05/25, 4:00pm
Dell's Windows 8 enterprise tablet sports hardware keyboard
Leaked images have emerged purporting to show both photos and specs for two forthcoming Dell tablets running Windows 8. The images appeared yesterday on tech site Neowin, and apparently show the Dell Latitude 10 and XPS 12. Dell has already affirmed that the company will be one of the very first to release Windows 8 tablets, but these images appear to be the most concrete evidence to emerge to date with regard to features and capabilities for those offerings.
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05/25, 1:15pm
ViewSonic to bring Touch and Connect range of tablets, more, to Computex on June 5
ViewSonic, best known for its wallet-friendly TVs and computer monitors, is now teasing a new range of Android-powered tablets. The Touch and Connect range is said to be in prototype form, and is headlined by the 22-inch model, thus far known only as a smart business tablet monitor. It appears to be running on Android 4.0, though it may also eventually get a model with Windows 8 onboard and multi-touch capability.
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05/23, 4:22pm
Office for tablets set to arrive in November
Microsoft is preparing to release tablet versions of its Office suite for both Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms, a source familiar with the software has told BGR. The company had been previously rumored to be bringing its Office suite to the iPad, and the new details, if true, will see the productivity suite arriving on tablets in November.
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05/23, 1:20pm
Boot menu redesign due to promised fast boot times
Windows 8 will have an improved pre-boot menu screen, to avoid constant reboots and stop the user from repeatedly tapping F8 or another key to interrupt the process before Windows loads. An MSDN blog post by Microsoft's Windows engineering team explains in detail how the system will work if the BIOS is needed due to a problem, and how to get to the same screen when there isn't an issue.
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05/21, 12:04pm
Microsoft shows evolution from Windows 1 to Metro
Microsoft has blogged about the history of Windows user interface changes in preparation for the expected Windows 8 release later this year. The post explains how Windows has morphed from the original release in 1985 through to present day, and the jump from "Aero" UI elements in Windows Vista and 7 to "Metro" in Windows 8.
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05/18, 12:43pm
Comments follow concern over Nokia
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega suggests the Windows Phone platform may see a significant boost from Microsoft's Windows 8 OS when it arrives on the market. Speaking at the JP Morgan technology conference, the executive noted that he was "very upbeat about what they are bringing to the market."
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05/14, 2:50pm
Windows 8 Pro upgrade to be $15 option on Windows 7 PCs
Microsoft will soon begin offering a promotion to buyers of Windows 7 PCs that will allow them to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for just $15, WinSuperSite reported. The special offering will kick off on June 2, with the idea being to 'future-proof' computers and motivate buyers who may otherwise hold off on a new purchase as they await the latest software to come out. In previous, similar promotions, however, Microsoft offered equivalent versions of the software to the one they've purchased, but this time it seems to be upgrading them to the Pro version.
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05/04, 11:57am
Cdec costs, decline in habits reasons for no DVD playback in Win 8
On its Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft revealed that its Windows 8 operating system won't play back DVD movies, unless the optional Media Center pack is purchased. The reason is the added royalties needed to pay for the specialized decoders and the cost of hardware to enable this. Microsoft also justified the decision by throwing out numbers that showed a sharp decline in DVD movie sales and broadcast TV consumption. Last year, Microsoft revealed only about 6 percent of users utilized Media Center.
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05/04, 8:30am
Tablet vendors lacking urgency on Windows 8 front
Tablet makers are expected to continue their focus on Android tablets through Q3, according to Digitimes. Although Windows 8 is expected to launch in or around October, tablet makers will continue to push forward with their Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) plans. Tablets running Windows 8 or Windows RT are not expected to start hitting the market until Q4 with vendors said to be in no rush to launch tablets based on Microsoft's new tablet-optimized OS.
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05/03, 7:10pm
Windows 8 to feature Dolby-friendly APIs
Dolby and Microsoft are partnering to bring Dolby Digital Plus' audio technology to Windows 8 tablets and PCs. The addition of Dolby Digital Plus will allow Windows 8 devices to play Dolby-encoded content. Microsoft has used Dolby encoding since Windows Vista shipped in 2007, but Dolby in 2008 raised the possibility that Windows 8 might not feature Dolby technology.
