Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Schools are choosing Chromebooks because they are inexpensive, and versatile!

With 1M Sold In The Last Quarter, Google’s Chromebooks Are A Hit With Schools

TechCrunch – by Frederic Lardinois – “During its earnings call this week, Google announced that it — and its partners — sold a million Chromebooks to schools in the last quarter. Overall PC sales worldwide were about 76 million in the last quarter, according to Gartner’s latest numbers, so a million Chromebook sales just to the education market is a pretty good number.

In the early days of Chrome OS, it often seemed like a doomed project. Who, after all, would want to buy a laptop that would just run a browser? Google has one big advantage, though. It’s massive advertising income allows it to stick with projects, even if they don’t catch on right away. As web apps developed, Chromebooks started to get significantly more useful, and these days, when you can do almost everything on the web (and yes, I know Photoshop isn’t one of those things), only having access to web apps really isn’t such a big deal anymore.

A lot of schools were sold on iPads right after those became available and students probably still prefer them over Chromebooks, but they are relatively expensive compared to Chromebooks and harder to manage. Google also offers admins easy ways to manage large Chromebook deployments from a single console while Apple is still catching up when it comes to this.

At its I/O developer conference last month, Google quietly announced that it was expanding its Google Play for Education app and e-book store from Android tablets to Chromebooks, too. That announcement didn’t get a lot of hype, but it’s a huge deal for Google’s push into the education market and for the schools that have bought into this ecosystem.

As Rick Borovoy, Google’s product manager for Google Play for Education, told me back then, many schools deploy both tablets and Chromebooks for their students.

Apple has always been very strong in the educational market, but even though its hardware is arguably superior, it’s also much more expensive. And as long as U.S. schools have to hold bake sales to raise funds, a $200 Chromebook is simply within reach for more of them.

Microsoft, of course, has long been aware of Google’s push, too. It loves to make fun of Chromebooks (remember its Pawn Stars ad?), but the fact that it does so only means it is aware of the threat Google poses in the lucrative education and enterprise markets. It’s now making a counter-push with low-end, low-priced laptops, but while price definitely matters, Microsoft doesn’t have the full ecosystem available that has made Chromebooks so popular in schools. While it offers plenty of apps for textbooks, for example, Google lets schools fund a Google Play for Education account for teachers that allows them to easily buy apps and books for their whole class and for individual students.

Microsoft and Apple should be concerned about Google’s success in schools. Once students get used to working with Google’s products, after all, they are likely to stick with them as they grow older. Apple and Microsoft used to play this game very well with its discounts for schools, but it feels like Google has clearly learned from this and is now a real challenger in this space.”

Chrome can be a bit of an energy hog, but it sounds like help may be on the way!

Chrome’s been eating your laptop’s battery for years, but Google promises to fix it

PCWorld – By: Jared Newman – “Google is just now responding to a bug in Chrome for Windows that may have been sapping users’ batteries for years.

Chrome’s battery drain problem was brought to wider attention by Forbes contributor Ian Morris, who noticed that Chrome for Windows was using considerably more power than other browsers.

The issue, he wrote, is that Chrome doesn’t return the system’s processor to an idle state when it’s not doing anything. Instead, Chrome sets a high ‘system clock tick rate’ of 1 millisecond, and leaves it at that rate, even if the browser’s just running the background.

By comparison, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer only ramps up the tick rate for processor-intensive tasks such as YouTube, and otherwise returns it to the default rate of 15.625 milliseconds. According to Microsoft, setting the tick rate consistently at 1 millisecond can raise power consumption by up to 25 percent depending on your hardware configuration.

This bug wouldn’t be too surprising if it was introduced in a recent update. But according to Morris, the first report of it popped up in 2010, and a more recent bug report in Chromium has been racking up new comments since November 2012. So if your Windows laptop isn’t getting the battery life you’d expected, it’s possible that Chrome is the culprit.

In any case, the new reports have finally gotten Google’s attention. In a statement to PCWorld, the company noted that the bug has been assigned internally, and that the Chrome team is working to fix it—though only after Morris shined a spotlight on the issue. The long-standing bug report has been bumped up to priority one.

In the meantime, consider shutting down Chrome when you’re not using it on your laptop, or trying out a different browser.”

I think I might just go for this one… especially as many Star Trek books as I read!

