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• UPDATED: The NBN: Everything you need to know
• Industry Voice: Four steps for success with big data in 2015
• Blip: What are you going to do now, Apple Pay? I'm going to Disney World!
• Review: Samsung Gear S
• Review: Acer TravelMate B115
• Interview: How going digital can drive business innovation and value
• Updated: CES 2015: what to expect from the biggest tech show of the year
• This is the first real build of Google's self-driving car
• Microsoft quietly kills free Public Websites feature
• Intel betting on semi-custom designs for 2015
• ARM server startup Calxeda back on track
• Apple readying 'ultra-thin' Retina MacBook Air and Apple Watch in autumn 2015
• Review: Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha
• Nintendo is working on its next console, which may be powered by AMD
• Download of the day: Foxit Reader
• This is Samsung's Z1 Tizen phone, launching in January
• Downloads: Christmas crackers: Foobar2000
• Two months in, Apple Pay is doing impressively well
• Tech Bargains: TechRadar Deals: PS4, Xbox One, TV + soundbar, headphones and more!
• Interview: World could "run out of storage capacity" within 2 years warns Seagate VP

UPDATED: The NBN: Everything you need to know Posted: 22 Dec 2014 09:30 PM PST Introduction No technology has quite changed the way we interact with each other like the internet has. From email to Facebook, from Twitter to Quickflix, people are spending more and more of their time online. Not only are we spending more of our time online, but we're downloading more and more stuff every day. More than four billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube, while there are over a billion monthly active Facebook users. But it's not just social. Businesses are moving to the web en masse, creating an industry worth billions. The convenience of shopping from home, or accessing your favourite media instantly via the web has seen more and more startups and services launch businesses specifically for the web. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that the average broadband usage across Australia increased 46% between 2013 and 2014. All this demand for content has put a strain on the infrastructure that connects homes all over Australia to the internet. For the most part, that infrastructure consists of ageing copper wires, owned by Telstra and in need of upgrading. YouTube : youtubeurlv=JU-zIEkGJps&list=UUQD-lFbbcD6ZQOLHZr6AREQ&index=35&feature=plcp ADSL technology, which delivers broadband to the vast majority of Australian homes, has reached its peak as well, with ADSL2+ unable to offer more than a theoretical maximum download speed of 24Mbps. That number is always much less, as the quality of the signal over copper degrades with distance. Fibre Optic cable, on the other hand, offers an easy 100Mbps connection, that is largely unaffected by distance. What's more, it can be scaled upwards, with 1Gbps speeds already available on some networks around the world, and research showing 40Gbps speeds can be attainable and affordable within a few years. For the speeds to get faster, the cable in the ground remains the same, it's the connections at the ends of the cable that need to be updated. It was with this idea in mind that the Labor government went to the polls in 2007 with a policy for a national broadband network. Initially, the government was hoping to have private companies build and rollout the network, but it quickly became apparent that the job would be too big, too expensive and too risky for the private sector to pursue. So in 2009, The Labor Government announced its plans for the National Broadband Network. A nationwide, fibre to the premises network that serviced 93 per cent of Australian homes, with wireless being used to reach the remaining seven per cent. Run by a government funded company - NBNCo - the NBN would offer wholesale fibre services to ISPs to sell on to the end user. A massive undertaking, both in scope and in price, the NBN quickly became a political football, kicked between the government and the opposition to score cheap political points. The Liberal Party decided that if the NBN provided optical fibre to a box at the end of the street (the node), it would be less expensive and faster to implement. This requires the use of Telstra's copper infrastructure for the last segments from the nodes to households. The coalition's policy still lends money to NBN Co for a large portion of the infrastructure but also encourages private companies to 'finish off' the infrastructure themselves. The Coalition claims that their NBN is less expensive, will be finished significantly sooner and lays the groundwork for a good broadband network somewhere down the track. The downside is, the distribution of 100% fibre optic broadband will be a function of market forces, meaning it will go to densely populated and high income areas quickly and may never make it to other areas of Australia. Using copper wires also reduces the final speed of the connection by a minimum of 20% and in some cases the immediate benefits of the upgrade could be negligible. History The ALP put the contract for an Australian broadband network to tender and received six submissions in total, including one from Telstra that was excluded for not complying with the application requirements. The Telstra application was in fact a half-submission, doing its best to dance around the potential issue of structural separation, where the government would force Telstra to split its wholesale and retail arms into two businesses. In the end though, none of the applications met the government's requirements. More of an issue was the timing - in the middle of 2009, the world had just hit the Global Financial Crisis, and none of the companies that had submitted a proposal could raise the necessary capital to fund the project. What's more, the ALP discovered that, should it go ahead and build a Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) network - as was being pitched at the time as a more affordable approach to the NBN - it would end up having to pay Telstra between $15-20 billion in compensation to access the copper wires connecting the node to each home. This fact more than anything else spurred the ALP to create its own solution to the issue of nationwide broadband, in the form of the NBN. The NBN under the ALP In April 2009, the Government formally announced its plans to bypass Telstra's copper network entirely by building a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, and supplementing it with additional fixed wireless and satellite services for remote customers. July 2009 marked the start of the NBN with an initial Trial run being deployed in Tasmania. The following year work began on 5 mainland sites and an additional 14 were announced to begin later in 2010. In may of 2011 the first homes were able to use the newly connected broadband and by september 32,295 premises had working fiber optic broadband connections. In March 