Google has added a Do Not Track privacy option to Chrome's developer channel, though it's late to the party compared to other browsers.

When Do Not Track is enabled in a browser, it signals to Websites and to advertisers that the user doesn't want to be followed around the Web for ad targeting purposes. Ad networks and sites aren't required to comply, butseveral of them do, and the U.S. government is now pressuring more companies to play along, including Google.

Hence Do Not Track in Google Chrome. Google spokesman Rob Shilkin specifically called out the company's pact with the White House as its reason for adding the feature in the Chromium developer channel in a statement to All Things Digital. Do Not Track should be available in the stable version of Chrome by the end of the year, he said.

Google will be the last of the major browser makers to add a Do Not Track option, which is already available in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Third-party Do not Track browser tools are available as well.

Broad participation may seem like good news, but Do Not Track is still controversial. Because the setting doesn't guarantee privacy across all Websites, it could give users a false sense of security, and the seediest advertisers may never participate.

Do Not Track also treads on thin ice among advertisers who do participate. They're hoping that even if the tool is widely available, most people won't bother to enable it. Microsoft's recent decision to make Do Not Track the default setting for Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 jeopardizes that idea. The developers of Apache Web server have already said they'll ignore IE10's Do Not Track settings as a result.

Still, an anti-tracking standard across all browsers seems like a good foundation for improving users' privacy options on the Web. It's good that Google has joined in, even if it was under government pressure.

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Lenovo, keeper of the venerated ThinkPad brand, was one of the first Windows laptop makers to directly take on Apple's MacBook Air, with its 13-inch ThinkPad X1. This was before Intel had begun publicly branding thin laptops with its trademarked ultrabook tag, and the rules for this new class of thin laptops were still in flux. We called that original X1 "an appealing middle ground for business road warriors," but also said, "It's not as sleek or as light as a MacBook Air -- not by a long shot."

Lenovo's ultrathin ThinkPad is reborn as a 14-inch ultrabook, the X1 Carbon. When we first spotted the X1 Carbon at a Lenovo press event earlier in 2012, I thought it might not depart enough from the original. The name was nearly the same (not even called the "X2"), and it looked a bit thinner, but not all that much evolved from last year's X1.

Getting an opportunity to test and review the final version of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon makes a big difference. Lenovo previously stated that it would be the world's lightest 14-inch laptop at 3 pounds, and in the hand, you can definitely feel it. This is clearly a premium product, thanks to the light weight and the carbon fiber lid.

The components are standard, with a third-gen Intel Core i5 CPU, integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics, and a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD). That's a fairly standard loadout, and available in some very affordable laptops. But no one would describe the X1 Carbon as affordable. It starts at $1,399, and our review configuration is $1,499 (with a mobile broadband modem). More expensive builds, with faster processors and a 256GB SSD, cost up to $1,849.

Of course, you get a lot of extra features that may help justify the higher price: Lenovo's industry-leading keyboard, a revamped glass touch pad that works better than any Windows touch pad I've tried, a suite of Lenovo-branded security and support apps, and IT-department-friendly features like Intel's vPro technology. On the down side, battery life, an area Lenovo normally does very well in, was merely adequate, at a just over 5 hours.

Even though this is still a business-targeted ThinkPad, it's also one of the most satisfying ultrabook laptops I've used this year. It's expensive, especially compared to much of the ultrabook competition, and has a handful of quirks, but if you're willing to make a sizable investment, it's the ultrathin 14-inch ultrabook to beat. 

Processor                 Intel Core i5-3427U
Memory                4GB, 1333MHz DDR3
Hard drive                      128GB SSD
Chipset                          Intel HM77
Graphics                       Intel HD4000
Operating System          Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Design and features
While the design is familiar, the X1 Carbon is much thinner than the original X1, and the front tapers to a sharper edge. The top cover is made of carbon fiber, typically found in only the most expensive laptops, as is the system's internal roll cage, a stiff latticework that protects the laptop but adds minimal extra weight. The matte-black look is universal enough that I doubt it'll ever look truly dated, but there's also not much forward-thinking about the aesthetics, either, considering PC makers (plus Apple) have been churning out ultrathin systems for some time. It's the weight that really sells the design. On the table, it looks like a standard, very thin 14-inch laptop, but pick it up, and it feels surprisingly light. Despite having a bigger screen and bigger footprint, it weighs just about the same as a 13-inch MacBook Air. The keyboard retains the modified island-style keys used in the first X1, a look that comes from Lenovo's consumer line and that is slowly making its way into ThinkPad models as well. It's also backlit, which is a feature every travel-oriented laptop should have. As with other island-style Lenovo keyboards, the individual keys have a slightly convex curve at the bottom. I've found that bit of extra surface area makes typing easier, and mistakes less frequent. Lenovo refers to the shape created by the keys and the space between them as the "forgiveness zone." Many thin laptops have shallow, clacky keys that are better than typing on something like the iPad's virtual keyboard, but often not by much. Even on this slim chassis, the keys have excellent depth and solid, tactile feedback.  The touch pad is a bit of a departure from the usual Lenovo style. Instead of a touch pad with separate left and right mouse buttons below, it's a one-piece click pad with a glass surface, similar to what you'd get on a MacBook or Dell XPS. Lest you think we're going too far off the beaten track, there is still a second set of mouse buttons above it, and a traditional Lenovo ThinkPad trackpoint nestled between the G, H, and B keys. The slick glass surface is a welcome change from the normal sluggish feel of so many Windows touch pads, and the overall feel of navigation and multitouch gestures is much more responsive than the norm. Many touch pads have a matte finish, with varying degrees of finger drag, but the glass surface here is surprisingly slick and friction-free. A separate touch-pad settings menu, called UltraNav, allows you to tweak the behavior slightly, including adding a trackball-like momentum feature (which just made mousing very imprecise), and designating one corner as a tap-to-right-click zone (as opposed to having to push down on the lower right corner). I didn't see the touch-pad option I wanted most, which was to use a two-finger tap anywhere on the pad as a right click (as found in OS X), but you can set a two-finger click to do that. The display is excellent, with a matte finish on the 14-inch, 1,600x900-pixel-resolution screen. I've seen more high-end laptops lately add a full HD 1,920x1,080 screen. On a 15-inch system, it works, but on a 13-inch it's too much, making text and icons too small. On a 14-inch, you could go either way, but I'd lean toward 1,600x900, as seen here, as the sweet spot. The screen is bright and colorful, despite the lack of a glossy coating. My colleagues and I almost universally prefer matte screens, and are generally disappointed to only find them in business-targeted laptops. You may never use this feature, but it's interesting to note that the screen folds nearly 180 degrees back, lying almost flat. There have not been many times I've wished my laptop would open wider, but I suppose there have been a handful. The Lenovo X1 Carbon's speakers get surprisingly loud, and a Dolby Home Theater v4 software package lets you tweak the EQ and other sound settings a bit. But it's still not going to turn this into the sound system for your next house party. Besides, people don't buy ThinkPads for their great speakers -- but they do buy them for the microphone and Webcam, as used in videoconferencing. Using the handy built-in videoconferencing app, you can set the mic's pickup pattern, turn on face tracking on the camera, and even send an image of your desktop as your outgoing video feed.
Connections and configurations
This is a business laptop, at least on paper, so some consumer-friendly features, such as the HDMI port, get jettisoned. Somewhat surprisingly, Ethernet gets downgraded to a USB dongle as well. While nearly every other current laptop offers two or more USB 3.0 ports, the X1 has one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0. A handy "airplane mode" switch on the left edge turns off all the system's radios if needed.