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited offers all-you-can-eat e-books for $10 a month

Engadget – By: Matt Brian – “After teasing us with a possible launch, Amazon has confirmed Kindle Unlimited, its all-you-can-read e-book subscription service. For $9.99 per month, Kindle Unlimited offers 600,000 books and ‘thousands’ of audiobooks across a range of devices. As expected, many of the major publishers aren’t fully represented, but there are number of popular titles listed, including Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Hunger Games, as well as a whole catalog of Kindle exclusives. Like Prime, Amazon initially offers a free 30-day trial to draw you in, but it’s also throwing in a three month subscription to Audible and access to 2,000 audiobooks via its Whispersync service (which lets you seamlessly switch between reading and listening whenever the mood takes you). For a service that bills itself as ‘unlimited,’ there’s a few constraints on Amazon’s Netflix-for-books service. In addition to the fact that it doesn’t have the support from all of the major publishers, of course, there’s also the small matter that it’s only available in America. At least, for now.”

Check out this video. This looks very cool!

OK, this is pretty amazing, if it works! The device is called MindRDR, and is pronounced “Mind-Reader.” It doesn’t actually read your mind, as much as sense your focused thoughts to “tell” the device to send a “take a photo” command to Google Glass. Still… pretty cool!

Microsoft got a bump in sale when they began the “Windows XP Support Ends Soon-Scare,” so, now they are treatening Windows 7 support. Class act, guys!

In Six Months, Microsoft Will Pull The Plug On Some Parts Of Windows 7 Support

Business Insider – Julie Bort – “Microsoft is warning customers that the end is soon coming for free Windows 7 support. Microsoft will end free mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 13, 2015.
This covers all versions of Windows 7, Mary Jo Foley points out.

The end of support generally means no more updated features or performance improvements, unless you are covered by extra “extended support.”

UPDATED: Microsoft has promised to provide security patches even after it ends mainstream support, through 2020. What is ending is design changes, warranty claims and no-charge incident support.

This move will mostly affect consumers. Businesses get extended support and will get all updates for another five years, until January 14, 2020.

That’s important, because many businesses are right now are in the process of upgrading their old Windows XP PCs, but they’re moving to Windows 7, not Windows 8.

There’s some speculation that, given the popularity of Windows 7, Microsoft might change its mind as the date nears and continue to support it a bit longer, like it did for Windows XP. All told, Microsoft supported XP for about 13 years.

That kind of extension doesn’t seem likely at this point. Remember, Windows 8 basically includes a full version of Windows 7, called Desktop mode. With Windows 8.1, it’s possible to run a Windows 8 machine in Desktop mode and almost avoid the new-and-confusing Windows 8 part of the OS.

And Microsoft really needs to nudge consumers into buying Windows 8 machines. More Windows 8 machines means more developers will want to write software for Windows 8, which will make more people want to buy it.

By the way, Microsoft also set an end-of-life of mainstream support for Windows 8 (including the latest version, Windows 8.1), for January 9, 2018.

This is another hint that Microsoft should have its next version of Windows ready in 2015, code-named “Threshold” (sometimes referred to as Windows 9).

If Microsoft plays its cards right, Windows 9 will be to the unloved Windows 8 what Windows 7 was to Vista, which InfoWorld ranked No. 2 on its list of the 25 biggest tech flops (also PCWorld’s “Biggest Tech Disappointment” of 2007.)

Note: The original version of this story said that security patches will end for some Windows 7 users when mainstream support ends. This was an error. Microsoft has confirmed to us that it will continue to provide security patches for all Windows 7 users through 2020. We apologize for the error.”

Now your DropBox sync’ing will be faster than ever!

Dropbox updates desktop client with streaming sync: Up to 2x faster via overlapping uploads and downloads

The Next Web – By: Emil Protalinski – “Dropbox today announced its desktop client is getting streaming sync, a new feature that significantly reduces the time needed to synchronize large files. You can download the new version now from dropbox.com, and the company promises the improvement will be rolled out ‘over the next couple weeks.’

Until now, Dropbox would split its file synchronization into distinct upload and download phases. In other words, a file needed to be uploaded in its entirety before other clients could begin to download it.

With streaming sync, the two phases are done almost concurrently via Dropbox’s servers, hence the ‘streaming’ name. The company claims multi-client sync time for large files is typically 1.25x faster, and can even go up to 2x faster in certain cases.