2012, the NBN Co announced outlined the plans to construct the fibre network in over 1500 communities and past 3.5 million homes before June 2015. By June 2013 the NBN had passed by 207,500 homes, there was 70,100 active NBN services and 33,600 active fibre services. YouTube : youtubeurlv=2RtnfwVPSdw&list=UUQD-lFbbcD6ZQOLHZr6AREQ&index=49&feature=plcp Major Coalition reforms to the NBN The 2013 Federal Election resulted in a Liberal/National Coalition that set in motion a strategic review of the ultimate Multiple-Technology-Mix (MTM) NBN. Instead of the unilateral FTTP across Australia the Coalition elected for a new more complicated strategy that would save them time and money, but would also compromise on the infrastructure. The Labor government intended the National Broadband Network to be a high speed service that offered fast broadband at an affordable price to 90% of the Australian population. The party set up a number of subsidies that would see the cost of delivering broadband to remote areas of Australia shared across the entire service. The Coalition were worried that this would push the expense of services in populated areas higher than they needed to be and would drive down the network's competitiveness. The Telecommunications Regulatory and Structural Reform paper released by the Coalition in December 2014 stated that "this is neither sustainable nor fair." Under this plan the government will determine the best technology to deliver broadband for each individual suburb on a case by case basis. The NBN under the former ALP government was such a comprehensive upgrade that when the roll out began it caused a drop in private investment of moderate-speed broadband connections like ADSL. There was no intermediate development for a number of areas with very poor broadband as there was no chance for infrastructure developers to make their money back before a superior service was delivered. These areas would simply have to wait for an NBN connection that could take years. This had a negative impact on the whole industry and contributed to the Coalition's goals to speed up the rollout up and deliver the NBN to areas with poor connections first. The Coalition also intends to remove cross-subsidy arrangements for non-commercial areas like those connected by fixed wireless and satellite, and make the cost of broadband in those areas proportional to their infrastructure cost and transparent. This will mean that populated areas will pay less for their broadband access and remote households will pay more. Telstra, Optus and the ACCC The NBN was initially conceived as a way to work around Telstra's monopoly of copper telecommunications infrastructure. Yet as part of the NBN construction process, NBNCo and Telstra formed an agreement in 2011 that involved the leasing of Telstra exchanges, ducts and pipes and currently unused fibre infrastructure to the NBN. This arrangement ensured that NBNCo would be the only wholesaler of fibre broadband in Australia, while getting Telstra to migrate its customers away from its copper network and onto the fibre one. Similarly, an agreement with Optus worth about $800 million initially outlined that the telco would switch off its hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) network and move to the NBN. Both of these Agreements were amended early in December 2014. The coalition government, NBN Co and Telstra signed an 'equivalent' deal worth $11 billion, meaning Telstra will now transfer ownership of its copper infrastructure and HFC cables to NBN Co instead of decommissioning them. Optus will also give NBN Co its HFC cables instead of turning them off. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission(ACCC) signed off on both the initial deals, the amendments are yet to be approved. The technology The NBN Co was originally planning to use just three different technologies to bring high speed broadband to Australians across the country. The reason for the different technologies comes purely down to cost. While the bulk of Australia's population lives in cities, the cost of running fibre to remote parts of the country is far from cost effective. By using fixed wireless and satellite services, NBNCo is able to manage the expense of building the network, while providing rural Australians with an internet connection speed that is actually usable. The Coalition's introduction of the Multiple-Technology-Mix (MTM) in 2013, adds another three variations to the equation. Technologies implemented will be determined on a case by case basis and could include fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB), hybrid fibre coaxial HFC, fixed wireless and satellite. The government released a reform policy alongside the Telstra and Optus deals that stated the NBN Co would be the broadband infrastructure provider 'of last resort'. NBN Co will be required to maintain separate accounts for its satellite, fixed wireless,FTTx, HFC and transit networks, in order to ensure that each can be priced competitively and reviewed accordingly. Fibre to the premises Fibre to the Premises, or FTTP, is exactly what it sounds like. Optical fibre runs from the local exchange to the house directly, allowing for super-fast broadband speeds. FTTP networks offer download speeds up to 100Mbps and upload speeds of 40Mbps. But the company has already announced its intention of upgrading that to 1Gbps download speeds before the network is completed. Though this was largely the ALP infrastructure, the Coalition intends to use FTTP wherever Telstra's copper wires are damaged, in new large scale housing estates and throughout high demand locations like business centres, universities and hospitals. Fixed wireless Roughly four per cent of the population living outside the fibre footprint will get access to broadband using a fixed wireless service. But what does that even mean? For the NBN, fixed wireless will use a version of the LTE 4G technology, running on the 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz spectrums. Unlike the 4G services from Telstra and Optus, the NBN fixed wireless technology will deliver a set amount of bandwidth to a set amount of people. Where mobile networks can have lots of different people accessing the network at the same time, slowing the network down, NBNCo can effectively guarantee enough bandwidth for each user by having a pre-determined amount of people on its fixed wireless network. It also won't be affected by changing distances away from the mobile towers like your 4G smartphone. Initially, NBNCo's fixed wireless service will be limited to theoretical maximum speeds of 12Mbps. It has stated that it will improve those speeds in the future, although no timeframe has been given for the upgrade. NBN Co purchased a chunk of spectrum from Austar in early 2011, plus an extra bit of spectrum from the ACMA in July that year to help deliver its fixed wireless network. Fibre to the node Fibre to the node (FTTN) only delivers the optical fibre to the local node, relying on Telstra's pre-installed