 These are all on the expensive side, especially considering that all use Intel's integrated HD 4000 graphics. Another point worth noting, on our review model with its 128GB SSD, the system only had about 50GB of free space left, after accounting for the operating system, Lenovo's custom apps, and a backup partition.

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If every computer had antivirus software running, life would be tough for bot herders and cyber crooks. Their ability to orchestrate spam campaigns and denial of service attacks relies on a plentiful supply of unprotected computers. Windows 8 will put the squeeze on those creeps. It has antivirus protection built right in, enabled by default if no other antivirus is present. But the new security features at the very deepest level may be even more significant. To understand what Windows 8 adds, we need to look back at the evolution of operating system security.

The Story So Far
COM file programs for the original MS-DOS were laughably insecure by modern standards. DOS simply copied the program byte for byte from disk into memory and started it running. It made no distinction between code and data, so a buffer overrun attack could easily force execution of arbitrary code. Early file-infector viruses simply appended their own code to the program's end and replaced the very first instruction with a jump to that code.

The EXE file format, still in use today, isn't quite as open to manipulation. It does distinguish between memory areas used for code and those used for data. Windows XP SP2 introduced Data Execution Protection, which ensures that a memory area marked as data will never be executed. (Note, though, that it's possible for a hardware backdoor attack to disable this feature).

Even with these enhancements, malware writers managed to craft attacks that could inject arbitrary code into trusted processes. Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), introduced with Windows Vista, made those attacks tougher by making it impossible for an attacker to predict where in memory a given code module would load.

Windows 8 Toughens Up
Despite all these protective features, malware attacks can still succeed in Windows 7. Windows 8 will block many such attacks by toughening up at the very deepest level—memory allocation. Many low-level memory functions have new safeguards in Windows 8, rejecting invalid input and adding a degree of randomness. "Guard pages" before and after in-use memory chunks prevent attacks that work by writing beyond the end of allocated memory. A new "Fast Fail" function lets a program terminate instantly if it detects memory corruption.

Windows keeps track of free and in-use memory chunks using a structure called a doubly linked list. Each chunk has an entry in the list with links to the next entry and the previous entry. Various attacks take advantage of this structure by changing the entries so they link to malicious code. That won't work in Windows 8, though, because the pointers are protected.

ASLR makes it tough for an attacker to predict where a given code chunk will load in memory. Windows 8 also randomizes the allocation of smaller memory blocks within memory heap sub-segments. "Random" numbers generated by a computer aren't random in an absolute sense, but in Windows 8 the random number algorithm is very much enhanced over Windows 7.

A Black Hat briefing by researchers Chris Valasek and Tarjei Mandt delivered an amazing level of detail about these and many other security enhancements found in Windows 8. Thepresentation slides and full paper are available online, for those with the chops to understand them. The overall point of these low-level security enhancements is to let Windows 8 perform its tasks efficiently while resisting all memory modification by external processes.

Windows 8 isn't totally hack-proof. Valasek and Mandt detailed a number of areas that could still be vulnerable. After the briefing, I asked Valasek whether we'll ever see a totally hack-proof operating system. His response: "No, that doesn't exist. Not as long as humans are writing the code." Even so, he noted, any attack or exploit that worked under Windows 7 will fail against Windows 8.

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Try these five helpful tips to help reduce or even prevent the discomfort caused by staring at your monitor all day.

If you spend hours a day in front of a computer screen (like me), and have experienced anything along the lines of: eyes burning, neck aching, vision blurring, or head throbbing, you might have a common problem known as eyestrain.
In medical terms it's called Computer Vision Syndrome, and it comes from a combination of your monitor's bright backlight, glare and staring at a screen for extended periods of time.
Quick fixes like ibuprofen and eye exercises will usually relieve eyestrain, but in my quest to resolve this issue, I went for a preventative approach.
After consulting trusty sources like the Mayo Clinic, I found that the following five tips were the most effective in preventing my Computer Vision Syndrome.

1. Adjust your monitor's position

A simple tweak to your monitor setup can go a long way in solving your eyestrain. For optimal comfort, your monitor should be 20-30 inches away from your eyes. Additionally, the top of your monitor should be at eye level, as you should be looking down at your work, not up. If you need to raise your monitor, consider using risers, or even a stack of old hardcover books.

2. Tweak the lighting

An office setting with too much artificial or natural light can create monitor glare that quickly tires your eyes. So, if you can, turn off any harsh fluorescent lights and position your computer so that any natural light is coming in on either side of your monitor. Light should never be directed behind or in front of your screen. Instead, use floor or desk lamps and position them on either side of your monitor so that they provide indirect lighting.

