Tag Archives: microsoft

Why Microsoft May Want the Netbook to Exit

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Microsoft thinks it might be. In reporting record revenues, the software giant buried this nugget: netbooks represented 8 percent of the company’s PC sales a yr ago. Now, it’s down to 2 percent.

That casts a dim light on Microsoft’s Windows 7 Starter Edition, the low-cost version of Windows 7 that effectively defeated expire the Linux-based netbook. But isn’t it in Microsoft’s best interest to see the netbook fade away, regardless?

Patrick Moorhead, a former corporate fellow with AMD and directly master at Moor Insights and Strategy, has watched the traditional netbook an Atom-based, small-form-factor notebook that costs nigh $399 disappear from store shelves. Netbooks receive been relegated to Best Buy’s online shelves, for example, while higher-margin, recurring-revenue productions alike smartphones dominate its floors. Desktops are a thing of the past.

You could forgive Moorhead for thinking that the AMD Brazos platform, combined with a 10.6-inch screen and a good keyboard “crushed” the netbook market. Only what’s make is that consumers loved the cost point, simply wanted more for their money.

“In the end, and I get been very realize on this since daylight one, is that netbooks are just inexpensive notebooks that went popular,” Moorhead said. “They became replaced by higher-quality notebooks that were fulfilled by a selfsame similar cost and situation in the market.”

According to Moorhead, the next of the netbook isn’t the tablet, as Acer seemed to imply with its decision to throw its lid into the tablet market last year. Instead, the next is something similar the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, which oscillates between a tablet and a notebook, depending on whether it’s in a docked or undocked configuration.

Microsoft’s Pedestrian Navigation Patent Dubbed Avoid Ghetto

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It’s “pedestrian route production,” not the “avoid ghetto” toggle, just diverse pundits experience already miscategorized Microsoft’s latest patent for a lineament that would countenance Windows Phones to produce more user-friendly route navigation for those on foot.

So where does the “ghetto” part arrived into play? Presumably, decently in the first business of Microsoft’s description of patent No. 8,090,532: “As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties could be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighbourhood or being in an open area that is field to harsh temperatures.”

The fix, suggests Microsoft, is to mix an assessment of a user’s behaviors with the user’s upcoming tasks and some relevant external data sets. For example, Microsoft’s mobile route-generation organisation could “learn” that a user leaves form at 5 p.m. each daylight and questions to a park placement home. Since the system’s pedestrian-focused, it could aim a path that a vehicle couldn’t navigate to give the user the quickest possible walkway home.

“In addition, unexpected results can accept berth through exercise of the exposed innovation,” reads Microsoft’s patent. “As an illustration, a pedestrian could arrive at a placement faster than if she traveled in a vehicle by taking more direct paths, however a vehicle normally travels much faster. Due to detailed path planning, a direction posed may exist made that allows a user to take more diverse paths that could compensate for a general miss of speed.”

But that’s not all. The organization could too have a user’s chronicle into account (“paths previously needed by a user, available paths, user experiences upon the paths, etc.”) as well as any potential stops that might otherwise alter a user’s normal itinerary on a given day alike a calendar appointment that would pull a user to closure somewhere subsequently form on the style home, for example.

As for the “avoid ghetto” bit, Microsoft also indicates that its pedestrian path navigation organisation could accept database info into chronicle when planning one’s walking route, which could include weather information, crime statistics, and demographic information. Merely the specific crime statistics or demographics that Microsoft’s system might consider, and what the threshold might be that would deem a route55555 “unsafe” by the system, wasn’t specified.

The crux of Microsoft’s patent is that it wants to build a real-time navigational system that gives users the best possible walkway home, applying a combination of a walker’s preferences, third-party data, and the specific choices a mortal makes during the paseo itself (like the benefits of switching to public transit mid-way, for example). The “avoid ghetto” label is a act of a misnomer; Microsoft looks to want its users to be able to avoid any and all transit headaches.

Windows 8 Promise Fewer Annoying Restarts

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Windows has a bothersome habit of interrupting users and asking them to shut down their PCs thus that an update may exist installed. That will pass less ofttimes in Windows 8 equally a effect of changes Microsoft is building into the operating system, a fellowship official said.

Windows 8 “will make restarts less annoying,” enounced Farzana Rahman, group programme manager for Windows Update, in a blog post. “The challenge we faced was to discover the residuum between updating with swiftness and bountiful observe to the user for upcoming restarts.”
Windows 7, the current version of Microsoft’s PC OS, gives users a bit of options when it comes to update notification and installation. Users may select to have updates installed automatically, they can opt for notification when an update is available, and they could choose to exist notified alone before an update is installed.

Those who take to receive updates installed automatically may1111111 elect to get the update hap at a predetermine time, or they may4444444 opt to get it installed as presently equally it’s available.