copper connections to connect each house to the network. An independent website providing statistics on the progress of the NBN rollout has calculated broadband speed estimates for FTTN areas. Households within 300 meters of the node can expect the maximum theoretical speed of FTTN connections of 80 mbps, but if your house is any further than 1.1km from the node your predicted internet speed will be under 25mbps. Since the Government has committed to a minimum of 25mbps by 2016 and 50mbps by 2019 they will likely be planning to eventually place nodes closer than 600m from every household. Fibre to the basement The telco TPG is largely leading the way with fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) making the surprise decision in September of 2013 to roll out its own fibre infrastructure to new apartment blocks. New apartment buildings represent a slice of the market that has lots of customers serviced by less infrastructure and tenants who can afford unlimited broadband plans. In the basement of apartment buildings, TPG had worked out a business model that would allow it to create its own infrastructure and compete with the NBN on a small scale. FTTB is often connected to non-fibre wiring from the basement to each apartment and so trial speeds are equivalent to the best results seen on the FTTN network. In response to this, NBN Co announced its own release of FTTB to block other telcos from absorbing all of those premium customers. In December 2014, the Coalition announced that there would be a blanket tax on all new build houses and apartments connected by the NBN and this will likely affect FTTB connections most. $900 will be the final cost passed on for a new residence connected by FTTP or FTTB broadband. Fixed wireless Roughly four per cent of the population living outside the fibre footprint will get access to broadband using a fixed wireless service. But what does that even mean? For the NBN, fixed wireless will use a version of the LTE 4G technology, running on the 2.3GHz and 3.4GHz spectrums. Unlike the 4G services from Telstra and Optus, the NBN fixed wireless technology will deliver a set amount of bandwidth to a set amount of people. Where mobile networks can have lots of different people accessing the network at the same time, slowing the network down, NBNCo can effectively guarantee enough bandwidth for each user by having a pre-determined amount of people on its fixed wireless network. It also won't be affected by changing distances away from the mobile towers like your 4G smartphone. NBN Co's fixed wireless service currently has theoretical maximum speeds of 25Mbps. However the Coalition is planning to introduce an upgrade to 50mbps where the signal strength is high enough, a pilot is scheduled for the second quarter of 2015. Satellite About three per cent of Australia's population lives in areas so remote that the only realistic way to offer a broadband connection is via satellite. Satellite technology is hardly an ideal solution for broadband delivery. The interim offering currently available from NBN Co can only deliver up to 4 Mbps download speeds. The current solution involves using bandwidth bought from Optus and IPstar satellites, but NBNCo has also made plans to build and deploy its own satellites. Due to launch in 2015 by Space Systems/Loral, the two Ka band satellites will deliver 80 Gbps worth of bandwidth each, and will deliver peak speeds of 12Mbps to the 400,000 premises outside both the fibre and fixed wireless areas of the NBN. HFC Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) is currently used for delivering subscription television and the technology will require upgrades to the connections in order to be able to deliver broadband. Picking up the HFC was a gamble by the Coalition. In 2011 it was identified as a poor investment by Optus's director of government and corporate affairs Maha Krishnapillai. Expensive to convert to broadband usage and unable to handle large volumes of connections the HFC was identified as having limited growth potential as a broadband network. The HFC is already connected to 1.7 million homes and has passed another 1.5 million. Considering that HFC with low demand can reach speeds of 100mbps acquiring these connections will help the government dramatically reduce the timeframe of the NBN rollout. The cost The biggest argument against the NBN revolves around the network's cost to build.There is a common misconception that the network is being funded by taxpayers dollars, and is therefore costing the general public a lot of money. It's not.To fund NBN Co, the federal government borrows money and gives that money to NBN Co to construct the network. The idea is that once the network starts operating and selling its wholesale network, it can begin to pay back the government with money from its customers. In other words, it works almost exactly like a regular business loan from a bank, except with much bigger numbers. The NBN Co will be owned outright by the government before 2034. YouTube : youtubeurlv=WufIZGf3ALA&feature=share&list=UUQD-lFbbcD6ZQOLHZr6AREQ Build cost The other myth that continually flies around arguments about the NBN is the cost of building the network. While the Liberal party is more than happy to throw around the predicted cost of $90 billion, the truth is that the cost of the network has never come close to that figure. The capital cost of building the ALP NBN was predicted to be $37.4 billion. Of that amount, only $26 billion needs to be raised, as once the network reaches critical mass, the network will start making enough money to cover the cost of completing the rollout itself. The Coalition requires $29.5 billion dollars of which $20.4 billion will be capital expenditure and the NBN Co will begin repaying the loan in 2021 when construction is complete. The NBN Co expects to own the NBN outright by 2034. The biggest argument against the NBN from the federal opposition revolves around the network's cost to build. However, in almost every case, the information delivered by the liberal party is either being misrepresented or misconstrued. Whether that's done intentionally for political gain or mistakenly through a fundamental lack of understanding about the economics of the network is irrelevant. The biggest source of confusion seems to be the idea that the network is being funded by taxpayers dollars, and is therefore costing the general public a lot of money. It's not. To fund NBNCo, the federal government borrows money and gives that money to NBNCo to construct the network. The idea is that once the network starts operating and selling its wholesale network, it can begin to pay back the government with money from its customers. In other words, it works almost exactly like a regular business loan from a bank, except with much bigger numbers. The opposition spent a lot of time arguing against the fact that the NBN isn't classified as an expense as part of the federal budget. But the government's accounting decision was justified