On a mission to secure a goal of having Windows 10 power 1 billion devices, Microsoft’s “Window’s life cycle fact sheet” shows us that October 31st 2016 could be the last day for sales of PCs pre-installed with Windows 7 professional or Windows 8.1. This means, that post the given date, all new computers will come with Windows 10 pre-installed. However, businesses with license agreements which entitle them to choose whichever version they prefer can continue working on Windows 7 or 8.1.
This deadline is probably not the best news for users who have become comfortable with the Windows 7 and have been procrastinating the update to Windows 10. Microsoft will however benefit from this deadline, because they will finally be able to tie together PCs and other devices with apps that can run on all the devices.
Microsoft usually sets their end-of-sales date for each version of Windows after two years of the release of a new version. However, since Windows 8 didn’t receive the best of responses, Windows 7 continued to be available. This privilege may not be available anymore because of the positive response that Windows 10 has mustered up.
But, for users who really want to continue with the Windows 7, technical support has been extended up to January 14th, 2020 for all users and up till January 10th 2023 for Windows 8 users. As of now, Windows 10 is available as an “optional update” on all PCs, however, early next year, reports suggest that it could become a “recommended update”.
Windows 10 is slowly finding acceptance, so Microsoft is probably just trying to make things easier for themselves and their users. All we can do is watch and wait for the response.
Microsoft’s former version Windows 7 is an addictive one. It has all the necessary features and most important of all, it’s user-friendly. Even after the roll out of Windows 8 a couple of years ago, there are many people across the globe who still rely on updates and support for Windows 7. However, Microsoft seems to think otherwise. The US-based company has decided to retire the 5-year-old operating system still prominent on more than half of the desktop population running Windows.
The announcement read that Windows 7 users will neither get new updates nor any help related to the OS. Nevertheless, according to a publishing daily, the company will continue to patch security vulnerabilities until 2020. The suspension of support to Windows 7 will make way for the forthcoming Windows 10.
The start of a new NFL season is just around the corner, and Microsoft’s been working hard to improve the experience for football fans on the Xbox One. A new version of the NFL app for Xbox One, coming out later this month, is how the company plans to do it.
There are a lot of new features, with Fantasy Football and NFL Now, the league’s upcoming online video service, is playing a huge role in the refreshed version. First and foremost, Microsoft wants its NFL app to feel like your own, which is why it lets you personalize it with content from team and players you’re interested in, as well as different media provided by NFL Network, NFL RedZone, NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL Now.
The new version has an updated Snap mode that shows a stream of plays made by your fantasy players. And instead of navigating menus to play highlights, you’ll be able to set global Xbox One notifications for when fantasy players make big plays. Just hold the Xbox button and a replay will Snap to the side of the screen alongside whatever you’re doing. Perhaps most importantly, the new app will work with more fantasy football leagues beyond NFL.com. Microsoft representatives confirmed that ESPN is on board, and work is underway to bring Yahoo and CBS into the fold.
The new app is a fruitful result of NFL and Microsoft’s $400 million, multi-year partnership. It’s worth noting that you won’t have to buy an Xbox One to get most of these features. The NFL app will be one of the very first “universal” apps on the console. That means the same app will work both on Xbox Ones and Windows 8 PCs — a feat made possible by the fact that the game console partially runs on Windows. Of course, the advantage of having a Xbox is that you can pass your cable feed directly through the console and use the NFL app side-by-side with live games.
To go along with the introduction of a new NFL app for Xbox One and Windows 8, the software giant has also planned to help professional coaches and players during games with Surface Pro 2 tablets. It allows NFL teams to review plays instantly on the sidelines.
When Windows 7 was newly launched the web traffic for Windows xp went down, which is because whenever a new operating system comes up in the market it usually grows faster than the previous generation of OS.
Windows 8 does not seem to behave the same way, as the total web traffic on windows 8 reached 8 percent worldwide, whereas Windows 7 grew faster and has 46.4 percent of web traffic currently. Ever since its launch Windows 8 is been treated with mixed emotions, some like the way it looks some find it to be complicated. The rise in Windows 7 use corresponds to a drop for Windows XP, which shows that customers are less likely to choose a new Operating System. However, Microsoft has faced problems with the new Operating System overall, but they might have a different plan considering Microsoft to take over Nokia for Its Lumia, we might have something big coming up soon.