3. Use the 20-20-20 rule

Every 20 minutes, find an object about 20 feet away, and stare at it for 20 seconds. This trick from labnol.org is intended to exercise your eyes and give them a break from your monitor's bright backlight. If you need to, automate reminders for these breaks with programs like BreakTaker for Windows, or Time Out for Mac.

4.Try Gunnars glasses

Artificial light combined with natural light and your monitor's backlight puts unavoidable stress on your eyes. One solution to consider is Gunnar glasses. These specialized glasses, mostly aimed at gamers, are tinted yellow to offset the cool blue light your monitor produces. They also offer slight magnification, making it easier to read text (even for those who don't normally wear reading glasses.)
They'll set you back about $80, but from my experience, they make a big difference. The glasses come in several styles and custom prescription models.

5. Use a setup that's easy on the eyes

When your work materials and tools are splayed out in different areas of your desk, you force your eyes to constantly readjust for their various distances. Fix this by putting your keyboard directly in front of your monitor, and your reading materials adjacent to it using a copyholder.

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If you are planning on purchasing a used MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air, then it is recommended you thoroughly test it to ensure it works properly.

Apple's MacBook systems are stylish and quite popular, but also come at a relatively steep retail price that may be too much for some people. While Apple offers discounts for refurbished systems, another option people have is to purchase a system second-hand from someone who has upgraded their older system.
While new and refurbished Mac systems come with a one-year warranty and 90-days of free technical support, this likely will not be the case with a used system, so if you buy one you will need to be sure it is working properly.
Buying used computers can be a hit-or-miss situation at times, but there are a few things you can do to ensure the system is working and does not need repair.
First, be sure you have an option to test the system before you purchase it, or at least have the ability to return it if there is a problem. Also be sure the system comes with its recovery DVDs (these should be gray discs that were shipped with the system), especially if the system did not originally ship with OS X Lion. These discs contain a hardware test that should be run on any used system you are considering buying, and also contain the OS version that shipped with the systems and should be kept with them.
When you go to see the system for the first time, be sure to bring the following items if you can:

1. A working USB and FireWire hard drive (preload it with a fully updated version of OS X if you can -- at least use Snow Leopard, but OS X Lion is preferable)
2. A robust drive management tool like Drive Genius or TechTool Pro (you can also preload this on the external hard drive)
3. An external headphone
4. An external microphone
5. A movie DVD and a music CD if the system has an optical drive

With these items available, you are now ready to test most of the system's functions properly and check it for problems. You can do this fairly thoroughly using the following steps:

1. Check its age
   While Apple's systems should work fine for years, be sure you are purchasing the system that you intend. Apple's systems can look quite similar, and therefore be difficult to distinguish, so a system from 2009 will physically look like a more modern one from 2011. Apple has a couple of resources that will help you in identifying various Mac models:
   How to identify a MacBook
   How to identify a MacBook Pro
   How to identify a MacBook Air
   
   In general I recommend people avoid systems that are more than three years old, but these specifics depend on the user's needs and the prices being offered.
2. Is there any physical damage?
   Check the system thoroughly for physical damage. Check the screw heads that hold the case together to see if someone has stripped or marred them at some point, which may indicate they were too rough on the system when replacing RAM or a hard drive. While dings and scratches happen at times and don't usually indicate a problem, be sure the case isn't severely warped or bent. The display lid should close and match up evenly to the bottom case, and the system should not have any rattles or loose-feeling components in it.
   
   In addition to obvious physical damage, check the display hinges. The MacBook displays have a clutch mechanism that should keep the display open at any supported angle, especially if the system is on a flat surface. If the display falls shut or open and will not stay without being propped up, then it is likely it was tampered with or abused at some point.
3. Does it boot?
   Be sure the system boots up fully. The system should make a boot chime when you press the power, and then boot fully to an OS X installation (the speed of this process will be different depending on the system, but it should load to an OS X desktop). If OS X is not installed, then you can use your external hard drive preloaded with OS X to boot the system and test it out (hold the Option key at startup to select the boot drive).
4. Is a firmware password set?
   Apple's systems support a hardware-based password, which if enabled will prevent the system from booting to Safe Mode, Single-user mode, and perform other tasks that can aid in both the configuration and troubleshooting of the system. While the password can be reset on some systems by removing a hardware component such as RAM and then starting the computer, Apple has made this more difficult in its recent systems. Therefore, ensure the firmware password is disabled when you purchase the system. To test for a firmware password, start up the system and immediately hold the Option key after you hear the boot chimes. If the system shows a boot menu with available boot drives and arrow buttons then there is no password set; however, if it displays a password prompt with a lock icon then the password has been set.
5. Check the display
   Next, open a word processing document so you have a white surface to move around on the display, and use it to check the screen to ensure all of the pixels are working properly (be sure to scrutinize corners and edges). You might have an easier time checking each RGB component of the pixels by using a program to draw a pure green, blue, and red box and then move them around on the display. If a pixel is not working properly, then it should stand out as a darker or different colored spot. While sometimes a dead pixel or two is unavoidable, if there are groups of stuck pixels then that is clear indication of a problem.

The keyboard viewer (enabled in the Language & Text system preferences) can be used to check the functions of the keyboard.
(Credit: Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)
6. Check the keyboard
   Next check the keyboard by using the same document to type each key character and ensure it works properly. You can also open the system's keyboard viewer panel to ensure each key-press is properly registered, which will help for non-character keys like the function keys, escape key, and modifier keys.
7. Check the trackpad
   Next check the trackpad and ensure it makes a proper click when you depress it, and also that it tracks smoothly. Sometimes over time trackpads can wear out and take barely any pressure to invoke a click, and result in a trackpad that constantly selects things or clicks buttons. Apple's multi-touch trackpads are made of glass, and while they are relatively difficult to break, sometimes this can happen and result in a crack that sometimes can be easy to overlook, so be sure to check the edges and corners of the trackpad.
8. Check the FireWire, USB, and audio ports
   Attach your external hard drive to each USB and FireWire port on the system and ensure it is properly recognized. Do the same for headphones and the microphone jack, to ensure they work and automatically switch the input source or output source when a device is attached (open the Sound system preferences to see these switch behaviors and test the microphone setup). In addition to testing an external microphone, test the internal one as well.
9. Test the iSight camera
   Apple's MacBooks come with an iSight camera at the top of the display, which can be tested by launching Apple's Photo Booth program.
10. Test the optical drive
    Use your DVD and CD to ensure the optical drive reads them properly, and optionally try to burn a blank CD or DVD. You can use the Finder to burn a few files quickly by dragging them to the inserted blank media and clicking the burn icon.