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05/03, 5:05am
Outgoing Nokia chairman promises new gadgets
Nokia has promised new products ahead of what is expected to be a relatively heated meeting with disgruntled shareholders. In an interview with the Financial Times, retiring Chairman Jorma Ollila has said that the former world number one handset maker by volume would be releasing tablets as well as unspecified ‘hybrid’ smart devices, although without committing to a timeframe. His comments come on the back of Nokia’s shares being downgraded to ‘junk’ status as well as a disastrous past five years that has seen its shares plummet in value by 90 percent.
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05/02, 6:36pm
Microsoft cloud services remade for Windows 8 and Windows Phone
Microsoft's official Windows 8 developers shed light on their plan to "reimagine" Windows Live services, which will be rebranded for the upcoming OS. Chris Jones, VP of the Windows Live group, wrote that Windows 8 will provide the company with the opportunity to “design them to be a seamless part of the Windows experience.”
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04/30, 7:50am
Barnes and Noble gets investment, truce
Barnes & Noble and Microsoft on Monday settled an Android patent dispute through a union. An e-reading partnership, Newco, will see Microsoft take a $300 million, or 17.6 percent, stake in a project that should merge Barnes & Noble's Nook business and its college division. In return for the funding, Barnes & Noble will make a Nook app for Windows 8 to help foster textbooks on future Microsoft-powered tablets.
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04/27, 1:55pm
HP Slate 8 may be much sleeker, net 10h battery
The first production Windows 8 tablet may have been uncovered early in a presentation believed leaked on Friday. Badged as the Slate 8, the third-generation Windows tablet seen by Neowin in preliminary rendered form would be much sleeker than previous generations. The 10-inch tablet would now be much more competitive in design, at 0.36 inches thick and eight to ten hours of battery, while carrying an aluminum design with a chin for the hardware Start button.
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04/26, 8:15am
Acer sees slight bounce back in Q1 2012
Acer in discussing its latest results at an investor's conference was hopeful that this was a sign of a widescale resurgence in PCs for the industry. Its climb from 10.1 percent share in the fall to 10.9 percent this winter was a sign the company's "competitiveness is coming back," according to chairman JT Wang, and that Acer would climb back to third place while Dell sank. Demand for the spring would be typical in light of world economic troubles, but it would grow in earnest in 2012 and expand to more than 10 percent in 2013.
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04/24, 8:45pm
New phones expected by end of year
Should rumors prove accurate, Microsoft will soon have a new OEM partner offering Windows Phone 8 handsets and Windows 8 tablet products. Chinese smartphone giant Huawei is reportedly looking to debut new phones and tablets running Microsoft's upcoming system by the end of the year.
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04/24, 6:20pm
Apple CEO slams Windows 8 ultrabook idea
Apple CEO Tim Cook during his company's fiscal Q2 results call slammed the idea of merging touchscreens and ultrabooks. When asked by Sanford Bernstein's Toni Sacconaghi why Apple wouldn't merge the iPad and MacBook Air like Intel and Microsoft wanted Windows 8 and ultrabooks to unite, he described it as a matter of inherent tradeoffs. Trying to appeal to everyone ended up pleasing no one, Cook said, saying that just having the option of converging doesn't mean it should be forced.
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04/24, 10:45am
Forrester sees Amazon undermining Google
A new long-term estimate by Forrester Research has painted a strong picture for Apple in the tablet space. It saw Apple keeping its lead even up to 2016, when it saw the iPad having 53 percent of the space. A total of 760 million tablets would ship that year.
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04/24, 12:00am
Windows 8 now almost done
Windows division head Steven Sinofsky used a Japanese Developer Days presentation to reveal that a release candidate version of Windows 8 is due in early June. Billing it as a "release preview," he had it shipping just over three months after the Consumer Preview from late February. What if anything would change between builds wasn't mentioned, but it's expected to focus on polish and minor additions.
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04/23, 2:55pm
Microsoft intros SkyDrive preview desktop apps
Microsoft quickly confirmed rumors and has posted preview versions of both Windows Vista/7/8 and OS X Lion desktop apps while curbing the reach of its cloud service. The software now lets users more directly organize their cloud storage, automatically syncing anything loaded into a SkyDrive folder and sorting its contents as though it were offline. The iOS app has also been updated (App Store to get native iPad support, including for the higher-resolution visuals of the new iPad along with deleting renaming, and moving files in the cloud.
