windows

Touch devices to drop to $200, says Intel CEO

Touch laptop prices are headed south. Way south, according to Intel executives.

The price of Intel-based touch devices, including laptops, will sink to price points that penetrate inexpensive tablet territory. These new "innovative" designs will be based on Intel's Atom chip, Intel executives said today during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call.

"If you look at touch-enabled Intel-based notebooks that are ultrathin using [Atom] processors. Those prices are going to be down to as low as $200," said Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

Though neither Otellini or Smith mentioned screen size specifically, those price points … Read more

Turn your RSS feed into a "Star Wars" crawl

If Google's recent decision to pull the plug on the (incredibly useful and beloved) RSS tool Google Reader has convinced you that the search giant is now the Evil Empire, then join the Rebel Alliance with the RSS reader StarRSS, from user fotcorn at github. Simply enter in an RSS feed into the box on the landing page and a scrolling list of items will appear as familiar horns trumpet the start of that classic movie music.

Clicking on the items in your feed as they scroll up and become smaller and smaller isn't the easiest task in … Read more

The 404 1,250: Where we bet our bottom dollar (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Former 404 guest and Internet Archivist releases Web's largest collection of historical software.

- Judge holds himself in contempt for cell phone going off in court.

- NY Philharmonic phone disruption: A cell-phone etiquette reminder.

- Here's a 90-year-old granny freaking out over Oculus Rift.… Read more

Microsoft moves to match Amazon Web Services

Microsoft wants the world to know it is ready to go head-to-head with Amazon Web Services on both features and price.

As expected, Microsoft today announced that its Linux and Windows Server virtual machines (VMs) on Windows Azure are now generally available and ready for deployment. These are the persistent VMs that Microsoft publicly unveiled last June, and which provide users with a way to run existing Linux and Windows Server apps in the Azure cloud without having to completely rewrite them.

Microsoft announced last year that these persistent VMs will allow users to run Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows … Read more

Microsoft exec: We don't need to build a Microsoft phone

NEW YORK -- Microsoft sees no need to build its own smartphone to help kick-start sales of devices running its Windows Phone operating system, a company executive said today.

Terry Myerson, a vice president at Microsoft working on the Windows Phone team, told All Things D reporter Ina Fried at the Dive into Mobile conference here this morning, that the company feels its device partners Nokia and HTC are doing just fine when it comes to building smartphones using the Windows Phone operating system.

The precedent for moving directly into phone hardware lies in Microsoft having built its own tablet, … Read more

Windows 8, take 2? Let's see Start button, boot to desktop

What if Microsoft relented and granted users who are lukewarm about Windows 8 two of their biggest requests: Allow those who want to boot straight to the desktop, and bring back the Start button with Windows Blue, a.k.a. Windows 8.1?

Though supposedly not part of the original plan for Blue, these two UI options are looking more likely.

Reports from a couple of different forums from this past weekend raised the possibility that Microsoft might be moving toward allowing users to skip booting into the Metro-Style Start menu and instead start their PCs in desktop mode. (Winbeta.org noted the thread about this … Read more

Facebook in talks to bring Home to iPhone, Windows Phone

Facebook is reportedly in talks with Apple and Microsoft about the possibility of creating versions of its Home launcher for the iPhone and Windows Phone.

The social network is in negotiations with the companies about expanding the platform to their smartphones, Adam Mosseri, Facebook's director of product, told Bloomberg, noting that talks are ongoing and nothing has been finalized.

"We've shown them what we've built, and we're just in an ongoing conversation," Mosseri said.

Mosseri said the skin could arrive on Apple's platform with a different name and appearance than the one that'… Read more

Q&A: MacFixIt Answers

MacFixIt Answers is a feature in which I answer Mac-related questions e-mailed by our readers.

This week, readers wrote in with questions about whether it is possible to install Windows on an external hard drive for use in Boot Camp, how to set up Time Machine to back up home folders stored on secondary drives, and how to disable the yellow tooltip popups that appear over URL links in many OS X applications. I welcome contributions from readers, so if you have any suggestions or alternative approaches to these problems, please post them in the comments!

Question: Using Windows 7 … Read more

A fix for the multifile-selection glitch in Windows 7 and 8

Sometimes you wish Microsoft would let customers decide when to delete a feature. Reader Dan Baechlin depends on Windows Explorer's ability to retain the selection of multiple files after changing the sort order. The feature has been removed from the version of Explorer in Windows 7 and 8. As Dan explains:

My job requires the ability to highlight multiple files or folders in a directory, and to retain that highlighting while re-sorting them by different fields (modification dates, thematically-based titles, etc.) Windows provided that feature -- until version 7. My work unit indexes, manages, and compares policy documents that … Read more