Clearly the file size needs to enter the high gigabyte range to see the overall sync time reduced by half. Still, shaving off a few seconds on small files and minutes on large files is quite an accomplishment.

Dropbox says the threshold for streaming sync is 16MB. Anything above that mark will get a boost as it arrives on your connected devices or in a shared folder.

The new desktop client has also received a few other new features: four new languages (Danish, Dutch, Swedish, or Thai), scrollable menu notifications, as well as the ability to create a shared link to files and accept shared folder invites right from the Dropbox menu. What are you waiting for? Get downloading!“

Peppermint 5 is a light-weight (easy on the hardware) Linux desktop that tightly integrates your “Cloud” presence into the desktop experience. As Chromebooks become more and more popular, this version of the Linux desktop becomes VERY interesting to turn any PC into a Cloud client!

Peppermint Five is Live!

“Peppermint OS LLC is excited to announce the launch of our latest operating system Peppermint Five. Lightweight and designed for speed, Peppermint Five delivers on that promise whether using software on your desktop, online, or using cloud based apps.

Kendall Weaver, Chief Technical Officer of Peppermint, states, ‘Initially, Peppermint One was designed out of our desire for an operating system optimized for working online. Each year since then, we have improved on it, and we are very excited about new and improved features in Peppermint Five.’

Shane Remington Chief Operating Officer of Peppermint, adds, ‘With this release we are getting ready for the future. The technology landscape is constantly changing, and we are always responding to meet our user’s needs. We are 100% driven to deliver an OS that is fast, secure, and available everywhere, Peppermint Five is another step in that direction.’

Peppermint Five Highlights

• Peppermint Five is built on a Long Term Support (LTS) code base, Ubuntu 14.04. The upstream code base will receive updates for five years.
• Peppermint Ice is our in house built SSB manager, it has been rewritten from scratch and is now significantly more stable and is more feature rich than past versions. The key new feature is that it now supports both Chrome and Chromium as a backend.
• Peppermint Control Center is our new settings app which provides an intuitive interface to customize and manage your workspaces, window behavior, keyboard and pointer settings, keyboard shortcuts and more.
• We’ve fixed a number of upstream bugs present in Lubuntu, the specific project we fork from. Most notable among these are that the network manager applet starts properly.
• Peppermint-Light is our new window manager and widget theme designed to offer a clean and relatively flat look and feel.
• In previous iterations of Peppermint OS we used Alsa for sound. Our users asked for a more robust audio backend with more options and more user-friendly, Peppermint Five delivers with PulseAudio.

We invite you to compare Peppermint to other operating systems, we are confident you will be impressed. To take Peppermint Five out for a test drive, visit our website at peppermintos.com where you can download it for free. If you need help installing Peppermint Five, or have any questions about using it, we have a second-to-none user support team at forum.peppermintos.com.

About Peppermint OS LLC

Peppermint OS LLC is a software company, based in Asheville, North Carolina. Founded in 2010, we are committed to building the best operating system for both enterprise and consumers available on the widest range of devices. To find out more about our company, please visit us at https://peppermintos.com.”

John Pozadzides from GeekBeat.TV posted this image on Google+! Happy Fourth of July! (Yesterday, anyway!)

The fans are definitely taking a “wait and see” attitude on the next Superman movie. I will see it, but I do wonder.

Fans are worried about yet another moody ‘Batman v Superman’ reveal

“To say that some fans aren’t exactly excited for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the next installment from Warner Bros. and DC, may be an understatement. Between the confusion and disappointment with the movie’s title and the sad first picture of Ben Affleck as Batman (which quickly became a meme), the film’s teases so far seem to be having the opposite effect on fans than what the studio intended. Instead of increasing excitement, fans are growing more worried about what we can expect to see when it hits theaters.

The latest reveal unfortunately doesn’t change this trend. On Thursday the first official picture of Henry Cavill’s Superman as he will appear in the movie was revealed by USA Today and simultaneously on the official Twitter account. Superman’s new design looks much like his old one and his serious expression on a gloomy, rainy rooftop keeps the depressing tone going that we saw in Affleck’s Batman reveal. The only semi-exciting part is that the background looks more like a rooftop in Gotham than Metropolis.

For the most part, fans weren’t won over by Superman’s look. On Twitter many poked fun at the once again dark imagery and expressed their boredom with the rather uninspired photo.”