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04/19, 10:45pm
NVIDIA Tegra 3 Plus and 4G variant
NVIDIA helped validate some leaks regarding its future Tegra roadmap in a presentation at HTC's Freqs event in Seattle on Thursday. Along with the known Wayne, its codename for Tegra 4, it also mentioned a Tegra 3+. What it would entail wasn't mentioned, but the name implied a clock speed boost or other minor updates that wouldn't fundamentally rework the quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 chip.
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04/19, 8:00pm
Blog post addresses enterprise needs for new OS
In a lengthy post on the Building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft lays out how the company is adjusting its forthcoming OS to account for an influx of consumer-oriented devices, such as smartphones and tablets, into the workplace. Typically, these are employee-owned devices, and Microsoft is developing its new OS to allow IT professionals the security they need for enterprise apps while trying not to compromise flexibility for the employees who own the devices.
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04/19, 4:15pm
Microsoft bounces back in fiscal Q3 2012
Microsoft saw its Windows unit partly return to form on Thursday as it once again reported gains. Following Windows division losses in the fall, the group has seen its revenue go up four percent to just over $4.6 billion. The segment succeeded mostly on the back of business desktops and infrastructure, Microsoft said, suggesting that home users and pro notebooks were still struggling.
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04/19, 1:30am
Touchpad app available from Windows Marketplace
Windows Phone marketplace application Touchpad Free and its paid counterpart by Nullar Game Studio have been upgraded. The prior version turned a Windows Phone into a wireless but simple two-button trackpad; the new v2.8.0 adds two-finger scroll and Windows 8 gesture support.
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04/18, 8:10am
Intel and MS hope iPad loses majority market share
Taiwan-area contract manufacturers claimed Wednesday that Intel and Microsoft have ambitious aims of reducing the iPad's dominance of tablets. The Digitimes contacts understood the Wintel combination wanted the iPad down from 70 percent share, as it has had in the past, to under 50 percent by mid-2013. For Intel, Lenovo's strength in its native China would be a key factor.
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04/18, 5:00am
Metro app 'suspension' allows RAM to be reclaimed
A new paper and accompanying video on Microsoft's developer network has laid out the new system of memory management for Metro-style apps on Windows 8 which closely mimics Apple's iOS "app suspension" model, allowing inactive apps to surrender most of their RAM in favor of running apps to avoid "memory pressure." While Windows 8 will attempt to regulate physical memory allocation for all apps, Metro-style apps will use the iOS-like suspension technique to free up RAM.
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04/17, 11:45am
Cove Point ultrabook reference design shown off
Intel is refining its ultrabooks, having shown off a new reference design at the IDF 2012 show in Beijing last week. Building upon its 13.3-inch touchscreen ultrabook, the so-called Cove Point also doubles as a tablet. The demo unit sported a 12.5-inch touchscreen, two USB 3.0 ports, and an HDMI output.
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04/17, 10:25am
ARM Cortex-A15 hard macro blends speed, effciency
ARM on Tuesday rolled out a unique variant on the Cortex-A15 designed to bring the next-generation chip to shelves faster and with less power use. A new hard macro variant that has fixed specifications, including quad cores clocked at 2GHz based on a 28 nanometer TSMC-made (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) design, instead of the "soft core" that lets firms heavily customize an ARM design to their own ends. In return, however, it's both faster to implement and uses the same power as the earlier Cortex-A9.
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04/16, 8:10pm
Windows 8 sheds complex naming scheme
Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc detailed the Windows 8 version lineup in a sign the company may sincerely back away from previous complexity. Apart from confirming Windows 8 as the official name, the official showed that there would be just two x86-based versions, Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. The Pro version would add business-focused features like BitLocker drive encryption, virtualization support, and support for domains, group policies, and hosting remote desktops.
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04/13, 1:45pm
Windows 8 Intel tablets must be thin, long-lasting
Intel's Developer Forum in Beijing has slipped out a new set of guidelines for Intel-based Windows 8 tablets. The chip designer wants tablets based on its Atom Z2760 chip to largely fit in with a 10-inch, touch-only tablet or a 11-inch version with a keyboard, CNET saw in its copy of the hardware advice. All of the dimensions would be targeted at matching or beating the iPad, with weight under 1.5 pounds, thicknesses below 0.35 inches, and over none hours of at least theoretical battery life.