by a research note from the Parliamentary Library of Australia, which explained that "Australia has adopted internationally accepted accounting standards, and these are applied in the budget treatment of the NBN." The future From the outset, the NBN has been a political football, bruised and battered as politicians from both sides of parliament do their best to kick it in their favour. The ALP claim FTTP is the best way to deliver superfast broadband to all Australians, while the current Coalition claim it is too expensive, and similar results could be attained with a FTTN network for a much lower cost. While cheaper than Labor's NBN, the Coalition network will rely on current copper wiring to connect homes to nodes placed on street corners. Tony Abbott has claimed his party's NBN will deliver speeds of between 25Mbps and 100Mbps by 2016 and a minimum of 50Mbps connections by 2019. While the Coalition hasn't set a rate to then run fibre from the node to a residence if a person requests it, Turnbull's example indicates that it could cost around $3000 for this service. Adding to this, Telstra CEO David Thodey in June 2013 said that the copper network was in fine working order, though there has been concerns over the years about its condition. The Coalition's policy could in turn receive a boost after Thodey said that the century old copper network could last for another 100 years. Bill Morrow replaced Mike Quigley as NBN Co's chief executive in December of 2013 along with many executives, following the Coalition's election win. The coalition will use FTTN to service more than two thirds of the total rollout. 10 per cent of the the premises selected to have FTTP will be replacing either high maintenance or broken copper infrastructure. The Coalition expects to complete 65 per cent of the roll out by 2017 with the remainder largely being HFC connections that will be updated by 2019. Speed FTTP initially delivers a theoretical maximum download speed of 100Mbps, whereas the Coalition's plans to use copper from the node reduces this to a maximum of 80mbps. This is not a huge difference immediately and many people would not require the faster 100mbps for some time but it does limit the future potential of the infrastructure. British researchers have already developed a way to realistically deliver 20Gbps speeds over fibre, potentially upgradeable to 40Gbps, at 80mbps copper is at it's limit. Infrastructure longevity FTTN will eventually need to be upgraded to Fibre to the Premises. In the short term, the Coalition will connect some locations that need the faster download speeds, but plan to wait until there is demand for full fibre broadband across the country. The Coalition has offered the option of paying for 50 per cent of the cost to build fibre infrastructure if a user or investor is willing to put forward the other half of construction costs. When you consider that only 38 per cent of properties with new broadband connections are actively using the connection, it is understandable that the Coalition is attempting to save some money by using what is already there first. The majority of fiber in the NBN is still being constructed providing a decent base infrastructure that can be developed in the future. The Coalition's support of competition also means that private companies are likely to create much of the final infrastructure themselves, allowing those who need it to have access but others who have no use for it yet will not add unnecessary expense. The main unknown is HFC. In 2011, it was assessed as a poor broadband infrastructure investment as it was expensive to upgrade and struggled to maintain effectiveness with increasing volumes of connected users. NBN Co's CEO Bill Morrow recently said that HFC infrastructure is capable of delivering much faster speeds than many think. There are also new technologies that could allow HFC to have gigabit download speeds, but its inability to handle volume may make it an inefficient technology in the future. Considering it is planned to connect over a third of the total NBN rollout, the success of the HFC will be a decisive factor in the success or failure of the Coalition's NBN.

Industry Voice: Four steps for success with big data in 2015 Posted: 22 Dec 2014 04:00 PM PST According to Gartner's recent Big Data Industry Insights report, it's clear that while organizations are increasing their investments in big data, they struggle to gain significant business value from those investments. Furthermore, according to a CSC survey, five of every nine big data projects aren't completed and many others fall short of their objectives. Often, business and IT groups are not aligned on the business problem they need to solve. Also, employees frequently lack skills required to analyze data. To help overcome these hurdles and maximize business value from data, organizations can take the following steps to significantly shorten the time-to-value and contribute to business success using big data initiatives. 1. Know What You Are Trying to Solve Identifying a key element or business problem for a successful big data initiative may seem trivial at first, but it's absolutely crucial. Many organizations fall into the trap of starting a big data initiative before digging deeper into what business questions they want to solve. This often leads to frustrations for both business and technology teams since they already started investing in technology and resources. Having clearly defined analytics requirements is essential for a partnership between business stakeholders and the technology team. Success for big data initiatives hinges on business stakeholders deciding which requirements will move the needle for the business. As technology has evolved, business stakeholders should be encouraged to think of analytics questions that once seemed to be a distant dream with existing technologies. Coming up with a succinct set of analytics requirements also helps technology teams define a big data architecture that leads to success for the organization. 2. Replace Data Silos with Auditable Role-Based Access Controls Another hurdle that organizations face is that IT departments spend too much of their time accessing data rather than analyzing it. Most data analysts spend 80 percent or more of their time accessing data, while a mere 20% or less spend time actually analyzing it for actionable business insights. In order to move past data silos and take full advantage of low-cost batch storage technologies like Hadoop, many organizations are looking favorably at a "data lake" or "data reservoir" model. In this model, data is stored once and shared by multiple business and IT stakeholders. This architecture permits role-based access controls to protect sensitive data and customer privacy. For example, someone on the fraud team may be authorized to see PII data, such as home addresses and credit card numbers, while a marketing analyst sees masked and aggregated data. Creating this "data fabric" not only breaks down organization silos, but also empowers employees to take advantage of their data with a single version of the truth. 