debuted today, the just-for-demos unbranded Asus unit that was the star of MWC, and the LG slider that we got cozy with at the Engadget Show.
We’re still hoping for more time with the Samsung — and we’re pushing for more detailed specs on all of thes.
