It’s not the launch announcement that we were hoping for but at least Microsoft are being public about progress on their touch-focused Office for Modern applications. At the opening keynote today we saw a demonstration of progress, and it looks good.  

At the opening keynote of the BUILD developer conference in San Francisco today Microsoft announced something that will completely change the way application development is approached for Windows 8 Phone and Windows 8. Windows Runtime is now going to be supported across both Phone and Modern to allow cross-platform development. Visual Basic tools have been updated to support the new cross-device development mode. Update: Universal apps coming to Xbox. The Windows dev economy just tipped!  

I’d like to highlight this very interesting presentation given at IDF Shenzen because it covers all the important elements that USB3.1 is going to bring to PCs. It’s not just about the Type-C reversible connector because it includes power delivery, higher speed and an AV class of connectivity.

We’re focusing on mobile PC solutions here at ‘Ultra Mobile PC Portal’ but always have a quiet eye on the emerging and complex areas of Internet of Things, In-Vehicle-Infotainment as well as areas that affect UMPCs such as USB3.1, WiDi and Thunderbolt. A number of detailed and revealing PDFs are now available from the Intel IDF Shenzen content catalogue that I would recommend you download and glance through if you’re working in any of these areas. Here’s a list of PDFs available now. The list will update tomorrow with day […]

The Internet of Things (IoT) is not something we really cover here because most of the hardware you’ll find is headless – that is it doesn’t have any way to drive a screen. Take the Intel Edison board for example; It’s tiny, but runs using Intel Quark which doesn’t have a GPU. That’s not much good for display-oriented personal computing. The Minnowboard Max, however, runs an Atom (latest generation Baytrail-I series) E3815 single core at 1.46Ghz or (for dual-core 1.33 Ghz operation) the Atom E3825. Both have a GPU and […]

Following recent hints that new versions of the Baytrail-M processors would be launched Intel have confirmed by publishing details of the new student-focused platform ahead of IDF. It’s called BTS’14 and it’s aimed at lowering the cost of Android and Windows tablet and 2-in-1 products. A number of Pentium N3000 CPUs will be launched which include improved CPU and GPU frequency over previous Baytrail-M parts and support for Intel Quick Sync, the hardware video encoder usable through the Intel Media SDK. A set of Celeron N2000-series CPUs will also feature […]

32GB SSDs are popular on some of the lower-cost Windows 8 tablets and 2-in-1’s and the new wave of $200-$250 netbooks and laptops but after the operating system is installed and the device is updated that 32GB partition can leave just 10GB free. As time goes by, increasing storage usage will eventually leave you with an unusable Windows 8 PC. To make that space more manageable there are things you can do to increase the capacity and to reduce the rate at which that space is used. Please also note […]