Computer hardware

Apple buys Chomp to 'revamp' App Store search

2012-05-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

Apple has splashed-out on application discovery website Chomp and plans to use the technology to revamp the App Store, according to TechCrunch.

Recent speculation has hinted that an overhaul is due for Apple's application download portal so Apple's reported acquisition arrives at an opportune time.

Three year-old start-up Chomp.com arguably gives smartphone and tablet owners a more efficient way to discover new apps by simply asking 'what kind of app are you looking for?'

It brings easy access to categories like trending apps, free apps of the day, all time greats, and on-sale applications for iPhone, Android and iPad.

Moving to Cupertino

The TechCrunch report says the entire Chomp team will transition over to Apple, when the purchase is completed.

"This is not a cheap acqui-hire," says the article. "Apple has bought the Chomp team and technology and plans to use both to completely revamp App Store search and recommendations."

There has been no official confirmation from Apple or Chomp.

Week in Tech: Viva la Vita: Sony's new handheld hits right note

2012-05-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

This week's biggest news is about something quite small: the Sony PS Vita, which went on sale in the UK this week and was topping Amazon's charts before a single unit had shipped.

It's a serious bit of kit. As you'll discover in our in-depth Sony PS Vita review, Sony's handheld console is "the most powerful, dazzling and impressive handheld games console ever built" with "not one but two quad-core processors, a sparkling 5-inch touchscreen OLED display, dual analogue stick controls and games that go way beyond what any other portable device is currently capable of."

Is it better than a 3DS? You betcha: it's "a beast among men", apparently.

FutTv : 1EH83eETugX1H

Will anybody buy one? That's a very good question. "It's a luxury item launching post-Christmas into a Western world ravaged by recession, and further hindered by Sony's desperate need to make money at a time when the strength of the Yen makes Japanese products very pricey."

But around 12.4 million PlayStation Vita handhelds will be sold in 2012, according to a forecast by Strategy Analytics.

While the PlayStation Vita represents the cutting edge of handheld gaming, some gamers' thoughts are turning to the next generation of consoles. Fancy a bit of Metal Gear Solid 5 on your Xbox 720 or PS4? Kojima productions is hiring for games running on "next-gen game engine technology." The game's years away, but that doesn't stop us from being a little bit excited.

Windows Phone 8 is coming

The PS Vita isn't the only little thing making big waves this week. While the giants of the phone world were getting ready to show off their stuff at next week's Mobile World Congress, we discovered stacks of information about the forthcoming Windows Phone 8. It'll have Skype, SkyDrive and possibly many other things starting with "Sky", and there should be four new form factors ranging from little tablets to little watches.

When Windows Phone 8 ships later this year, we might even be able to use it on 4G: according to Everything Everywhere, the terribly-named parent of Orange and T-Mobile, it could launch its 4G network by the end of this year if Ofcom lets it convert some existing frequency from 3G to 4G.

The firm also promises to complete its HSPA+21 high-speed 3G rollout by the second quarter of this year, with some lucky people getting HSPA+42 this year too.

So what sort of phones will we be using on the super-speedy mobile internet of the future? We reckon they'll look a lot like the LG Optimus 4X HD, a quad-core monster with an enormous screen and Google's Ice Cream Sandwich.

If that isn't impressive enough, it turns out that quad-core really means four-and-a-bit cores: the Nvidia Tegra 3 features hugely impressive technology with a hugely unimpressive name, 4-PLUS-1. That means the processor has four cores, with a fifth companion core for less strenuous tasks.

Technology doesn't get much smaller than processor cores, so let's look at something a little bit bigger. Fancy an enormous earth-to-space elevator? Of course you do. There's just one catch: it doesn't actually exist - yet.

That might change, because a Japanese firm wants to build it. As Marc Chacksfield puts it: "By 2050, Obayashi Corp is hoping to create a space lift, which involves a massive cable and something called nanotubes. The company doesn't know how much it will cost but promise it won't "simply be a dream". Sounds like someone has being reading too many Roald Dahl stories."

Apple shutters iCloud push services in Germany

2012-05-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

Apple has halted its iCloud push service in Germany as a result of losing a patent dispute with Motorola.

Although customers will still be able to access their email through iCloud and MobileMe on their iOS devices, they'll have to physically log in to their mailboxes to do so.

"Affected customers will continue to receive their iCloud and MobileMe email," explains Apple's German support page.

Du weis nicht

"New messages may only be loaded on their devices when the mail program is opened or if the device periodically retrieves new emails, depending on the configuration of the iOS settings.

"The push email service for desktop computers, laptop computers and the internet, and other service providers such as Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, are not affected."

There's no indication of how long the push services will be down though, as Apple still maintains that Motorola's claim over the relevant patent is invalid and plans to appeal the court's decision.

While all eyes will be on MWC 2012 next week, Apple will be staying characteristically quiet (unless it steals all the thunder by announcing the date of its iPad 3 event, presumed to be imminent).

Motorola is also expected to be fairly quiet in Barcelona; perhaps because it's focusing all its efforts on suing Apple and selling itself to Google instead. Or because it already launched its Droid Razr Maxx and the new Xoom this year. Either way.

In Depth: The 10 most loved programs ever

2012-05-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

10 most loved programs ever

Recently we discovered the most hated programs of all time, but when we hit the publish button we felt a little bit sad.

We're lovers, not haters, and software has brought us lots of great moments over the years.

There's only one thing for it: let's restore our happiness by talking about the good stuff, the programs that are - or were - loved by millions.

Have we missed any of your favourites? Let us know in the comments.

1. Napster

To the best of our knowledge, nobody's ever been sent to prison for using Excel - but plenty of people were willing to risk the long arm of the law to use Napster. The software wasn't exactly a design classic, but that didn't matter, because Napster offered its users something priceless: free music. Admittedly that was free, illegally copied music, but hey! Free music! Today only the logo lives on: it's been absorbed by Rhapsody.

[Image Credit: Johnrpenner, Wikipedia]

2. HyperCard

Male music fans of a certain age go all moony-eyed when you mention Betty Boo, and similarly ancient Apple fans do the same when you mention Hypercard. Bill Atkinson's application offered a kind of hypertext years before the World Wide Web was invented, and it made application development effortless. As Douglas Adams wrote: "it's a sensationally good idea, and I would dearly love to see something like it become the whole working environment for the Mac." Sadly HyperCard was shuffled around inside and outside Apple, and the much-delayed, unreleased HyperCard 3.0 was canned when Steve Jobs lost interest in it.

[Image credit: Creativeapplications.net, CC Attribution licence]

3. MS Paint

For some, MS Paint was the first time they'd ever drawn using a computer - and for many more, it was the tool that enabled them to draw as if it was the first time they'd ever drawn using a computer. The program's fundamental rubbishness made it a top tool for comedy - it's still the tool of choice for messageboard LOLs - but it also inspires awe whenever somebody draws something good.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-gAnDw-7k

4. Netscape Navigator

With the benefit of hindsight, stomping around the place bellowing "Raargh raargh raargh we're going to kill Windows" probably wasn't the best idea, but you can see why Netscape looked like Microsoft's destroyer: in the late 1990s Netscape owned the internet to the point where it would introduce its own technologies and web designers would implement them. Fearing the future of Windows, Microsoft did to Netscape what a bazooka would do to a puppy. Netscape's DNA lives on in Firefox. Speaking of which...

5. Firefox

We'd love to know how many early Firefox users switched because of technological reasons, and how many for ideological ones. We suspect for many people it was a bit of both. Mozilla's Netscape-derived browser suite was rather lardy compared to the all-conquering Internet Explorer, so three developers started a project to make something that wasn't just an alternative, but a really good alternative. The soon to be renamed Phoenix became enormously successful and was loved by users and web designers alike.

6. Photoshop

Plugins, layers, cliches (lens flare, page curls) and the ability to make us question whether what we're told is real is really real or just really realistic - not bad work for a single program. Photoshop's effect on the wider world has been extraordinary, and while it's (ab)used by goons and the advertising industry to distort reality it remains an astonishingly powerful creative tool.

7. WordPerfect 5.1

In the days before Windows, there were two kinds of word processing software: WordPerfect 5.1, or the rubbish your boss made you use because he hated you and wanted to make you suffer. On Windows, however, it died on its arse: the first Windows version wasn't very good, and by the time WordPerfect 5.2 for Windows shipped Microsoft's Word for Windows was in the ascendant.

[Image credit: Ozzmosis, Wikipedia]

8. Lotus 1-2-3

If it weren't for Lotus 1-2-3, we might not have any of the tech toys we know and love today: the Visicalc-inspired spreadsheet package was the IBM PC's first killer app, and you can still see its influence in more modern applications such as Excel or Numbers. Like WordPerfect it didn't see Windows coming and was stomped by a Microsoft rival, in this case Excel.

[Image credit: Ozzmosis, Wikipedia]

9. Scrivener

Writers tend to fetishise things - Moleskine notebooks, say, or IBM typewriters - but when you hear them banging on about Scrivener they're not doing so because they think it makes them sound cool and interesting. If you have to write things - any kind of things - that involve lots of research or just lots of ideas, Scrivener will delight you. It's one of those programs where you keep discovering new, cool things it can do, and if you told us it had an attachment for getting stones out of horses' hooves we'd believe you. Check out our Scrivener review.

10. Solitaire

Has any program wasted more corporate man (and woman) hours than Microsoft's card game? Its presence on an office PC was a source of great joy to bored white-collar workers, as it's quiet enough and clicky enough to make it look like you're still working without giving the game away. If we'd used all the time we've spent on Solitaire to study science, we'd have cured cancer by now.

[Image Credit: Techmdrn, Wikipedia]

Apple iPad 3 ready to leave Foxconn for US?

2012-05-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Shipments of Apple iPad 3 tablets are ready to depart the Foxconn plant in China and head for the United States, leaked documents have revealed.

The Apple Pro blog has obtained what it claims to be a shipping document that says the tablet is set to arrive on US shores no later than March 9th, two days after the rumoured date for the launch event.

The document shows that shipments will be made to three major airports in the United States for easy distribution around the country.

Combine the two assumptions and it seems fair to suggest that, just like last year, the Apple iPad 3 will go on sale in the United States around a week after the launch date.

Price hike incoming?

Recent reports seem to suggest that the iPad 3 will boast a much-improved Retina Display, a faster A5X or A6 processor as well as a 4G LTE radio and a camera with a larger sensor.

However, reports today suggest that Apple fans may be forced to pay more for those extra features.

Speculation from the far east suggests that the base price for the iPad 3 will be $579, rather than the $499 users are currently paying for a Wi-Fi-only 16GB iPad 2.

Microsoft 3D desktop with Kinect concept revealed

2012-05-23T08:19:00.000-07:00

Microsoft may be currently prepping Windows 8 for the world, but it has still found time to allow all of us a peak at what is to come in the near future, showing off a 3D desktop concept which uses Kinect functionality.

Shown off at its TechForum, the bods at Microsoft Research explained that the 3D-enabled desktop uses a see-through Samsung OLED screen and a Kinect sensor – combined they create a virtual desktop that can be controlled by swipes and gestures.

This isn't the first time we have seen a see-through OLED display from Samsung - it was also shown off in one of the company's own future-focused promos, where it was part of a flexible tablet concept.

Kinect, the best a man can get

According to the developers of the desktop, the Kinect sensor tracks all sorts of movement, including head and eye movement, as well as hand gestures.

Although the screen is 3D a normal keyboard is used for typing – so the desktop concept isn't completely motion-controlled.

It does look as if the future of desktop computing, however, is decidedly mouse-free.

Say what you want about Microsoft, the company has always been open about its future technologies – even if some of them never come to fruition.

We can only dream that Apple will one day operate the same way, but for now it looks as if Cook and co are very much working on their upcoming projects in a room with more security than the Pentagon.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGa1Q7NvsI0#%21

Quantum computing a step closer to reality, says IBM

2012-05-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

IBM is set to announce major advances which it claims will take us a major step closer to actually seeing a working quantum computer.

The prospect of quantum computers has intrigued scientists for years, but despite the potential, actually turning it into a reality has proved troublesome, with quantum decoherence caused by outside factors such as temperature and radiation.

All that could be set to change, with IBM's research arm set to announce how it has broken three records that take us ever closer to quantum computers.

Records

"Using a variety of techniques in the IBM labs, scientists have established three new records for reducing errors in elementary computations and retaining the integrity of quantum mechanical properties in quantum bits (qubits) – the basic units that carry information within quantum computing," explained IBM.

"IBM has chosen to employ superconducting qubits, which use established microfabrication techniques developed for silicon technology, providing the potential to one day scale up to and manufacture thousands or millions of qubits."

Quant-erm

So why do we care? Well, quantum computers could feasibly work on millions of computations at the same time, something that is fairly limited in even the most powerful current computers.