The battery health can be checked in this section of the System Information utility (click for larger view).
(Credit: Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)
11. Battery health
    Next check the battery by going to the System Information utility and go to the Power section. In here you will see a "Health Information" section with a cycle count and condition status. Generally Apple batteries last between 300 and 1,000 charge cycles (see here for model-specific cycle counts), and while a lower cycle count is generally best, this is not always the case. Batteries do best by regularly keeping electrons moving to ensure they do not build dead spots. If someone has always kept the laptop plugged into wall power or has stored it in a completely discharged state for a while, then the battery may have a low cycle count but also may have lost capacity.
12. Drive errors
    Use Disk Utility to check the drive for errors. Check its S.M.A.R.T. status in Disk Utility (at the bottom of the Disk Utility window), and also use it to verify both the filesystem structure and partition map health. Unfortunately hard drives can often hide areas of corruption and other potential problems, especially in the few minutes you might spend in assessing a system. If you have access to a robust drive testing utility like Drive Genius or Tech Tool Pro, then you can have it check the drive for errors more thoroughly. However, if not then it's not the end of the world. Ultimately if the hard drive is corrupted and needs extensive repair, then you can replace it with a new one (though this might affect your negotiated price or your decision to buy).

In this case, the "dedicated" Radeon GPU is controlling the display (click for larger view).
(Credit: Screenshot by Topher Kessler/CNET)
13. Test system settings
    For some MacBook systems, Apple includes two graphics processors. Go to the Energy Saver system preferences and then run the system with the "Automatic graphics switching" option both checked and unchecked, which will toggle between the two GPUs. Open the System Information utility and ensure in the Graphics/Displays section that the system's "Color LCD" switches between the different graphics cards when you change these modes (you will need to refresh the information window's view by pressing Command-R when changing modes).
14. Hardware tests
    Lastly, while the system may appear to be OK after performing these tests, there may be some underlying issues with hardware sensors and components that may not show up when briefly testing the system. To test these, Apple includes a hardware testing suite with its systems that comes either installed on the hard drive, included on the gray recovery DVDs that came with the system, or as an Internet download option on some of Apple's more recent systems.
    
    The hardware tests will output an error code if various sensors, fans, or other components are not working or over or under a threshold limit, and will also check the system's RAM for any errors. While the tests offer an extended RAM check that should be performed, this can take a very long time to complete, and the basic RAM test should be adequate for most situations. See this article for how to invoke and interpret the Apple Hardware Tests.

If any of these tests show problems or failures, then consider looking elsewhere for a system. In some cases like a single stuck pixel or even a hard drive error, the problem may be tolerable or fixable, but this determination is up to you. When all of these tests are done and you are certain the system is OK for purchase, then be sure to fully wipe it and reinstall a fresh copy of OS X to the hard drive. Doing this will ensure the system's software environment is as new as possible, and will allow you to configure it according to your needs, instead of managing someone else's setup.

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Does Windows 8 deserve the fuss, or has Microsoft delivered another Vista? We spend 24-hours with the new OS in an attempt to find out.

Once upon a time a new version of Windows was something to get excited about. Be it the low level support for new hardware technologies, new features and ways of interacting with one’s PC, there was a reason people lined up outside Harvey Norman stores to get their hands on Windows 95 the moment it was available.
This all came to a crashing halt with Vista, when a long and relatively public phase of operating system development resulted in a bloated, intrusive operating system that most people felt best ignoring.
Vista not only killed the clamour for the new, it meant Microsoft ended up needing to support Windows XP well beyond its intended use by date.
The mistakes of Vista were largely erased with the launch of Windows 7, and that has been the operating system many long-term PC users have settled down with. Gone was the unnecessary bling and in its place was an operating system that was less bloated but without getting rid of the better features Vista brought on board.
For many Microsoft moved away from its traditional audience with Vista, and in the process alienated them. This wrong step hangs heavily over Windows 8, which has Microsoft making even more drastic changes to the way in which we have learned to use our PCs.
We’ve had an All-In-One in the labs running the various versions of Windows 8 released so far, but it has been a largely academic exercise. While it gives us an opportunity to explore the operating system at our leisure, we aren’t forced to use it – and hence don’t, for anything beyond investigating the operating system itself.
With this in mind, we decided the consumer preview version of Windows 8 needed more committed testing. So we went all in with a laptop.
Hours 1-3
It was a process driven by a degree of nerdy bravado.
I got as far as the installer download page before sanity kicked in and I started wondering about the currency of my laptop’s backup. After transferring a few gigs of miscellaneous data to my NAS, I downloaded that little 5MB installer and proceeded to turn my Windows 7 laptop into a Windows 8 machine.
This was done with full awareness that upgrading is perhaps the worst thing to do with a pre-release operating system. But I was committed to learning the ins and outs of Windows 8. Oddly enough, the upgrade process went incredibly smoothly.
The installer ran some scans and presented a list of programs (now reduced to being described as mere Apps) that the upgrade would break, while also pointing out that I had virtually no free disk space on myC: Drive (the installer needed 20GB free).

The upgrade process begins.