3. Make Analytics Actionable A hidden issue with many big data projects is that often assessments are based on data subsets, when they are actually meant to be a representative sample. While this provides directional analysis, actionable insights cannot be derived from sampled and aggregated data. For example, if retailers want to understand customer interactions across offline and online channels, or if an investment banker wants to measure risk in a portfolio, companies must be able to search, analyze and visualize raw granular data, not just a sample. Actionable insights from granular data can drive a targeted marketing campaign at a customer level, or reduce risk by identifying a micro segment of customers. 4. Empower Self-Service Analytics by Everyone, Not Just Data Scientists Finally, organizations are struggling to hire and retain data scientists who understand statistics, computer science and open-source technologies, such as Hadoop or NoSQL data stores. According to research from McKinsey Global Institute, the United States will experience a shortage of between 140,000 and 190,000 skilled data scientists, and 1.5 million managers and analysts capable of reaping actionable insights from big data. One way to address the lack of skills is to adopt technologies that bridge the gap between data scientists and knowledge workers. This approach includes enabling product managers, web analysts, risk managers, security analysts and other knowledge workers to simply point at Hadoop or another data store, and start exploring, visualizing and analyzing. This also relieves database or business analysts from having to learn programming language to access this data or spend valuable time writing complex code, saving both time and money. The Bottom Line At the end of the day, businesses will thrive with wide data access and data-driven decision making. By simplifying access to data and democratizing the information, organizations will be able to leverage the power of big data, which will ultimately bring them a step closer to gaining a competitive advantage in 2015. Rahul Deshmukh is Director of Solutions Marketing at Splunk

Blip: What are you going to do now, Apple Pay? I'm going to Disney World! Posted: 22 Dec 2014 03:25 PM PST Apple Pay is continuing its (slow) march towards mobile payment domination by arriving at one of the happiest places on earth December 24. That's right - Apple Pay is going to Disney World! Specifically the Walt Disney World Resort, where it along with other NFC systems, like Google Wallet, will be acceptable forms of payment. Starting on Christmas Eve, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and eventual Apple Watch users can tap to pay at places like stores, quick-service restaurants, bars and ticket sales booths, according to WDWMagic.com. Other spots, like table service restaurants, will join the Apple Pay brigade. Eli Manning must be happy. More blips! The only things that'll make you happier than a trip to Disney World are our blips. Android Wear users can watch their security cameras on their wrists Fetch! Dog runs with help of 3D-printed prosthetics 20th anniversary PS4 sells for insane sums on eBay

Review: Samsung Gear S Posted: 22 Dec 2014 02:36 PM PST Introduction and display Samsung has jumped into the wearables war with gusto and launched quite a lot of smartwatches and fitness trackers in 2014. Aside from odd features here and there - like the camera on the Gear 2 which it thankfully got rid of with the Gear 2 Neo - Samsung looks like its slowly but surely improving its wearables selection. The Gear S for instance, is the first Samsung standalone watch that makes calls ... with a few caveats. You still need a compatible Samsung phone for the smartwatch to work. More on that later. Regardless it's definitely a leap forward in functionality and can potentially make Samsung mobile devices the go-to for wearable fans who want to carry around one device. Granted, the Gear S isn't exactly there yet but it's one of the closest independent smartwatches out now. However, cooler features means a higher price tag and the Gear S isn't cheap at $350 (£329, AU$449). That said, it's not much more than a LG G Watch R and seems to do more. But is the standalone smartwatch option enough to make the Gear S a standout smartwatch? Display The first thing you'll notice on the Gear S is its unique, curved AMOLED screen that's an even 2-inches. The 360 x 480 resolution display has a higher pixel count than already-released Android Wear and Samsung Gear watches. Like the Gear Fit, the screen is curved to better sit on the wrist. It really is quite lovely and drew a lot of eyes whenever I wore it out. But it's also gigantic - which also probably caught a lot of eyeballs. In comparison, I thought the the circular LG G Watch R (1.3-inches in diameter) was massive but it seems like Samsung thinks bigger is better and went a full inch larger. In some ways, it is nice and makes sense since you can use the watch to make calls and text - but it doesn't make it very comfortable. With the ambient light sensor, the display will also automatically brighten when you're outside. Even though the curved glass fits your wrist better, it doesn't help the glare. At its peak brightness, the screen is still difficult to see. The bezel itself takes up a lot of real estate and is part of why the watch face is so large. Perhaps Samsung should consider cutting down the bezel on future iterations to allow more screen space. Design and comfort The Gear S band (245 x 23.8 x 1 mm) is made from a surprisingly comfy, semi-flexible rubber (Urethane) that stretches around the face and meets up with a metal clasp. I also should emphasize "semi-flexible;" the band is able to bend like rubber but it retains a curled form most of the time. The strap is adjustable up to 10 different sizes and is able to fit a wide variety of beefy wrists, or in my case, tiny baby wrists. There are also five different proprietary Samsung straps you can choose from: Cobalt Blue, Blue Black, White, Mocha Grey and Supreme Red. However, only black and white are available in the US right now. If you do plan on several switches, the watch body pops out and snaps on to the strap. The band isn't like the faded leather of the Moto 360, or like many of the first Android Wear watches, but it's also not an uncomfortable plastic either. It's more sporty and seems pretty durable though the rubbery look makes the watch feel less premium. Luckily the body of the watch makes up for that. As mentioned before, there's a curved screen along with a curved body that cradles your wrist. It's definitely meant for larger wrists but fit mine decently. Though it was hard to see the full face of the watch because it was angled further away - meaning I had to tilt the watch towards my face a bit more than say, the smaller, flat Pebble Steel. There is one physical home button on the Gear S