Lots of new gear this time around in What I Use, including a desktop computer, Ultrabook, iPad, smart phone, Windows Server 2012-based micro server, and workout set up.
more With this week’s launch of the AMD “Trinity” processor chipsets—now renamed to the more pedestrian 2nd-Generation A-Series APUs, or Accelerated Processing Units—both of the major microprocessor makers are armed for battle.
more Few people are aware of the excellent parental control capabilities in Windows, which started in Vista and got a lot better in Windows 7. With Windows 8, Microsoft is raising the bar yet again, and as this week’s Building Windows 8 Blog post notes, they’re adding some new features too.
more A coming Microsoft promotion will provide Windows 8 Pro to buyers of Windows 7-based PCs for just $14.99, according to my sources. The promotion begins June 2, and was first reported by my Windows Weekly cohost Mary Jo Foley.
more Staffers for the US Senate Judiciary Committee will examine allegations that Microsoft is unfairly limiting its web browser competitors in the version of Windows 8 aimed at ARM-based tablets.
more Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson has resigned from the company after only four months on the job, in the wake of an academic-padding controversy triggered by an activist shareholder proxy battle.
more In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo Laporte, Mary Jo Foley, and I discuss the Mozilla and Google complaints about non-Microsoft web browser limitations in Windows RT, whether Microsoft is discontinuing the Azure brand, Windows Phone's proven efficiency advantages haven't resulted in better sales (yet), whether Windows Phone 8 app development will be a major reset, and the $99 Xbox 360 bundle is real but not as widespread as expected.
more The Start screen is the face of the Metro environment in Windows 8 and the controversial replacement for the application launching capabilities of the Start menu from previous Windows versions. A full-screen experience, this interface is populated with live tiles representing Metro-style apps, desktop applications, web sites, libraries and folder locations, and other items.
more Modeled after the Windows Phone lock screen, the Windows 8 lock screen is a full-screen, Metro-style experience that appears when you boot your PC or resume from sleep. And as with its smartphone-based counterpart, the Windows 8 lock screen is designed to provide basic glance-and-go information and status notifications for key Metro apps and the services behind them.
more An often irreverent look at this week's other news, including the start of the Windows 8 Upgrade offer, a rumor about an Xbox 360 version of IE, Xbox 360 continues to rule a rapidly declining video game market, Google preps for a massive US antitrust case, Nokia ships an eBook reader app but only in Europe, Amazon readies a color e-ink Kindle, Facebook is set to open its own app store, and Yahoo’s CEO doesn’t actually have a computer science degree.
more I’ve sort of avoided this topic for a while. I guess I wanted it to sink in before I just went off the handle and issued yet another rant condemning Microsoft for the latest in a long line of customer-unfriendly actions. The thing is, I just can’t justify what they’re doing.
more A week ago, Microsoft quietly changed how Bing search results look and work, but this week the company is making a much bigger change: Bing will soon provide a completely new user experience that is the biggest change in the service’s three year life.
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