I moved 35GB of Steam files and proceeded with the install. It really is one of the most polite processes Microsoft has ever delivered, with reassurances that I could continue using my computer while it downloaded, which was probably the slowest part of the entire procedure thanks to my wireless router being midway through dying at the time.
Once the files were downloaded it was the point of no return – the moment when the next shutdown could result in some sort of ominous user error. Thankfully it didn’t– if anything the experience of going from Windows 7 to Windows 8 ended up being the smoothest transition between operating systems since I first booted up Windows 3.1.
Once installed you need to give the usual location details and login with a Windows Live account. After a brief flirtation with password recovery the system booted up, now sporting that very identifiable Metro interface.
This was the point at which Windows 8’s inherently schizophrenic nature started to really show itself. Make no bones about it – Windows 8 is an attempt at a happy compromise between PC and tablet software that ends up feeling like two operating systems bolted together. The bolting is less awkward than it was in the developer preview from last year but is still apparent, and also governs interaction with the operating system too much.
It is hard to tell whether it’s the general feel of the interface or the fact that I’ve been using Windows Phone for some months now, but my first reaction to seeing those metro tiles was to paw the screen. It was a moment when the handful of touch-enabled laptops shown to me over recent years actually made sense for the first time, and the first indication that Windows 8 was going to really mess with my head for a while.
Hours 4-6
Resigning myself to not being able to flick through the interface, it was time to start working out just how the touchpad and keyboard translated to navigation in Windows 8. It was around this time that a few things became clear: first, that while most of the Windows 7 drivers on my laptop worked, the bits and pieces of Samsung software that helped with quick booting and system updates were not working.
Not the end of the world, but this did mean the instant return from hibernation that I loved so much under Windows 7 was gone. Searching for the device manager I discovered the Metro-based settings screen bears little or no resemblance to the desktop-based control panel in Windows 8.
Some settings hide in each area, again making Windows 8 feel like two operating environments mashed into one. Thankfully Windows Key + Pause still brings up the System menu, from which I could get into the Device manager and check what drivers were missing.

The upgrader finds a few issues which need fixing before it can continue.

Display drivers seemed to be my major issue. Thankfully though, the wireless connection was still operational after the upgrade so it was a simple case of checking both NVIDIA and Intel’s website in search of new graphics drivers (my laptop uses a Corei5 and a GeForce GT520M).
Intel’s driver detection java widget failed to play nice with Windows 8, while NVIDIA already had Windows 8 as an option in its driver selection page. So while downloading the GeForce drivers I checked Windows Update –or at least vainly searched for it in Metro then went to the desktop and searched for it in the control panel.
Pleasingly there was not only an Intel driver to download but also a Microsoft-approved NVIDIA one and drivers for the Broadcom wireless chip in the laptop (even though wireless was working fine right off the bat).
I started this downloading and hoped the drivers would actually support NVIDIA’s Optimus technology for graphics switching. Curiously, while going through this process I noticed that I had a) forgotten to disable Norton Internet Security and b) it didn’t actually matter because it was patched and working fine with Windows 8.
This in and of itself is a bit of a miracle, given how antivirus in general and Norton in particular has had a shaky history of coping with operating system upgrades.
Finally my laptop was transformed. I’d managed to survive the transition with very little hassle. My major issue was that the Samsung software on the laptop looked broken enough that my battery life wouldn’t be as impressive, but apart from that I was pleasantly surprised the upgrade process had gone so incredibly smoothly.


Hours 7-12
Now it was time to try to get my head wrapped properly around the Metro way of doing things. For anyone used to Windows, this largely revolves around living with a start button-free desktop. One of the major issues I had during earlier Windows 8 experiences was finding it difficult to adjust to the notion of the desktop no longerbeing the absolute bottom of the workspace.
Coming to terms with the notion that the desktop was now an App, hiding in the slick Metro tile layout, was the next big challenge. The sheer number of mechanical changes made to Windows in order to make it touch friendly became apparent.
One of the great advantages of Windows 7, when using a keyboard and mouse on a large screen, is that it is a pixel perfect operating system. The fine nature of the buttons and other interactive objects on screen works well with the precision control that a mouse offers.
But the big problem for moving Windows to a tablet is dealing with the shift from mouse pointer to decidedly imprecise finger control. Not only is the shift to the tile-based Metro UI an acknowledgement of the clunky nature of poking a screen with a digit, but the general way in which the operating system deals with concepts is designed to get around these touch limitations.

The new enhanced Task Manager in Desktop mode.

Most noticeable of these is the inherently horizontal nature of the Metro interface. Because it is designed to be swept through by hand, the Metro tiles run left to right. This means either constantly dragging a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen, as I had to do with the laptop, or using the up and down scrolling of a mouse scroll wheel to move the interface left or right.
While it’s an interface that feels quite natural when used on a touchscreen, the translation to keyboard and mouse control is somewhat confusing. Even worse, I suspect it will be more confusing the more familiar one is with Windows XP and 7. Hitting the desktop tile brings up the “almost familiar” desktop – sans the start button.
Not only did this make for several hours of accidentally opening Internet Explorer every time I wanted to run a program, but it meant I kept bashing the Windows key to run programs and was thrown back into Metro.
Thankfully, the Windows key operates as a “switch to last program” button so as long as I didn’t hit a tile in Metro I could press the Windows key a second time to bring up the desktop again.
Working on the desktop was pretty easy, once the Windows key-hitting habit subsided. Windows Explorer is at least visibly similar to Windows 7, with one major addition: the use of the notorious Microsoft Office Ribbon bar at the top.
This only appears when you select an item however, and ultimately it is quite a handy way of controlling things, even if I did occasionally need to figure out what functions from Windows 7 are now called, and where they have been hidden.
A few other interesting things emerged in the time spent trying to work on the desktop. Namely, the new “Charms” that Microsoft has added to the interface. These are basically hot corners of the screen – move your mouse over them and a context menu will pop up. Bottom left takes you to the Metro Screen, top left enables you to open a menu of currently-active programs (or you can just alt-Tab like the days of yore), while the right hand side opens a contextual menu.
This contextual menu gives you several options, which change based upon your currently active App. These are Search, Share, Start, Setting and Devices. It is always present on both the desktop and the Metro interface, and while occasionally useful my main annoyance was that it meant settings were smeared across several applications, making what should have been simple a lot more confusing than intended.
After a bit more exploration a few other things became clear. Namely that Windows key shortcuts were even more important than ever (and some of the ones that I’d carefully trained myself in, such as snapping applications, still worked on the desktop, but not in Metro).
Microsoft has also added perhaps the best ever shortcut for a very narrow slice of the Windows-using public – hit Windows Key and Prtscn and a .png file of the current desktop is dumped straight to the pictures library.
I was at least comfortable using the desktop now, even though I still kept occasionally opening Internet Explorer as I went for Start. So it was time to see if Metro offered me anything on my very non-tactile laptop screen.
Hours 13-18
As I mentioned at the start, I have been a Windows Phone 7 user of late, which means I’m already familiar with the basics of Metro. But while the easy customisation and pinning of tiles makes sense with touch, it’s a somewhat fiddlier procedure with a mouse.
Add to that the fact that non-Metro programs end up as somewhat ugly blank tiles with the icon at the bottom and it made customising my once Windows 7 install both frustrating and aesthetically unpleasing.
The native Metro Apps that do ship with Windows 8 were pretty slick though. I added my Gmail account to mail with little hassle (although Win 8 does seem to lack support for multiple Gmail accounts), and had an enjoyable play with the slick Weather App, which was so much more convenient than looking out the window.

