Windows 8 sparking little more search interest than Vista

Monday, April 15th, 2013

There’s a lot of debate over the popularity of Windows 8. Microsoft claims Windows 8 is outselling Windows 7; British desktop PC makers have told us that up to 93% of new PC buyers still want Windows 7.

Google provides us with another means of divining the popularity of different products. The Google Trends website allows you to compare the search volumes of different terms, and it doesn’t make particularly pleasant reading for Microsoft when you start comparing recent versions of Windows.

We compared the search volumes for the past four editions of Windows, from 2004 until the present day, and this is the result (click graph to enlarge):

As you can see, Windows 8 is following a very similar trend line to Windows Vista, briefly bursting past the incumbent version of Windows at the time of launch, before settling down at a level that’s well below its predecessor. While the post-launch drop-off isn’t quite as severe for Windows 8 as it was for Vista, it’s still pretty grim viewing for Microsoft.

If there are crumbs of comfort for Microsoft, searches for OS X appear to be in long-term decline — although we suspect more people search for the particular version number than “OS X”:

Indeed, when you throw the search term “Mac” into the comparison, it paints an entirely different picture:

Raspberry Pi Fuze enclosure revives 1980s micros

Saturday, April 13th, 2013

This post was updated on 13 May 2013 to add information about the Fuze’s project cards and final hardware design.

It’s fair to say the Raspberry Pi is a hit with at least two constituencies. Without a doubt it’s captured the imaginations of youngsters attracted to its simple versatility. To those of us from an older generation, it also has a certain nostalgia value, harking back to the days when bare circuit boards were de rigueur and writing your own software was all part of the fun.

It’s appropriate then that the Fuze enclosure – made by Aylesbury-based Binary Distribution – looks like something that itself fell out of the eighties. Following consciously in the footsteps of the BBC Micro, Binary Distribution has aimed the Fuze at schools – a fact which explains its tough, aluminium casing. Each unit comes with a deck of 16 colourful and jovially written project cards (aimed at key stages one to four) that guide students through the fundamentals of BASIC programming, starting with a classic Hello World program and moving on to more advanced concepts such as variables and loops.

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Were we unfair on Microsoft Security Essentials?

Friday, January 18th, 2013

If you’ve read the latest issue of PC Pro, you’ll have seen one of the conclusions of our latest round-up of security suites: Microsoft Security Essentials isn’t doing a great job of protecting against current malware threats, especially not brand new “zero-day” ones.

Microsoft isn’t happy about this conclusion, and it’s published a blog post challenging the research carried out by AV-Test.org to which we refer in our Labs.

The post doesn’t seek to claim that the test results are actually incorrect. It accepts that Security Essentials (and its business-oriented Forefront Endpoint Protection package, which uses the same engine) failed to protect against 28 out of 100 genuine zero-day attacks, as well as 9% of a huge collection of recent malware, representing almost 20,000 missed samples.

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Four ways to get PC Pro every month

Friday, November 9th, 2012

At the risk of sounding like a Stephen Fry voice-over, it’s never been easier to get your hands on PC Pro every month. We now have four different ways to pick up the magazine in either print or digital form, and to help you decide which suits you best, I’m going to run through the options here.

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Microsoft Surface review: first look

Thursday, October 25th, 2012

After the disappointment of the Windows 8 keynote, where very little was said that was either key or of note, Microsoft has struck back with a vengeance by delivering the Surface. And it is a staggeringly good device.

To explain this without making me sound like a Microsoft fanboi, I’ll dive into the kind of minutiae that PC Pro readers should appreciate.

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Windows 8 vs OS X on the Retina MacBook Pro

Friday, July 6th, 2012

We’ll be covering exactly how the MacBook Pro’s Retina display works with various resolution and scaling settings in a forthcoming magazine feature, but for now the quickest way to demonstrate is with a series of screenshots. Every screenshot in this post is taken on a 2,880 x 1,800 display, but with OS X’s “resolution” options or Windows 8’s DPI scaling settings applied. You won’t be able to see the sharpness, but you can see how big everything will look at various settings.

(NB. You may notice some interesting resolutions when you enlarge the OS X shots. That’s because OS X first renders the desktop at double the chosen resolution, then scales that down to 2,880 x 1,800 for display. I’ll be taking an in-depth look at all this technology in the feature.)

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HTC Radar review: first look

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

HTC used a swanky London event to unleash its second generation of Windows Phone 7 devices and, while it was the Titan taking most of the plaudits on the night, the Radar could prove to be just as enticing.

The firm’s European product director, Phil Blair, said the Radar was “designed around a social and mobile lifestyle”, and our hands-on time with the device certainly suggested that it’s got enough oomph to make Windows Phone 7’s Mango update feel slick, with no hint of slowdown or juddering as we navigated the various menus and applications. (more…)

HTC Titan review: first look

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

HTC has given its phones some odd names over the years, but there’s no denying that Titan is a step in the right direction (even if it is the second time HTC has released a Windows phone of that name). It’s certainly an  accurate description: with a 4.7in touchscreen taking centre stage in HTC’s new Windows Phone 7 flagship, it’s one of the biggest smartphones we’ve ever seen – and the largest to be loaded with Microsoft’s mobile OS.

Truth be told, the sheer size of the Titan made it feel a little awkward in our hands, but HTC has worked its familiar magic on the hardware.

The device feels rock-solid, it comes with the familiar matte rear and glossy bezel around the screen, and it’s also been made from one machined piece of aluminium. Impressively, it’s also only 9.9mm thick at its widest point. (more…)

Asus Eee Slate EP121 review: first look

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Not wanting to let Android have all the fun with its new Transformer, Asus has also introduced a Windows-powered tablet: the Eee Slate EP121.

It’s a hefty piece of kit, with a massive 12.1in screen and a 17mm-thick chassis weighing 1.15kg – almost twice as heavy as the iPad 2. Still, that makes room for some impressive hardware, with an Intel Core i5-470UM running at 1.33GHz and bringing two cores, Turbo Boost technology and Intel’s latest integrated graphics within a TDP of just 18W.

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Running PC Pro on Ubuntu: the verdict

Friday, February 11th, 2011

Yesterday, something remarkable happened. Our entire editorial team migrated to Ubuntu overnight and – by and large – it was business as usual. The website ran as normal, magazine copy was still written, we (just about) fulfilled our day jobs. (You can see how PC Pro’s Ubuntu day unfolded here.)

Several of the many excellent comments on yesterday’s live blog suggested our day-long experiment wasn’t a fair test; that no IT manager worth his space in the car park would migrate an entire office to a new operating system with almost no preparation or staff training. They were right. Yet what our somewhat reckless experiment revealed is that Ubuntu could cope. On a rag-bag selection of laptops and desktops, installed as a Windows “app”, a dual-boot or within a virtual machine, Ubuntu worked (sometimes at the second or third attempt) every time.

What our test also revealed is that the underlying operating system is becoming less and less relevant: what really matters are the applications. So much of our working lives are now spent in the web browser – updating the web CMS, scouring websites – that it really doesn’t matter if it’s Windows or Ubuntu propping the browser up. The Chrome and Firefox sync tools are so well implemented that you’re up and running with familiar bookmarks, extensions, search history and passwords within minutes.

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