"The quantum computing work we are doing shows it is no longer just a brute force physics experiment. It's time to start creating systems based on this science that will take computing to a new frontier," said IBM scientist Matthias Steffen.

Don't stick your current PC in the rubbish bin just yet though, it will be years not months until we see mass market quantum computing (even if everything goes well) and currently IBM is talking about an 'intimate' link up between current computers and the quantum computer as a workable solution.

Updated: iPhone 5 rumours: what you need to know

2012-05-23T07:19:00.000-07:00

iPhone 5 rumours: iPhone 4S and new rumours

As it happened, there was no iPhone 5 in 2011 after all, but the company did announce the iPhone 4S.

However, the iPhone 5 is still on the cards - we're expecting it to debut in the middle of this year. So we've gathered together all the latest iPhone 5 rumours and rounded them up below.

First though, why not read our complete iPhone 4S review?

It's the phone that appeared when the whole world was looking forward to the iPhone 5 anyway, so make up your own mind whether to make the jump to Apple's latest now or save those pennies for the 2012 iPhone 5 release.

brightcove : 1212352584001

iPhone 5 release date

UPDATE: For the latest on the new iPhone 5's release date, check out our regularly updated article iPhone 5 release date.

Given the pattern of Apple's iPhone launches, we're expecting the next-gen iPhone 5 to debut in mid to late 2012. We reckon it's most likely to be shown off at Apple's Worldwide Developer Event (WWDC), which usually takes place in early June.

Rumours that we reported on 18 October claim an iPhone 5 release date of Summer 2012. Analyst Ashok Kumar claimed that the absent iPhone 5 was meant to be the big announcement at the recent event where the iPhone 4S was launched.

iPhone 5 form factor

Unlike the iPhone 4S, it'll be a completely new design from what has gone before, so that means an entirely new casing as we saw with the iPhone 3G and, later, the iPhone 4.

Interestingly, someone who claimed to have seen a larger-screened iPhone 5 prototype said in November 2011 that Steve Jobs canned the new handset and opted for the iPhone 4S because of the larger screen size of the new device. According to Business Insider, it was feared that a new size would create a two-tier iPhone ecosystem.

Beatweek also claimed in November 2011 that the 5-inch was scrapped "because Apple wouldn't be able to do it properly" this year. However, the Daily Mail (make of that what you will) then suggested that a four-inch version was likely and that Sony has already shipped top secret demo screens to Apple.

iPhone 5 specs

Based on the roadmap of mobile chip design specialist ARM (of which Apple is a licensee), we'll see a quad-core processor debut in the iPhone 5 - probably called the Apple A6. We know that we'll see other quad core handsets debut in 2012, so it's not too much of a stretch to say that the iPhone 5 will be the same.

iPhone 5 will have 4G/LTE support

With many 4G handsets already announced in the US, it can't be long before the iPhone supports 4G technologies - even if we won't even have a UK spectrum auction until 2012.

4G mobile broadband and LTE explained

Cnet.com quotes Will Strauss from analyst firm Forward Concepts, who says that the next iPhone will feature LTE technologies."They're saving iPhone 5 for the LTE version and that won't be out until next spring," said Strauss.

Steve Jobs' iPhone 5 legacy

Many sites have reported that Steve Jobs was working hard on the iPhone 5 project, which will apparently be a "radical redesign". We shall see...

iPhone 5 rumours: old rumours

Below are the rumours that we reported on leading up to the iPhone 4S press conference.

iPhone 5 (or the iPhone 4S, as some are calling it) rumours have been flying thick and fast for months.

And now Apple has finally confirmed a press conference for Tuesday 4 October, where the company will almost certainly unveil the iPhone 5.

The invitation hints that it will be one phone that is announced, which is likely to be the iPhone 5 rather than the much-discussed iPhone 4S.

Check out what TechRadar is hoping makes it into the next iPhone, in our video wish list:

brightcove : 1027846751001

And if you're in a bit of a hurry, we've also got a handy iPhone 5 video detailing the latest rumours on release date, spec and more - so check if out for a quick fix of next-gen Apple fun:

brightcove : 1161523880001

Although we are still waiting for news on an iPhone 5 UK release date, we reckon an iPhone 5 release of late October is likely. It's possible that the iPhone 5 release date is November, but it's more likely set for October.

In mid September the CEO of France Telecom (the parent company of Orange) got specific when commenting on the iPhone 5 release date, saying "If we believe what we have been told, the iPhone 5 will be released on 15 October."

Price cuts of the iPhone 4 in August hinted at an autumn release for the iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S and Apple reportedly began pushing up the amount of orders for the handset.

In early September, Japanese site Macotakara reported that the iPhone 5 had entered production, saying that Foxconn and Pegatron had begun assembly on the new handset. A few days later, Digitimes wrote that Foxconn was producing 150,000 units of the new iPhone per day.

Rumours of a UK Apple Store holiday ban also emerged on 26 September. It was also reported that Telefonica, which owns the O2 network, is set to begin scaling back iPhone stock in advance of "the launch of a new smartphone".

However, it may not all be plain sailing for Apple, with rumours that Samsung will seek a sales ban courtesy of an injunction - another piece of the increasingly mixed up lawsuit puzzle between the pair.

The iPhone 5 will debut alongside iOS 5 and iCloud

Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer was asked during an earnings call why he was suggesting a 12 per cent drop in revenues for the Q3 financial period - a traditionally robust time thanks to the scores of people buying the latest iPhone.

He said that there is "a lot going on in the fall with iOS 5 and iCloud" but added there will be a "future product transition that we will not talk about today".

That's almost certainly the new iPhone 5. And iOS 5 will arrive alongside it as well iCloud.

Apple says it is "cutting the cable" with iOS 5 - just as well, as it claimed the iPad 2 was the first post-PC device earlier in the year. OS updates can be delivered over the air - you'll just received what's changed rather than the usual 600MB download - and devices can be activated without plugging them into iTunes.

You can also now create and delete iOS calendars and mailboxes too, so you really can devolve your device from your PC or Mac.

"You can activate on the device and you're ready to go," explained Apple's Scott Forstall.

"Software updates are now over the air. So you no longer need to plug in to update your software. And they're now Delta updates. Instead of downloading the whole OS, you only download what's changed," he continued.

The Wall Street Journal has previously reported that: "Apple is also developing a new iPhone model, said people briefed on the phone. One person familiar said the fifth-generation iPhone would be a different form factor than those that are currently available… it was unclear how soon that version would be available to Verizon or other carriers."

This has since been backed up by reports from Engadget, which state the design will be a 'total rethink'.

Chinese case manufacturers have been sent design briefings of the new iPhone 5 chassis and apparently feature a return to the old days of iPhone design. But could iPhone 5 really have a curved back? We can't begin to tell you how sceptical we are over such a 'leak', given Apple's desperation to keep its forthcoming designs under wraps.

However, earlier reports from China backed up the larger-screened, metal chassis-sporting iPhone 5 rumours, so the redesign still seems firmly on the cards.

Interestingly, an Apple patent that we reported on on 7 April 2011 suggests that we could see the bezel put to good use on the new iPhone. The patent describes how visual indicators and touch-sensitive buttons could be incorporated to the space around the iPhone screen.

Will iPhone 5 actually be an iPhone 4S?

Of course, since the iPhone 3G was followed by the 3GS it's possible the new iPhone won't be a total refresh and we'll see an iPhone 4S (or iPhone 4GS) before an iPhone 5.

An iPhone 4S looked more likely on 16 May 2011 after analyst Peter Misek wrote: "According to our industry checks, the device should be called iPhone 4S and include minor cosmetic changes, better cameras, A5 dual-core processor, and HSPA+ support."

Rumours that we covered on 3 May 2011, suggest that there may even be two versions of the new iPhone: a 'standard' iPhone 5 and an iPhone 5 'pro'. Apparently, Apple is buying in components of differing quality, and those parts wouldn't be required for a single phone.

A white iPhone 5

The Economic Daily News is reporting that white iPhone 5 glass is being shipped, with a supplier called Wintek being the sole touch panel vendor for the white iPhone.

On 12 September 2011, a page which briefly popped up on Vodafone's site referenced the iPhone 5 in white as well as black.

iPhone 5 will support 1080p HD

It's fairly likely - given that the iPad 2 supports Full HD - that the new iPhone will do the same.

According to the Chinese Economic Daily News (via AppleInsider), with the exception of Qualcomm chipsets - which would replace the current Infineon chipsets in the iPhone 4 - Apple's sticking with the same suppliers for the 2011 iPhone 5G components.

We'd expect the basics of the iPhone 5 specs to get a bump - more memory, faster processor, and more storage. The A5 dual-core ARM processor from the iPad 2 is extremely likely to be included.

The specs? A new antenna, 1.2GHz processor (possibly dual-core) and a larger screen: 3.7" instead of 3.5". The iPhone 5 may also be made from a new kind of alloy, or maybe meat.

On 12 September 2011, a page briefly appeared on the Vodafone site referencing the iPhone 5 in 16GB and 32GB storage, and in white as well as black. Other sources expect double the RAM of the iPhone 4, so that would be 1GB instead of 512MB.

On 20 September a bunch of internal iPhone 5 components were supposedly shown off.

iPhone 5 screen

Various sources claim the iPhone 5 will feature a larger, 4-inch screen. Digitimes quotes the source as saying that Apple is expanding the screen size "to support the tablet PC market as the vendor only has a 9.7-inch iPad in the market."

On 23 May, we reported on rumours that the iPhone 5 could feature a curved glass screen. These rumours also came from Digitimes, which said that Apple has purchased between 200 and 300 special glass cutting machines because they're too costly for the manufacturers to invest in.

The iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S will also get a massive graphical boost as it moves to a dual-core GPU - this will herald true 1080p output from the new device.

iPhone 5 digital wallet - NFC

There's been some speculation that Apple might include Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in the iPhone 5G, turning it into a kind of credit/debit card.

However, with the tech being inside the Google Nexus S, the time for NFC may finally be here.

On 24 June 2011 it was reported that the Google Wallet mobile payment platform could feature on the new iPhone. Eric Schmidt admitted that Google is looking to port the software to other manufacturers.

However, on 31 January 2012 9to5Mac claimed to have spoken with a well-connected developer who disclosed information received from Apple iOS engineers saying they are "heavily into NFC".

The developer in question has not been named, but is working on a dedicated iOS app which includes NFC reading for mobile transactions. When questioned how confident he was on the information he had received his reply was "Enough to bet the app development on".

iPhone 5 camera

Sony makes the camera for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. Speaking at a live Wall Street Journal event, Sony's Sir Howard Stringer was talking about the company's camera image sensor facility in Sendai, a town that was recently ravaged by the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

According to 9to5Mac, he said something along the lines of, "Our best sensor technology is built in one of the [tsunami] affected factories. Those go to Apple for their iPhones… or iPads. Isn't that something? They buy our best sensors from us."

Sources have also suggested the new iPhone could have an 8MP camera. Indeed, Sony announced in January 2012 that it had developed new back-illuminated stacked CMOS image sensors which are smaller in size.

iPhone 5 price

If the iPhone 5 is an evolutionary step like the move from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS then we'd expect the price to stay more or less the same, although in the UK higher VAT rates may well mean a higher price tag.

iPhone 5 review

TechRadar is renowned for it's detailed phone reviews where we look at every aspect of a handset, and we'll be bringing you a full, in-depth iPhone 5 review when we get our hands on one.

£22 Raspberry Pi miniature PC is a sell-out

2012-05-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

After six years in development, the credit-card sized Raspberry Pi computer has gone on sale and sold out almost immediately.

The £22 miniature ARM-based PC has been developed with the aim of producing a low-cost PC which will encourage school children to take up coding projects.

The small device runs on a 700MHz ARM processor with 256MB of RAM and is surprisingly capable. Its makers promise that it can be used for spreadsheets, word-processing, games and even playing HD video.

It boots from an SD card, running the Fedora version of Linux, and uses an HDMI socket to get up to 1080p video on an attached display.

There are two models in the lineup – the Model A and Model B. The only difference is that the Model B adds an Ethernet port and has 2 USB ports instead of just one.

Runs on a phone charger

To get the Raspberry Pi running, users will need to add a display, keyboard and mouse, plus power via a microUSB cable as used by many mobile phones.

The initial launch is aimed at developers and hobbyists, with the educational launch planned for later this year.

The product is being sold through RS and Premier Farnell. Both sites have been struggling under the load and are only appearing intermittently at time of writing.

As the initial run has already sold out, pre-orders are being taken for the next batch.

For availability updates check out the Raspberry Pi site or follow @Raspberry_Pi on Twitter.

Opinion: Apple iPad 3 launch: time for Cook to shine

2012-05-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Not that long ago I was sat at the London iPhone 4S announcement writing a live blog as several of the company's big wigs went through the phone that wasn't the iPhone 5 but that did become a truly monumental success for the company.

It was Tim Cook's first major consumer announcement and yet the whole thing felt muted. Cook himself was typically confident and forthright, and yet he was happy to let his team do the majority of the talking.