that sits on the bottom of the watch face. Pressing it takes you to the main watch face. On the left of the watch, you'll find a microphone, placed there for making phone calls and voice activated actions. There's a small speaker on the right for sound output. On the rear of the watch, you'll find a centralized heart rate monitor and five gold connector pins on the bottom which connect to the charging dock. The back is made of a hard plastic matching the feel of the rubbery strap. It doesn't seem like it would get easily scratched. The watch is IP67 dust and water-resistant but you can't hop in a pool with it on. It just means you can gently submerge a device in a tank of still tap water up to a depth of one meter at room temperature for about 30 minutes. You can also get a bit of sweat or rain on both the face and strap without lasting damage - which is good news since it's a watch you can't easily hide, bringing us to the next topic. Comfort Again it must be mentioned: the Gear S is a big smartwatch. Coupled with my small wrist, it's positively massive. I can't figure out who it would look "normal" on - maybe someone who's over six feet tall with wrestler sized wrists? It also makes taking coats on and off a pain. The watch tends to get caught on sleeves often. I even had to roll up my longer sleeved shirts because the Gear S wouldn't fit. I can also feel all of the Gear S's 2.3 ounces when wearing it. Like the LG G Watch R, both could gain a lot by shedding some weight. The Gear S is probably one of the most uncomfortable watches I've worn. The strap makes turning my wrist inward - or just using my hand to do anything - feel awkward, like I have an ankle bracelet slapped on my arm. If you're used to big, unwieldy bracelets or analog watches, then it may not be a problem for you. But for someone who doesn't wear jewelry or giant watches daily, it's not very comfortable. Specs and performance The Gear S has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal memory. That lines up with its smartwatch brethren: the Moto 360, along with other Samsung and LG watches also come with 512MB and 4GB of internal storage. There are a whopping seven sensors in the Gear S: Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, Heart Rate, Ambient Light, UV and Barometer. That's quite a lot more than both the Moto 360 and LG G Watch R, though it's not as many as the Microsoft Band (which has 10 sensors). On the connectivity side, the Gear S has Bluetooth 4.1 to connect up with supported Samsung phones. But it also has standalone Wi-Fi (b/g/n) and a Micro SIM slot for use with 2G and 3G networks when you're out of Bluetooth range. Calling and texting While driving and using the Gear S as a phone, friends could hear me very well with my hands on the steering wheel - about a foot away, give or take. It ended up being pretty handy going hands free. I even used it to make calls while typing with no huge audible issues on either end. While doing chores around the house like decorating for Christmas or doing laundry, I would call people to get a sense of how well they could hear me. Background noise wasn't too loud and when my arm was at my side while walking, it sounded like I was just on speakerphone - a little far but not inaudible. I can also see it being useful when I'm cooking, though I'd be afraid of getting the watch dirty. However I can't see myself using the watch to call people in public since it's pretty much a speakerphone on your wrist - meaning everyone can hear your conversation. You can connect a Bluetooth headset which will pair up with your Gear S, but what's the point of adding another awkward device to your body when you already have one? Texting is also a nice feature. Though the keyboard is an itty bitty thing, it's very intuitive. Aside from "how now Beyonce cow," the auto-correct was helpful making the texting process quicker. Ultimately, I can't see texting on a small smartwatch being that great. After all, you're typing away with one finger which makes the process pretty tedious. I will say, it is nice for quick little messages. It's almost like Samsung knew this because there's a character cap for each text message. You can use your voice to dictate messages but it cuts off around 10-15 seconds depending on how fast you're talking. There are quick pre-written responses you can choose from though, if you're in a rush. Interface, apps and fitness The first thing you'll see on the Gear S face is the clock, which can be switched out from a selection of pre-loaded faces - or you can download more from the Galaxy Apps store. A swipe left will take you through the following seven customizable widgets: S Health, news reader, calendar agenda, contacts, weather, a music player and settings. The order can be changed up however you want, though you can only pin five widgets. Since these are basically shortcuts, you can still access the other widgets as apps if you swipe up from the bottom. Swiping right from the clock will show a list of notifications. Emails, fitness goals, calendar reminders, phone calls and text messages can be found swiping right where you can dismiss them - but they also pop up on the home screen with short vibrations. If you keep swiping that direction, you'll get more details like reading and responding to your mail or text messages. Swiping from the top also takes you to information about sound and vibration preferences plus the battery state and connection when you're on the home screen; if you're on another screen, swiping from the top takes you back to previous screens - or the home screen if you're perusing the widgets. Despite the familiar Samsung and Android pairing, the Gear S runs on Tizen OS - Samsung's own Linux-based operating system - instead of Android Wear. There's even a separate Gear app that's needed to get the watch to work. There's a lot more going on with Tizen OS - to a point where the interface feels a little cluttered - but it's not hard to figure out. Specifically, you'll need a lot of patience to fiddle around with the different settings because there's quite a lot. If you feel inclined, home button shortcuts, motion controls, power saving modes, privacy locks, sound profiles, connection preferences, brightness and interface colors are all customizable. And that's on top of the widgets you can customize. I've actually liked using Tizen a little more than Android Wear because of this. Apps Before you can download any apps, you need to pair the Gear S with a compatible Samsung phone running Android 4.3 or higher. In fact the first thing you have to do in order to even turn on the the watch is download the Samsung Gear app. Only then will your smartwatch officially turn on and allow app downloads. Future app additions will require you to peruse the app store on your phone first which will sync your downloads with the watch. The same process is required for app deletions. It kind of defeats the purpose of having a smartwatch if you need a phone to do all of this. I didn't exactly need