General Gaming Article |
| This HDMI Stick Rocks a Bay Trail Chip, Supports Windows 8.1 Posted: 19 Oct 2014 08:42 PM PDT A thumb drive-sized PC powered by a quad-core Bay Trail Atom SoCARM clearly has the PC-on-a-stick niche cornered. What's more, it has enjoyed a near unmolested run at the top in this category. But this might be set to change. Some Chinese suppliers have begun selling a diminutive Bay Trail-powered PC the size of a USB stick. The device in question packs a quad-core Intel Atom Z3735F/G chip with a clock speed of 1.3GHz (up to 1.83GHz burst frequency). Capable of running a wide variety of operating systems including Windows 8.1 and Android, this thumb drive-sized PC comes with up to 2GB of RAM, up to 32GB of storage, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, microSD card reader, two USB 2.0 ports, and one HDMI out port. A Chinese seller on Aliexpress is selling this mini PC for $110 a pop (shipping extra). However, it's not clear whether this price is for the the basic version or the best configuration. The former has a Z3735G chip, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of eMMC storage. Follow Pulkit on Google+ |
| Patent Troll’s Bid to Benefit from Windows Live Tiles Falls Flat Posted: 19 Oct 2014 06:34 PM PDT All patent claims ruled 'unpatentable'Microsoft is not the only company to have pinned high hopes on Windows Live Tiles and been let down. The user interface element that has come to be associated with Windows 8's well-documented alienation of desktop users has been at the center of a patent lawsuit since 2012. A little-known Portland, Maine-based company named Surfcast, which inhabits the obscure realm of "operating system technology" design, suddenly shot to attention a couple of years back, when it filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the latter of infringing on one of its patents with Live Tiles. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) on Monday gave its final written decision in an inter partes review (IPR) of patent 6,724,403 (the "'403 patent") and sadly for Surfcast, Live Tiles are just as difficult to make money from as ever. In its final written decision, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO's) Patent Trial and Appeal Board declared as many as 52 of Surfcast's patent claims "unpatentable." Now this wouldn't have been such a huge problem had the total number of claims in Surfcast's patent not been exactly 52. Ouch! "Microsoft has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 1–52 of the '403 patent are unpatentable," the board said in its decision. Further, the board also denied Surfcast's motion to amend claims. Anyway, here's an excerpt from the '403 patent describing Surfcast's proposed tiles-based interface: "The present invention comprises a grid of tiles that resides on the user's computer desktop. The grid of tiles provides a uniform, graphical environment in which a user can access, operate, and/or control multiple data sources on electronic devices. The graphical environment is uniform with respect to the source of accessed information and can manage multiple streams of content, entirely of the user's choice. For example, the invention presents video clips, e-mail messages, television shows, Internet sites, application programs, data files and folders, live video streams, music, radio shows, and any other form of analog signal, digital data or electronically stored information, to the user uniformly and simultaneously, regardless of whether the information is stored locally or available via modem, T1 line, infrared, or any other form of communication." Follow Pulkit on Google+ |
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