Lenovo plans a Windows 8 Surface Competitor

Lenovo's upcoming Windows 8 tablet has been teased by the company several times and a mysterious source has leaked the specs of the device on the internet. The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet successor will be running Windows 8 and come with a pen stylus and an optional physical keyboard dock that is similar to Microsoft's Surface's one.

The heart of the machine will be a dual-core Intel Clover Trail processor that has access to 2GB of RAM. The screen is said to be a 10.1-inch WXGA touchscreen--WXGA is 1366x768. The device will sport 64GB of storage. Looking at the spec list, it's pretty clearly set to be an iPad competitor, but if that's not enough convincing, one of the leaked slides shows a comparison of the device with the iPad.

Looking at the chart entitled "Best in Class", the iPad clearly wins out in several categories such as screen resolution and voice control. However, Lenovo's tablet features stereo speakers, which trumps the iPad's mono system, and dual microphones, which offer digital noise reduction. The ThinkPad Tablet 2 measures 262.6 x 164 x 9.8mm and weighs 650g.

See techradar.tablet article…

Windows 8 Schedule

On August 1st Windows 8 was released for testing and production. That means that the new operating system has reached RTM status and that OEMs now have access to the OS and can start building with it.

These PCs won’t be available until the October 26th release date but at least we are moving closer. Upgrades will be offered for $39.99, or if you have recently purchased a Windows 7 PC, the upgrade will only cost you $14.99.

Various audiences will get access to Windows 8 RTM before the rest of us:

• August 15th: Developers will be able to download the final version of Windows 8 via your MSDN subscriptions.
• August 15th: IT professionals testing Windows 8 in organizations will be able to access the final version of Windows 8 through your TechNet subscriptions.
• August 16th: Customers with existing Microsoft Software Assurance for Windows will be able to download Windows 8 Enterprise edition through the Volume License Service Center (VLSC), allowing you to test, pilot and begin adopting Windows 8 Enterprise within your organization.
• August 16th: Microsoft Partner Network members will have access to Windows 8.
• August 20th: Microsoft Action Pack Providers (MAPS) receive access to Windows 8.
• September 1st: Volume License customers without Software Assurance will be able to purchase Windows 8 through Microsoft Volume License Resellers.

As of August 15, developers will have access to the final build of Visual Studio 2012, which will include resources they need to design, build, and sell apps in the Windows Store. We're just under 3 months away from seeing the final version of Microsoft's latest OS.

New Windows Photo Gallery and Movie Maker

Microsoft announced a new version of both the Windows Photo Gallery and Movie Maker for Windows 7 and Window 8. They have added a few new capabilities and are available for free from Windows Essentials 2012 (Web install).

For full details on this new release take a look at Windows Experience Blog.

If you look down through the Blog Comments you will see that there was some issues installing the update. You will need the newest version of .net and it isn’t part of the installation.

I have used Movie Maker in the past but I haven’t recently because it is a bit buggy and limited in features as compared to some of the simpler commercial programs that are out there like Adobe’s Premier Elements and Sony’s Vegas products.

Is the Samsung Galaxy Tab the Android Tablet Standard?

IDC stated that in Q2, 2012 the iPad was certainly the leader when it comes to the overall tablet market.. With 17 million iPads shipped during this period the next nearest competitive tablet was the Samsung Galaxy Tab that reached 2.4 million units during the same quarter. That means that iPads are outpacing its next nearest competitor by a ratio of greater than 7 to 1. Amazon shipped 1.2 million units in this same quarter. It will be interesting to see how the Nexus 7 fairs this quarter in the mix.

In the fourth quarter Microsoft is going to be jumping into the fray as well with their Windows Surface RT tablet and that is going to make it that much more interesting as well. The question is whether we are going to see that many more tablets being sold or whether one or another will start eating into each other’s sales.

What do you think?

Will Voice to Text and Voice Recognition be taking over all of your phone functions?

My use of voice to text recognition software goes in spurts.  I don't use it routinely just because I am very seldom in a quiet enough area to make a good environment for the voice to text recognition software work well.

On my Windows 7 machine I use the built in Windows 7 software for speech recognition.  It does pretty well, but I can't help but think that Dragon Naturally Speaking would do a much better job at this.  I sometimes use the Dragon app on my iPhone to create like texts that I send out.  But other than that, I don't use any of the boys search programs that are out there for my phone.

I have written a lot of blog posts using the voice to text technology on my iPad, and more recently on my new Nexus 7.  On the iPad am using the Dragon app to create a note that I eventually will paste into another application to post up to my blog.  The Nexus 7 has a very similar voice to text recognition application that you can use inside multiple applications on the device.  This makes it a little more usable then the dragon app.

New wants is the software manufacturer of the Dragon series of software packages, and they are in constant development of their software to place it on as many devices that they can.  We're starting to see it on some smart TV use and even in cars.  They are hoping to have their software power in every application that you use.

They're placing a new software development kit so all iOS and Android app developers can use the same voice recognition technology in any app. This might be exciting for some of us that there is a scarier side to this coming to fruition.  They are also hoping to combine actual voice ID’ing to financial applications to access banking and payment functions.  Think about one click purchasing at Amazon being processed totally by voice control.