to download any apps when I didn't have my phone but several pre-loaded options - like Milk or Running - on the Gear S still required installations through the phone which I hadn't done yet. There are several things you can do without the phone like customizing the watch's display and wallpapers but you'll need the Gear Manager app to transfer images, audio, transfer contacts and sync fitness information to the S Health app. The Milk app can also be a standalone radio but there are those pesky data charges you'll have to deal with. There are pre-loaded apps like S Health, Schedule, Email, Weather, Music Player, News Briefing, S Voice and Find My Device but in general, the Gear S app selection is a bit lacking compared to the growing choices of Android Wear. Dedicated apps for Facebook, Twitter or Google+ are missing in action despite the popularity of the social media apps on other smartwatches. If you have the apps on your phone, you'll be able to get the notifications but it's not really the same since you can't respond. It does however let you store other apps on your watch without worrying about taking up memory which is a better perk than none. If only there were apps worth downloading … one day, Samsung, one day. Fitness There are two built in apps you can use for fitness - Nike+ Running and S Health - which both require you to log in and create profiles. You can also download MapMyRun if the bloatware isn't up to your standards for exercise. However the S Health app is pretty detailed and can be found on other Gear watches or Samsung phones. I couldn't say "OK Google" like with Google Fit on Android Wear devices and ask for the Gear S to automatically check my heart rate - not even S Voice could recognize my request - but the S Health app is a widget option. As for actual measurements, it's hard to say just how accurate the Gear S is. The numbers varied immensely when I used my Note 4 to take my heart rate then immediately trying it with the Gear S, then the Asus ZenWatch. I tried it out several times with each producing numbers at least 15 bpm off each time making it difficult to discern which one was the accurate device. The pedometers seemed just as off with the numbers barely matching up; I reset both the Gear S and Asus ZenWatch to zero then walked around my house (with one smartwatch on each wrist) several times. After the first bout, the Gear S had told me I walked 70 steps versus the ZenWatch's 51 for a difference of 19 steps. How did the Zenwatch miss 19 steps, or the Gear S add 19? I have no clue. My own estimate was around 65 however, which leads me to believe the Gear S pedometer sensor might be more sensitive, especially after resetting both watches and walking around a couple more times. The same issue came up when I walked nine blocks to a beach by my house - the numbers were all over the place. I walked back with the watches on one arm to see if there would be a difference and interestingly, the Gear S numbers were far lower than the Asus. Clearly, these sensors aren't as good as they've been hyped up to be and results must be taken with a grain of salt. But I suppose what really matters is that you're actually out and about fiddling with your smartwatch exercising opposed to sitting at home sinking further into your couch. Compatibility and battery life As I mentioned before, the Gear S won't work without a Samsung Galaxy running Android 4.3 or higher. This also means the watch is a picky beast and will only pair up with Samsung phones. It's a strange move for the company to lock in the Gear S. On top of sneakily tethering the watch's calling and texting abilities, you'll need a data plan to even use the SIM card - which is another chunk of change you're giving up. In the US, Verizon and T-Mobile both charge an additional $5 per month while AT&T and Sprint want $10 a month. Though Sprint will waive the fee through December 2015 if your plan has 20GB of data or more. The Gear S can remotely connect via Wi-Fi as well but only for certain notifications. If it's not set up with a SIM card, you won't get call and text forwarding if you've left your phone at home. Battery life At 300mAh, the Gear S has a significantly lower battery capacity than the 360's 320mAh and the G Watch R's 410mAh but I was able to get almost two days of usage before needing to charge up again. Usage here means having the pedometer on, getting notifications, messing around with apps, texting, checking emails and of course, using the phone. The main battery suck is using the Gear S over Wi-Fi or 3G. It lasted slightly longer over Bluetooth - by a couple of hours, specifically. The charging cradle is similar to that of other smartwatches. The cradle itself can be charged then unplugged to clip on and juice up the Gear S without being tethered. Essentially, you can take the cradle with you, pop it on on the back of the smartwatch and charge on the go. Then when both run out of battery life, you can plug the cradle in with a micro-USB cord and charge both simultaneously. The length of time to charge up to 100% isn't terrible - about two hours if completely dead and much less if the battery is at half. The cradle can also hold a charge for several days before needing to be plugged in. Verdict The Gear S is definitely a premium looking smartwatch but rather large. Instead of opting for a classic analog style like the Moto 360 or sporty analog look like the LG G Watch R, Samsung has made a rather futuristic beast putting the Gear S in its own unique place. We liked The biggest draw of the Gear S is definitely the lovely AMOLED screen. The colors are always vibrant - not as much as the Note 4 of course - but very reminiscent of how Samsung displays always seem to pop. The curved body is also a neat design choice that while I thought was weird at first, I came to appreciate because it sat well on my wrist. Battery life on other watches has also been atrocious so the Gear S has impressed me by managing to stay alive longer than most. The calling function was also surprisingly handy when I wanted to type or use both my hands for other tasks. We disliked Frankly, the Gear S is super uncomfortable. I like how the band is able to fit my tiny wrist but it seems to restrict movement and mostly feels unwieldy. I've also been wearing the Gear S for quite some time now and I thought I would get used to it, but because it's so cumbersome, I never forget it's there - like wearing a billboard on my wrist. The massive body also gets in the way of everything. Whether it's putting on a jacket or any long sleeved shirt, I'd have to take the Gear S off first. Sometimes, I wouldn't even be able to put it back on because the sleeve wouldn't cover it. Verdict The Samsung Gear S is two steps forward and one step back for smartwatches as a whole. The promise of standalone calling and texting is an amazing and needed feature for smartwatches to really feel useful - but not great in practice if it requires a smartphone. It's sad to say but the Gear S is not a truly independent smartwatch. It's also not looking good value-wise. You're buying the Gear S for $350 (£329, AU$449), then shelling out another chunk of change for a higher end smartphone, like the unlocked $879 (£600, AU$960) Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Then to take advantage of the Gear S's most touted features - texting and calling - you'll have to pay an additional amount for a data plan. At this point, the Gear S is simply not better than your run of the mill smartphone. In fact, you're just better off getting the Samsung Note 4 by itself. Hands on Samsung Gear S gallery