Nokia, which is lagging behind rivals like Apple and Samsung in the global smartphone market, has launched its biggest-ever Lumia phone in India dubbed the “Lumia 625”. Nokia is planning to make available the Lumia 625, the handset with largest touchscreen in its portfolio, by the end of August.
Lumia 625
The Nokia Lumia 625 will feature a 4.7-inch IPS LCD display, the biggest for a Lumia handset, but the phone will be a mid-range device. The screen will also feature the Super Sensitive Touch technology which allows you to use the handset with gloves on (lucky since winters are around the corner, not!). Under the hood is a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 512 MB RAM and Windows Phone 8 operating system with Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 processor. The company has included 8 GB internal storage in the phone, along with microSD support up to 64 GB.
Colorful accessories
Nokia claims that the Lumia 625 will have the Smart Camera features that will allow users to create action shots, remove objects, blur backgrounds and capture the best smiles. “Editing your photos is a snap on the big screen”- says Nokia’s website for the Lumia 625.
Nokia Lumia 925 and 625 are expected to be available together in Indian market, while the 925 is already up for prebooking, we suppose that the Lumia 625 would also be available soon. Can this phone be the game changer that Nokia needs in India? only time and pricing will offer the answers for this device.
Microsoft has hit a pretty big milestone for Windows 8, with the Windows Store passing the 100,000 apps mark. It’s taken just over seven months for Microsoft to hit the big 100K after Windows 8 launched in late October last year, although the milestone didn’t quite happen quickly enough as it managed to miss Microsoft’s BUILD 2013 developer conference by roughly a week.
At the same time, Microsoft has also confirmed the development of some new exciting Metro apps, including a Facebook client that would allow users to access their profiles from the Modern UI. Flipboard and Rhapsody will also develop Windows 8 apps.
Even when compared against the iPad the feat is impressive. That device took 14 months to reach the mark, while the Mac app store still languishes on only 15,000 apps 30 months after its own launch.
Windows 8 has just passed the 5.1% share of the 1.3 billion PCs in use world-wide, according to NetApplications, which translates into more than 66 million PCs running Windows 8 at present, with at least 40% running a Metro app once per day. This is likely double the number of Windows Phones in use.
While Microsoft has hit the 100,000 app milestone, they still have a way to go to not only improve the quality of app offerings in the Windows Store, but also convince customers that Modern apps are worth downloading. Various analysts have been very critical of the app offerings in the Store, and consumers haven’t been convinced by Windows RT – which largely runs Windows Store apps – instead choosing to buy full Windows 8 tablets with desktop compatibility.
Aside from announcing that Outlook 2013 will be coming to Windows RT 8.1 later this year, Microsoft has revealed at Computex 2013 that all new “small” x86 tablets running Windows 8 will come with basic Office 2013 apps for free.
So far, there are few details regarding what products will be eligible for the bundle, what version of Office will be included and whether it will be a time-limited deal, but we do know that Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will form the free package.
Only x86 Windows 8 tablets will qualify for the bundle, as they are the only devices able to run the full version of Windows 8. The ARM processors used to power Windows RT devices, such as the Microsoft Surface RT, can’t run x86 applications and will miss out.
This follows with what we’ve seen in recent tablet launches, such as the 8-inch Acer Iconia W3, which comes with a free copy of Office 2013 installed out of the box. Expect more information about Windows 8 and the inclusion of these Office 2013 apps at BUILD 2013, Microsoft’s developer event scheduled for later this month.
Microsoft is also adding a version of its Outlook email and calendar app to Windows RT — the version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM-based chips from Qualcomm and Nvidia. Prior devices, such as Surface RT, came with only Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, along with a custom e-mail and calendar program.
“We’re always listening to our customers and one piece of feedback was that people want the power of Outlook on all their Windows PCs and tablets,” Microsoft said in a statement.