The Metro-based weather App.

Unfortunately a lot of the media-based tiles have only partial functionality, due to the inability to sign in from Australia. This means no Microsoft video or music stores– which makes the Apps appear somewhat naked. I did have limited success accessing the DLNA based video library on my NAS but the video player application just felt a little too lightweight for my needs.
The Xbox stuff looks quite interesting, bringing a similar level of integration as seen in Windows Phone. I eagerly hit sign in but was unable to access past scores - yet another service not available in our region. I was still able to play some of the games at least, but I think that Solitaire asking me to sign into Xbox Live is some sort of indication of an impending apocalypse.
As for standard Windows games, once I got my Steam files linked properly things worked fine. I tried a few of my guilty pleasures and they ran without a hitch, if not a little better than they did under Windows 7.
I suspect this is largely due to the relatively unchanged nature of the DirectX 11 graphics API used in Windows 8.
Hours 19-24
With that, the journey from Windows 7 to Windows 8 was complete. There are a few general observations though that kept coming up during this learning phase that are worth mentioning.
The escape key really needs to work in Metro Apps. Rather than backing out of an erroneously opened program, it did precisely nothing; the Windows key or mousing to the bottom left corner was the required way of getting out of the program.
Second, the operating system is going to be light years ahead of Windows 7 when combined with a touch interface. However, for those using a keyboard and mouse/touchpad the learning curve is steep, annoyingly unsignposted and often goes against years of ingrained habit.
One of the most frustrating things is that there appears to be two sets of rules – one for the Desktop and one for Metro, which can make some navigational attempts frustrating at best.
Overall though I enjoyed Windows 8 a lot more than I would have if I hadn’t taken the plunge. Don’t take this as a recommendation to jump in wholesale – I still have a work desktop for working and a home desktop for gaming, so committing my laptop to Windows 8 wasn’t me totally giving myself over.
What it does do, though, is make me excited for the new generation of touch-enabled Windows 8 laptops, which if done well could make the two-operating systems-in-one aspect of Windows 8 a lot more attractive.

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Apple's MacBook Air is one of the more popular of its laptop offerings, and in its recent hardware announcements Apple updated the Air with speed and storage bumps, in addition to including the faster Intel HD 4000 graphics capabilities. While these updates have been enticing to new buyers, a number of people who have been using the new systems are experiencing crashes.

After using the systems for a while, many users are noticing that they seem to randomly crash with a kernel panic, which fades the display and presents a message that states the user needs to press the power button to restart the system. This message indicates a core component of the system such as a driver or hardware component is not working properly.

While the crashes at first appeared to be random in nature, a number of users found that they were happening when using Google's Chrome browser, and have found evidence of this in the crash logs that are generated when the system goes into a kernel panic. The logs appear to describe an issue with how Chrome is handling the Intel HD 4000 graphics processors on the new MacBook Air, since the following common entries in users' crash logs suggest the Google Chrome process was the cause and last interacted with the driver for the Intel HD 4000 Graphics chip:

Kernel Extensions in backtrace:
  com.apple.driver.AppleIntelHD4000Graphics(7.2.8)[6B02D782-A79F-399C-81FD-353EBF F2AB81]@0xffffff7f81657000->0xffffff7f816bdfff
    dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.7)[C0404427-3360-36B4-B483-3C9F0C54A3CA]@0xffffff 7f80829000
    dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(2.3.4)[A004D087-8FB7-3630-AD65-18DC2A9B2EEA]@0xff ffff7f80cb8000
    dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.3.4)[2E0BAC50-C4B6-3353-BADA-0168305F3D06]@0 xffffff7f80c7f000

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Google Chrome He

If you are experiencing these kernel panics on your new MacBook Air and are using Google's Chrome Web browser, then for now you might consider avoiding the browser, or at least its official release version. Google maintains a development build of Chrome called Canary that does not appear to show these crashes on the Air, so you can try this build if the official Chrome release is showing problems. Alternatively, you can use other browsers like Safari, Firefox, or Opera as a replacement for Chrome.

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Apple makes the bulk of its revenue from devices that don’t look like traditional personal computers. For the past couple of years I’ve been worried that it would wake up and decide the traditional Mac is a burden, and it should instead be in the business of strictly selling consumer devices. With its announcements two weeks ago in San Francisco, I can happily say that my fears haven’t come true. At least not yet.

It’s been a while since Apple did a really exciting MacBook Pro launch. Much to my surprise, even the move to Sandy Bridge, the first quad-core in a MacBook Pro, was done without even whispers of a press conference. Apple threw up the new products on its online store, shipped inventory to its retail outlets, updated the website and called it a day. Every iPhone and iPad announcement however was accompanied with much fanfare. The MacBook Pro seemed almost forgotten.

With its WWDC unveil however Apple took something that it had resigned to unexciting, dare I say uncool status, and made a huge deal about it. Two weeks ago Apple did the expected and offered relatively modest upgrades to all of its portable Macs, all while introducing something bold.

Apple calls it the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. You’ll see me refer to it as the next-gen MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook Pro, rMBP or some other permutation of these words.

