There’s plenty about Microsoft’s new Windows 10 S that’s not fully understood, not the least of which is its built-in upgrade path to Windows 10 Pro. Which Windows 10 S device you buy and where you buy it, however, will decide whether you’ll pay a $49 fee for the the upgrade—or have Microsoft pay you with a year’s subscription to Office 365.With most Windows 10 S devices reserved for closely managed classrooms, there's arguably only one Windows 10 S device where the transition from Windows 10 S to Windows 10 Pro becomes an important decision: Microsoft's Surface Laptop, designed for college students. But as hardware vendors start shipping more laptops with Windows S installed, more users will have to consider how they handle this upgrade path. We'll explain what we know so far. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If the Windows 10 Creators Update had worked out as Microsoft had promised, we all would be taking 3D selfies, importing them to Windows, and then sharing them among our closest friends and coworkers via Office presentations and mixed-reality headsets.Microsoft sold us that vision as part of the Creators Update launch last fall. But somewhere between then and the Creators Update rollout announcement April 29, key pieces went missing. Microsoft previously said that its My People experience would be left for the “Redstone 3” update in the fall. The company never warned us, however, that we wouldn't see the Windows Capture app, which creates 3D objects simply by tapping your smartphone. If there’s a way to share 3D objects within the Holotour app within the HoloLens, I haven’t seen it. And, of course, neither the HoloLens nor the third-party mixed-reality devices are commercially available yet.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
As AMD reveals its Ryzen 5 prices and release date, the company marks an important transition: After launching its eagerly awaited Ryzen 7 chip for high-end PCs, AMD hopes to parlay that goodwill into mainstream success.AMD said it will ship its Ryzen 5 desktop processors on April 11, the same day it will begin accepting its first orders for the chip. All of the four new Ryzen 5 chips will be priced at less than $250, the same price range that Intel currently offers for its own Core i5 chips at. However, the number of cores and threads that the Ryzen 5 offers pushes into Intel’s Core i7 territory, potentially offering much more value for the price.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In a month’s time, Microsoft will put Windows Vista to rest once and for all. If you’re one of the few people still using it, you have just a few weeks to find another option before time runs out.After April 11, 2017, Microsoft will no longer support Windows Vista: no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates, Microsoft says. (Mainstream Vista support expired in 2012.) Like it did for Windows XP, Microsoft has moved on to better things after a decade of supporting Vista.As Microsoft notes, however, running an older operating system means taking risks—and those risks will become far worse after the deadline. Vista’s Internet Explorer 9 has long since expired, and the lack of any further updates means that any existing vulnerabilities will never be patched—ever. Even if you have Microsoft’s Security Essentials installed—Vista’s own antivirus program—you’ll only receive new signatures for a limited time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ransomware doesn’t sneak into your PC like ordinary malware. It bursts in, points a gun at your data, and screams for cash—or else. And if you don’t learn to defend yourself, it could happen again and again.Armed gangs of digital thieves roaming the information superhighway sounds like an overwrought action movie, but the numbers say it’s true: Ransomware attacks rose from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016, an increase of 167 times year over year, according to Sonicwall—even as the number of malware attacks declined. Why steal data when you can simply demand cash?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ransomware doesn’t sneak into your PC like ordinary malware. It bursts in, points a gun at your data, and screams for cash—or else. And if you don’t learn to defend yourself, it could happen again and again.Armed gangs of digital thieves roaming the information superhighway sounds like an overwrought action movie, but the numbers say it’s true: Ransomware attacks rose from 3.8 million in 2015 to 638 million in 2016, an increase of 167 times year over year, according to Sonicwall—even as the number of malware attacks declined. Why steal data when you can simply demand cash?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You know when AMD’s Ryzen is launching, how much it’ll cost, and you even have a pretty good idea of its performance. But you might not know why AMD dropped the original Zen name for Ryzen, so we asked. And it all begins with what AMD couldn’t do with the brand.As John Taylor, corporate vice president of marketing for AMD, describes it, AMD was between a rock and a hard place. Mike Clark, an engineering fellow at AMD who led the Zen architecture development, had dubbed the architecture “Zen” for the balance it struck between various aspects of the design. Fans who had followed Zen’s development would buttonhole AMD execs and rave about the Zen name: “‘I love Zen...there’s something about it I’m just connecting with,’ they’d say,” Taylor said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You know when AMD’s Ryzen is launching, how much it’ll cost, and you even have a pretty good idea of its performance. But you might not know why AMD dropped the original Zen name for Ryzen, so we asked. And it all begins with what AMD couldn’t do with the brand.As John Taylor, corporate vice president of marketing for AMD, describes it, AMD was between a rock and a hard place. Mike Clark, an engineering fellow at AMD who led the Zen architecture development, had dubbed the architecture “Zen” for the balance it struck between various aspects of the design. Fans who had followed Zen’s development would buttonhole AMD execs and rave about the Zen name: “‘I love Zen...there’s something about it I’m just connecting with,’ they’d say,” Taylor said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ryzen is here. AMD said Wednesday that it plans a “hard launch” of its first three Ryzen processors on March 2, outperforming Intel’s high-end chips while undercutting its prices by as much as 54 percent. AMD executives confidently unveiled the first three desktop chips to attack Intel’s Core i7, supported by several top-tier motherboard vendors and boutique system builders. In many cases, executives said, AMD will offer more for less. The top-tier Ryzen 7 1800X will cost less than half of what Intel’s thousand-dollar Core i7-6900K chip does—and outperform it, too. You can preorder Ryzen chips and systems from 180 retailers and system integrators today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ryzen is here. AMD said Wednesday that it plans a “hard launch” of its first three Ryzen processors on March 2, outperforming Intel’s high-end chips while undercutting its prices by as much as 54 percent. AMD executives confidently unveiled the first three desktop chips to attack Intel’s Core i7, supported by several top-tier motherboard vendors and boutique system builders. In many cases, executives said, AMD will offer more for less. The top-tier Ryzen 7 1800X will cost less than half of what Intel’s thousand-dollar Core i7-6900K chip does—and outperform it, too. You can preorder Ryzen chips and systems from 180 retailers and system integrators today.