Using a Windows 8 pc? You will be happy to know that Skype has been updated to v 1.6. after many months of no updates. The new version adds a bunch of nifty bug fixes and performance enhancement. You can now black the users offending you and even delete or remove them. Speed and reliability have been improved, especially when loading contacts, and a number of bugs have been fixed to make the usage an overall boon to the users.
The update’s available in Windows Store, and over 20% users have already upgraded.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft required that all tablets made specifically to run Windows 8 have a minimum display resolution of 1366×768. This was because Microsoft also made 1366×768 as the minimum for Windows 8 Modern apps to run while in snap view mode.
A few days ago, it was discovered that the leaked build of Windows Blue actually lowered that app snap view minimum resolution down to 1024×768. As it turns out, Microsoft recently, and quietly, announced that Windows 8 tablets can now be made with a 1024×768 resolution screen, down from the previous requirement of a 1366×768 resolution.
The change is thought to be a sign that Windows 8 devices are about to arrive with mini sized screens (and prices?) to compete head on with the likes of the Google Nexus 7, Amazon Kindle Fire and Apple iPad mini and other successful devices that have with 7- and 8-inch displays.
One of the headline multitasking features of the currently shipping version of Windows 8, snapping, won’t work at this lower res. However, a leaked build of Windows Blue has revealed that Microsoft is changing its Snap View support to let 1024 x 768 users take advantage of a 50 / 50 Snap View. The changes are all part of improved support for 7- and 8-inch form factors and Microsoft’s official guidance notes that “partners exploring designs for certain markets could find greater design flexibility helpful.”
The change was announced on Microsoft’s Windows Certification Newsletter earlier in March. In making the change, Microsoft stated that while their were not encouraging PC OEMs to offer a lower resolution for their Windows 8 tablet products, they admitted, “We understand that partners exploring designs for certain markets could find greater design flexibility helpful.”
According to an unofficial tally by the site MetroStore Scanner, Microsoft has pushed past 50,000 total apps within the Windows Store.
The service also noted that there has been a large decline in new submissions since November of last year, with averages dropping from 400 to 150 in February before seeing an uptick to 200 in March.
It is unclear whether Microsoft’s new rewards program has helped in the growth. The company began offering developers $100 per app for new published apps submitted to either the Windows Phone Store or the Windows 8 Store before June 30th. Each developer can qualify for up to 10 apps per store, for a net total of $2000 in bonuses. All apps must meet standard certification requirements, and the app must do more than just launch a web page. Additionally, you cannot clone existing published apps.
The offers runs until June 30 but is exclusive to those living in the US.
As TechCrunch’s Matt Burns notes, it’s difficult to compare the growth of apps in the Microsoft Store versus rival Apple, which lists approximately 13,000 total apps or so in its Mac App Store as of this article’s writing, as there is a huge difference in the quality of apps available for the 2 OSs.
While this is good news for Windows 8 PC users, it’s not so great for Windows RT tablet users considering the iPad has 376,000 dedicated applications.
With that in mind there’s still plenty of work for Microsoft to do, but signs are more encouraging.
Microsoft says its fourth-quarter earnings slipped 4 percent, despite a lift from its latest version of Windows.
The Redmond, Washington-based software giant posted revenue of $21.46 billion and net income of $6.38 billion, with earnings per share of 77 cents. That’s largely in line with what Wall Street had been expecting, though a bit lower on the revenue side and higher on the earnings side — ahead of today’s financial report, the analyst consensus was that Microsoft would post earnings of 75 cents a share on $21.53 billion in revenue.
The results announced Thursday are the first to include Windows 8. The program is a dramatic overhaul of the Microsoft Corp operating system that powers most PCs. Windows 8 came out 26 October with slightly more than two months left in Microsoft’s fiscal second quarter.
When Windows 8 finally hit the market, Microsoft also unveiled its own tablet computer, Surface, as a showcase for the operating system. Microsoft didn’t disclose Thursday how many Surface devices were sold in the October-December period.
Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, which is responsible for the Xbox and Surface, saw an 11% decline from last year, with only $3.77 billion of revenue. This comes after Microsoft announced that the Xbox 360 was the top-selling gaming console for two years straight. It looks like holiday sales weren’t as great as the company expected.
