Samsung Giorgio Armani Windows Phone

In case this one slipped under your radar this weekend (and if it did, consider yourself lucky) the iPhone has a new "competitor." And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. The Giorgio Armani smartphone has been formally introduced. It's a mobile offering born of the unique partnership among Microsoft, Samsung, and, you guessed it, fashion guru Giorgio Armani. In presenting the new smartphone, Jared Newman at Gadget Crave somehow managed to remain relatively "nice" as he politely implied that anyone who spends 700 Euros (or $1,031) could use a lesson in money management.

Since the introduction of the iPhone, consumers have warmed to the notion that modern mobile devices are "not just phones anymore." In this particular case, the phone's design is fashionable, but how will the newest addition to the Samsung family measure up in the areas of functionality and level of customization? Time will tell.

If anything, the tragedy of this Armani contraption is that - if proven successful - we could see a fleet of otherwise generic smart phones roll out into the market with some celebrity's name on it, contributing nothing to the mobile world other than an endorsed bucket of bolts that only serves to clutter an increasingly sleek, sophisticated landscape.

Red Fox Wizbook N1020i netbook

One of the engadget folks was at the official launch event of the Red Fox Wizbook N1020i netbook which was announced just recently. The following is what he stated on engadget.com about his experience.

I was able to snap a few photos as well as try out the demo units for a few basic Windows tasks. All of them had Windows XP Home Edition SP3 pre-installed, and I believe this will be the case for all retail units that will ever be sold here in the Philippines.
The Red Fox Wizbook N1020i is actually more of an upgrade to the original Wizbook 1020i instead of being a new model altogether, but still, it has enough merit to be a distinguished model and after all, it is one of the very few netbooks left which still have ExpressCard/34 slots and it is the very first in the world to feature Bluetooth 3.0. Read on for my first impressions after the break.

The Red Fox Wizbook N1020i netbook features run-of-the-mill netbook specs: 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 160GB hard drive, 3 USB ports, mic/headphone port, 4400 mAh 6-cell battery, 1GB of RAM (with support for up to 2GB), 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 screen, a/b/g Wi-Fi, built-in webcam and card reader. What possibly sets it apart as even just a little bit better than most other netbooks out there are its ExpressCard/34 slot and its support for Bluetooth ver. 3.0.
ExpressCard/34 slot and Bluetooth 3.0
With this ExpressCard/34 slot, users will be able to upgrade stuff much more easily depending on their liking. They could fit this with a TV tuner, SSD for additional memory, e-SATA port, FireWire 800 and a few others more. Basically, this makes upgrading it that much more fun than just taking the screws off the lid underneath the body and replacing the factory hard drive or RAM.
At the same time, Red Fox touts that this netbook features support for Bluetooth 3.0. I was eager to try it out, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to during the event. I should be receiving a review unit from Red Fox in a couple of days, though, and I should be able to test it then.
(To eliminate any confusion from whether it will actually achieve a data transfer rate of 480Mbit/s or not with Bluetooth 3.0, keep in mind that this is only the max theoretical bit rate that can be achieved with Bluetooth 3.0, the same way that 802.11g’s theoretical bit rate is 54Mbit/s and 802.11n’s is supposedly 600Mbit/s. In real world usage, these are all unlikely to be met.)

Size and notes on hardware
In this side-by-side photo with my Eee PC 1000HE, the Wizbook 1020i appears to be a little short. But note that in this picture, the Wizbook 1020i is not equipped with a battery, and that if it was, it would probably be just as tall as the Eee PC because of the its battery’s bulge.
Both the keyboard and trackpad are smaller than what they could be, based on my observation. The keyboard’s keys are rather cramped, and the dry plastic feel can be felt all around. Being used to netbook keyboards, though, I did not find this to be that much of a problem. But the touchpad doesn’t support multi-touch, which is an even bigger issue at hand. At first, I didn’t really care much for this feature, but after finally figuring it out, I’ve come to prefer it to using a mouse (as it also saves me battery life).
I wasn’t able to hang around long enough to see just how long the the N1020i netbooks last on a single charge with their standard batteries, but I was told that they work up to more than 4 hours straight with moderate to heavy usage. I should be able to start on a review in the next couple of days so tune in next week to see the full review with most other aspects of the netbook’s performance covered.