A few days later and we found out the sad news of Steve Jobs, and the conference was thrown into stark relief.

The questions about the lack of impact without Jobs on stage fell away. Now we knew that Jobs wouldn't only not be at the announcements of the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5, but that wouldn't be around to see the launch of his beloved devices.

iPad 3 launch

Less than six months on and we are only days away from the launch event for what is almost certainly the iPad 3 and all eyes will be on Cook as he kick starts the new post-Jobs era for Apple.

Perhaps that's overstating it a little. Apple has been beavering away on the iPad 3 for a long time, and yet this is one of the two key launches on Apple fans' calendars, with the belated iPhone 5 announcement likely to be later this year.

And it is up to Cook and his team to show that Apple is just as confident that it can flourish in the post-Jobs era as Jobs was confident that Apple would flourish in the post-PC era.

One more thing...

That doesn't mean that Cook needs to take to the stage in a black turtleneck, grandstanding, charming the crowd and closing with "one more thing".

It doesn't even mean that Cook needs to take the bulk of the time on stage; it would be entirely understandable that Apple does not want to fill the vacuum of Jobs with another single figure. Instead it will try to share the load across its luminaries: Ive, Cook, Schiller, Forstall et al.

But what it will need to do is prove that the iPhone 4S announcement was not the new Apple; that the figure-heavy presentation and sombre mood was for the perfectly acceptable reason of Jobs' illness.

Make no mistake, the iPad 3 launch is a massive deal for Apple.

Few would doubt that Apple will continue to go from strength to strength assuming it continues with the perfectionism that marked Jobs' time at Apple.

But this conference is the time for Apple to show that it can still wow the world, leave the fanboys giddy with glee and convert the cynics with the familiar spellbinding mix of showmanship and gorgeous gadgets.

Gary Marshall: What to expect from the iPad 3

2012-05-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

It's coming! It's coming! Fire up your eBay account and get that iPad 2 listed pronto, because the iPad 3 is here!

Details? You want details? OK! I've got details! I've got them straight from the horse's mouth, and by "horse's mouth" I mean "launch invitation, leaked case designs from no-name Chinese case firms and a whole bunch of ill-informed speculation".

So what can we expect from the iPad 3?

iPad 3 display

First up, the iPad 3 display will be blurrier than Alex James' underpants. If you look at the launch invitation the Calendar app icon is nice and clear and Retina-y, but just look at the Keynote icon to the right. It's so blurry you can barely make it out.

It's clear what Apple's doing here: because its Retina display is so powerful and awesome and amazing, it probably uses quite a lot of battery power. Apple's solution? Make the bits you aren't looking at go blurry to save pixels. Thinking like this is why Android can never win.

iPad 3 multi-touch

Next up, there's touch. Apple even mentions it in the invitation: "And touch," it says. See? Told you. If you look at Tim Cook's hand - because it is definitely Tim Cook's, or maybe Jonathan Ive's, or Phil Schiller, or one of the other top Apple guys nobody can remember the name of, like Bert McThingy - you'll see that Apple's clearly taking multi-touch into a whole new dimension.

We've had touch. We've had multi-touch. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? If you're thinking "knuckles" then you are thinking what I'm thinking: there's clearly some knuckle control going on here. Nobody outside Apple is thinking about knuckle-controlled computers, and that's why Android can never win.

iPad 3: button-free

Last but not least, the iPad 3 won't have any buttons. The internet has decided this based on the text of the launch invitation, which says "We have something you really have to see. And touch."

That, clearly, means that the iPad 3 doesn't have a home button, because "touch" means "touch the border" and "see" means "you can't see the button, because there isn't one. See?"

Android fans don't indulge in this kind of speculation when there's a new Asus Transformer en route, and that's why Android can never win.

iPad 3: what's really going on

I have no idea, and neither does anybody else. The Retina display looks likely, of course, but the only thing we know for certain is that that iPad 3 - if indeed it's called the iPad 3 - will have an Apple logo on it and a nice box.

Speculation is fun, but it's purely speculation: while some stuff is pretty predictable - let's face it, Apple's not going to unveil a device that's like the current model but rubbish - the only people who know for sure what Tim Cook's going to show off - at least, until Apple does its traditional leak-to-the-Wall-Street-Journal thing - are the chosen few inside Apple.

It's like Christmas Eve: instead of going to bed and letting Santa do his stuff, Apple fans and observers are hiding under the blankets, trying to divine from the lumps and bumps whether we're getting a shiny new bicycle and a glow in the dark Buzz Lightyear or a sack of coal.

In fact, it's worse than that: while Dad's sticking a top-end skateboard under the tree we're imagining nuclear-powered hoverboards that totally fire laser beams and control robots and stuff.

I suspect that whatever Tim Cook unveils, it'll be the iPhone 4S all over again: a great product that isn't quite as great as a completely imaginary one.

MWC 2012: Steven Sinofsky: There's too much compromise in tech

2012-05-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

Launching the Windows 8 Consumer Preview today, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky talked about the hardware on show at MWC 2012, complaining that there are too many choices to make in tech today.

"As exciting as all these devices are, we all face a bit of a yearning for something a little bit better," he said at the launch event.

"In our day to day lives we face too many choices – between consumption and productivity, more battery life or more features. You have to choose do you want a touch interface or a keyboard and mouse – mixing those is complicated and not yet natural."

Nightmare

So what's the answer, Steven Sinofsky? Why it's Windows 8, of course.

"The goal should really be that the operating system scales with you; and that's what we mean by a no compromise experience," he explained.

"Our goal for Windows 8 was to create that no-compromise experience with phones, laptops, desktops and tablets all coming together, to be seamless."

Happily for those of us paralysed by indecision in today's technological playground, Windows 8 Consumer Preview launches today.

Exclusive: Microsoft: 'It's the complete vision for Windows 8'

2012-05-23T04:49:00.000-07:00

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Gabriel Aul

The Windows 8 Developer Preview (as the name suggests) was for introducing developers to Windows 8 and it didn't have many of the pieces of the OS, especially not the final user interface.

The Consumer Preview obviously isn't completely finished but it is what Director of Windows Program Management Gabriel Aul calls "the complete vision for the product". He calls the look of the Metro start screen "more finished and more polished than it was at Build."

In fact there have been over 100,000 code changes since the Developer Preview, which makes the Consumer Preview a wholly different beast.

And while there are new ways of switching between applications and new touch controls "we also went back and added a ton of mouse and keyboard support to complete that experience," Aul promises.

The touch controls are a more developed version of what we saw at CES this year and Aul explains the logic behind the way they work. "The new things are all about the edges. The left and right edges are about Windows controls; the left side is about switching, the right side is about controls.

The top and the bottom edge are about app controls, and they both do the same so you can choose which you prefer."

That makes sense for touch; "when you're holding [a tablet] the touch is all about the edges. Ergonomically, they're the easiest thing to hit with my thumbs."

The Windows 8 Start Screen

The charms are carefully arranged, he says. "The Start screen [charm] is always right there under my thumb." But it's also optimised for mouse users, who can just roll into the corner area without having to be too precise.

"With a mouse, if I have to pick a particular pixel it needs fine control, but for the Metro controls you can just jam the pointer up into the corners – you don't have to be precise. When I pull down a charm, I'm putting my mouse in the right place for the controls. I make a big movement to open the charms, I pull down and my mouse is there, I hit Settings and my mouse is right where the controls are so it's a very small movement."

Moving between Windows 8 Metro apps

Putting the mouse in the top left corner shows a thumbnail of the next Metro app, but you can pull down to see thumbnails for up to five current apps. Outlines of the thumbnail edges help make that more obvious.

"It has hints that there are tiles hidden away when I put the mouse in the corner; it's very subtle, it's just something to say there's something here." With a touch screen, swiping an app in from the left and back off screen shows the same thumbnail strip, or you can use Windows-Tab on the keyboard.

Need to see more than five apps (or to be able to jump straight to individual apps on the desktop)? Alt Tab gives you thumbnails for all running apps the way you're used to.

The Start Menu still exists in Windows 8

And while the Start button is no longer an orb at the end of the taskbar, clicking in the corner still works (and hovering your mouse there shows a thumbnail of the Start menu you can click).

"We didn't take the Start menu away," he points out; "it's just zero pixels. In the lower left corner you have Start where you expect it to be, you click it to jump back to Start. Or if I go to the lower corner and push up, I get that same switching list."

Touch is also more responsive in the Consumer Preview, Aul claims. "We've got the physics of swipe dialled in now; as you swipe it really sticks to your finger. Switching performance is as fast as I can flick through, it switches.

The Windows key takes me to Start or whatever I'm doing as fast as I can do it." Scrolling through the start screen with a mouse now works directly; instead of grabbing a scroll bar you just move your mouse to the side of the screen. That gives you a more responsive scrolling behaviour, especially if you have a scroll wheel on your mouse.

"It has a physicality to it, there's a different response when I push a little or a lot." And while the picture password option is certainly easier than tapping out a password on a tablet screen, Aul claims it can be more secure. "It's cryptographically stronger than a numeric PIN and it's actually as good as a strong password if you have a complex photo."

Windows 8 on different devices

Aul is a big fan of Windows tablets like the Samsung Series 7 Microsoft has frequently used to demo Windows 8 (check out our Hands on: Windows 8 tablet review) but he also dropped strong hints about how Windows on ARM (WOA) tablets will fit in as companion devices that rely on syncing documents and settings.

"I love the tablet. Other people may want smaller more power efficient tablets and another computer. If I'm on the couch browsing and reading email and I want to go to work I dock it and work [on the same machine]. In the tablet scenario, I put it down, I walk over to my desktop and log in and it'll feel just like the machine I've been using. The IE history is even there. I don't have to connect it and sync stuff; it just all happens automatically."

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is available for download from Microsoft now. To get it, head over to http://preview.windows.com.

MWC 2012: All apps free during Windows 8 Consumer Preview

2012-05-23T04:19:00.000-07:00

Microsoft just announced that all apps in the Windows 8 app store will be free to download during the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

Speaking at the launch event, Antoine Leblond, corporate VP of Windows web services, made the revelation while demoing the app store on screen.

"A number of essential apps will ship with the Consumer Preview but they're all subject to change," he added. "And we're adding apps all the time so you'll want to keep checking back into the store."

Apps are good

"Apps bring the OS to life – it's alive at a glance. We wanted to scale these apps across many dimensions, screen sizes, usage scenarios etc," added Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's President of the Windows division.

"We want apps in that environment to work together. Currently you get a lot of islands of apps and that's not the right way.

"So in Windows 8 you have control over apps. Apps work together and everything is cloud connected, which is a very important part of how we thought about Windows 8 from the very beginning."

Microsoft launched the Windows 8 Consumer Preview (which is a posh way of saying public beta) at MWC 2012 in Barcelona - and we've only gone and done a hands on Windows 8 review for you as well.

Updated: Hands on: Windows 8 review

2012-05-23T03:49:00.000-07:00

Windows 8: Getting started, ARM and x86

NOTE: We're updating this article constantly as we play with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Check back for more!

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview (here's the Windows 8 download) updates the look of the Developer Preview and adds a lot of new features and revamps a few old ones.

The round Start button is gone, the Metro-style Start screen remains and yes, you can only pick from nine colours and five patterns for the Start screen background.

But there's far more to the Consumer Preview user interface than the Start screen, and far more to Windows 8 than the user interface.

There are new ways of switching between apps, as well as more updates to the desktop tools. There are changes under the hood to file copying, power management, security, networking, hardware support and more.

And then there are the first real Metro apps, so you can find out what it's like to use Metro for more than just trying out Metro, and the Windows Store for the first third-party apps from real developers.

This is the version of Windows 8 that's going to give you a real feel for what the final operating system will be like and the first version you could realistically use for day-to-day work. But will you want to?

Running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

First of all, it's worth noting that the Consumer Preview is only for x86/64 PCs; there isn't an ARM version that you can download and try out, since there aren't any ARM devices that will run it.

That's because of the extremely custom way that ARM devices are built, where not even the way to control a physical button is standard. Microsoft isn't supporting tablets built to run Android or WebOS.

Much of what we're seeing in Consumer Preview will be the same on Windows on ARM (WOA) systems. Most stuff like the Metro user interface to the touch gestures, to the Windows desktop and built-in Windows tools like Explorer and Task Manager will be practically the same, but until we see it in action we don't know what WOA performance and battery life will be like.

Consumer Preview doesn't include the desktop Office apps that will be bundles with WOA either - and of course it runs all the x86 desktop apps that won't work on WOA.

Windows 8 on ARM: Steven Sinofsky speaks

When you download the Consumer Preview, installing is easier than usual with a beta operating system. You can start the installation directly from the Web page, instead of having to download an ISO file and burn that to an optical disc.

You can still burn an ISO if you want, and the installer can also create a bootable USB stick so you can download Consumer Preview once and install it on multiple machines.

