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Microsoft Raises Office Price
Microsoft has quietly increased prices of Office for the Mac as much as 17% and stopped selling multi-license packages of the application suite.
The move puts Office for Mac 2011 on the same pricing schedule as the new Office 2013 for Windows. The price increases and the disappearance of the multi-license bundles also makes Microsoft’s Office 365, a software-by-subscription deal the company has aggressively pushed, more competitive with traditional “perpetual” licenses.
It’s not clear when Microsoft raised prices. The oldest search engine cache Computerworld found with the new prices was Feb. 2, so the company boosted them before then, likely on Jan. 29, the day it launched Office 2013 and Office 365 Home Premium. Microsoft did not mention the changes to Office for Mac in its press releases that day, or otherwise publicize the move on its Mac-specific website.
The single-license Office for Mac Home & Student now costs $140, a 17% increase from the previous price of $120. Office for Mac Home & Business, an edition that adds the Outlook email client to Home & Student’s Excel, PowerPoint and Word, runs $220, or 10% higher than the older $200 price.
The new prices are identical to those of Office 2013 for Windows, as are the percentage increases.
Buyers can still find Office for Mac 2011 at the older, lower prices, however. Although Microsoft has boosted prices on its online store — as has Apple’s e-store, which also sells the suite — other retailers have not yet joined them.
MSI Shows Off Lightning
MSI’s Geforce GTX 680 Lightning-L graphics card has showed up in Japan and it is possible that we will it in other markets as well.
Apparently not much has been changed compared to the original GTX 680 Lightning, as the PCB and feature set look about the same. The only thing that is different are the clocks. Set at 1019MHz and 1084MHz for base and boost GPU, they are somewhat lower. For comparison, the original GTX 680 Lightning worked at 1100MHz for base and 1176MHz for Boost GPU clock.
The new Lightning is still cooled by MSI’s Twin Frozr IV GPU and it comes with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6008MHz. With the same feature set it is expected that this SKU will have a rather decent amount of overclocking headroom as well, depending on the GPU below the cooler, of course.
Although it has not been officially launched, we will surely keep an eye out for it in other markets as well.
Will Intel Drop Itanium?
Intel has scaled back plans for its next Itanium chip, prompting observers the question Intel’s commitment to the chip.Intel said the next version of Itanium, codenamed Kittson, will be a 32nm part. It will not migrate to a more advanced process. The new chips will use the same socket as the existing Itanium 9300 and 9500 chips.
Analyst Nathan Brookwood said the move is Intel’s idea of an exit strategy.
“It may very well be that Itanium’s time has come and gone,” he said.
Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds told Computerworld that Itanium might see a new process in the future, if it proves successful enough to make the investment worthwhile. However, he does not expect any more major updates to the architecture.
Itanium launched in 2001 and it quickly became a running joke in the industry. It never achieved the volumes expected by Intel and AMD seized the opportunity to take on Intel with 64-bit Opterons. However, Itanium soldiered on for years, although many vendors stopped developing software for the chip.
Apple Squashes Rumors
February 21, 2013 by admin
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Apple will not develop a new, inexpensive iPhone just for the sake of offering a cheaper alternative, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a speech on Tuesday.
The company’s focus is on creating great products, and it will not make a smartphone that does not past the quality test, Cook said during a webcast from the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference, which is being held in San Francisco.
“There are other companies that do that, that’s not who we are,” Cook said. “Our North Star is great products.”
Instead, the company is now dropping prices on the older iPhone models. That has been successful, and the demand for iPhone 4 models in December was greater than supply, Cook said.
“It surprised us as to the level of demand we have for it,” Cook said.
Lowering the price on older models is just one of the approaches Apple is taking to reach out to price-sensitive buyers. It’s not easy to balance quality and price, and that’s when innovation comes into play and new products could be created to meet consumer demand, Cook said.
“Sometimes you can take the issue … and you can solve it in different ways,” Cook said.
For example, the first iPod that shipped in 2001 was priced at $399, and now users can buy an iPod Shuffle for $49. There was also a big demand in the past to drop the price of Macs to under $500, and Apple tried and couldn’t do it, so it created the iPad tablet.
MS Surface Pro Sells Out
Microsoft started selling its Surface Pro tablet last Saturday, and quickly ran out of its supply of the 128GB configuration.
While the less expensive 64GB device was also listed as out of stock Saturday on Microsoft’s online store, by Sunday it was again available.
The company acknowledged the outages.
“We’re working with our retail partners who are currently out of stock of the 128GB Surface Pro to replenish supplies as quickly as possible,” said Panos Panay, general manager for Microsoft’s Surface line, in a Saturday blog post. “Our priority is to ensure that every customer gets their new Surface Pro as soon as possible.”