So that sums it up for today folks, lets wait for what engadget.com has in store for us tommorro. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

Windows 7 release to manufacturing reportedly on track for July 13th

Get out your Bill Gates commemorative calendars folks, 'cause it looks like we now have a few more dates to mark off on the road to Windows 7availability. While Microsoft still isn't saying anything official itself just yet, a number of different sources are reporting that the company has set July 10th as the date for the final gold build of Windows 7, while the big release to manufacturing date is apparently on track for July 13th. Of course, things could still change if there's a major bug or other problem encountered, but barring any disasters, that'll likely be the same build that finds its way onto your PC this fall.

Archos 9 Windows 7 tablet hands-on

Looks like the Archos 9 Windows 7 tablet has made it out of the labs (and controlled show floor settings) and into the hands of Crave UK, where thatseemingly-amazing resistive touchscreen continues to impress -- so much so that they initially thought it was a capacitive unit. We actually pinged Crave ed Nate Lanxon to find out what was up, and the real story appears to be a mystery -- either Archos PR is mistaken in telling everyone that it's a resistive screen, or the company has somehow improved the tech to the point where it's virtually indistinguishable from a capacitive display. Given our experience with previous Archos resistive touchscreen devices that felt like mush, we've got to say we're going with Occam's Razor on this and that it's really capacitive, but we're definitely ready to be proven wrong -- hey Archos, you feel like sending us a new toy to play with?

Lurking in the archives of last month you'll find details of the 9-inch Windows 7 tablet PCcoming later this year from French manufacturer Archos. Today, the wait to know how it functions is over, as we spent a morning fingering it. Oh, and we know now that it'll cost £450 for an 80GB model, and £500 for a 160GB.

First, a quick reminder of les autres caractéristiques. This is a tablet PC weighing 623g, featuring a 9-inchcapacitive touchscreen (that's the sexy kind, like the iPhone), an Intel Atom Z515 CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1, plus built-in DVB-T antennas, which should allow it to receive and store Freeview TV in the UK.

It feels like a solid piece of kit. Used as a weapon, you could probably knock a decent-sized mammal unconscious, up to and including a cheetah, though a musk ox would certainly be a step too far and require a full-size laptop. The capacitive screen -- which was running at 1,024x600-pixel resolution -- was responsive and allowed us to click around the Windows 7 release candidate without any real problems.

And because it's capacitive, you can safely ditch your stylus right now. Three of your finest cheers can be released in response to this news.

The on-screen keyboard takes up roughly half of the lower part of the screen when brought up. Again, as this is a touch-sensitive, as opposed to pressure-sensitive screen, tapping on a virtual Qwerty keyboard is relatively painless. Unless you're typing a novel, in which case using a touchscreen is about as enjoyable as having an eyeball removed.

Time was short this morning, so we didn't have an opportunity to benchmark or perform any kind of scientific tests dans le tablette, so check back for our full review in the coming weeks.

For now, enjoy the plateau of visual treats over the next few pages, as we explore the physical attributes of one of the most interesting French inventions since Madame Guillotine.

Update: We discussed the Archos 9 having a capacitive touchscreen, but Archos's Web site specifies a resistive screen that uses a stylus. This is causing us some confusion, so we're looking into it. If that screen was resistive, it may be one of the best resistive screens we've ever seen -- so good, and so sensitive, it had us believe it was capacitive. We'll update when we get confirmation either way.

How to Recover Windows 7/XP/Vista/Office 07 product keys

If you couldn’t find your Windows product keys, this little program WinGuggle helps you in recovering your product keys from the windows installation. WinGuggle can recover and Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 product keys along with Office 2007 product key.

WinGuggle is self executable file, download the application, unzip it and launch the application. It will display the product keys of the windows installation and Office. It also allows you to change OEM logo and other information if you would prefer that.