The tools for creating a Windows To Go USB stick aren't available yet, so you can't run Windows 8 directly from USB, but you'll get a far better feel for how Windows 8 performs if you can try it out directly on a PC.

Windows 8: Metro interface

The Metro interface doesn't look that different, but having your email, photos, appointments and friends pinned to it livens it up considerably – as does the new Metro tile for the desktop, which sports a cute Metro-ified version of the Windows 7 beta fish.

You can also pin libraries here as well as Explorer, but you have to do that from Explorer set to view the desktop rather than from within a library itself.

The improved touch gestures also make it far easier to work with. Swipe from the right edge of the screen and you get the redesigned charm bar; Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.

You can do the same thing by leaving your mouse pointer in the top or bottom right corner; first the charms appear as white outlines and if you don't move your mouse they disappear as Windows assumes you didn't want to trigger them (you might be moving the mouse to scroll or closing a window at the side of the screen instead and you don't have to wait for the charms to vanish to do that. Move the mouse towards the charms and the black bar and charm titles draw in on screen.

Start, which is highlighted in the accent colour of the colour theme you choose, swaps between the Start screen and whatever you were doing last. Search is now context sensitive; if you're in IE when you choose it, you get results from Bing first.

Swipe up from the bottom on the Start screen to get a quick link to the All Apps view, which is now neatly organised into program groups, arranged alphabetically.

As you swipe across the Start menu, it stops with the group of tiles you've swiped to lined up under the word Start; this bouncing into place is the promised 'speed bump' to help you navigate around. Scrolling with a mouse works far better; you push the mouse past the edge of the screen and the tiles scroll as if you were swiping with your finger.

This works so well you'll find yourself missing it in apps that don't support it, like Photos, where you have to go back to grabbing the scrollbar – or use a touch pad or Microsoft Touch Mouse, which lets you swipe sideways.

The Semantic zoom feature now works too; pinch to shrink the tiles on the Start screen to tiny thumbnails so you can see everything at once or move an entire group. Select a group and drag it down to get the option of naming it.

This is also the view you get when you drag a tile you're moving to the bottom of the screen, which makes it easier to move an item a long way across the screen without disturbing the arrangement of all your tiles and groups.

As you drag a tile between two groups, when you position it between them a vertical grey bar appears to show that you're creating a new group to put it in.

Switching between apps is now far easier. You can still drag in the next app in the stack from the left edge of the screen to be full screen or to snap into a side window, but when the icon of that next app appears, you can also drag it back to the edge to get a vertical pane of thumbnails.

This only shows six thumbnails of recent apps (including the desktop if that's open) plus the thumbnail for the Start menu. Tap a thumbnail to open the app or drag it to choose where on screen it appears.

You can get the switching pane using a mouse by leaving the mouse pointer in the top or bottom left corner of the screen until a thumbnail appears (the next app at the top, the Start menu preview at the bottom); drag down with the mouse and the thumbnails appear. If you want to see all current desktop apps and recent Metro apps, use Alt tab instead (and Win Tab makes the switching pane appear).

You can close Metro apps without restoring to the task manager. Drag down from the top of the screen until the app you're looking at shrinks down to a thumbnail and keep dragging that off screen to close it (it's a longer swipe that when you use a quick finger swipe down from the top or up from the bottom of the screen to get the menu bar inside an app).

That works with a mouse as well. Or you can use Alt-F4, just like with a desktop app.

You can type quite well on screen. The large touch keyboard is a little better laid out now, and has predictive text and spelling corrections. The thumb keyboard layout still has the alphabet split between the two sides of the screen where it's all in reach of your thumbs, but there's now a numeric keyboard in the middle to make it faster to type passwords (or indeed, numbers) and you can resize the keyboard.

The new notifications in Metro work well; they pop up in the top right corner of the screen where they're not likely to be in the way and you can tap for options. So the first time you put a USB stick in, you can choose whether to open Explorer or do something else – and that will happen automatically next time you insert it.

Windows 8: Metro apps

Instead of the games and utilities bundled with the Developer Preview, the apps included with Consumer Preview are the basic apps you need – mail, calendar, contacts, messaging, photos and social networking, plus an app for exploring your files on SkyDrive (the desktop SkyDrive app is 'coming soon').

There's also a Bing Maps app and other tools like Weather and Finance, Music and Video catalogues powered by Zune (which also give you a music and video player that will be very familiar to Zune HD and Windows Media Center users) and an Xbox-branded gaming section.

These apps are all labelled as previews and while many of them were produced by the Windows Live team, they're not the final Windows Live apps that will be coming for Windows 8. Microsoft told us to think of them as representative of the kind of experience you'll have in the final apps but not of the features that will be in them.

The People app is similar to the Windows Phone tool, in that it combines the address books for all the services you link Windows to, through your Live account or by adding specific accounts for email and calendar.

You can see contact details and recent updates for individual friends or browse through updates from all your linked social networks in a view that wastes a lot of space unless there's a photo in the update; you can tap through to reply or see more details but this isn't powerful enough to be really useful.

The Mail app is better, although you can only use it with Hotmail, Gmail and Exchange accounts and while it's easy to jump between accounts and folders, there's no conversation view and you can't flag email or even mark it as spam.

The Calendar app is similar; it has a clean and appealing interface, with a monthly, weekly or two-day view and it shows all your calendars together. You get the choice of which calendar you create a new appointment in. But if you have multiple calendars in your Exchange account you can't choose which are visible

The Messaging makes good use of the size of a PC screen to show you multiple conversations on Facebook and Windows Live, with details about your contacts so you can see what else they're talking about on other services. You can also send group messages, but it's just text chat; no voice or video yet.

The Photos app lets you explore your images whether they're on your PC or in online services like SkyDrive, Facebook and Flickr. You can swipe through images, zoom out to see thumbnails, play a slide show or pick an image for the Lock screen but there aren't any editing tools. It's very simple, but the look is elegant (apart from the lurid yellow banner marking it as a preview app).

Until the desktop SkyDrive app arrives, you can't automatically sync files from Windows 8, although you can pick files to upload to SkyDrive in the Metro app, which has a clean and simple interface with tiles for folders and thumbnails for images. It's a great way to work with your online files, although documents on your SkyDrive open in the Office Web apps in Metro IE rather than directly in the SkyDrive app.

Apps that let you select files, for example to upload to SkyDrive, use the Metro file picker, which will either make your life very simple or very complicated. When you look at the Pictures library, you see the contents of every folder aggregated together - much like Windows Live Photo Gallery - as well as a list of folders (or you can navigate to individual folders by starting at Computer and working down).

That's convenient if you can't remember which folder you put some recent photos in but could get overwhelming once you have a lot of images. The Music library only shows the list of folders (usually corresponding to albums) but not the individual tracks inside them.

The same is true in Explorer in Windows 8 desktop; the Pictures Library shows you thumbnails of all the pictures in all the library locations, but it's a little more manageable when you have a mouse and scrollbars.

The Bing Maps app is very like the version for the PlayBook; you can jump to your current location, see traffic or an aerial view, search for businesses and places and get driving directions. It's a little basic, with far fewer features than the Bing Maps Web site, but it's very easy to use with touch.

We've seen rumours of the Microsoft Reader PDF viewer before; it's included in Consumer Preview and it's an excellent and simple PDF tools. Large files open quickly and scrolling through documents is equally fast.

There are no confusing toolbars floating over the page; you can pinch to zoom in and out or double tap to zoom into a page, and the commands on the app bar let you search, switch views, rotate a page or see what you have permission to do with a password-protected PDF. This is far more pleasant to use than Acrobat Reader (and noticeably faster).

The Xbox LIVE Games app will look familiar to both Xbox and Windows Phone users; it has your avatar and those of your Xbox LIVE friends, your achievements on phone and Xbox games, the two games included in the Consumer Preview and adverts for the Windows and Xbox game marketplaces.

Those two games are disappointing though; Pinball FX2 looks good but the multiple splash screens and pages of instructions mean it takes far too long to load for a casual game) and the basic version of Solitaire doesn't even let you choose a different deck.

The Xbox Controller is far more interesting. Unlike the Windows Phone app, it doesn't turn your PC into a replica of the Xbox controller, which would be rather fiddly on a large screen. Instead you see what you can do on the Xbox screen and you can touch areas directly, so instead of looking on the Xbox screen to see that the B button means back, you get a back button to press.

This is going to work best with tablets, but on any PC the option to pick a movie or TV show from the Video app and play it directly on your Xbox is a great way of doing things; you get to search the catalogue using a keyboard so it's easy to find the show you want and then sit back and watch it on the big screen where it looks good.

Scrolling and zooming is smoother in the updated IE10 Platform Preview included with Consumer Preview; you can double-tap to zoom on the part of a page you're interested in – this works well, very like the same feature in the Windows Phone browser.

You can swipe near the left and right edge of the screen to move forward and back through the Web pages you've visited; if you use a mouse, when you hover near the edge of the screen you get an arrow you can click to do the same thing.

When you pin sites to the Start screen, they have a much nicer icon than in the Developer Preview, and if a site has a jump list you can see that in Metro IE on the bar of commands that appears when you swipe up (or right click). You can also choose whether the sites you pin to the Start menu or links you click in email and tweets open in Metro IE10 or desktop IE10.

The multiple tabs aren't quite a substitute for being able to see more than one Web site on screen at once and if you open several sites from other apps in quick succession, you may find the page you want is hidden away in a tab rather than being what you see in the browser.

Windows 8: Accounts and apps

If you use a Windows Live account (which can be a Hotmail address or any other email address you've set up as a Windows Live account) to log in, you automatically get your contacts, calendar and messages.

If you've already linked your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Flickr accounts to Windows Live, Windows 8 uses that to put your Facebook photos in the Photos app, your Facebook friends in the People app and Facebook chat in Messaging.

Much like it did in the Developer Preview, Windows 8 uses this account to take your settings, IE favourites and saved passwords to any other Windows 8 PCs you sign into with the same account, but this is now called a Microsoft account and it will let you download apps from the Windows Store.

If you use an account from a different provider, like Gmail, as your login you'll get the information from that account in Windows but you'll have to verify that before contact, calendar and message information start arriving.

When they do, you can choose which of them show notifications on the Lock screen; you can pick up to seven apps that will run in the background when your screen is off and tell you if you have new messages – one of them can show more detailed information although so far the calendar is the only choice. This will be much more important on WOA and SoC devices that have connected standby, as these are the apps that will get updates while the rest of the system is asleep.

Windows Live account or not, the first account you make on a Consumer Preview system is automatically an admin account. When you add a second account, there's no option to set it as being an administrator straight away, as you realise the first time you try to install an app and have to put in the password of the original account; you can go into the control panel and change the account type, but it's irritating not to get the option in the first place.

Windows 8: Conclusion

The Consumer Preview is a huge improvement over the Developer Preview; it's more polished, more pleasant to use and has far fewer rough edges. Performance is good, there are none of the frequent crashes we saw before and our initial testing suggests the battery life issues from Developer Preview have been fixed too. The interface is far more usable, whether you have a touch screen or a mouse and you should quickly master the gestures for switching and closing apps.

Consumer Preview also proves that Windows 8 isn't all about touch. The improvements to the desktop are very welcome, although we'd call them evolution rather than revolution, and if you want to spend most of your time in the desktop you can pin apps to the taskbar and stay there until you want to explore the Start screen. This is the version of Windows 8 that will let you decide what you think of Windows 8 and if you approach it with an open mind, you may be surprised how usable Metro can be.

On the other hand, Microsoft clearly has more work to do, both on Windows 8 itself and on the Windows Live apps that showcase Metro, and there are many key features like sharing and search contracts that will only be useful when there are far more apps to work with them. Windows 8 has to both deliver worthwhile improvements in the way you use your PC today – which it mostly does – and take a major leap forward for tablets and other upcoming PC form factors.

Until we see WOA tablets, it's going to be an open question how well Windows 8 can compete with the iPad. Consumer Preview is far and away the most touch-friendly version of Windows ever (and it no longer treats mouse and keyboard users like second class citizens). That won't be enough but it's a very promising start.

In Depth: Windows 8 Consumer Preview: what's new?

2012-05-23T03:19:00.000-07:00

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: what's new?

So now we can all get a flavour of Windows 8 with the new Windows 8 Consumer Preview. We've taken an in-depth look at the new OS in our Hands on: Windows 8 review here and interviewed Microsoft about its new Windows.

But what's changed? Well, pretty much everything. Last September's Developer Preview was a simple demonstration for, yep, you've guessed it, developers, to show them how Windows 8 Metro apps would work.

While we could glean a lot from that version, it was nowhere near feature-complete. It wasn't even significantly near.

This new Consumer Preview version brings a whole raft of product changes and improvements. Microsoft said today that it has made over 100,000 code modifications since the earlier build. Of the new version, Microsoft says that "with the added features, it represents a more complete view of the capabilities of Windows 8."