Microsoft’s Online Services division saw more growth, however, with $869 million in revenue, which is an 11% increase year-over-year. Thanks to the upcoming Office 365 suite and SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online services don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon, especially with the deal that Microsoft made with the city of Chicago to bring Office 365 services to city employees.
Flat-screen TV manufacturer Vizio jumped into computers in 2012, launching its Windows 8 tablet at CES.
The Vizio Tablet is an 11.6-inch slate that will pack a dual-core 1GHz AMD z60 processor, a 1080p display and 2GB of RAM. Other specs include 64GB SSD storage, 2MP front cam, micro-HDMI, and micro-USB.
The Advanced Micro AMD Device’s Z60 processor allow Vizio’s tablet to run older programs on Windows 8, such as Apple’s iTunes.
One of the biggest negative to Windows hardware over the years is that many vendors choose to fill their devices up with tons of bloatware that make them slow and, well, annoying.
Rob Kermode, head of the Irvine, Calif., company’s PC and mobile device efforts, acknowledged that Vizio’s offerings were coming months after some other companies had released their Windows 8 tablets in late October. But, he said, Vizio chose to wait until the Consumer Electronics Show to make announcements because it was watching how customers would respond.
The good news here is that the Vizio Tablet PC has a “Microsoft Signature” software install. For those that don’t know, that means it is a clean installation with no added bloatware. This is perfect for consumers looking for a pure Windows 8 experience without vendor-specific add-ons like start menus and vendor software.
An AMD processor and 1080p display certainly sounds like a unique match. So when is it coming? Unfortunately we have no specific launch date or even pricing at this point.
By comparison, Microsoft’s own Windows 8 Surface tablet sells for around $1,000, and features an 8-inch screen and 720p HD.
When you look at the tech world this year, there have been plenty of innovations, but of course where there are successes, there are certainly going to be failures. Coming up with a list of the top 10 tech fails of 2012 was a bit of a challenge however, not because there weren’t enough, but because there are so many. And most of the entries on this list are debatable to some extent.
1. Aakash Tablet!
In October 2012, Indian politician Kapil Sibal called a press conference. Indian politicians call press conferences all the time, even those with a last name that is not Gandhi. And with two portfolios–he is both India’s minister of human-resource development and its minister of communications and information technology–Sibal typically has a lot he wants to talk about.
But this time he actually had news that would be noticed beyond New Delhi. With a phalanx of reporters and photographers gathered in a government auditorium, Sibal, a Harvard Law grad with a halo of white hair, held up a device he called the Aakash, which is Hindi for “sky.” It looked like an iPad.
The most remarkable Aakash data point was its price: $35. Meant for the millions of students who can’t even afford textbooks, the Aakash is supposed to be India’s iPad knockoff. “There are some moments in history,” Sibal said, taking a long pause, “that will be milestones recognized by future generations. This is one such moment.”
Indians take a certain pride in making things cheaper. The Hindi word to describe this is jugaad, roughly translated as “frugal innovation.” However, the Aakash, never made it to market.
I’ve yet to come across any college student who bought the tablet, either at the subsidized rate or the normal cost. So it tops our list as the biggest fail for 2012!
2. Apple Maps
Along with the rollout of the much anticipated iPhone 5 in September 2012, Apple overhauled iOS, the operating system that runs the phone, its iPad and other mobile devices. A much-hyped feature of the change was Apple’s first effort at its own mapping app — after dumping rival Google’s map software.
The result was so bad that a few days later Apple’s CEO was essentially telling customers to use Google Maps.
Entire cities appeared in the wrong place. Landmarks such as the Washington Monument showed up submerged in bodies of water, and big chunks of the globe appeared as roadless wastelands.
It was a little more than a month later when Scott Forstall, vice president in charge of iOS, was ousted from the company, reportedly, in part, for not wanting to apologize for Maps.
Apple fails are few and far between, but Apple Maps were a definite fail!
3. Motorola India
Motorola Mobility, which is totally independent from Motorola Solutions, had incurred heavy loss last year. Google took over the company for $12.5 billion in May this year. Google had earlier said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Motorola Mobility shut down its India-specific product website as part of its global streamlining process.