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04/12, 5:40pm
$25 Splashtop app brings Win 8 Metro UI to iPad
Splashtop has launched a remote deskop app ($25, App Store) for the iPad that lets users experience Windows 8's Metro UI. Meant for developers, Win8 Metro Testbed supports gestures and swipes with low latency, as demonstrated in the demonstration video, below. It does require a wireless connection to a host computer, however.
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04/11, 2:35pm
Intel to bring out 'many' Win 8 tablets in 2012
Intel China chairman Sean Maloney at the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing on Wednesday said many Intel-based tablets with Windows 8 are coming before year's end. He went on to say the company is working with 10 Chinese and global hardware makers on such tablets, but didn't name them. The most likely candidate chip to power the tablets is the Atom Z2460, also dubbed Medfield internally.
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04/11, 9:40am
Intel predicts flood of cheap ultrabooks
Intel PC Client general manager Kirk Skaugen used a keynote at the Beijing edition of the Intel Developer Forum to predict a heavy saturation of the ultrabook market. He saw ultrabook prices reaching down to $699 by the back-to-school period at the end of the summer, or down from the $899 and up more common today. About 75 models were in development for all of 2012, including some touchscreen models mostly intended for Windows 8.
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04/10, 7:25pm
Base unit to carry $1900 price tag
Lenovo UK has provided firm pricing for its soon to be released crossover IdeaPad Yoga. The entry level Core i5 powered tablet/ultrabook will hit stores at £1,199 ($1,900 USD), while a higher-end Core i7 equipped version will be priced at £1,499 ($2,380 USD). When the company
let us test the Yoga at CES back in January, the device carried a lone American starting price of $1,199.
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04/10, 12:10pm
Gartner sees iPad still leading in four years
Apple will stay out in front of the tablet market for at least the next four years, Gartner predicted in a long-term estimate on Tuesday. The analyst group saw sales for the entire tablet market for 2012 nearly doubling, up 98 percent to 118.9 million, with Apple still in the clear majority at 73 million. While the gap would close, Apple would keep the largest piece of the market even until 2016.
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04/07, 2:15pm
NVIDIA Tegra 4 may be huge speed increase
More details of NVIDIA's Tegra 4 have emerged that could point to as much of a leap in speed as with the last generation. Possible leaks from VR-Zone have shown the line keeping the "4-plus-1" quad-core design but jumping to the much newer ARM Cortex-A15 architecture inside, which should give it a leap in speed at the same clock speed. The clock speeds themselves should climb from 1.5GHz to 2GHz to give it brute force improvements.
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04/06, 9:15pm
Windows Phone 8 to have back app compatibility
Microsoft's Larry Lieberman used a posting Friday to reassure developers that the next version of Windows Phone would support Windows Phone apps. The new OS, codenamed Apollo and informally called Windows Phone 8, would run "today's Windows Phone applications." Backwards compatibility was a sign of a "commitment to [Microsoft's] developers," Lieberman said.
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04/03, 5:20pm
Previews looks for webpages and blogs
Mozilla developers have posted their latest progress update for their efforts to create a working prototype for Firefox running on Windows 8. In it, for the first time, they have hinted at what the app could ultimately look like under the new Microsoft operating system. The team acknowledges that there is still a lot of work to do, but has said nothing altering their schedule to develop the proof of concept.
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03/31, 2:55pm
Qualcomm hopes ARM ultrabooks to take off
Qualcomm senior VP Rob Chandhok in discussion Friday made clear that the quad-core version of the Snapdragon S4 would be destined for Windows 8 notebooks. Confirming that ARM wouldn't be confined to tablets for Windows 8, Chandhok told IDG that he expected them to show up Intel's ultrabook concept with thinner designs and longer battery life. They would share the 28 nanometer process behind the dual-core versions, but the extra power would make them more viable for games and more complex apps as the software underwent an "maturation."
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03/29, 1:15pm
Developer brings Metro UI look to Android tablets
Owners of the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 got a unique take on the interface this week with a new modification from BroBot175 for a look inspired by Windows 8's Metro UI. The Android tablet needs to be rooted using the ClockworkMod recovery, and the project is in a beta stage. It will also work on the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer.