"With Windows 8, we reimagined the different ways people interact with their PC and how to make everything feel like a natural extension of the device, whether using a Windows 8 tablet, laptop or all-in-one," said Steven Sinofsky, head of Microsoft's Windows division.

As with the earlier preview, the new beta build still doesn't have a version for ARM processors – it's x86 for Intel and AMD-based systems only.

However, Microsoft did demo the OS working on ARM hardware at the Consumer Preview launch during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

ARM vs x86

As Mary Branscombe explains in our Hands on: Windows 8 review, it's therefore hard to get a complete grip on what the ARM experience will be like.

As Sinofsky said previously, there will be no third-party apps on the Windows on ARM (WOA) desktop, though there will be third-party Metro apps.

WOA will also have baked-in versions of the key Microsoft Office apps – this Consumer Preview version doesn't and Windows for the x86 platform won't.

Microsoft says that "Windows 8 has progressed across every dimension" from what we've seen before.

The user experience for touch plus keyboard and mouse is now complete, says the software giant. The Consumer Preview is compatible with mouse and keyboard as well as touch.

The new Window Store is now open (also in a pre-release beta version) with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and, as we reported earlier, all apps are now free. The store has a variety of new Metro style apps from both third-party developers and Microsoft. The store will offer recommendations

The Consumer Preview also gives you the ability to take your apps and settings with you across multiple PCs.

The Consumer Preview offers the ability to sign on with a Microsoft Account (the new name for your Windows Live ID or Microsoft Passport). That basically means you can store all your stuff in the cloud – you can keep your settings in sync across devices, use cloud storage plus use Windows Live services like Hotmail and Calendar (the Windows Live name appears to be doomed).

Of course, your stuff is also available on Windows Phone as well as your Windows PCs.

The OS also features another preview version of the new Internet Explorer - Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 5. The browser has been reworked so it performs across all Windows 8 devices. The interface can be edge-to-edge in Metro and it's all nicely hardware accelerated.

Windows 8 system requirements

Windows 8 Consumer Preview works on any Windows 7 PC. Here are the basic requirements:

Processor: 1GHz or faster
RAM: 1GB (32-bit) or 2GB (64-bit)
Hard disk space: 16GB (32-bit) or 20GB (64-bit)
Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device or higher

Additional requirements to use certain features:

To use touch, you need a tablet or a monitor that supports multitouch.
To access the Windows Store and to download and run apps, you need an active Internet connection and a screen resolution of at least 1024 x 768.
To snap apps, you need a screen resolution of at least 1366 x 768.

We'd recommend you don't install it on your main PC or, if you have no other option, you create a new partition to install it on so you don't ruin your current Windows installation.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is available worldwide for download in English, French, German, Japanese and Chinese (simplified)

Download it at http://preview.windows.com and check out our Hands on: Windows 8 review.

In Depth: Apple iTV rumours: what you need to know

2012-05-23T02:49:00.000-07:00

Apple iTV rumours: what you need to know

We love our Apple TV, but we're not sure Apple does: the firm's more interested in getting iPads into your living room than Apple TVs under your flat screen.

Apple says the Apple TV is a hobby, but it turns out Apple is thinking bigger. Much, much bigger: it wants to sell you the entire TV set, not a little box beneath it.

In a 15 February 2012 earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook hinted again at the release of something bigger and better than the current Apple TV (credit CNN Money).

And, with the iPad 3 launch announcement set for 7 March, rumours are rife that Apple will also announce some kind of TV product then - largely since the invite to the event said the launch was "something you really have to see. And touch."

brightcove : 1468725309001

"With Apple TV, however, despite the barriers in [the TV set top box] market, for those of us who use it, we've always thought there was something there. And that if we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, then we might find something that was larger.

"For those people that have it right now, the customer satisfaction is off the charts. But we need something that could go more main market for it to be a serious category."

Here's all the rumours and speculation surrounding the next-generation new Apple TV.

Apple iTV design

Forget the current hockey-puck form factor: the rumour mill is unanimous that the third generation Apple TV will be a proper TV.

The Telegraph says that "sources within the company" say that Jeff Robbin, the man who helped create the iPod, is leading the team.

Remember that hockey puck we told you to forget about two sentences ago? You might want to remember it again, because 9to5Mac has found a reference to a new Apple TV (AppleTV3,1; the current model is 2,1) in the latest build of iOS. That could indicate an upgrade to the current Apple TV before the new sets ship.

Apple iTV specifications

Engadget predicts an A5 processor and 1080p video - neither of which are a huge surprise, granted.

Australian tech site Smarthouse says that the Apple iTV will come in three sizes, including 32-inch and 55-inch models.

Sources at "a major Japanese company who are involved in manufacturing the TV" reckon the sets will have the same processor as the forthcoming iPad 3, which presumably means an Apple A6.

Smarthouse isn't usually the go-to site for Apple rumours, but its report echoes similar claims by respected Apple analyst Gene Munster, who told the recent Future of Media conference that Apple will make its TV in a range of sizes.

The supply chain for the iTV is set to get going during the first quarter of 2012. That's according to Digitimes on 27 December 2011.

Apple iTV operating system

As with the current generation, the third generation Apple TV is likely to run iOS, albeit in slightly disguised form. Compatibility with other iOS devices is a given: current Apple TVs already accept video streamed via AirPlay and access shared iTunes libraries. We'll be amazed if the iTV doesn't get apps.

Apple iTV and iCloud

Steve Jobs told his biographer: "I'd like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

Apple iTV remote control

Munster says the iTV will come with an ordinary remote control, and will be controllable with iPhones, iPod touches and iPads, but the real remote control will be Siri.

Apple's voice recognition system will be the heart of the new Apple TV, enabling you to choose channels and control the TV's functions with voice alone. That means " the simplest user interface you could imagine" is voice.

Apple iTV AirPlay mirroring

After AirPlay mirroring from Mac to Apple TV was present in the developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, it's not a great leap to suggest that the Apple iTV could mirror the display of your Mac or iPad wirelessly too. AirPlay mirroring is 720p only at the moment - could it be 1080p compliant on in the Apple iTV?

Apple iTV programmes

While the iTV will get content from iTunes and iCloud, it's not going to be completely separate from current TV broadcasters: Munster says that you'll still need a cable TV subscription and decoder because Apple doesn't have enough content.

We're not sure whether it would play nicely with Freeview and Freeview HD here in the UK, but perhaps a DVB-T compatible unit will arrive as part of a second generation.

Apple iTV price

Gene Munster reckons that the iTV will be twice the price of a similarly sized TV. Ouch.

Apple iTV picture quality

If the iTV does appear, it won't leave manufacturers quaking in their boots. That's according to Samsung's Chris Moseley who told Pocket-Lint in early February 2012 that the firm isn't overly concerned with what Apple launches if it decides to enter the TV market

"We've not seen what they've done but what we can say is that they don't have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category," he says.

"They don't have the best scaling engine in the world and they don't have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else."

Apple iTV release date

Most rumours predict a 2013 Apple iTV release date, but the more optimistic observers think Apple won't want to miss 2012's Christmas shopping season. The New York Times says that price, not technology, is the problem: Apple is waiting for the cost of large LCD panels to fall further before building iTVs.

Review Roundup: This week's hottest reviews on TechRadar

2012-05-23T02:19:00.000-07:00

This week we've reviewed Apple's new iBooks creation app for the Mac as well as a cracking pair of cameras and a cracking pair of graphics cards to boot.

There's also a great phone for the US, the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx which takes the existing Razr and adds a huge battery.

Here's our full list of this week's reviews from the site.

Apple iBooks Author

Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and even Apple's iBooks have been working on moving us away from reading physical books and embracing the digital revolution. But until now, there was very little to convince us how good an idea this could be, since the digital versions looked very much like their real-world counterparts, right down to the page turning effect.

But this is what Apple is trying to change with its new content creation app, iBooks Author. Its aim is to revolutionise modern textbooks by bringing interactivity to the learning experience.

Fuji X-S1

Always liked the idea of an all-in-one camera with a massive zoom capability, but hated the often all too-plastic feel? Fuji's X-S1 may, nay will, cause you to re-evaluate the humble bridge camera. Whereas Fuji has previously applied an 'X' - its signifier of a premium camera

- to the Leica-like FinePix X10, for the first time it gives a superzoom that same distinction.

This means that the new 26x optical zoom Fuji X-S1 figuratively sits above the existing Fuji HS20 and HS30 models, even though the latter boast 30x zoom (maximum 720mm equivalent telephoto setting in 35mm terms).

AMD Radeon HD7770

AMD showed its hand first in this year's GPU arms race with Nvidia by turning it into last year's arms race. While Nvidia has kept shtum about its upcoming new 'Kepler' architecture and looks to do so until spring, AMD stole the march and released the first of its new 7-series cards, the AMD HD 7970, a few days before Christmas 2011.

That sure was odd timing, but it taught us a lot about AMD's new Southern Islands architecture, specifically the 'Tahiti' chip. The HD 7970's whopping £440 price made all those neat features all but irrelevant to the gaming masses though, so we're putting our hopes on this HD 7770 to deliver the best bits of the new AMD architecture for a more palatable price.

Canon G1 X

The new Canon PowerShot G1 X - commonly shortened to Canon G1 X, or even Canon G1X - occupies the top spot in Canon's prestigious G-series compact camera range, offering a truly impressive array of high-end features.

Launched at CES earlier this year, the new digital camera is aimed at advanced photographers in search of a high-quality, take-anywhere primary camera and/or backup for their DSLR. It may not be the compact system camera (CSC) that everyone was expecting to see from Canon, nor is it a direct replacement for the highly popular Canon PowerShot G12 - rather, it's something in between.

Motorola Droid Razr Maxx

The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx is the newest Razr to be released on the Verizon network. It takes everything you love about the Droid Razr, and fattens it up a bit with a whopping 3,300 mAh battery. That's a battery that's capable of 21 hours of talk time on a single charge.

And while we're excited to finally disconnect from that required midday charge, the true power of a battery that size comes in the form of 7 hours of LTE browsing per charge.

This week's other reviews

Audio systems

Edifier Luna5 encore dock review

Camera accessories

Kenro Flash Meter review

Camera lenses

Kenko Teleplus Pro 300 AF DGX 2x review

Desktops

Packard Bell OneTwo L review

Graphics cards

AMD Radeon HD 7750 review

Mobile phones

Samsung Galaxy W review

Samsung Galaxy Xcover Extreme S5690 review

Samsung Galaxy Y review

Monitors

Hanns.G HL229DPB review

Scanners

Reflecta iScan 3600 review

Software

Apple Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 review

Storage

Samsung SSD 830 512GB (Notebook Kit) review

Televisions

Kogan LED55 review

Tripods

Velbon Ultra Rexi L review

Velbon QHD-61Q review

Buying Guide: Best monitor: 9 reviewed and rated

2012-05-23T01:49:00.000-07:00

Best PC monitor: how to choose

We've said it before, we're going to damn well say it again, and we're going keep saying it over and over until somebody starts listening.

By far and away and without a shadow of a doubt, the best long term investment you can make for your PC is a decent screen. Repeat, LCD screen.

That's especially true at the top-end of the market, where some specs have stagnated. Back in 2006, the pinnacle of PC screendom was 30 inches and a native resolution of 2,560 x 1,600. Fast forward to the dawn of 2012 and absolutely nothing has changed. That's still as good as it gets.

In fact, if anything, prices of premium panels have hardened. Premium 24-inch monitors based on the better VA and IPS panels are quite possibly more expensive than they were five or six years ago. The problem is the market for higher-priced panels – there isn't one.

People buy almost purely on price; they just want cheap and cheerful. That said, this obsession with cheaper screens means the focus is on squeezing the most out of a sub-£300 budget.

Today, that figure doesn't just secure full HD resolutions and stretch to 27-inch and even 28-inch monitors, it also bags you a multi-function monitor packing everything from an integrated TV tuner to full stereoscopic 3D support using the technology of your choice.

Until recently, what you wouldn't get was anything other than TN technology for the panel, but there are now some exceptions. Along with some affordable VA panels, the new kid on the block is e-IPS tech, which is effectively a cheaper version of the IPS screens favoured for their colour reproduction and found in many premium devices including, yes you guessed it, Apple's iPhone and iPad gadgets.

As for the TN masses, the good news is that the technology continues to improve, closing the gap with IPS and VA. It's also worth noting that the increasingly widespread use of LED backlighting, even at the arse end of the market, has given TN a kick up the backside too.

All of which means there's serious value to be had if you know what you're buying, which is exactly where this month's LCD panelfest comes in.

Every screen purchase should start from a position of informed awareness. You need to know what you're buying and that means getting to grips with the different panel technologies. Yup, we have been here before, but given the lengths some monitor makers go to obscure and obfuscate the underlying technology, it's more critical than ever to know your TNs from your PVAs.

