General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Seagate Completes LaCie Purchase to Help Take on Western Digital

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 11:25 AM PDT

La CieThe mechanical hard drive sector has been consolidating rapidly to help combat the rise of SSD's, and as of today we officially have one less player. Seagate has succeeded in acquiring a controlling share of LaCie stocks, although they may end up paying slightly more than the €4.05 per share that they initially disclosed. Assuming Seagate manages to accumulate a 95 percent share in the company, the price could jump to €4.17, but this will also net them full control over their French rival.

Seagate currently only holds around 65 percent of the company, however this is more than enough to declare them the new official owners of LaCie. The merger should help them resist any potential takeover attempts from Western Digital, but it certainly won't help those who feel the consumer hard drive market has already consolidated down to the point where it's no longer competitive. 

Safari For Windows is Abandoned By Apple, Leaving Users Vulnerable With No Warning

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 10:33 AM PDT

Safari WindowsThe lack of confirmation kept us from writing up a definitive post on this last week, however I think it's now safe to finally report that Safari for Windows is officially dead. Apple released its newest operating system on July 25th, and along with it came Safari version 6, a full point ahead of the most recent Windows release. Since then Apple has removed any reference to Safari for Windows from its website, and is more or less acting like it never happened.

Safari for Windows made its way onto millions of PC's using the iTunes auto update system, and you'd be hard pressed to find a single fan among those they duped into downloading it. As a WebKit equipped browser it wasn't the worst option for Windows users at the time, but it also didn't offer any distinct advantages. Today Safari 5 users on Windows are stuck using an outdated browser, and naturally, aren't warned that they are vulnerable to at least 121 unpatched flaws. According to Apple's own documentation these flaws can expose users to attack by malicious code execution, and are quite serious in nature. 

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume nobody reading Maximum PC is running Safari for Windows, but if I'm mistaken (and it's happened before), you'd better start looking into alternatives soon. Also just to be clear, these alternatives don't include switching to a Mac. 

Are we misjudging Safari for Windows popularity? Let us know in the comments below.

 

Microsoft Looking to Tighten Up Windows 8 Activation Requirements

Posted: 05 Aug 2012 09:23 AM PDT

ActivateMicrosoft's activation service has always been somewhat controversial since its debut in Windows XP, but has turned out to be a necessary evil. The process started out being very forgiving, and to be fair, we have yet to hear of a single legitimate customer being turned away. Even when Microsoft was within its rights to deny activation as a result of terms in the EULA, a simple phone call was often all it took to resolve the dispute. Pirates have been taking advantage of Microsoft's generous nature for years now, and new reports are suggesting they are looking to close down a few of the loop holes with Windows 8.

In particular Microsoft is looking to improve the way they deal with OEM editions of Windows, making it significantly harder for pirates and rogue OEM's to circumvent paying their dues to Redmond. In the past several OEM's used a single activation key, however going forward with Windows 8, they will be required to write a unique Windows product key into the BIOS of each new machine shipped.

OEM's will also be forced to obtain their product keys directly from Microsoft electronically, and each machine will come with a "Genuine Microsoft" sticker affixed to the outside of the case. In the past machines were only required to come with a Certificate of Authenticity. The new requirements only applies to Windows 8 at the moment, however if Windows 7 hangs around as long as Windows XP did in the Vista era, we can probably expect the program to be expanded.

Legitimate customers probably don't have anything to fear from these changes, and they make absolute sense for Microsoft going forward as long as this dosn't change. 
Posted by Shri Krishna

Total Pageviews

statcounter

View My Stats