What is frightening is the possible loss of control as someone overhearing, recording your voice, or some other IP capture system to be able to take advantage of this voice function on devices and within applications that could hurt you financially.  The question is do you want to open this Pandora's Box or not?  Think about it.

Lexmark Inkjet Printer Tips

This is from a recent email sent out by the Lexmark News Group on some suggestions on how to maintain the best quality printing from your Lexmark Inkjet Printer.

Don't get stuck troubleshooting print streaks, missing colors, or other print quality issues. Most of these printer problems are caused by clogs in ink cartridges, which form when ink dries inside the print head or ink nozzles. But if you keep your cartridges in good condition, your Lexmark printer will continue to run like a well-oiled machine. Here's a little advice that can help:

1. Do you use your printer regularly? Of course, you shouldn't just print for printing's sake, but when you naturally have print jobs to do, don't hold back! Printing black and color documents multiple times on most days will help to avoid print quality issues by keeping the ink flowing, so it doesn't dry out.

2. Use your printer less frequently? If your printer goes unused for lengthy periods of time with ink cartridges inside, your cartridge nozzles can dry out. This can affect your print quality or interfere with your printer's ability to do its job. When you're not planning on using your printer for a long period of time, remove your cartridges from the printer, place them in an airtight container and store them somewhere cool.

3. Regardless of your print habits, don't let your cartridges run completely out of ink. Just like you wouldn't let your car run on empty, you can't let your printer run until the very last drop of ink is used. Replace your cartridges just before you're running on fumes—your printer will alert you when it's time. This simple step will ensure that your printer continues to function properly.

Lexmark Pro5500

The Lexmark Pro5500 is a really solid business class inkjet printer. All our old preconceptions of the limitations of inkjet printers go out the window when looking at these new class of inkjet printers. Priced at $399 the Pro5500 is fast and inexpensive to operate. This is a multifunction printer with Print, Scan, Copy and Fax functions that is network ready with wireless AirPrint capabilities.

Features:

• Legal-sized Flatbed Scanner
• 4.3” touch screen with SmartSolutions
• Fast laser-quality printing: 21/14 ipm
• 300 sheet tray
• Optional 550 sheet tray takes the paper input capacity to 850 sheet total
• Automatic duplex printing up to legal size
• After market High Yield cartridges provide 2500 b/w 1600 color pages per cartridge
• Business class fax with duplex and backup memory (up to 900 pages)
• Network Ready: Ethernet & Wireless N
• 50 Sheet ADF with single pass duplex scan
• Front USB port & media card reader
• Solid and reliable- 30k page duty cycle
• Cost per page: 1.5/7.9 cents BW/Color

I have one of the earlier Pro901’s but I really want to replace it with this one. Just the duplex scanning feature alone makes it worthwhile as well as the AirPrint capability. Take a look at the demo video below.

Google–Free 100GB Cloud Storage for new Chromebook Purchasers

This is not official but you may have incentive to buy a new Chromebook or Chromebox here shortly. According to reports from several sources there is code in the Chromium open source operating system hinting at this.

Reported by:

Google+ user François Beaufort spotted the promo within the Chromium Code review site. Looking at the code, you’ll notice several mentions of an “alternative GDrive promo” and, within one JavaScript file there is welcome text that says “Get 100 GB free with Google Drive.”

The Chromium code may tell the tale.

100GB on Google’s online storage service would normally cost $4.99 per month, so it’s a savings of about $60 a year for Chromebook and Chromebox owners.

This may not be much of an incentive for some people give the small difference in cost between a Chromebook pc and an entry level Windows based notebook.

Cubby Update…

I received my Cubby invitation today so I loaded it up on my office workstation. I then immediately installed both the Android and IOS versions on my tablets. Just like that I had instant access to the published My Cubby folder. On your desktop you will click on your Cubby program icon and the dialog box that you see on the right will pop up. The wrench at the top of the screen will bring up a new dialog box that shows you your account, allows you to control notifications, and whether you want to start Cubby at startup. It also lets you setup a proxy server if you need to and provides an information screen on the version and links to terms and cubby.com.

You get 5GB’s of space to start with. At the bottom of the initial dialog screen you are shown the current used and available space on your account. If you run your cursor over this area a quick info box appears showing you total cloud capacity, file space used, archive space used and free space available for more storage.

When you add a new folder that you want to share from your machine its location doesn’t move it is just given access to the Cubby application. You can add a folder in a couple of ways. You can drag a folder from an explorer window onto the Dialog Box. You can also right mouse click on the folder in the explorer window and then choose Make this a Cubby Folder.

Once you have chosen a folder to be included as a Cubby Share folder, you can do several things to it. Hover over the folder and you will see 4 icons show up beside the folder. The screen icon gives you control of what devices will sync to the folder you are highlighting. The second icon represents invitations you can send out through email to individuals to share access to the folder. The third icon that appears as a chain (link) allows you to create a public link that you can share from a website, email or other method. The last icon is an “x” and by choosing this option you will delete the link to the folder. Very simple and very straight forward.

I am going to try this out for a couple of weeks. I will report back as to whether I find in more useful than Dropbox or not.