Twisted Nematic

I DREAM OF 3D: If slaying dragons in 3D appeals then look for a screen with 3D support

From the top, the cheapest and most commonly used panel tech is our old friend TN. Otherwise known as 'twisted nematic', in layman's terms the thing that really matters about TN technology is that the liquid crystals in each picture cell are effectively fixed at one end. When an electrical current is applied, the crystals twist rather than rotate.

This explains TN's strengths and its weaknesses. The tension involved in twisting crystals in one direction means they pop back the other way more rapidly. The result? Fast pixel response.

Of course, with one end fixed, you never get the full rotation achieved by other LCD tech, which means light isn't managed as accurately or blocked as fully. Result? Inferior colour accuracy, less expansive viewing angles and poorer contrast.

One of the specific consequences of the restricted crystal articulation is the need for dithering. TN panels can't natively display as many colours as IPS and VA screens. The solution involves forcing pixels to jump rapidly between two colour states in order to fool the human eye into observing a third, incremental colour. In theory, it should be invisible. In practice, it's sometimes possible to see the pixels fizzing away as they hop between colours.

Everything is relative though. Ongoing improvement of TN technology has given us panels superior in some regards to IPS panels of six or seven years ago.

What's more, it's not just the panel technology that has improved. The market-wide shift from CCFL backlights to LED technology has been a big help for TN screens. You get a broader spectrum of light, which helps compensate for the inherently poor colours. So, TN monitors with LED backlights are more vibrant and sock you with more saturated colours. Yay!

Despite all of this, there are limitations to TN, and they can be spotted on the spec sheets. That's true even when the monitor maker doesn't deign to mention the panel type. Unfortunately, that's pretty frequent.

Anyway, the markers you're looking for go something like this. Start with the viewing angles, the metrics manufacturers use vary, but if either figure is under 170°, you're looking at a TN. Typically a vertical angle of 160° really gives the game away.

The other major give away is contrast. The tricky thing here is that dynamic contrast – in other words, contrast achieved by modulating the backlight - is often the only figure quoted. Any figure of roughly 5,000 to one or greater will be the dynamic rating. If it's lower than that, it's likely to be contrast with a static backlight.

In-Plane Switching

THE WINKING SKEEVER: "Skyrim belongs to the Nords!"

Until recently, anything capable of 1,000 to one or more for static contrast was very likely to be VA or IPS. More recently, TN monitors capable of 1,000 to one static contrast have appeared.

At the same time, VA and IPS panels have upped their game. So any quoted figure above 1,000 to one (but below 5,000 to one) will indicate a panel other than TN.

The final give away is price, but here again, things have begun to change. Until recently, VA and IPS panels were always much more expensive. The good news is that lower cost derivatives, including e-IPS and MVA, are becoming ever more common. It's now possible, for instance, to buy a 24-inch MVA screen for under £180. If that's TN, what about the other two?

Our next candidate is 'In-Plane Switching' or IPS technology. It occupies completely the opposite end of the scale from TN for everything from price to colour accuracy.

Critically, where other panel technologies include a single controller transistor per subpixel, IPS packs a pair and offers superior crystal control and, in turn, the best colour accuracy. Of course, increase a product's complexity and you increase costs. But that's not the only downside – the extra transistors also block light. That makes IPS notably less vibrant and saturated than the best VA panels.

Another upside of IPS is extremely wide and consistent viewing angles. Unlike TN crystals with their rooted ends, the liquid crystals in an IPS panel rotate fully about their axis. That matters because it allows them to present a more consistent face to the viewer at varying angles and means a more constant quantity of light passes the red, green and blue subpixels regardless of the viewing angle. In other words, you don't get wonky colours if you sit in an off-centre position at your desk.

There is, however, a snag. That greater range of crystal articulation translates into longer response times when transitioning between extreme colours. The longer that process takes, the blurrier a panel looks when rendering moving images.

That said, just as TN technology is closing the gap for colours and contrast, IPS screens keep getting faster. Factor in the static fidelity advantages and it's easy to see why IPS is the tech of choice for graphics professionals.

Vertical Alignment

CAUGHT IN LIMBO: VA panels would suit cult smash hits such as Limbo well

The last of our trio of panel technologies is VA or 'Vertical Alignment'. There are two types of VA panels, PVA (Patterned Vertical Alignment) and MVA (Multidomain Vertical Alignment).

PVA is more common, but both share the same basic characteristics and give similar image quality. For the most part, VA panels fall half way between TN and IPS technology. In terms of cost, colour accuracy and pixel response, VA panels split the difference.

That said, VA screens also have a number of distinct characteristics that set them apart. Most notably, the default position of the liquid crystals in a VA pixel blocks light from passing through. The upshot is that VA screens deliver the deepest, inkiest blacks of any panel type, and the best static contrast ratios.

Colour saturation is another plus point for VA screens, even if outright colour accuracy is a click or two behind the best IPS screens.

Colour gamut is another VA strong point. Like IPS technology, VA panels are typically true 8-bit per colour channel. That means colour dithering isn't necessary.

Overall, VA panels give the most vibrant, eye-catching image quality of any LCD technology. The richness and depth of a good VA monitor is spectacular. For that reason, many high-end HDTVs, including Samsung and Sony sets, use PVA LCD panels.

If VA technology does have a weakness, it's pixel response. In an attempt to reduce response times, many VA monitors use a technology known as pixel overdrive. While it can be effective for speeding up pixel response, it creates problems of its own, including input lag and inverse ghosting.

The spiel here involves altering the colour of a pixel. That requires a change in the voltage applied. The idea behind overdrive is to either increase or reduce the voltage fed to any given pixel more acutely than required for the target colour state. This accelerates the pixel towards the new colour state more rapidly. Before the pixel can overshoot the target colour, the voltage is normalised.

Tricks of the trade

NEW KEN ON THE BLOCK: Badly overdriven panels can exhibit inverse ghosting, blighting your image with nasty colour trails

That's the theory, at least. Overdriven panels are definitely sharper when displaying movement, but close inspection of some overdriven monitors reveals something slightly rotten.

The first problem is usually referred to as inverse ghosting. This often manifests as a trail of shadows in the wake of a moving object, approximately in the opposite colour to that object. It's quite distinct, therefore, from the smeared trail seen on monitors with poor pixel response.

This is due to excessive overdrive leading to pixels overshooting the required colour state. Inverse ghosting can affect both TN and PVA panels with overdrive technology, but the other major problem – input lag, seems to be restricted to PVA screens.

The problem here is a measurable delay between the video signal being sent to the monitor and the screen responding with a refreshed image. Typically, this is noticed as a lag between a physical mouse input and the movement of the cursor, crosshair or application window on the screen.

Of course, the method of processing a digital signal results in at least some lag on all LCD screens compared to the instantaneous output of an analogue CRT monitor. Using a CRT monitor in cloned mode as a control device, LCD screens usually lag behind by 10 to 20 milliseconds. With some overdriven screens, this increases to 50 milliseconds or more.

The result is a sticky, disconnected feel on the desktop. That's a serious problem for gaming, and can make first-person shooters in particular almost unplayable.

That's the major panel technologies all summed up, but there are one or two universal issues to address. The first is video interfaces.

HARD TO PORT: The difference in display ports can seem confusing, but you can connect all of them up with the right cables

In theory, all the major digital interfaces are quite similar. You can't see the difference between DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort on your screen.

In practice, however, HDMI can present problems. With certain video card and driver combos, HDMI connections can throw up scanning issues that prevent the panel running pixel for pixel. In other words, you can't achieve native resolution, and that's critical for any LCD.

Admittedly, most PCs won't suffer from this problem, but when it does happen, it can be insurmountable short of buying a new video card. Our advice is not to go with any monitor that is restricted to HDMI.

Next up are the related issues of resolutions and aspect ratios. For the most part, the monitor industry has settled on full HD 1080p or 1,920 x 1,080 for the former and therefore 16:9 for the latter. The first implication of this is that it usually doesn't matter what size screen you go for, your resolution and desktop space or in-game detail will be the same.

Indeed, you could argue larger screens look worse. You just end up with bigger, jaggier looking pixels. However, if you mainly use your PC for gaming, a bigger screen gives you the option of sitting further away. Larger panels are also handy for watching TV and movies, but there are a few exceptions to this rule of ubiquitous 1080p.

A few monitors are still available in 16:10 aspect. Most common among these are 24-inch panels with 1,920 x 1,200 pixel grids. That's a useful dollop of vertical pixels. And let's be clear, vertical pixels are really useful for normal PC usage rather than watching HD movies.

The best eyeful

STYLE ICON: Watch 3D and look like Michael Caine with Nvidia's 3D Vision specs

A few monitors are available with the slightly higher 2,048 x 1,152 resolution. The problem is, it's only a small increase over 1080p, and it's still 16:9. Finally, at the top end you have the two ultra-high resolution panels in the shape of 27-inch running 2,560 x 1,440 pixels and 30-inch 2,560 x 1,600.

We've extensive experience running both of those options and we heavily favour the latter. It's a subjective issue, but the 30-incher feels larger, more expansive and more luxurious well beyond the extra three inches and 160 vertical pixels.

Anyway, the great shame about these panels is that prices haven't really shifted since the first 30-inchers appeared five or six years ago. You're still looking at the best part of a grand for a 30-incher. The 27-inch alternative can be had from around £500, but that's an awful lot to spend on something ever so slightly suboptimal.

Best PC Monitor: reviews 1-5

1. Asus PA238Q

Price: £236
Panel type: IPS Monitor

Fed up with cheap and not-always-cheerful monitors based on TN panel technology? Then get a load of the new Asus PA238Q. At around £235, it's pricier than your average 23-inch TN screen. But joy of joys, it's got an IPS panel.

IPS, of course, stands for 'In-Plane Switching' and it just so happens to be the finest panel technology known to man or beast. That's why Apple, for instance, uses IPS exclusively in its iPhones and iPads. It's simply the best when it comes to colour accuracy and viewing angles.

As it happens, colour accuracy is a big part of the remit for the Asus PA238Q. It's pitched as a low-cost screen for the graphics professional. However, Asus is also claiming 6ms response times, which is very impressive for an IPS screen and makes for a tantalising all-round package.

Could this affordable, colour-accurate screen also be killer in-game and at the movies? There's only one way to find out.

Read the full Asus PA238Q review

2. Asus VG278H

Price: £530
Panel type: TN Monitor

You know how it goes by now - a 3D monitor is a capable gaming screen that lacks colour quality of IPS panels and is slightly overpriced… Well this one's different. The reason? LightBoost.

This is Nvidia's big idea for improving 3D image quality. LightBoost is an extra layer that compensates for any dimness in the image, making it twice as bright as previous 3D screens. The shocker is that the LightBoost isn't a fancy gimmick and actually does make a big difference.

That's not this screen's only endearing feature – there's the height-adjustable bezel, a bundled pair of Nvidia 3D Vision 2 glasses and a 27-inch panel too.

We're impressed with the effort Asus has gone to with the VG278H's bezel. It's rare to get a height-adjustable panel outside of IPS screens. In our opinion, the panel surround looks a little cheap and flimsy for over £500.

The screen itself is an LED-backlit TN, and as a result it's image quality is a mixed bag. The screen suffered from gradient banding from white to black in our tests, displaying striped shades instead of smooth transitions. The viewing angle is also poor, and there's some significant colour distortion at wider angles.

Read the full Asus VG278H review

3. BenQ RL2240H

Price: £110
Panel type: TN Monitor

You're a gamer, you're on a tight budget and you need an LCD screen. Five years ago, we'd have pitied your predicament. Whatever you ended up with, it wasn't going to be pretty. Fast forward to today and this gaming-optimised 22-inch panel is yours for just £110. And it's full HD. Yippee.

That's right, a full HD screen from a proper brand for £100 and the cost of a packet of fags. Ish. Give it up for globalisation and preposterously low electronics prices – but we digress.

Cost and relatively modest screen diagonal aside, this BenQ also claims to improve your gaming prowess in RTS games. What you're actually getting is an operating mode with colours and contrast tweaked for the demands of RTS games.

If we're really honest, as with most preset modes, we probably wouldn't bother. The difference is marginal at best, and where it is noticeable, not unambiguously for the better.

Read the full BenQ RL2240H review

4. BenQ EW2730V

Price: £300
Panel type: VA Monitor

Fitness for purpose. More than anything, that's what this big BenQ delivers. It would be all too easy to immediately disregard it based on its humdrum 1,920 x 1,080 native resolution. After all, you can have precisely the same pixel grid for a little over £100.

Okay, at that price point, you'll be squeezing those pixels into a much smaller 22-inch LCD panel. But when it comes to apps and web surfing, it's pixel count not screen diagonal that really matters. You get no more viewable Windows desktop with this £300, 27-inch screen than you do from BenQ's £110 special offer 1080p (opposite). But what if it's games and movies above all else you want to your screen for?