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Battalion 101 X7200

When you’re looking into getting a gaming system of any kind, the first thing to take into account is the graphics card. You are going to want a card that will not only work for the current games out, but one that will be able to handle the increased demands of newly released games for the next few years as well. It is even more important to look at what comes in a gaming laptop because it is very hard to replace parts on your own, so having something that is going to work for a long time is a must. The Battalion 101 X7200 has one of the best mobile NVIDIA graphics cards on the market, which means you are going to be able to run pretty much any game on the highest graphic settings. The NVIDIA Geforce GXT 560M has 3.0GB of memory, which allows the card to display those very detailed images even better.

This laptop uses a 3D premium surround sound onboard sound card. This won’t provide the best gaming audio, but almost all laptops use simple sound cards and will not be able to produce the amazing sound you will find on a desktop computer. The Battalion 101 X7200, and all of the other gaming laptops we reviewed, have this same issue: The sound quality is far below that of standalone speakers. That being said, the Battalion does produce very good sound for a laptop, and that is due to the size of this notebook. With a 17.3-inch screen and base, Battalion was able to fit a lot more into this gaming laptop.

Processor:

10/10

The processor is basically the brain of your computer; it tells the computer what to do and how to carry out those instructions. The Battalion 101 X7200 gaming laptop has one of the best CPUs (central processing unit) available for laptops. The Intel Core i7-760 processor will keep your computer and all of its programs running at their top capacity. This amazing little device has a clock speed of 3.20GHz, four cores and eight threads. What does all of that mean in terms of processing speed and how your gaming laptop will work? Basically, the clock speed is how fast information can be processed, like a (speed limit; the threads and cores are similar to freeways (four cores) and lanes (eight threads) on the freeway. Essentially, there are four areas that have eight threads in which information can move to and from the processor. A speed of 3.20GHz is very fast for a laptop, particularly when you consider that some of the best desktop processors run around 3.46GHz.

Memory/Storage:

7/10

If we take a step back and look at the system requirements necessary to run games at top performance 5 years ago and compare it to what they require now, it is easy to see why RAM is becoming even more important. If you are not running at least 4GB of RAM in any gaming laptop or computer, odds are you are not getting the best performance from your system. If you choose this top-ranked gaming laptop, you will have 6GB of DDR3 RAM, which is about perfect for most games. There is an option to upgrade, and if you are planning for the future, adding RAM may be a good choice. In fact, almost all gaming laptops out right now offer around 6GB, so the Battalion 101 X7200 is right on track. The only place this laptop could improve is in the amount of hard drive space it has. With only 500GB of memory, you will want to be careful about storing too many movies, music or other such extras. However, 500GB is more than enough for most gamers since some of the biggest games out only use about 30GB at most.

Additional Features:

10/10

All of the high-end gaming laptops use Windows 7 Home Premium. This is because all gaming companies are making games for this operating system because it works well and can handle multitasking. The Battalion 101 X7200 is one of our largest gaming laptops, coming in at 17.3 inches. Some may find the very large screen to be a huge plus, whiles others may feel the large size hinders portability. This computer does weigh a lot more than the ones with 15-inch screens, but it will provide a much better gaming experience. It also has a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, which is what we would expect from our number one gaming laptop. One thing we really love about this computer is the overall look and feel of the laptop; it feels very sturdy and the buttons don’t feel like they are going to fall off. You will find all of your basic volume and other touch controls along the top of the keyboard, and there are also a set of hotkey buttons on the left-hand side of the keyboard. One of the most important connection types for a laptop is USB ports, and this computer offers five. These allow for connecting a mouse, external hard drive, Blu-ray player and just about anything else. The Battalion 101 X7200 will run for about two and half hours on a full charge. This is about average for a gaming laptop and plenty long for most people.

Support/Warranty:

10/10

iBuyPower’s support and warranties page is very easy to navigate, and you will find all their different help options on one page. This is a huge plus since some sites send you from page to page just to view additional information. Drivers, FAQs, technical support and warranty services are all quick and simple to use, and it’s easy to find the answers you seek. There is also a live chat option for those with questions about the purchase process. Overall, we are pleased with the one-year warranty offered for this gaming laptop, and this site’s support and warranty section are very inviting.

Summary:

Purchasing a gaming laptop can be a very daunting prospect, but iBuyPower has made it easy. The Battalion 101 X7200 is by far one of the best gaming laptops on the market today. This amazing device allows you to take your gaming experience on the road and still run those graphic-intense games with ease. When it comes to top-of-the-line hardware and a large viewing screen, you will be hard-pressed to find anything better than the Battalion 101 X7200 gaming laptop.

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Intel will hold a conference in July to discuss with Taiwan-based supply chain makers about how to minimize ultrabook production costs, according to the makers.

Intel aims to decrease retail prices for ultrabooks to US$699 in the second half of 2012, and thereby reach target global sales of 20-30 million units for the year.

Apple lowering retail prices for the new MacBook Air equipped with Ivy Bridge processors by US$100 has brought pressure to cut ultrabook prices, the sources indicated.

Intel will focus on solutions to reduce component costs, including adoption of fiberglass-reinforced plastic cases in place of expensive aluminum-alloy, 16650 cylinder-shaped batteries or prismatic lithium-ion batteries in place of Li-polymer batteries and hybrid-HDDs in place of SSDs, the sources said.

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Sure, most of the fanfare about Windows 8 has centered on its use in tablets, but the operating system is also designed for laptops and desktops. If you have an old PC knocking around, why not give the latest from Microsoft a look. After all, it's free—for now. And Windows 8 can be installed only any PC capable of running Windows 7. That means any PC with at least a 1GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of hard disk space (2GB RAM and 20GB storage for the 64-bit version). You'll also need DirectX 9-capable graphics hardware.

There are two main ways to install Windows 8 on an existing machine: by using the upgrade installer directly on the test PC or by creating a disc or USB key with the OS installer ISO image. If you install it directly as an upgrade, you'll get the benefit of a system check to see if and how well your computer will be able to run the new operating system.

Remember, though, Windows 8 is still pre-release software, so we strongly advise you not to use it as your main or work computer's operating system. Such an early version brings the potential for crashes, especially when you consider the vast number of hardware combinations possible with a Windows PC.