WinGuggle is a freeware works with Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and requires .NET framework for Windows XP.

Free Photo Editing Software: Image Tuner

Image Tuner is a freeware for windows that allows you to do basic editing of your digital photos and images. The program allows batch resizing, converting, watermarking, and renaming of the photos.

The app is not for professional photographers, it doesn’t do any photo manipulation but is for users who upload their digital photos to various social networks, blogs etc. Image tuner supports batch resizing so you can just select a folder and add all the photos for editing.

It has preloaded templates for resizing pictures. The templates offer ideal size for iPod, iPhone, DVD, Facebook, Twitter etc and also offer standard sizes or you can override this with the custom size option.

Features:

• 100% Freeware. No spyware, adware, banners etc.
• Resize, rename, watermark and convert images in batch mode
• The most fastest image resizing algorithm
• Supports JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP formats
• Variable options and settings for advanced users
• Built-in size templates: iPod, iPhone, Facebook, Twitter, DVD etc.
• Configurable compression / resolution ratio
• Load / save settings and image lists
• Clean, easy to use interface
• Small installation file ~ 2MB
• Supports Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista/7 (32 and 64 bit)

Download Image Tuner

Microsoft Security Essentials is available, download now

Microsoft Security Essentials, a free security software from Microsoft is available for download from today. This is a beta release of the software and the download is capped at 75,000, Microsoft may increase the download limit based on the demand, but if you want try the software download as soon as possible. Download from here.

Microsoft Security Essentials offers protection against viruses, spyware, including Trojans, worms and other malicious software. According to Microsoft MSE is only available in United States, Israel, Brazil and China, but i could download and install the same from France, it doesn’t restrict you to download the app even you are from the unsupported country.

MSE is available for Windows XP 32-bit, Windows Vista 32-bit/64-bit and Windows 7 32-bit/64-bit. You need to login to Microsoft connect before you can download and also you have to complete a short survey. Your computer will need to pass Windows Genuine Advantage Validation before you can install it. If you have any other security software installed it may conflict with this software, uninstall other antivirus apps before installing MSE.

System Requirements:

• Operating System: Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3); Windows Vista; Windows 7 (Beta or Release Candidate)
• For Windows XP, a Personal Computer with a:
• CPU with clock speed of 500 MHz or higher
• Memory: 256 MB RAM or higher
• VGA (Display): 800 x 600 or higher
• Storage: 140 MB of available hard-disk space
• An Internet connection is required for installation and to download the latest virus and spyware definitions for Microsoft Microsoft Security Essentials.

Windows 7 pricing announced, pre order upgrade for half the price

Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 will ship on October 22, 2009. Today Microsoft announced the pricing details for windows 7, interestingly the prices are slightly lower when compared to the Windows Vista prices. Along with the pricing Microsoft is also allowing users to pre-order upgrade packages for half the price in select markets.

The Home Premium upgrade has been reduced to around 10% (varies based on the market). In the US it is available for $119, Vista is available for $129, a drop of $10. The price of the full version of Home premium is dropped from $240 to $200, Vista home premium ships for $240.
Here’s the low-down on pricing for Windows 7.
Windows 7 Home Premium (Upgrade): $119.99
Windows 7 Professional (Upgrade): $199.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (Upgrade): $219.99
And the estimated retail prices for full packaged retail product of Windows 7 in the U.S. are:
Windows 7 Home Premium (Full): $199.99
Windows 7 Professional (Full): $299.99
Windows 7 Ultimate (Full): $319.99



For the users who want to pre-order Windows 7, Microsoft is offering a limited time offer. In select markets you can pre-order Windows 7 at more than 50/ discount. “In the US, this will mean you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium for USD $49.99 or Windows 7 Professional for USD $99.99. You can take advantage of this special offer online via select retail partners such as Best Buy or Amazon, or the online Microsoft Store (in participating markets).” Microsoft Says. More information on this offer can be found here.
This program begins tomorrow in the U.S., Canada and Japan. The offer ends July 11th in the U.S. and Canada and on July 5th for Japan or while supplies last. Customers in the UK, France and Germany, can pre-order their copy of Windows 7 starting July 15th and will run until August 14th (or supplies last) to ensure folks don’t miss out on this. Act fast if you want to be the first in line to get Windows 7 at this screaming deal! Note: The special low pre-order price will vary per country.

