Author: kenmay

OEM Windows 7 License Sales End This Friday

colinneagle writes This Friday is Halloween, but if you try to buy a PC with Windows 7 pre-loaded after that, you’re going to get a rock instead of a treat. Microsoft will stop selling Windows 7 licenses to OEMs after this Friday and you will only be able to buy a machine with Windows 8.1. The good news is that business/enterprise customers will still be able to order PCs ‘downgraded’ to Windows 7 Professional. Microsoft has not set an end date for when it will cut off Windows 7 Professional to OEMs, but it will likely be a while. This all fits in with typical Microsoft timing. Microsoft usually pulls OEM supply of an OS a year after it removes it from retail. Microsoft cut off the retail supply of Windows 7 in October of last year, although some retailers still have some remaining stock left. If the analytics from Steam are any indicator, Windows 8 is slowly working its way into the American public, but mostly as a Windows XP replacement. Windows 7, both 32-bit and 64-bit, account for 59% of their user base. Windows 8 and 8.1 account for 28%, while XP has dwindled to 4%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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OEM Windows 7 License Sales End This Friday

This is Verizon’s Droid Turbo: 5.2-inch Quad HD display, up to 48 hours of battery life

What’s black and Kevlar and screams “turbo”? Okay, yes, a modded BMW M3. But also Verizon’s latest smartphone, the Droid Turbo by Motorola. Regular Engadget readers assuredly know a lot about this phone already : it’s got a 5.2-inch Quad HD AMOLED display covered in Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3, a Kevlar back, and an incredibly long battery life. Verizon’s touting “up to” 48 hours of power and a quick charge feature that nets “up to 8 hours of use” from a 15-minute charge (using a specific charging cable included with the phone, naturally). The Droid Turbo’s not all charge and no oomph: a Snapdragon 805 processor is the heart of the Turbo (a 2.7GHz quad-core CPU) and an Adreno 420 CPU (running at 600MHz) handles graphics on that fancy Quad HD screen. 3GB of RAM handles memory, making all that processor power worth a damn. Should processor speeds not excite you, perhaps megapixel counts will? The camera out back on the Droid Turbo is a whopping 21-megapixels. And yes, relax, your selfies are safe: there’s a front-facing camera with 2MP resolution and 1080p video capability. In terms of the rest of the specs, the Droid Turbo is keeping up with the Joneses with Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 in all the flavors (a/g/b/n/ac), NFC, and microUSB for connectivity. Verizon’s XLTE comes inside the Droid Turbo as well — surprise! Honestly, it’s just a little frustrating to see this thing debut so shortly after the Moto X first hit the scene. After all, it basically improves on just about everything we didn’t dig about Moto’s recent flagship , so if you just bought one you might want to keep the receipt handy. In fact, all of the voice and gesture ability in Motorola’s Moto X is also in the Droid Turbo. How about that ?! Okay, now the elephant in the room: what’s powering that “up to” 48 hours of battery life? A 3, 900 mAH battery is nestled behind that tough exterior, sitting next to 32GB of internal storage (64GB optionally if you wanna get crazy ). It’s available October 30th; Droid Turbo starts at $199 (with a two-year contract) and jumps to $249 when you add the extra storage. So, how does the phone feel? Is it any good? These are all good questions that we don’t have answers for just yet, but we’ll have a hands-on for you shortly. Hang tight! Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds , Mobile , Verizon Comments

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This is Verizon’s Droid Turbo: 5.2-inch Quad HD display, up to 48 hours of battery life

Space Whiskey Safely Returned To Earth

Back in 2011, a group of alcoholics masquerading as scientists managed to somehow persuade their bosses that sending (very small) vials of whiskey to space was a viable ‘experiment’. Four years on, the whiskey has eluded the clutches of the ISS astronauts, as has landed safely back on Earth . Read more…

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Space Whiskey Safely Returned To Earth

Alienware’s Triangular Area-51 Re-Design With Tri-SLI GeForce GTX 980, Tested

MojoKid writes Dell’s Alienware division recently released a radical redesign of their Area-51 gaming desktop. With 45-degree angled front and rear face plates that are designed to direct control and IO up toward the user, in addition to better directing cool airflow in, while warm airflow is directed up and away from the rear of the chassis, this triangular-shaped machine grabs your attention right away. In testing and benchmarks, the Area-51’s new design enables top-end performance with thermal and acoustic profiles that are fairly impressive versus most high-end gaming PC systems. The chassis design is also pretty clean, modular and easily servicable. Base system pricing isn’t too bad, starting at $1699 with the ability to dial things way up to an 8-core Haswell-E chip and triple GPU graphics from NVIDIA and AMD. The test system reviewed at HotHardware was powered by a six-core Core i7-5930K chip and three GeForce GTX 980 cards in SLI. As expected, it ripped through the benchmarks, though the price as configured and tested is significantly higher. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Alienware’s Triangular Area-51 Re-Design With Tri-SLI GeForce GTX 980, Tested