In that scenario, the BenQ EW2730V might just be purpose personifi ed. For starters, BenQ has given it a glorious, luxurious VA or Vertical Alignment panel. That's not just any VA panel, but one from the very latest generation, complete with a claimed contrast performance of 3,000:1. Then there are 178° viewing angles in both planes; an LED backlight; a gorgeous looking chassis and stand replete with slithers of brushed alloy.

Read the full BenQ EW2730V review

5. Dell UltraSharp U2412M

Price: £275
Panel type: IPS Monitor

An affordable alternative to the daily drudgery of TN technology. Please tell us it's not too much to ask for, surely. Finally, mercifully it's becoming a reality. For proof, look no further than Dell's new UltraSharp U2412M.

At £275, it would be awfully pricey for a TN 24-inch, but it's still a lot cheaper than your typical premium IPS and PVA panel, which tend to slot in at around £400 to £600. And yet what we have here is a bona fide, card-carrying IPS panel.

Okay, it's e-IPS, the prefix indicating a new generation of lower-cost IPS screens, but it's IPS all the same. Cue much rejoicing.

Glance at the spec sheet and you'll discover that Dell has addressed another of our panel pecadillos. The U2412M sports a 1,920 x 1,200 pixel grid, and, therefore, a 16:10 aspect ratio. That might not sound like a big difference from the 1,920 x 1,080 native resolution that's become dominant in recent years – as after all, how much difference can those extra 120 vertical pixels really make?

Read the Dell UltraSharp U2412M full review

Best PC Monitor: reviews 6-9 and verdict

6. LG DM2350D

Price: £236
Panel type: IPS Monitor

A TV screen that does the lot – that's the plan for the new LG DM2350D Cinema 3D Monitor TV. It's a full HD PC monitor, it's also a digital TV with an integrated DVB tuner and IR remote, but the LG's real party piece is that it throws stereoscopic 3D into the mix. What's more, it all comes in a compact package that does a half decent impression of a miniature high-end HDTV.

If you're short on space and want style, you could do an awful lot worse. As a monitor for a desktop or portable PC, the LG is pretty much par for the course. It's a 23-inch panel with a full-HD 1,920 x 1,080 pixel grid. At this price point – and bearing in mind the built-in tuner and 3D support – it's no surprise to find that the underlying technology is TN.

That said, LG's latest effort is one of the better TN panels that we've seen. Part of the explanation is the use of an LED backlight. The result is richer, more saturated colours than you get with a TN panel powered by an old school CCFL lamp. Like most TN screens, pixel response is excellent, too, making this screen a great choice for keen gamers.

Read the full LG DM2350D review

7. Philips Brilliance 248C3LHSB

Price: £192
Panel type: TN Monitor

There's a parallel universe where we're all millionaires, our PCs are hooked up to 30-inch LED-powered beasts with 120Hz refresh. Life is pretty sweet.

Back in this universe, compromises must be made. Which is where the Philips Brilliance comes in. It's the solution, or so Philips hopes, to the following crucial conundrum: just how much screen can you get for under £200?

The real answer begins with 24-inches or more accurately 23.6-inches of corner to corner screen diagonal. Next up is 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. It's the full HD grid, then. Finally, and rather predictably, you get TN panel technology. More on that in a moment.

Because one thing you might not expect to get at this price point is a really classy chassis and stand. But that's precisely what Philips has come up with. Granted, the stand is limited to tilt-only adjustment. That aside, it's a remarkable high quality effort which leverages cast aluminium for the base and both looks and feels positively pukka.

Read the full Philips Brilliance 248C3LHSB review

8. Samsung 5 Series T27A550

Price: £325
Panel type: TN Monitor

Movies, games, PC and TV – can a single screen really deliver on each and every count? That's the challenge for the new Samsung Series 5 T27A550 HDTV monitor.

It's a 27-inch beast with an integrated digital TV tuner and enough inputs to soak up everything from desktop PCs to games consoles and set-top boxes. It's the total video solution.

That it's also priced at just £240; looks a little like a miniature high-end HDT; sports a full HD 1,920 x 1,080 pixel grid and comes complete with an IR remote just sweetens the deal. It's an awful lot of screen, features and technology for your money.

Of course, HDTV prices have been tumbling of late. A 32-inch HDTV can be had for under £250. Likewise, pretty much any HDTV with an HDMI port is capable of doubling as a monitor for a PC or a screen for gaming console and set-top box larks.

It's also worth noting that the panel itself is based on TN technology. At this price that's inevitable. But it's worth remembering that large, expensive HDTVs use more sophisticated VA or IPS technology.

Read the full Samsung 5 Series T27A550 review

9. Samsung 8 Series S27A850D

Price: £550
Panel type: PLS Monitor

We have a habit of relentlessly banging the TN-vs-the-rest drum. But we do it because we care. Both about technology and your very fine elves. Sorry, selves.

Samsung's all-new S27A850D has us at something of a disadvantage. Many of its on-paper specs are thoroughly familiar. A 27-inch diagonal and 2,560 x 1,440 native resolution puts it firmly in the premium, high resolution camp. Bung in a static contrast ratio of 1,000 to one and you might assume you're looking at yet another screen sporting LG's familiar 27-inch IPS panel. Yes, the same one used by Apple in its 27-inch iMac.

On the other hand, Samsung is one of the very small handful of outfits with the gumption to fabricate its own LCD panels. Manufacturing the substrates that form the basis of large, full-colour is a criminally complex and expensive process.

Consequently, around five to six companies make nearly all the LCD substrates worldwide. And that in turn means that Samsung in not normally in the business of buying in panels.

Read the full Samsung 8 Series S27A850D review

And the winner is... Asus PA238Q

Not enough real choice. Until very recently, that's been the problem with LCD panels. Almost everything remotely affordable had a TN panel and 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. But no longer.

This month's screen test includes all shapes and sizes, including the welcome return of the 16:10 aspect ratio and, critically, all manner of panel types, including an all-new technology from Samsung.

Prices at the high end are steep at £550, but there's some serious quality to be had from as little as £200. What's more, previously costly panel technology at more affordable prices has pushed decent TN monitors even lower. You can now get a very reasonable screen for little more than £100. On to the final reckoning.

Unlike previous screen group tests, there are no real stinkers this time round, but somebody has to come last and that dubious honour goes jointly to the Philips Brilliance 248C3LHSB and Samsung 5 Series T27A550.

The Philips is an expensive, plain ol' 24-inch TN panel that lacks DVI connectivity, which is a pain with AMD graphics cards. The Sammy 5 Series, meanwhile, packs a lot of features into its generous 27-inch, TN-powered proportions, including a TV tuner, but it doesn't do anything particularly well, and again, that missing DVI port could prove painful.

Another screen that does no real wrong is Asus's immense VG278H, but at well over £500, you're being asked to pay a big premium for that integrated Nvidia 3D Vision support.

Indeed, if stereoscopic 3D is your bag, we'd probably settle for LG's 23-inch DM2350D. It's smaller, and its polarised 3D technology doesn't work as well as Nvidia's active shutter solution. But it's well under half the price of the Asus and adds an integrated TV tuner.

Meanwhile, if you want to match the big Asus's screen diagonal but don't care for stereoscopic 3D, the BenQ EW2730V blows it away for raw image quality and will save you around £230.

Unexpected wins

Next up is Dell's UltraSharp U2412M. With so much going for it on paper, it was our favourite to come out on top. After all, an IPS panel, 16:10 aspect ratio and fully adjustable stand for under £300 are exactly what we've been begging for. It is good, but just not as brilliant as we'd been hoping for.

Which is pretty much the opposite of what we'd say for the BenQ RL2240H. At £110 our expectations weren't high, and let's be clear, in absolute terms there are many better screens here. But it's still a stunning effort for so little money and a sheer delight for anyone on a tight budget. It really is a most tolerable monitor.

Right at the opposite end of the scale is Samsung's epic S27A850D and its fancy new PLS panel tech. It's a fabulous screen that delivers the best elements of PVA and IPS technology in a single screen. It's got an understated but flexible and well-made chassis, too. And it'd be a winner save for a single flaw. At £550 it's simply too expensive.

All of which means our winner is the Asus PA238Q. How Asus can deliver such a screen at this price point is a mystery. The gorgeous IPS panel would be enough, but Asus has also conjured up a great chassis and factory colour calibration and kept the whole thing within spitting distance of £200. It's a simply stunning effort.

Valve: We'd consider making hardware

2012-05-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

Valve's Gabe Newell has hinted that the gaming giant will consider developing and selling its own hardware if it is the only way to innovate.

Valve's success with high-profile games and its Steam delivery system has been a big part in keeping PC gaming buoyant, but Newell appears frustrated with the lack of progress being made in hardware.

Speaking to Penny-Arcade, Newell confessed that the thought of making the kit that the company's games are played on has occurred.

If we have to

"Well, if we have to sell hardware we will," he said. "We have no reason to believe we're any good at it, it's more we think that we need to continue to have innovation and if the only way to get these kind of projects started is by us going and developing and selling the hardware directly then that's what we'll do.

"It's definitely not the first thought that crosses our mind; we'd rather hardware people that are good at manufacturing and distributing hardware do that.

"We think it's important enough that if that's what we end up having to do then that's what we end up having to do."

There are only a handful of gaming companies that could even allude to making hardware – but Valve is certainly among that group.

The prospect of Valve hardware appears remains small, but it's clear that a company that has kept the PC going as a gaming platform is keen not to get stuck behind ageing tech.

Opinion: Why there's never been a better time to buy a new PC monitor

2012-05-23T00:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a ridiculously long time coming, but affordable IPS screens for PCs have finally arrived. That makes right now perhaps the best time ever to upgrade that dusty old flat panel.

And we've Apple to thank for it.

Yup, I know that sounds ridiculous. I'd say both Apple's technological prowess and its overall influence are often overstated. And the relationship between Apple gadgets and PC screens seems pretty tenuous. But I'm convinced it's true.

Once I've explained it all, I reckon you'll agree.

It starts with Apple's shift in recent years to near-exclusive use of IPS panels in its iMacs, iPads and iPhones. IPS, of course is a sort of superior LCD technology. It delivers the best colours and viewing angles by far.

Apple doesn't just use IPS, is shouts about it. That matters because it wasn't very long ago that monitor makers wouldn't dream of putting IPS panels into their mainstream displays. I know this because I asked them and they told me. The problem, they said, is that punters aren't willing to pay even a small premium for a superior panel. The market was extremely price sensitive.

But now Apple is using IPS, punters have heard of it and think it's worth paying for. I doubt most of them really understand why. They just know Apple uses IPS, so it must be good.

The result is that LCD panel makers have tooled up for IPS in a big way. And that, somewhat ironically, means that IPS is actually cheaper than ever.

The best example here is the new AOC i2352vh. Ostensibly, it looks like any cheapo 23-inch monitor. The chassis feels flimsy, the tilt-only stand is even worse. It's the sort of screen you'd expect to see priced a little over £100 and sporting a washed out, substandard TN panel.

Except it cost a little bit more at around £135 and has a genuine, bona fide IPS panel. OK, it's very likely only a 6-bit, rather than 8-bit or 10-bit, IPS panel in terms of native colour depth. But it's still a lovely looking thing with great viewing angles and far, far better than the TN screens that normally dominate this price point.

A little further up the scale, Viewsonic has released a couple of affordable IPSers in the £160 to £200 region. The ViewSonic VP2365-LED is particularly nice.

OK, the DVI and VGA connectivity isn't exactly comprehensive. But it's got a proper, fully adjustable chassis and that gorgeous IPS panel. And not much else. Not tricks. No gimmicks. Just a great screen at a reasonable price.

My only real issue with it and other members of this newly affordable IPS army is that they all buy into the 1080p Full-HD thing. In truth, the extra vertical pixels of the 16:10 aspect 1,920 x 1,200 resolution suit PCs better than 16:9 and 1,920 x 1,080.

Moreover, TN technology has improved enormously of late. There are one or two TN screens that run IPS panels surprisingly close.

So, the absolutely ideal affordable PC monitor remains a little elusive. But things are still immeasurably better now than they were just 12 months ago.

Whether you're willing to doff your cap in Apple's direction or not, right now is simply a great time to pick up a new panel for your PC.

MWC 2012: Qualcomm announces new Snapdragon

2012-05-23T00:19:00.000-07:00

Qualcomm has shown off a brand new version of its Snapdragon S4 processor, with a 'Pro' version announced at MWC 2012 alongside displays of the latest LTE technology.

The chip giant's Snapdragon has become a familiar sight in mobile devices, and the company is keen to keep up momentum with the arrival of the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 Pro.

The processor includes the Adreno 320 GPU to support high res displays, new multimedia capabilities and the ability to tap directly into the computational capability of its GPU through new APIs like Open CL.

Pro version

"As a result of strong customer demand for Snapdragon S4 processors, we've added a new Pro version of MSM8960 to continue delivering the highest performing mobile processors in the industry," said Cristiano Amon, senior vice president of product management, Qualcomm.