“We are streamlining our business and support systems, and unfortunately, we’ll no longer have a dedicated website for India,” a message on Motorola Mobility India’s website said.
“Your local support site will remain open well into the future, and we’ll continue to provide support for our existing products,” it added.
This move seems to be a part of the company’s global downsizing process. In August, it had confirmed its decision to cut off 20 percent of work force and shut down operations in many countries.
So after capturing the Indian customer’s imagination with devices like the MotoRazr and the MotoRokr, Motorola finally bid adieu to the country, leaving many disappointed.
4. HTC One X Wi-Fi Issue
HTC did extremely well for themselves with their new line of Smartphones, the One Series. In June, several reports of WiFi issues on the HTC One X came to light, issues that led to difficulty connecting to Wi-Fi networks and annoying lag when playing games. The issues, which can also negatively affect the handset’s battery life, may have been related to a flaw in manufacturing, was actually confirmed.
Taiwanese manufacturer, HTC, officially confirmed that the device was infact suffering said issues. But having finally come clean on the issue, the Taiwanese Smartphone Giant also claimed to have found its fix, and had changed its production process for the One X to tackle the problem.
It replaced many handsets in the process, earning itself a place in our top 10 fails.
5. Stop Online Piracy Act ( SOPA )
The new law was supposed to be about fighting online piracy. Who’s going to be against that, right?
Answer: Pretty much the whole Internet.
Members of Congress sponsored the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and related bills to make it easier to shut down websites that illegally share music, movies and other content.
But opponents argued it went too far and could end up shutting down legitimate sites while stifling free expression in the process.
Unfortunately for backers of SOPA, Web heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia joined the fight against the bill. Sites went black on January 18 to raise awareness. Members of communities such as Reddit put intense pressure on lawmakers (including soon-to-be GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan) until they dropped their support or went on record opposing the bill.
The unprecedented backlash eventually caused supporters to shelve SOPA, and quite possibly ushered in a new age of Web activism.
6. Blackberry Outage
This tweet just about sums it up!
It was a case of worst possible timing as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) confirmed it had suffered a significant outage across Europe and Asia, just as the iPhone 5 was launching to the now familiar queues in Apple stores around the world.
An October outage at a data center caused users to lose messaging ability in parts of Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, Latin America and North America. (To their credit, RIM ultimately gave away a pile of free apps to the folks affected).
The outage lasted for several days and was the final straw for some users, who abandoned ship for other phones. Add that to a list of Blackberry fails.
7. Zynga
Zynga was riding high. Love them or hate them, its games like “Mafia Wars” and “FarmVille” were everywhere, clogging up Facebook pages and spurring millions of bored casual gamers to pay real cash for virtual cows. Then, it all came crumbling down.”
OK, maybe “crumbling down” is an overstatement. But things in The ‘Ville definitely didn’t go Zynga’s way in 2012.
In October, Zynga announced it was laying off 5% of its employees, Facebook, which gets a cut when people spend money on games such as “FarmVille,” said that income from Zynga was down 20% over last year.
And yesterday, the company announced that it was closing down 20 of its game titles in order to cut costs. FAIL!
8. Windows 8
Many eyebrows were raised on November 12, 2012 when Microsoft announced that Stephen Sinofsky—the president of the Windows division, a driving force behind Windows 8, and a long-time leader at Microsoft—was leaving his post, effective immediately. The odd timing and abrupt announcement led to a rash of speculation. Was Sinofsky fired or did he quit? Was it planned? Are Windows 8 sales that bad? The answer is yes!
Aside from the app selection, many early criticisms targeted the modern UI itself, which throws everything you know about navigating Windows, well, out the window. Early adopters—especially nontechie types—have reported running into issues with the overhauled interface, which is made worse by Windows 8’s near-complete lack of instructions when you boot it up for the first time.
Microsoft hasn’t been forthcoming with sales numbers, and the company declined to comment when asked by various journalists. That institutional reticence makes it hard to divine just how well Windows 8 is actually selling on the streets.
All that said, sporadic leaks, whispers, and data from third-party channels help us paint a partial picture of Windows 8’s sales success—and what we’ve learned suggests that the OS is stumbling out of the gate.
