At this present moment, the tablet market is a two-horse race consisting of Android tablets, and Apple's iPad range. The third iteration is set to begin retailing tomorrow morning at 8am, with many fanatic consumers expected to be queuing through the night tonight ready for doors to open.
While the minor, incremental Windows Phone Tango/Refresh update is right around the corner - which, primarily, will allow Windows Phone to penetrate the lower-end emerging markets with diminished hardware requirements and functionality - a far more major update is on the horizon.
Microsoft has reportedly revealed to partners that its next-generation Xbox - unofficially dubbed the "Xbox 720" - will not feature an optical drive, and that games and other content will only be accessible through downloads or an "interchangeable solid-state card storage".
Regardless of whether you are an Apple lover, Google guru or an old faithful Microsoft worshipper, the current technological climate represents an excellent time to be involved in, as a user of hardware and software. The majority of the major players in the tech business seem to have some exciting new pieces of kit about to hit the public eye, with Apple set to imminently launch the new iPad and possibly Apple TV, Google looking likely to seed their new Android Jelly Bean in the coming months and Microsoft finally releasing the Consumer Preview of their new Windows 8 operating system.
The Daily posted two screenshots of what they claim to be Office for iPad. One screenshot showed what looks like the "start screen" of the app, where you can open and create documents, and the other showed the "Office" app icon.
The world wide web has been going Xbox - or more specifically - Halo 4 crazy today. With leaked images from the new Halo 4 game being shown earlier today, Microsoft and game makers 343 Industries have released a new preview video of the highly anticipated, yet extremely mysterious Halo 4 video game. The next release in the Halo franchise is tipped to hit our shelves sometime before the holiday season and will bring the iconic Master Chief back to the forefront of gaming, intended to launch the 'Halo Reclaimer Trilogy'.
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Tablet Vs. iPad 2 Running iOS 5 – Head To Head Feature Comparison [VIDEO]
When Microsoft released its Windows 8 Consumer Preview, it was always going to be compared squarely against the biggest, best and some would argue only real competition in the tablet market: the iPad 2.
On Wednesday, Microsoft officially released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (which is essentially a fancy term for 'public beta'). If you're eager to dabble around with the build in a virtual machine - perhaps due to the lack of a non-production machine, a spare partition, the fear of using it in a production environment, or, well, if you just want to install it in a virtual machine - then you're in luck.
It was only yesterday morning that the Microsoft team held an event at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and announced that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, essentially a prerelease version of Windows 8, would be made available immediately for public download. Windows 8 was described by Microsoft was "Windows reimagined", which sounds awfully familiar to the "Inspired by iPad, reimagined for Mac" tagline that Apple are muttering with their Mountain Lion OS.
Whether you're eager to get the freshly released Windows 8 Consumer Preview installed but don't have DVDs at hand, or if you'd prefer to not use such an outdated method of installation, we'd recommend that you install by creating a bootable USB stick with the ISO. When the Windows 8 Developer Preview was released, we wrote an extensive guide covering just how to do this by using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. So, to go about preparing the bootable USB step, follow the steps in the guide with the Consumer Preview ISO of your choice.