A couple of options let you test the Windows 8 waters without losing the current OS on the test machine: You can either install it in a separate partition or in a virtual machine. The Windows 8 installer even includes multi-boot setup that will create a separate partition for you. This way, whenever you start up your machine, you can choose which OS version you want to run. For virtual machine installation, see How to run Windows 8 in VirtualBox.

In general, the installation process for Windows 8 is more streamlined and quicker than that for Windows 7, though it does share some common procedures. It took from 17 to 25 minutes to install on various PC hardware in my testing.

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Getting Started
1. The first thing to do, after choosing your victim machine, is to head to preview.windows.com or tohttp://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso to get images you can burn to disc. If you're installing on a new partition or virtual drive, Microsoft recommends the first installer link rather than the ISO image for burning to disk or bootable USB. This is because the installer can burn the disc or create a bootable USB for you, and the downloader is faster (using compression) and more reliable. My contact for Microsoft explains it as follows:

"Microsoft actually invented a new compression algorithm optimized for Windows images which makes the transfer faster, plus unlike an .iso download, they are doing dynamic error correction in the download to deal with dropped packets or bit-flips. This means that at the end of the installer download you will always have a bit-perfect copy, whereas it's possible you may have to download an .iso more than once if you're unlucky."

The Setup is in general a more hand-held process, compared with burning an ISO image and installing with that.

Running the Upgrade Assistant
2. Before starting this process, make sure all your peripherals are connected and powered up so that Windows Setup can download the correct drivers for them.

3. When you first click on the bright blue Download Windows 8 Release Preview button, you'll actually be downloading the Upgrade Assistant, which checks whether your hardware is compatible. You still have a choice between 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. At this point, I'm surprised the Microsoft hasn't fully moved to 64-bit, as Mac OS X has. Virtually all new machines are shipped with a 64-bit OS, and PC processors have nearly all been 64-bit-capable since AMD introduced x86-64 in 2003.

4. The Upgrade Assistant will run through its system checks, and then create a report of what hardware works and what doesn't. If you're installing on a touchscreen PC, you may see a warning stating that your touch screen is not "Designed for Windows 8" and indeed, not every touch gesture may work. But on our 2-year-old HP TouchSmart, even though we got this message, the Windows 8 gestures worked surprisingly well. One of my reports on another machine said that I'd need to install an app to play DVDs, and that my hardware wasn't compatible with the faster Secure Boot feature of Windows 8. I could live with those stipulations.

5. After this, the Upgrade Assistant shows the product key, which you'll need later. You can cut and paste this to an email for retrieval.

6. Then the assistant will download the actual Windows 8 installer that suits your machine.

Installation Itself
7. After selecting your language, you'll need to enter the product key provided earlier.

8. Next you agree to the license terms. Note that by installing this pre-release version, you're consenting to send Microsoft usage data. After all, the point of the free preview is to get testing data and feedback to polish the final software.

9. You next choice is between Upgrade and Custom. If you're upgrading from a previous Windows 8 preview, as in Developer or Consumer, you'll lose your existing files, but if you're upgrading from Windows 7, you'll be able to keep files, settings, and applications. It runs from the Desktop, even if you start in Metro. (If you're upgrading from Windows 8 Developer Preview or Consumer Preview, the next choice is "Choose what to keep," and the only option was "Nothing." After this, actual installation took place.)

The Custom choice lets you create a new partition and a multi-boot setup, so you can keep your old version of Windows and choose between it and Windows 8 at system startup. You'll also need to choose Custom if your PC is running an outdated operating system like Windows XP or if the disk contains no OS at all. Disk options in the Custom install setup path let you delete and format drive partitions. 

Pre-First Run Setup
10. After the installer runs, you just have a couple tasks left. You choose a color combination for the start screen, a name for the PC (no spaces or funky characters allowed), and a Wi-Fi network. Of course, you don't have to log onto a wireless network: There's a "Connect to a wireless network later" option.

 

 

11. Next you can either let the installer use Express settings or choose options for automatic updates, security, privacy (especially for your location data), and local network connections. Express settings will suit most users.

 

12. Then it's time to log into a Windows account. This can be a Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger account, or you can create a new one using any email address on the spot. You have the option not to do so, but you'll definitely want to sign into your Windows 8 PC, since this will enable you to get more apps from the Windows Store and avail you of 7GB of free SkyDrive online storage. It also means you'll be able to sync settings and apps among multiple Windows 8 devices you log into.

 

13. You'll then be asked for a security backup email address or mobile phone number. The setup page says that Microsoft will only use this for password recovery and account security.

14. Next, you'll see a "creating your account" message, then "finalizing your settings," then "Your PC will be ready in just a moment." After this, you're ready to roll in the Windows Metro Start screen. To get started, remember that the corners of the screen are key for mouse input, and the Windows key on your keyboard is your friend, always taking you back to the Start screen. From here, too, you can just start typing to search for apps to run. There are over a dozen included with Release Preview, so you'll have plenty to explore, and you can add more from the hundreds of free third-party apps in the Windows Store.

No Turning Back!
One important final note about installing Windows 8 is that you can't undo it, unless you have recovery media. You can't even restore from a recovery partition—but you should be able to create recovery media from such partition if you need to. You can then use the Windows 8 installer to recover from the media. This is another reason why it makes sense to install on a separate partition or virtual machine.

What if you Want Media Center, Too?
In Windows 8, Windows Media Center is not included by default, and will be an extra cost item only available with the Pro edition. If you want to add it, you'll have to type "Add features to Windows 8" from the Start screen, with Settings selected. The choice will be to the right of all the Metro results. This launches the new desktop-based installer. You'll need the product key, which can be found in Microsoft's Windows 8 FAQ. For reference, it's MBFBV-W3DP2-2MVKN-PJCQD-KKTF7.

Then you accept the license terms, and hit "Add features." After a while of an "Adding features" message with progress animation, your PC restarts. You'll see the last and newest tile on you Metro Start screen will be for Windows Media Center, and running this opens the desktop app, which is nearly identical to the Windows 7 Media Center.

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