| Windows 9 Will Reportedly Have a Notification Center Posted: 07 Sep 2014 07:42 PM PDT 
A basic version said to be already present in early builds As September 30th, the day Microsoft is widely rumored to release a "technical preview" of the next version of Windows — codenamed "Threshold" and commonly referred to as Windows 9 — draws near, you can expect to see a surge in Windows 9-related reports. According to one such report, Windows Threshold is going to feature a notification center à la the Windows Phone Action Center. A notification center is said to be already present in some builds of Windows 9, if the folks over at Neowin are to be believed. Said to be accessible from the system tray, this notification center is reportedly quite basic in its current avatar, only possessing such simple features as the ability to sort notifications by app and a button to clear them all at once. However, you can expect the addition of some advanced features further along in the development process, when Microsoft starts receiving some valuable feedback from users. And talking of feedback, recent reports suggest that feedback received during the preview stage is set to play a more important role than ever before in determining what the final product will look like. Follow Pulkit on Google+ |
| Intel Releases 'Major' Graphics Driver Update for Haswell Processors Posted: 07 Sep 2014 04:55 PM PDT 
New graphics driver also supports the new Intel Core M chip with Intel HD 5300 graphics In a week that saw a whirlwind of product announcements, including the arrival of the first processors based on the chipmaker's Broadwell architecture, Intel released a major graphics driver update for 4th generation Intel Core processors. The new driver, the release of which went almost unnoticed, is significant not only because of the up to 30 percent improvement in performance that it is supposed to deliver to those rocking Haswell chips, but also because it is also the first to support the new Intel Core M processor with Intel HD graphics 5300. Those of you with a 4th generation Intel Core chip with integrated Intel HD, Iris, or Iris Pro graphics can look forward to experiencing up to 30 percent improvement in some OpenCL apps and up to 10 percent improvement in gaming performance with these drivers. Another thing you can look forward to, should you proceed to download this new driver, is improved battery life "through newer power conservation techniques such as CMAA (Conservative Morphological Anti-Aliasing) and Adaptive Rendering Control." You can read the full release notes here (PDF), and download the 32-bit version of the driver here and the 64-bit version here. Follow Pulkit on Google+ |