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What happens if a bad actor turns off your heat in the middle of winter, then demands $1,000 to turn it back on? Or even holds a small city’s power for ransom? Those kinds of attacks to personal, corporate, and infrastructure technology were among the top concerns for security experts from the SANS Institute, who spoke Wednesday during the RSA conference in San Francisco.+ MORE FROM RSA: Hot products at RSA 2017 +Some of these threats target consumers directly, but even the ones that target corporations could eventually “filter down” to consumers, though the effects might not be felt for some time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What happens if a bad actor turns off your heat in the middle of winter, then demands $1,000 to turn it back on? Or even holds a small city’s power for ransom? Those kinds of attacks to personal, corporate, and infrastructure technology were among the top concerns for security experts from the SANS Institute, who spoke Wednesday during the RSA conference in San Francisco.+ MORE FROM RSA: Hot products at RSA 2017 +Some of these threats target consumers directly, but even the ones that target corporations could eventually “filter down” to consumers, though the effects might not be felt for some time.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
With Intel’s forecasts projecting the PC could be the smallest moneymaker five years from now, the company has gone “data center first”—giving Intel’s server business first crack at new manufacturing technologies.It’s another sign of massive change within Intel, as the traditional PC business is shoved to the side. In a slide presented during Intel’s investor day on Thursday, the company showed off how the total available market (TAM) for its PC CPU business was just $30 billion or so, less than half that of the data center.The TAM, as its known, projects the maximum available revenue Intel could pull in if it owned the entire market—which won’t happen. It’s an excellent guide to which segments Intel is prioritizing, however: the data center, non-volatile memory like flash and its new Optane, plus mobile communications and various embedded segments. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Kim Stevenson, who served as the second-in-command at Intel’s PC chip division, has left the company after just six months in her new role.Stevenson tweeted last week that she had left the company after serving more than seven years at Intel, and she would move “on to new adventures.” She served as the chief operating officer for its Client and Internet of Things Business and Systems Architecture group—a catchall for Intel’s consumer-focused products, including its traditional PC business. Stevenson reported to Murthy Renduchintala, the group’s president. LinkedIn
Kim Stevenson has left Intel for "new adventures."ent.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When Microsoft launched its Cache note-taking experiment last year, we hoped it could become Microsoft’s version of Google Keep, if Microsoft devoted enough resources to it. Sadly, that’s not the case.In a note to users, Microsoft said Thursday that it would shut down Cache at the end of February, and would no longer market it as a standalone service.“Over the course of this year, we learned that there was an appetite for a service like Cache, but more importantly, your feedback taught us a lot about the extent of the challenges people have with managing and organizing their work,” Microsoft said in an email from the Cache team.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
One build, almost a whole new OSMicrosoft releases new builds of Windows 10 for its Insider beta testers every so often—some minor, some really significant. You can call Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 15002, released this week, a really big deal.Microsoft’s notes on the new build ran to over a dozen pages, according to the company, and we found over 20 notable new features. (We left out some minor tweaks to keep this list manageable.) Some are cosmetic improvements that enhance the user experience, while others add powerful new features that Windows lacked before.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
2016: A year to remember... maybe?Image by Microsoft2016 was a busy year for Microsoft wins and fails. From Windows phones to the Surface Studio, and Windows 10 to Minecraft, the company and its products dominated headlines in both hardware and software.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
What not to buy for the holidaysImage by Evil ErinClueless? Yeah, we get it. Every year we have to figure out what to buy our significant others, and a great tech gift often tops the list.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The future of Windows phones...might not be phones?
Rumors and hopes for a category-defining Surface phone were not satisfied at Microsoft's press event last Wednesday. The company didn’t even mention Windows 10 Mobile. With the collective market share of Windows phones stagnant at about 1 percent, customers and partners have to wonder why anyone should bother investing in Microsoft’s mobile strategy.
In an interview with ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft executive vice president of Windows and Devices Terry Myerson was asked just that. But instead of committing wholeheartedly to Windows phones—or declaring that product line dead—Myerson tried a different tack: obscurity.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Though Intel’s PC group, data center, and Internet of Things businesses helped drive Intel to record revenue in its third quarter of 2016, all eyes seemed focused on one number: the company’s fourth-quarter forecast, which isn’t great. Intel achieved a 9 percent year-over-year increase in profits, up to $3.4 billion, and a 9 percent increase in revenue as well, to a record high of $15.8 billion.Unfortunately, the company’s projections for fourth-quarter revenues are actually slightly down: $15.7 billion, with some $500 million either way in terms of wiggle room. Traditionally, Intel sees its highest revenue in the fourth quarter, so the numbers provide an indication of how the holiday tech sales season is expected to go.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Mark Hachman