Apple to distribute over $100 million worth of iPads in underprivileged schools

Students in 114 schools across the country are about to get free iPads straight from Apple, thanks to the tech titan’s $100 million pledge to President Obama’s ConnectED initiative . Cupertino first announced its support for the project (which aims to give students access to high-speed internet) in February this year, but now we know how the company’s fulfilling its multimillion-dollar promise. According to Apple’s ConnectED page, 96 percent of the students in each of its 114 chosen schools are eligible for free or, at least, reduced-priced lunches. Also, half of the schools are in urban areas, with students who are mostly of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian heritage. Apple placed emphasis in giving minorities access to technology and knowledge, as they usually don’t, putting them at a disadvantage. The company says it sees “the results of this and other forms of inequality every day”, as “minorities are significantly underrepresented in the technology industry.” In addition to giving every student in the school an iPad , Apple will also provide each teacher with both an iPad and a Mac and will equip classrooms with Apple TV. The company will be assigning special education teams to oversee each school, tailor curricula for the needs of every institution and work with providers to ensure students and teachers have WiFi or cellular connection, as well. You can check out Apple’s ConnectED page for more details, or the complete list of schools to know if there’s one in your area. [Image credit: Getty Images] Inspired by the students, teachers, and administrators at the 114 schools we’re partnering with for ConnectED http://t.co/WTsQT0yAD4 – Tim Cook (@tim_cook) October 27, 2014 Filed under: Desktops , Tablets , Apple Comments Source: Apple

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Apple to distribute over $100 million worth of iPads in underprivileged schools

Tesla Model S is now cheaper to lease, comes with a return policy

Tesla has just revealed reduced lease rates for its Model S, along with a “happiness guarantee” that lets you return the EV up to three months after purchase with no penalty. Elon Musk said that buyers in certain states will get rates up to 25 percent lower, thanks to a new deal it struck with US Bank. Leasing currently starts at around $800 per month for a Model S. The return guarantee is “no questions asked, ” but Musk added that it’s not possible to then turn around and lease a newer model unless you pay a pass-through fee. Tesla recently announced a new, more powerful “D” variant of the Model S and, and currently has the Model X SUV and cheaper Model 3 in development. The new lease rates and guarantee have led some to speculate that sales are down, but Tesla told the NYT that “demand remains extremely strong for the cars.” Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Autoblog Source: Tesla

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Tesla Model S is now cheaper to lease, comes with a return policy

This Is What The Next MS Office For Mac Might Look Like

Chinese site cnBeta has got its hands on some alleged screenshots of an upcoming refresh of Microsoft Office for Mac. Fans of improved productivity and enhanced workflow, your hour is nigh. Read more…

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This Is What The Next MS Office For Mac Might Look Like

You can finally play the best-ever Star Wars games on a modern PC (updated)

Forget that upcoming Battlefront game for now — the Star Wars titles that hardcore fans have really been looking for are finally here. Good Old Games has announced official re-releases of X-Wing and TIE Fighter that let you play these legendary space combat games (arguably, the best Star Wars games ever) on a modern PC without resorting to bootleg copies or hacks. They’ll cost $10 each when they arrive on October 28th, and they’re Special Editions that include both the CD-ROM content (SVGA graphics! Voiceovers!) as well as all the expansion packs. If you’ve been waiting two decades to once more recreate the Death Star trench run or blow up a Rebel frigate, your moment has come. Update: As you may have suspected, GOG posted those game links prematurely — they disappeared shortly after we posted our story. Come back on the 28th and they should work properly. Filed under: Gaming , Software Comments Via: Sir_Crocodile (NeoGAF) , Kotaku Source: GOG (X-Wing) , (TIE Fighter)

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You can finally play the best-ever Star Wars games on a modern PC (updated)

Alienware’s got a massive $300 dock for your new graphics card

We know what you’re thinking: What the hell is a “graphics amplifier”? (Some of you smartasses are probably also wondering if it goes to 11 .) In fact, it is what it sounds like: The Amplifier, a new accessory from Alienware, is a big ol’ shell that lives on your desk, with room for nearly any desktop-grade GPU (anything up to 375 watts). Once you get that set up, you plug the thing into your gaming laptop via a cable and boom, your notebook is suddenly running off a desktop-grade GPU, not the mobile one that came built inside the chassis. As a bonus, the Amplifier also has four powered USB ports, so you can also use this as a docking station for your keyboard, mouse, monitor, et cetera. And yes, that glowing Alienware head on the front has customizable lighting. Of course it does. Sounds kinda rad, right? Right. Well, except for one teeny detail: This requires a proprietary, PCI-Express-based cable, one that only works on the new Alienware 13 . According to a Dell spokesperson, future models will use the same connection port, but for now, even if you have an older Alienware machine you’re outta luck. Of course, too, if you own a notebook from another brand, like Razer or ASUS, this will be of absolutely no use to you. Which makes sense: Dell wants to give people an incentive to buy Alienware laptops. This is, at the end of the day, just an Alienware add-on and little more. But come on, imagine how many of these Dell would sell if it could make the thing work using a common standard. Assuming we haven’t taken the winds out of your sails, this is up for preorder today for $299 in the US and £199 in the UK (GPU not included), and is expected to ship sometime in November. As for the rest of you, well, we’ll always have Spinal Tap , right? Filed under: Gaming , Dell Comments

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Alienware’s got a massive $300 dock for your new graphics card

In 72 hours, Apple Pay is already the wireless payment leader in the US

Paying with your phone still feels fancy, and at WSJD Live today, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that the company has already registered 1 million customers. Compared to say, iPhone sales, it might not seem all that impressive, but Cook added that Visa and Mastercard apparently said that if you summed up everyone else in the contactless payment market, these kinds of numbers make Apple number one in wireless payments. Already. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Apple Comments

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In 72 hours, Apple Pay is already the wireless payment leader in the US