A fail so far, we’re afraid.
9. Facebook IPO
Maybe the dumb money wasn’t so dumb this time.
From the point of view of the company, Facebook itself, of course it was a roaring success. They were able to raise a good chunk of capital to develop and expand the business. That’s what an IPO is, at heart, about. Early investors in the company did well too: they were able to cash out some portion of their earlier investment at good prices. But things went horribly wrong!
If the market were to judge Facebook not a a potential promise but as actual worth today, the stock should be trading around $4.50. It could lose over 85% of its current value (90% from the IPO price, which started at $38) and still have room to fall further. That’s how big a fail the IPO has turned out to be!
10. IPC Sec 66A Of The IT App
The Section 66 (A) of the Indian IT Act continues to haunt the cyber population of India. At a time when a public interest litigation has been filed in the Supreme court questioning the constitutional validity of the section, questions are also being raised about the need for such “draconian” section.
Section 66A of the IT Act criminalises any person who electronically sends any information that is deemed grossly offensive, has a menacing character, which he\she knows to be false but still transmits to cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will, persistently by making use of the electronic communication medium. It also includes emails or text messages that have been sent with the deliberate purpose of causing annoyance or inconvenience or to deceive or mislead the recipient. The punishment can be a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years.
The act has been in the eye of the storm after it caused the arrest two Palghar girls for allegedly posting Facebook comments against a political party. Earlier, the police had used the same law to arrest Aseem Trivedi for allegedly mocking the Indian Constitution through cartoons that had been put up as banners during Anna Hazare’s rally in Mumbai.
It definitely earns its place in the top fails!
Epic Fail
But the biggest fail of 2012 has to be the inability of our nation to respect women. The recent gang-rape and eventual death of the girl, named by the press as “Nirbhaya” (or fearless) is a BIG black dot on our society. Change is needed, not only in our laws and government, but within ourselves.
So many Big Statements coming in. Where are the big actions?
Have we missed any? Let us know in the comments section below!
There’s no mistaking the fact that, despite Windows Phone 8’s extensive feature set and countless improvements over its predecessor, there were a few notable omissions in the final Windows product.
Microsoft admitted that it ran out of time to bring a new notification centre to the OS, and basic enterprise features like VPN support were also omitted at launch.
To that end, the company plans to introduce a software update for Windows Phone 8, currently dubbed “Apollo+”, early next year, likely during Mobile World Congress in February.
Also expected to make an appearance in the update, which may be the first to use Microsoft’s new over-the-air infrastructure, will be fixes for WiFi disconnecting when the screen is turned off, corrections for audio glitches, and the possibility of notification improvements.
Last but not least, it’s said that Microsoft plans to test the ability to receive Windows Phone 8 updates via OTA (over the air), but it’s not yet decided whether this change will be introduced with Apollo Plus update.
Logitech India today introduced a new line of products specifically designed to facilitate intuitive navigation of Windows 8.
The new products are: Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Touchpad T650, Touch Mouse T620, Zone Touch Mouse T400 and Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard K810 and Wireless Touch Keyboard K400R.
[quote]”We have a tradition of launching innovative products and believe in their superiority. Windows 8 allows users to move from one form factor to another, and hence we are offering mouse with horizontal navigation,” Logitech Country Manager India and South-West Asia Subrotah Biswas told reporters here.[/quote]
The Logitech Wireless Rechargeable Touchpad T650, lets you use all Windows 8 gestures to navigate on a old laptop running the new OS. The T620 mouse too lets users do the same – even the top corner swipes to cycle through apps and open settings. You can swipe though pages by running you fingers on the mouse and open Start with a double tap.
The new family of products includes the K810 Bluetooth Illuminated Keyboard that can connect with up to three different devices at the same time (Rs 8,295), the K400 Wireless Touch Keybaord with a Windows 8 compatible 3.5-inch touchpad (Rs 2,995) and the T650 rechargeable touchpad with a glass surface and full gesture compatibility (Rs 4,995). The Logitech Touch Mouse T620 will be priced at Rs 4,295, while the T400 Zone Touch mouse will cost Rs 2,895.