“On October 22nd, Windows 7 will be available in the following 14 languages: English, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Chinese (Hong Kong).”
“Then on October 31st, the remaining 21 languages will become available: Turkish, Czech, Portuguese, Hungarian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Greek, Ukrainian, Romanian, Arabic, Lithuanian, Bulgarian, Estonian, Slovenian, Hebrew, Thai, Croatian, Serbian Latin, and Latvian.” according to Microsoft.
Microsoft is also offering a free upgrade to users who wants to purchase a PC in bteween June 26th and October 22nd.
But, you don’t have to wait until GA to get a new Windows PC. In fact, we know many people need that new PC sooner – for back to school specifically. And we have the answer for people who need a new PC now but still want to get Windows 7 and that’s the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program, which kicks off tomorrow, June 26th! Anyone who buys a PC from a participating OEM or retailer with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate on it will all receive an upgrade to the corresponding version of Windows 7 at little or no cost to customers. The Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program will be available until January 31st, 2010 – and is global! For more information on taking advantage of the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program, visit www.windows.com/upgradeoffer.

Via Windows Team blog

Microsoft reinvents Live search as ‘Bing’

So far through the last year, Microsoft has been mostly criticized for making products and releasing services which were either poor in quality or of no customer value.

Live search by Microsoft remains the top candidate in that case, which promised to provide a search engine as better as Google but failed miserably in achieving a user-following like Google did. But perhaps with Microsoft's new search engine called Bing, the scenario might change.

Bing is the final version of the long-in-alpha new search engine by Microsoft codenamed Kumo earlier this year and to be honest, its intelligent and also pretty amazing.

According to the press-release by Microsoft

Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today's search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions.

Bing definitely helps in improving the customer-experience by providing data in the most organized manner. As soon as one passes on a query, it is processed and the results are displayed much like in the same format as Google, but Bing takes the edge when it comes to the organization of these results.

Results are organized into links, images, videos, maps and Bing is smart enough to give you a preview of these results even in case of videos.

Also, being new, Bing has a definite advantage over Google as it is immune to black-hat like keyword stuffing so the results are more relevant and up-to-date. Moreover, Bing has support for aspect-oriented queries such as weather, location etc.

As it seems, Live search is right now redirecting to Bing and soon will act as a portal all to Microsoft Live services. So to test out Bing, head over to the Live search website.

Microsoft to release a Free Anti-Virus called Morro

Latest news from various sources claims that Microsoft is working on a new security product for Windows and plans to release it as a freeware by end of this year.

Though it won't be the first time for Microsoft to work on a Windows-based security solution, but we certainly hope that Microsoft does it right this time. Earlier, Microsoft has provided security solutions like Windows Defender and Live OneCare for Windows users but failed to deliver a competing standard.

The new security tool by Microsoft is being dubbed as Morro and is most likely to compete with other anti-virus and security software such as Symantec Norton, Kaspersky and McAfee.

Rumors about Morro have been on the lose since November last year when Microsoft announced that it would discontinue support for Live OneCare and instead plans on providing a much better security solution to the users in the future.

This will not only help the consumers in terms of choice but will also save them from paying off extra money to 3rd part security software as Morro will be totally free.

A beta version of Morro is already under testing internally at Microsoft and will soon be available for download by the users. Perhaps this year, its time for Microsoft to reinvent each of its technologies into something that is better and useful.

Windows 7: Release Candidate 1

Among those that won't become switchers, Microsoft's own worst enemy is itself, as it needs to prove that Vista is a worthwhile upgrade to XP when XP is already so refined. For many users in the consumer space, Vista is simply a version of Windows where (to borrow a quote from Field of Dreams) "If you build it, they will come." These people will get Vista on their new computers and they'll like it because it is good, but having never had the chance to decide if they didn't want it.

