Mozilla's biggest export is Firefox, and with Windows 8 having been in circulation for a few months now, the next stage of preparations for a version of the popular browser tailored to Microsoft's latest OS release have begun. Last week, the Metro/Modern-ized browser reached Mozilla's nightly build channel, and today, it has reached Mozilla-central. Although Firefox desktop product manager Asa Dotzler confessed there is still "plenty of work" to be done, it has now reached a point where it is stable enough for regular testing.
BlueStacks has built its solid reputation on providing software which enables Android apps to run on a variety of different platforms besides Google's. With the Windows beta version released last year to some 5 million+ downloads and the OS X beta arriving just six weeks ago, the BlueStacks team has now compiled a version adapted to the relatively-new Windows 8 platform, as well as optimization for the Microsoft Surface Pro. Details after the break.
The release of Windows 8, has, quite inevitably been followed by the release of Office 2013 and Office 360, but this time around, the Redmond company has been hard at work on several other apps as it tries to establish its new-look operating system across its vast user base. The Windows Store needs as many decent new apps as it can get, and today, another in-house offering arrives in the form of My Server.
The news is perhaps about as predictable as when Call of Duty: Black Ops II swept past Halo 4 to take its usual position is market leader, but Windows 8 has - just three months after its initial release - surpassed Apple's OS X Mountain Lion in terms of market share. The Redmond company has seen a positive, if not overwhelming public response to its new operating system, and with many opting to upgrade online as opposed to purchasing a more expensive physical copy, the entire Windows process looks to be headed towards Apple's download-only direction.
If you have been hoping to pick up a Microsoft Surface Pro this month as your late Christmas present, you may be disappointed, since the shipping date has been pushed back slightly, to February 9th, in both the United States and Canada, along with several accessories to please anybody’s ‘wants’ and ‘needs’.
With Microsoft making the announcement that they would be closing down the Windows Live Messenger platform and recently confirming that closure date; there will undoubtedly be a lot more attention paid to Skype. Windows Live Messenger users will automatically have their accounts migrated across to Skype to allow them to simply download the software, log in and begin sending IMs, making video and audio calls to their contacts.
With Windows 8, Microsoft took some rather bold and unprecedented steps. The RT version of the operating system, found on the company’s Surface tablet (and perhaps, soon to land of similar offerings from a plethora of other manufacturers), enabled the software giant to enter a market that was previously dominated by Apple’s iPad and various-manufacturers’ Android-based tablets. Judging by the response that Surface has received from the consumer population, Microsoft’s entry in this niche seems to be playing out well as of yet. The good thing is that the RT version of Windows doesn’t suffer from a serious lack of apps, considering as how a lot of legacy apps are becoming available in their Modern UI versions for the platform. Things do seem to be headed in the right direction.
When the retail version of Windows 8 was released back in October last year, it brought a lot of improvements over all the earlier versions, despite the fact that a lot of people didn’t seem very happy with it. The new Modern UI, along with its ability to launch apps much faster, the improved copy/move dialog box, the new task manager with a plethora of new options, and the Charms bar, for instance, are just some examples to name, among many others. However, not all features (or lack thereof) could really be considered as improvements. I can understand the grudge that some people hold against Microsoft for taking away the Start menu to be a matter of personal preference, but some changes were downright limiting, the top of which turns out to be the operating system’s native inability to play DVD & Blu-ray discs.
There are certain changes in Windows 8 that are far better than any other previous Windows version. With any operating system, or any other device that stores your personal data, the most important thing that users are concerned about is data security. You need to protect data from malware, external attacks, hard drive crashes, corruption and what not. While there are a lot of tools out there that help you achieve all that, nothing beats the usefulness and importance of taking backups of all the important files that you have.
There is a lot of fuss being made in the tablet industry at the moment, centering around the pros and cons of the most well-known tablets on the market and which piece of hardware will reign supreme in the race to be king of the slates. Contenders include the Apple iPad, the Microsoft Surface, the ASUS Nexus 7 and the Nexus 10 manufactured by Samsung. They are all extremely capable options, but look past their feature sets and you will ultimately find that they all have a similar set of issues that affect our user experience. If you happen to have opted for the Microsoft Surface RT tablet, then the discoveries of one individual could go some way to eradicating any touch-screen responsiveness issues you may have been facing.
