Monday, January 7, 2013

Window 8 Upgrade is going up by Jan 31st. We suggest you hurry now!

Microsoft's Windows 8 Pro upgrade discount will expire in about three weeks, at which point the company will triple or even quintuple the current price of the new operating system, according to several online retailers.On Friday, Microsoft reminded customers that a different upgrade deal will expire Jan. 31 -- one that lets purchasers of new Windows 7 PCs acquire Windows 8 Pro for $14.99 -- but made no mention of the same deadline for an upgrade from Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 on older PCs. That discount, also set to end Jan. 31, prices a download upgrade to Windows 8 Pro at $39.99, or $69.99 for a DVD.
Microsoft announced both deals in mid-2012, and began selling the upgrades in October when Windows 8 debuted in retail. According to online retailers, including Amazon, Newegg and TigerDirect, the DVD-based Windows 8 Pro upgrade carries a suggested list price of $199.99, or nearly triple the now-discounted price of $69.99.Although Microsoft has repeatedly declined to comment on post-January pricing plans for Windows 8 Pro, its past pricing practices sync with the $199.99 list price: An upgrade to Windows 7 Professional, analogous to Windows 8 Pro, has always been priced at $199.99. Microsoft's e-store currently lists it at that price.
It's unknown whether Microsoft will continue to sell Windows 8 Pro as a download after the discount expires, and if it does, at what cost. If the price of a download is identical to the boxed copy -- Microsoft has priced downloads and DVDs identically in the past -- then the OS price will jump five-fold on Feb. 1. So advise you go ahead and do your upgrade today!... Culled from PCadvisor.


A new season of launch as HP and LG launches Ultra HD TVs, Nvidia plans cloud gaming..‏


It's pretty clear HP is all about monitors at this year's CES -- in fact, that's pretty much all it announced, with the exception of a couple laptops. All told, we've detailed 10 models here, and that's not even counting that USB-powered one we wrote up in a separate post. You can find all the gory details after the break, because we're assuming you don't want Engadget's home page taken up by paragraphs on resolution, contrast ratio and brightness ratings. (Or do you?) For those of you who just plan on skimming, all you really need to know is that the displays range in size from 20 to 27 inches, and cost anywhere from $130 to $500. And some of them, like the one pictured above, are damn gorgeous. Meet us past the break where we'll break down all the particulars.


The NVIDIA Grid, a card used for cloud computing across PCs, smart TVs, and smartphones. CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang detailed the new card on-stage, which you can see above in a rack of 20 grid servers. Huang says the rack pushes out roughly 240 NVIDIA GPUs worth of power, or about 200 teraflops -- equivalent to approximately 700 Xbox 360s. The Grid was given a tease earlier this year; the card will assist in pushing serious horsepower to the cloud, so that gaming over the air, across multiple devices becomes a less complicated reality.
During an on-stage demonstration, NVIDIA showed Frozenbyte's Trine running on various devices, all powered by the Grid system. Beyond just looking great, it carried over seamlessly between multiple devices. Huang also detailed NVIDIA's first partners for Grid: Agawi, Cloudunion, Cyber Cloud, G-cluster, Playcast, and Ubitus. Apparently biggies like OnLive and Gaikai are already all set?.