Now two and a quarter years later we can see the outcome of that. It’s not favorable to Microsoft.

While Vista’s adoption has not been a failure, it hasn’t necessarily been a success story either. Microsoft’s own worst enemy was XP, and the users complacent with it have been in no big rush to upgrade. The primary vehicle for moving Vista has been new computers, and even that has taken a hit in the kneecaps with the sudden rise of netbooks, which fit poorly with an OS that was made for newer, faster computers.

Further complicating matters is that the quality of Vista wasn’t particularly stellar at launch. We’ve already covered this with our Vista SP1 article, so we won’t completely rehash this, but specific performance problems such as file copies (local and networked) and Vista’s hunger for virtual address space quickly made themselves evident. Netbooks drove this point home even harder –Vista doesn’t do so well with so little RAM.

Finally, Apple deserves a great deal of credit here for driving the stake into the public opinion of Vista. The extremely popular Get a Mac campaign took the dissent from above and managed to amplify it and sew it into the public at large. Apple made it popular to hate Vista, and Microsoft did too little too late on the marketing front to counter that. Never underestimate the power of marketing – many people can tell you they don’t like Vista, few can tell you why. That’s marketing.

Even though many of the technical problems were fixed before or at the launch of Vista SP1, by then it was too late. The public had become permanently dissatisfied with Vista. Regardless of the quality of the OS these days, the Vista name has become poisonous.

Of course as far as consumer sales are concerned, this hasn’t significantly dented Vista adoption. Vista’s still going out on virtually every new consumer-level computer shipped. People may be dissatisfied, but so far they’re not doing anything about it other than complaining. Business users on the other hand are acting, or rather are not acting. They’re not upgrading to Vista on existing computers, and on new computers they’re still installing XP. Vista’s not taking at the corporate level, and that’s Microsoft’s more immediate problem.

So here we are today with Windows 7 Release Candidate 1, Microsoft's grand attempt at taking Vista and building a more palatable operating system out of it. With Windows 7, Microsoft has ripped the Vista playbook to shreds and they are going an entirely different route. The goal: make Windows 7 successful before it even ships.

Windows | How to Unlock the iPhone 3G Using UltraSn0w

These are instructions on how to unlock the iPhone 3G for use with any GSM cellphone carrier using UltraSn0w. They have been taken from iclarified.com and I dont own any right over them. This is only for sharing purpose. Thanks

Before you can follow these instructions you must have a jailbroken iPhone and you must be on the 04.26.08 baseband(modem firmware). This means that you must be running the 3.0 firmware and have used PwnageTool or RedSn0w to jailbreak.

Just update to OS 3.0 and your firmware and Baseband will be up to date.

If you are on T-Mobile remember to turn off 3G before starting...

Watch the Video!
For your convenience this unlock tutorial is

available in video format also. Click the Watch

It button to view the tutorial!

Step One
Press to launch Cydia Installer from your SpringBoard.

Step Two
Press to select the Manage tab at the bottom of the screen.

Step Three
Press to select the large Sources button

Step Four
Press the Edit button at the top right of the screen.

Step Five
Press the Add button at the top left of the screen.

Step Six
Enter http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com/ as the source url and press the Add Source button.

Step Seven
Once the source has been added press the large Return to Cydia button.

Step Eight
Press the Done button at the top right of the screen.

Step Nine
Press to select repo666.ultrasn0w.com from the list of user entered sources.

Step Ten
Press to select ultrasn0w from the list of packages

Step Eleven
Press the Install button at the top right of the screen.

Step Twelve
Press the Confirm button at the top right of the screen.

Step Thirteen
After installation completes successfully press the large Return to Cydia button.

Step Fourteen
Now press the Home button then power off and power on the iPhone. You do this by holding down the power button for 3 seconds then moving the power slider that appears to the right. Press the power button again to turn on the phone.

Step Fifteen
You should now be able to insert the SIM of your choice!