Displaying items by tag: Microsoft

As consumers are becoming less and less enchanted with their wireless carriers we are now hearing that Microsoft is trying to take a leaf from their book of tricks. With a wireless provider the way to get people in the door is to offer great phones (like the iPhone, Google Nexus, Galaxy III Etc) for amazing prices, but then to require a two year commitment for service. This is exactly what Microsoft might be doing with the next round or XboX hardware.

So Microsoft is trying to defend their decision to cripple Windows 8 right out of the box. We told you a few days ago that Microsoft has chosen not to include Media Center or DVD playback support in the shipping version of Windows 8. To get either of these you will have to pay for some sort of upgrade. If you have the standard version of Windows 8 you will need to buy an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro and if you already have Pro you will need to buy the Media Pack upgrade.

After our initial story of Microsoft’s idea to remove DVD playback and Media Center support from core installations of Windows 8 (you can still get it with an upgrade purchase) we find out a bit of news that simply makes no sense in light of what we are hearing about its crippled media playback functions. It appears that Microsoft is going to lean on Dolby Laboratories for enhanced audio in Windows 8.

Time for some Windows 8 news and there is plenty this morning some of which is going to make a few people that were considering Windows 8 a little hesitant. We have been covering the next operating system from Microsoft as it begins to develop its identity and the engineers hone in on performance and the shipping feature set. During this process the design flow feels less like a direction and more like a group of kids arguing over the remote.

As you might have noticed we have been following Windows 8 and all of the expected and unexpected features and pitfalls that it might bring to the market. So far we have found that the core of the OS appears to be pretty solid and while there is plenty of room for improvement, even the consumer preview version of the OS could be used as-is. Now this is great, but it is important to remember that Windows 8 is a split personality OS. Microsoft is trying to bridge two very different markets with a single product; Windows 8 for the x86/64 PC and Windows 8 on ARM (called Windows RT).

Understandably the news has been filled with information on Google’s new product. We have heard about their typical tendency to copy and paste their terms of service along with how it is going to kill Dropbox and other storage providers. Along with these we have even heard how Google drive is signaling the death of Microsoft Office… ummm hang on a bit there. The death of what?

A few years ago we had hope for Microsoft in the phone and mobile media player market. There was a new device on the tablet with a new SoC (System on Chip). This we had one in the lab and it was looking very promising in terms of performance and even style. Then something happened; Microsoft. For those of you that have been around the IT game for a while you will know what I mean here. As for the device; I am talking about the ZuneHD. This was (and still is) arguably the best media player that I have ever owned.

You knew we were going to do this eventually (after all we told you we would) so here we go with a complete review (performance numbers) of the Asus Maixmus V Gene with our Core i7 3770K running the same group of tests we do normally, but this time using the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 for our operating system. So now we will get to see if there is any benefit to getting Windows 8 running Intel’s latest CPU. Read on to see how Microsoft’s next OS runs on Intel’s newest platform.

Since the release of the customer preview program version of Windows 8 we have covered more than a few of its features, advantages, disadvantages and even where we feel that Microsoft is going with this new OS. The one thing that we have not fully covered is one of the things that we feel will be essential to the success or failure of Windows 8; business usage. With Microsoft’s earnings call out of the way we all know that the consumer market is not where Microsoft makes its money. Instead they make the most cash from their server products followed by business sales. If this is where they are hoping to make a bundle with Windows 8 there are some obstacles that might hinder this.

We have had quite a bit on Microsoft’s next operating system here on the site including gaming performance, Internet Explorer 10 and the Metro UI (which we still do not particularly like). After tinkering around with Windows 8 and seeing the potential underneath we do get that even if Windows 8 is not a blockbuster it will change the way that the tablet market works forever.