"By delivering the S4 Pro processor in 2012, we are fulfilling our promise that Snapdragon processors will remain the industry's barometer for excellence in mobile computing while helping our customers bring the most innovative smartphones and tablets to market."

The S4 Pro version of MSM8960 is optimized for the most advanced operating systems, including the highly anticipated Windows 8 system.

Qualcomm is also showing off LTE broadcast at the show, which enables network operatios to adjust coverage and capacity dynamically, and its latest LTE chipsets that take advantage of HSPA+ release 10.

MWC 2012: Intel announces dual-core Atom for phones

2012-05-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

Intel has announced a major overhaul of its Medfield smartphone processor platform here at MWC 2012, adding two new Atom chips to its line-up.

The Atom Z series, which was unveiled at CES 2012, previously only featured the Z2460. That was a single-core chip based on the 32nm Penwell architecture famous for powering phones, tablets, low-cost PCs, netbooks and nettops.

The silicon giant has now added two more chips to its line-up, the dual-core Atom Z2580 and a low-cost Z2000, which is aimed at emerging markets.

Two-core hyperthreading

The Atom Z2580 features two cores that run at an improved 1.8GHz, but most importantly, has 4 hyperthreads, which act as virtual cores, enabling better performance when multitasking. While it's not a quad-core processor, hyperthreading enables the processor to split its power effectively, designating one thread to any given task.

Intel will hope that its hyperthreading capabilities can offset the gains made by Nvidia and ARM on the swathes of quad-core handsets that have been announced at this year's Mobile World Congress, such as the HTC One X and the Huawei Ascend D1, while delivering better battery life and power efficiencies.

Those power savings chiefly come thanks to the 32nm architecture, which enables the chip to run more efficiently than rivals using larger dies. With ARM Cortex A9, the chip at the heart of Tegra 3, running at 40nm, Intel-based handsets has the ability to make real gains in battery life, and still deliver top notch performance for media and games.

Aside from raw processing power, the Atom Z2580 has a dual-core graphics core clocked at 533MHz built into the Penwell SoC architecture, and 4G LTE.

Medfield's original single-core release raised questions about Intel's ability to compete, and the likes of Nvidia have been keen to shout that more cores equal more power. However, benchmarks of the original Z2480 processor have shown that not to be the case. Medfield's smart throttling of power, large dynamic range, and burst modes for intense work-loads revealed huge gains in terms of power efficiency and battery life.

Intel will be hoping that their dual-core update can retain the efficiencies of the original Medfield chip, and compete with the likes of Tegra 3 in terms of processing power.

The Z200 uncovered

The Z2580 has also been accompanied by a low-power Z2000, which should bring the technology of the original Atom Z Series to the developing market.

The Z2000 is essentially a hobbled version of the original Z2460, featuring a single-core 1GHz Atom processor, supporting a 300MHz graphics core, 720p playback and up to 8MP rear facing camera.

The sub-$200 market is a huge opportunity for Intel to make a serious play, in a space which is dominated by some pretty poor offerings. Most of the low-cost handsets by the likes of ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo use ARM 9 and ARM 11 chips, and the emergence of a 32nm Intel processor into this space could make a huge difference in terms of market share.

Intel hopes to have its new Z2580 and Z2000 Atom chips into smartphones by mid-2012.

Quantum computing a step closer to reality, says IBM

2012-05-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

IBM is set to announce major advances which it claims will take us a major step closer to actually seeing a working quantum computer.

All that could be set to change, with IBM's research arm set to announce how it has broken three records that take us ever closer to quantum computers.

Records

Quant-erm

So why do we care? Well, quantum computers could feasibly work on millions of computations at the same time, something that is fairly limited in even the most powerful current computers.

Updated: Hands on: Windows 8 review

2012-05-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

Windows 8: Getting started, ARM and x86

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview (here's the Windows 8 download) updates the look of the Developer Preview and adds a lot of new features and revamps a few old ones.

The round Start button is gone, the Metro-style Start screen remains and yes, you can only pick from nine colours and five patterns for the Start screen background.

But there's far more to the Consumer Preview user interface than the Start screen, and far more to Windows 8 than the user interface.

Running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

First of all, it's worth noting that the Consumer Preview is only for x86/64 PCs; there isn't an ARM version that you can download and try out, since there aren't any ARM devices that will run it.

Consumer Preview doesn't include the desktop Office apps that will be bundles with WOA either - and of course it runs all the x86 desktop apps that won't work on WOA.

Windows 8 on ARM: Steven Sinofsky speaks

You can still burn an ISO if you want, and the installer can also create a bootable USB stick so you can download Consumer Preview once and install it on multiple machines.

Windows 8: Metro interface

You can also pin libraries here as well as Explorer, but you have to do that from Explorer set to view the desktop rather than from within a library itself.

The improved touch gestures also make it far easier to work with. Swipe from the right edge of the screen and you get the redesigned charm bar; Search, Share, Start, Devices and Settings.

Swipe up from the bottom on the Start screen to get a quick link to the All Apps view, which is now neatly organised into program groups, arranged alphabetically.

As you drag a tile between two groups, when you position it between them a vertical grey bar appears to show that you're creating a new group to put it in.

That works with a mouse as well. Or you can use Alt-F4, just like with a desktop app.

Windows 8: Metro apps

The Photos app lets you explore your images whether they're on your PC or in online services like SkyDrive, Facebook and Flickr.

You can swipe through images, zoom out to see thumbnails, play a slide show or pick an image for the Lock screen but there aren't any editing tools. It's very simple, but the look is elegant (apart from the lurid yellow banner marking it as a preview app).

The Xbox Live Games app will look familiar to both Xbox and Windows Phone users; it has your avatar and those of your Xbox Live friends, your achievements on phone and Xbox games, the two games included in the Consumer Preview and adverts for the Windows and Xbox game marketplaces.

Windows 8 desktop

Popular and polished as Windows 7 is, there are irritations like Explorer jumping the view back as you explore deep nested folders and the intrusive language toolbar. The Windows 8 desktop addresses all of our complaints, but it also takes away the familiar Start menu. Does that make it hard to use, with or without touch?

There's no denying that this is a different way of working; press the Start key on your keyboard and yes, you get the Metro Start screen.

But if you roll your mouse into the familiar left-hand corner you get a thumbnail of the Start screen and you can roll up to get the list of Metro apps running as thumbnails (or use Win-tab), so you can jump directly to another running app without the disruption of the full-screen tile layout, or you can use Alt-Tab to switch between all running apps, Metro or desktop.

If there's a Metro app pinned at the side – which you can easily do by dragging the thumbnail that appears when you mouse into the top left corner – Alt-Tab respects that and switches the app in the pane you were working in last. Windows plus the '.' key swaps apps between the different window positions on screen at top speed. There are far more ways of switching between apps than before so you can pick the ones you prefer and ignore the others.

If you want quick access to desktop tools without going back to the Start screen at all, right-click in the very farthest point of the left-hand corner to get a handy menu with just about everything you could want: Search, Run, open Explorer, Task Manager or Control Panel, run tools like Disk Management, Device Manager, Event Viewer or Power Options.

You can also jump to the control panel settings for Network Connections, System or Programs and Features and open the command prompt, as admin or a normal user. Windows-X opens this and you can navigate it with the keyboard, so if you want the Event Viewer in a hurry and you haven't already pinned it to the task bar, press Windows-X E.

And there's still Windows-R to run any app directly. Frankly, this addresses any complaints we had about losing the old Start menu; there are neat and efficient ways to get to everything you want in the desktop without ever taking your hands off the desktop or having to see Metro.

The charm bar works far better in the desktop in Consumer Preview as well. Throw your mouse over in the corner and the charms ghost in, in case you didn't really want them; like the hints of app thumbnails in the switching pane, this hints at what you can do without getting in the way of working with windows and controls on the edge of the screen.

Start is there for systems with no hardware Windows button, Search is there for consistency but Devices and Settings both give you the desktop tools rather than the Metro ones. The Settings pane has icons for network connections, volume, screen brightness, switching language, turning popup notifications on and off plus Sleep, Shutdown and Restart.

There are links to Help, System Information, personalising the desktop and the full control panel at the top; if you want the friendly Metro PC settings, that's a link at the bottom. Compared to the jumble of ways you could navigate to key tools, control panels and utilities in Windows 7, this is a streamlined and efficient interface – and again, you never leave the desktop unless you want to.

That irritating language bar? Replaced by an option to switch language from the Settings charm (or you can use Windows-spacebar to flip between installed languages).

There are a couple of points where Windows 8 sacrifices convenience for improved security. If you have two accounts on one PC, even if they're both signed in, you have to unlock the PC with the account that was in use last – unlike Windows 7, there's no way to choose which of the accounts to log in with from the lock screen.

We predict this will be unpopular in multi-user households. Also, when you log into a Wi-Fi access point, instead of the dialog where you type in the wireless password showing what you type by default, Windows 8 hides the password and only reveals what you've typed when you press and hold the cryptic icon next to the field (which might or might not be an eye for visibility).

With touch, the desktop is a bit of a hybrid. You can use gestures at the sides of the screen for task switching and working with charms, and you can swipe to switch to Metro apps; you can even swipe down from the top of the screen and drag the thumbnail off screen to close the desktop like any other Metro app. You can also touch anything you'd click with a mouse.

This works extremely well with ribbon controls (and makes it initially annoying that Microsoft has bowed to complaints from people who've never used a ribbon interface with touch and made it minimised by default).

Smaller controls work surprisingly well too, because Microsoft has used machine learning to predict where you're really trying to tap for the desktop and built-in apps; we found this made touching tiny drop-downs and menu items in Office and third party applications accurately very easy as well (on a Samsung Slate 7 that has a good touch screen to start with).

It can get fiddly; multi-selecting files in Explorer didn't always give us all the files we wanted, but Windows 8 does an excellent job of making an interface that was never designed for touch work with your fingers.

Windows 8 desktop apps

Look around the desktop and you'll find all the built-in apps you expect; Paint, WordPad, Notepad (which doesn't have a ribbon), Windows Media Player and Media Center, Control Panel, Sticky Notes and so on. Explorer and Task Manager get most of a makeover.

The ribbon works well for exposing buried features in Explorer like extracting compressed files, selecting every file that isn't currently selected, opening a command prompt and doing things Explorer has let you do before in awkward ways you had to be an expert to remember.

It's also context sensitive; navigate up to the Computer level and you get options like uninstalling programs without having to delve into the Control Panel. The Up button makes a welcome return; maybe you shouldn't need it with the breadcrumbs but it's so handy so often, ignore the purists and enjoy the efficiency.

Task Manager is very similar to the version in the Developer Preview, with a clean layout that's packed with useful information, from historical data about which apps use the most bandwidth, to how much items in your Startup list slow Windows down. You can see what all the strangely named Windows services are actually doing, find out which IE window is which and – new in Consumer Preview - double-tap or click on the name of a running app to switch to it.

Desktop IE10 has the same improved browsing engine as Metro IE, but it also has plugins, toolbars and all the traditional extras of a desktop browser, which can look rather cluttered after the 'just the Web page' view in Metro.

Desktop IE has the usual Favourites bookmarks; these aren't the same as the Pinned sites you see in Metro IE, which means you can separate the sites you want to view in Metro from the ones you visit on the desktop. Frequently visited are shared between the two browsers.

Consumer Preview includes Media Player and the small but vocal fanbase of Media Center will be glad to see this in the preview too, although both look almost exactly as they do in Windows 7 except for the version numbers.

So far the only differences we've spotted, apart from both feeling slightly faster and more responsive, are that the Media Center screen saver of photos is set to start after ten minutes rather than fifteen and that the burn CD/DVD option no longer shows up under tasks on PCs with no optical drive.

Windows 8: Accounts and more

This will be much more important on WOA and SoC devices that have connected standby, as these are the apps that will get updates while the rest of the system is asleep.

Windows 8: Conclusion

The Consumer Preview is a huge improvement over the Developer Preview; it's more polished, more pleasant to use and has far fewer rough edges.

Performance is good, there are none of the frequent crashes we saw before and our initial testing suggests the battery life issues from Developer Preview have been fixed too.

The interface is far more usable, whether you have a touch screen or a mouse and you should quickly master the gestures for switching and closing apps.

This is the version of Windows 8 that will let you decide what you think of Windows 8 and if you approach it with an open mind, you may be surprised how usable Metro can be.

Windows 8 has to both deliver worthwhile improvements in the way you use your PC today – which it mostly does – and take a major leap forward for tablets and other upcoming PC form factors.

Until we see WOA tablets, it's going to be an open question how well Windows 8 can compete with the iPad.

Consumer Preview is far and away the most touch-friendly version of Windows ever (and it no longer treats mouse and keyboard users like second class citizens). That won't be enough but it's a very promising start.