Numerous online reports noted the shortages, saying that some Microsoft retail stores sported Apple-esque lines on Saturday and that many Best Buy and Staples locations — Microsoft’s retail partners for the Surface in the U.S. — had single-digit supplies that in some cases were claimed earlier in the week.
Microsoft is selling the Surface Pro in the U.S. through its online e-mart, its approximately 70 retail outlets, and the Best Buy and Staples chains.
The device, which runs Windows 8 and is powered by an Intel processor, sells for $899 in a 64GB storage configuration, and for $999 with 128GB. Keyboard-cover accessories — the Touch Cover and Type Cover — sell separately for $120 and $130, respectively.
AMD Delays Cards
While some people are packing in smoking, AMD thinks it is a good idea to pack in releasing new graphics cards, at least for a year or so.
AMD marketing manager Robert Hallock told Megagames that the company has no intentions to release Radeon HD 8000 series cards for the foreseeable future.
“The HD 7000 Series will remain our primary focus for quite some time,” he said.
When pressed he said that AMD and its partners are happy with the HD 7000 Series, and it will continue to be its emphasis in the channel for the foreseeable future. There had been some rumours that an HD 8000 Series was being developed. However AMD has never confirmed it and so far there has been no proof that any were ready to show up.
Hallock’s comments lend credibility to rumours that the HD 8000 family won’t be out before Q4 2013.
Will SSDs Make HD’s Obsolete?
HD makers can expect to see revenues decline as demand for traditional disk drives falls, according to IHS Isuppli.
Hard drive manufacturers Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba have carved up most of the market, lowering warranties and keeping prices high after the Thai floods in 2011 that shuttered several factories. Now IHS Isuppli claims that the good times have come to an end, with industry revenues expected to drop by 11.8 percent in 2013 and 2014 not expected to show signs of improvement.
While Seagate and Western Digital gouged consumers by keeping prices artificially high even after production recovered to pre-flood levels, solid-state disk (SSD) drive makers aggressively brought prices down. Intel has also been pushing SSDs as part of its ultrabook specification and with Windows 8 tablets using SSDs, the long term prospects for hard drive makers are not looking good.
Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS Isuppli said, “The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013. Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favour smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs. However, HDDs will continue to be the dominant form of storage this year, especially as demand for ultrabooks picks up and hard drives remain essential in business computing.”
IHS Isuppli said Western Digital could overtake Seagate to become the market share leader by the end of 2013, and said that hard drives will see greater use in the enterprise market in cloud and big data use cases.
HP Looks Beyond Windows
Hewlett-Packard has announced the availability of its latest Pavilion laptop with Google’s Chrome OS as the PC maker attempts to improve laptop sales by offering an alternative to the Windows OS.
The Pavilion 14 Chromebook has a 14-inch screen and runs on a dual-core Intel processor. The laptop is roughly 21 millimeters thick, and weighs 1.8 kilograms. It offers just over four hours of battery life, said David Conrad, director for product management at HP’s consumer products group.
The laptop is expected to ship on Monday in the U.S. starting at $329.99. The company did not immediately provide worldwide availability information.
HP wanted to widen its product offerings and the new Chromebook is targeted at those who do most of their computing on the Web, Conrad said.
“It’s really about choice. We have a very wide offering,” Conrad said. “We think the time is right for an additional choice for people to have a gateway to their Google digital lifestyle.”
The laptop has only 16GB of solid-state drive storage, but will offer 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years.
The Chromebook has the same design as HP’s other PC offerings, which mostly run on Windows and have standard-capacity hard drives. But, with a lot of data moving to the cloud, the Chromebook provides a different usage model.
“We see this as another device to be used around the house. It’s easily managed,” Conrad said.
Developers Gaining Interest In WP8
February 11, 2013 by admin
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Developers are becoming increasingly interested in developing apps for Windows Phone and BlackBerry 10.
According to ABI Research, Android and iOS remain dominant platforms, with Android in the lead in the smartphone space and iOS dominating the tablet market.
However, developers are also focusing on Windows Phone and BB10. AI analyst Aapo Markkanen believes 45 million Windows Phone devices will be in use by the end of the year, along with up to 20 million BB10 devices. Redmond will also have 5.5 million Windows powered tablet by the end of the year.
AMD Releases Vishera
Although it was detailed back in August last year, AMD has just now officially released its new “affordable” Vishera based FX-4130 quad-core socket AM3+ CPU.
The new CPU is part of AMD’s 4100-series and is based on Vishera core design with four Piledriver cores. It works at 3.8GHz base clock and can “turbo” up to 3.9GHz. It packs 4MB of L2 and 4MB of L3 cache and has a 125W TDP.
According to the slide over at Xbitlabs.com, the FX-4130 replaces the FX-4100 with the same US $101 price but should provide between 3 and 9 percent more performance.
As things get better with Globalfoundries and their 32nm process technology, AMD is expected to introduce new models based on cut-down versions of Vishera, according to the report.