Month: November 2015

HWMonitor Pro is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors: CPU temperature, voltage, power consumption and utilization.

HWMonitor Pro

• Mainboard voltages, temperatures, fans speed.
• GPU voltage, temperature, utilization.
• HDD temperature.

Remote Monitoring:
Watch the sensors of one or several distant PCs or Android devices using a simple TCP/IP connection.

Graph Generator:
Save monitoring data and generate logging graphs as bitmap files.

Improved Interface:
Sensors in system tray, editable sensors labels.

Now, this is interesting!

Android and Chrome OS to merge by 2017, says WSJ

MNR Daily – By: Sanjit Dutt – “Rumors about Google merging its two operating systems, Chrome and Android, will finally come true according to a new report.

For the last two years, there have been reports of Google planning to merge its Chrome OS and Android, which has now been confirmed by a report from Wall Street Journal. Google will reportedly integrate its Chrome OS into Android by 2017 and the name ‘Chrome’ will no longer be used. Chromebooks will continue to be available, but under a different name, while the Chrome browser will also continue to be available in the same name. This means that all functionalities of Chrome OS will be available in Android and apart from smartphones, the new most operating system will become available on other devices.

At first glance, the move to merge the two operating systems appears unnecessary, as Chromebooks have a loyal user base, particularly in educational institutions across the United States. However, Chromebooks are not so popular among the general public and have managed to achieve a market share of only 3 percent. On the other hand, Android dominates the mobile market with a share of about 78 percent and is also found running on the majority of tablets. Google’s plan to merge Chrome OS and Android was also confirmed when the company recently launched its high-end tablet Pixel C, running on Android OS. Similar to Microsoft’s Surface series of tablets, Google’s Pixel C also comes with an optional keyboard that can be plugged into the Android powered tablet.

Back in 2009, Google’s founder Sergey Brin had hinted at the possibility of the merger of Android and Chrome OS. ‘Android and Chrome will likely converge over time,’ said Brin. After Sundar Pichai took over in 2013, the first step to merge the two operating systems was taken by offering Android app support on Chrome. Recently, Pichai had told analysts, ‘Mobile as a computing paradigm is eventually going to blend with what we think of as desktop today.'”

Bad move, Amazon! You don’t build a market by looking like you are afraid to compete!

Amazon Officially Removes All Apple TV And Google Chromecast Listings From Its Website

Tech Times – By James Geddes – “Amazon had previously said it would be removing all Apple TV and Google Chromecast devices from its online retail listings, and now it has followed through on its promise. As of today, all listings of the devices through the company as well as via third-party sellers have been removed, and customers searching for the units are redirected to listings for a Fire TV device.

The planned move first became apparent not through an official announcement by Amazon, but via an email to resellers with whom it partners, advising them that the company would be discontinuing sales of the products at the end of October. Media requests for confirmation of the new policy were met with the following statement from the company:

‘Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion. Roku, Xbox, PlayStation and Fire TV are excellent choices.’

Now, Amazon has followed through on its promise to eradicate the competing products from its site. A search for ‘Chromecast’ results in a series of listings topped by ‘Amazon Fire TV Stick.’ The items which follow do include several accessories for the Chromecast dongle, however, such as a mini-USB power cable for the device. Amazon also still lists both paperback and Kindle edition books related to the use of the device, such as ‘Chromecast: Go from Chromecast Beginner to Master in 1 Hour or Less! (Master Your Chromecast Device)’

A search for Apple TV results in listings for the Amazon Fire TV Stick, Amazon Fire TV, and other media players.

Amazon’s claim that the removal of the competing products is being done to avoid customer confusion appears disingenuous. Clearly, customers will only be more confused when they search for a product they have a specific interest in buying only to discover it is nowhere to be found and that they have been redirected to another product manufactured by Amazon. While the company might earn a few more dollars by steering customers away from their original purchase interests to its own products, is that really worth the loss of goodwill when loyal Amazon customers realize they are being manipulated?”

We love our hand held devices!

Pew Research Center: Many Own Smartphones, Not Ebook Readers

PC Magazine – “Smartphone ownership has been on the rise over the last few years, but you hardly need a survey to tell you that—just look at all of your friends and family members who plant their faces in their mobile devices at any given opportunity. (A fun game for the upcoming holiday season.)

What’s more interesting is just how some of the other big tech devices in the market have ebbed and flowed over the past few years. The Pew Research Center has a few figures: Most notably, that the once-popular e-reader is starting to fall on tougher times—probably because any tablet you can buy today can also serve as a pretty good digital book.

According to its figures, which the Pew Research Center generated by conducting a whole host of surveys over the past decade, just around 68 percent of all U.S. adults have a smartphone right now, which is up from an estimated 35 percent back in 2011. Only around 19 percent of today’s adults say they own any kind of e-reader, however—a bit of a drop from last year’s 32 percent. (Pew didn’t release detailed stats for exact years, so we can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison back to 2011.)

Tablets, on the other hand, have been on a steady increase since Pew started tracking them in 2010. According to Pew Research Center’s figures, just around 45 percent of all adults now own one.

Curiously, just around 40 percent of adults say they own an MP3 player, and that figure hasn’t really changed since 2008. One might assume that the growth of smartphones that also double as audio players would have made MP3 players fairly irrelevant, but that’s not the case—not according to Pew Research Center’s features, at least. However, MP3 player ownership is on a decline for younger demographics. Only 51 percent of those aged 18–29 say they own an MP3 player now, versus 75 percent in 2010.

Our suggestion might have some merit, as smartphone ownership has jumped from 52 percent in 2011 to 86 percent in 2015 among this younger group. As for other devices, game console ownership has dropped from 62 percent in 2010 to 56 percent today, and e-readers went from 5 percent to 27 percent in 2012, but have dropped back down to just 18 percent in 2015.

‘The Pew Research Center surveys cover ownership of seven types of devices. The center studies them because their use often affects how people connect with each other, with information and with media. They also impact the way people spend their time. And each kind of device has its own attributes of how people use them and engage with the material they provide,’ reads the Pew Research Center’s report.

‘Thus, device usage has notable social and cultural implications, and there are sometimes important political and macroeconomic consequences to the way people use their gadgets. For instance, every major media industry – those built around video, audio and text – has been disrupted by these devices.'”