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03/28, 11:35pm
Dell exits another mobile category
Dell in a statement confirmed that it had backed out of smartphones in the US. At least at present, the Android-running Venue and Windows Phone-based Venue Pro had "run their course," PCWorld paraphrased a Dell representative as saying. There would be mobile devices later into 2012, but Dell was unclear if there would be more than tablets at the time.
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03/28, 9:45pm
Company to require five-finger digitizers
Microsoft has shed light on the touchscreen gesture technology that will be implemented in Windows 8, including the hardware requirements that will be necessary for a consistent experience across multiple devices. The company notes that Windows 8 will run on the hardware currently on the market, however upcoming touchscreen PCs built specifically for Windows 8 will be required to integrate five-finger digitizers.
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03/27, 9:25am
BlueStacks beta supports Angry Birds and more
BlueStacks' App Player was posted as a beta on Tuesday with significant expansion over the earlier alpha. The Android-on-Windows emulator's compatibility is now much wider and will recognize games like Angry Birds Space that would normally talk directly to an ARM chip. OS support is wider as well, expanding from just Windows 7 to either as far back as Windows XP or as recent as the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
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03/23, 8:05am
Intel Valley View leaks in roadmap
Intel through a combination of a Linux driver posting by its own engineer Jesse Barnes, as well as roadmap presentations by Advantech PPT 1, PPT 2), has given a peek at a major upgrade to the Atom platform due in early 2013. The processor, Valley View, would run on a Balboa Pier chipset and improve both the baseline performance as well as visuals. Chips would carry as many as four cores, and the graphics would be the same as in Ivy Bridge, giving about a fourfold improvement over the existing Cedar View and Cedar Trail platforms.
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03/22, 6:15am
MS outlines plans to support hi-res displays
Following hot on the heals of the super-high resolution display in the new iPad, Microsoft has posted a technical explanation on its Building Windows 8 blog about how it is readying the platform for the next generation of HiDPI displays. In doing so, the company has highlighted three general classes of display resolutions including standard, HD and quad-XGA (2560x1440) -- as incorporated on Apple’s Thunderbolt Display and other similar 27-inch displays. The company said that support displays at these resolutions would help to ensure that UI elements are not too blown up, or too small and difficult to touch.
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03/21, 6:25pm
Microsoft tries to show how iPad devs can hop over
Microsoft has shown early signs that it's hoping to lure iPad developers to Windows 8 with a new design guide. The Windows Dev Center example shows the common differences in layout between an iOS app and Windows' new Metro interface, including not just the look but also how certain commands would unfold and how either would respond to gestures. Its most advanced element is an explanation of "contracts," or agreements between apps and Windows 8 that give them permission to share files or search between each other, play out to other audio sources, or toggle settings.
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03/20, 11:15pm
Windows 8 tablet rollout given rough outline
Microsoft's Windows 8 ARM tablet rollout has had a rough schedule possibly outlined in a rumor late Tuesday. Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo were said by Digitimes' part supplier contacts to be the ones hand-picked for the October release. The Nokia tablet might follow a month later, in November.
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03/20, 7:20pm
IDC hopeful Windows 8, ultrabooks will save PCs
IDC painted an optimistic picture of traditional PCs in a Tuesday long-term estimate of their shipments. Researchers expected PC shipments to grow just five percent year-on-year in 2012, but pinned most of this sluggishness on the first half, as the iPad and other tablets were a "powerful distraction," IDC VP Bob O'Donnell said. However, a mix of the Windows 8 launch and ultrabooks was assumed to be creating "excitement" that would see a bounce back.
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03/19, 7:05pm
Windows 8 launch may keep ARM a minority
After having touted ARM support, Microsoft is expected to leave it a minority for the fall Windows 8 launch, insiders purportedly disclosed on Monday. There would be "fewer than five" ARM devices, three of which would be tablets, in the understanding of Bloomberg's sources. Over 40 companies were hoping to have Intel-based systems, they said.
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03/19, 4:00pm
Win 8-optimized business concept apps shown
Microsoft has shared its vision of what it thinks its Dynamics business apps would look like when optimized for Windows 8 and its Metro-style interface. The concepts will be shown at the Convergence conference that kicked off on Monday. Sent to ZDNet, the images represent HTML5 clients that connect to Dynamics ERP and CRM back-end services.
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