Review: Acer TravelMate B115 Posted: 22 Dec 2014 01:13 PM PST Overview and specs Acer's TravelMate B115 laptop ($379, £243, AU$466) features a 11.6-inch touch-screen display, measures to 11.5" x 8.3" x .83" (W x D x H; 292.1 mm x 211 mm x 21 mm), and runs Windows 8.1 in 64 bits. Breaking from tradition when it comes to smaller PC laptops, it makes no attempt to ape any other designs in the industry, unlike the Chromebook market, which are all aesthetic descendants of Apple's MacBook Air, which costs $1,299 (about £1,129/AU$1,449. Lightweight, a mere 2.91 lbs (1.32 kg), the B115 comes with a roomy 500GB hard drive. It's of a solid build, and while I wouldn't call it rugged, it does feel built for the traveller. The B115 is dramatically cheaper than our recently reviewed Lenovo Z40, a 14" model that costs $599 (£399, AU$799). You can reason out that one is saving money on the B115 thanks to a lack of screen real estate. Comparing it with Acer's laptop/tablet hybrid Aspire Switch 10, ($467, £299, AU$574), you'll miss the Switch 10's form factor, which was made for its touch screen. Looking out at the world of affordable smaller laptops, it's hard to ignore the Chromebook 2 models recently released by Toshiba and Samsung. Samsung's sold at $249 (about £154, AU$282), while the Toshiba's unit bumped the price to $329 (about £205, AU$382) on account of a 1080p display. If the ability to use Windows applications is not a must for your needs, those units need to be included in your search for an affordable laptop. Specs and design While the B115 has an unassuming design, those always on the go will be thankful for a slim PC that can run the Windows applications their office demands. Featuring three USB ports, one of which is USB 3.0, HDMI-out, Bluetooth 4.0, and an SD memory slot, it can work in most situations. The trackpad, one feature PC vendors are notorious for cheaping out on is impressive, and just as good as those on Apple laptops. When you walk into any room with many laptops these days, you're greeted with a sea of silver/aluminum. That doesn't distinguish anybody, and emphasizes how nobody's really done much to innovate outside of Microsoft's Surface line, which I haven't spotted anywhere in the wild. The B115, though, thanks to it's almost-squared edges and black-with-touches-of-chrome look, won't be mistaken for anything else. While most of its ports are located on the back of the machine, which keep them out of sight and mind, it does keep a USB port and a SD slot within reach on the left side of the body. While the B115 feels built for travel, the no-frills design signals to me that customers aren't paying for design. In order to get a full-size keyboard onto an 11" frame, some keys feel a little shoved-in or too-tight, but it's all in service of the small foot-print. Performance Testing the battery life, the B115 scored 6 hours 19 minutes and 7 seconds on PCMark 8's Home battery life test. The machine also lasted a good amount during standard usage. I reproducing a traveller's routine, running the unit unplugged during business hours. It lasted from 9am to 12:15pm, then I put it to sleep for lunch, and then the battery lasted from 3 to 6:30pm, for a total of 6 & 3/4 hours, against their advertised 7. That testing included email, office software, and streaming music and video from YouTube and Netflix. The quality of said streaming video on Netflix was especially sharp, which earned Acer the "HD" qualifier they apply to the display. In benchmark testing, the B115 scored a 1636 on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, including a video chat framerate of just fewer than 30 frames per second (FPS), which is definitely functional for work needs. Running elemental gaming benchmark tests on 3DMark, the processor demonstrated some muscle on the low end, but buckling at anything more. The Ice Storm test, built for low-end devices, would render around 70 FPS, netting a score of 16368. Cloud Gate, for "basic notebooks and home PCs" never broke above 7 FPS, and got a score of 1459. Unfortunately, Fire Strike, the test "for high performance" gaming PCs crashed before it could finish and give a score, and seemed to render one frame per every few seconds. Those last two tests sure looked damning, but nobody ever said this was a gaming PC. The greatest red-flag in that regard is that instead of a graphics card, it lists on-board "Intel HD Graphics," a sure sign that this isn't made for gamers. 3DMark: Ice Storm: 16,368 points; Cloud Gate: 1459 points PCMark 8 Home: 1,636 points PCMark 8 Battery Life: 6 hours 19 minutes Flaws The biggest obstacle with the B115 is coming to it after having used anything better or larger. I could see being given this unit by a company looking out for its bottom line, but I could never see wanting to have this in my day to day life. The B115 fits a full-sized keyboard in a small-form computer, but it just doesn't feel right. In a week's testing, I could not get used to this keyboard. While its keys don't feel cheap, I had numerous instances of clicks not registering. Often times this wasn't a problem with the keyboard or screen, but in fact with the speed & RAM of the computer. I'd click on an icon to load an app, and thanks to no feedback, I thought I didn't register the click. Unfortunately, the process took so much time that when I'd click again, two instances of the desired effect would run. Something that was incredibly frustrating with this review unit was the amount of bloat that the machine came with. Booting into Windows 8.1, I was greeted with an avalanche of things nobody would have wanted. The built in Acer Explorer app store had prominent billing and it was the first thing I removed. The pre-installed McAffee virus protection seemed cute at first, but a never-ending series of notifications, including the warning that its one week trial was about to end quickly soured me. While most office teams should have their own comprehensive security solution in place already, and won't care about this cruft, one week felt like a cheap move in an age when most products have free 30-day repair windows. The biggest thumbs-in-the-eye came from off-brand synergy, which kept reminding me that I was working on a budget computer. Take for example, a preinstalled link on the desktop for a relatively unknown travel website that I won't give free advertising by mentioning it by name. Sure, I guess there's an argument to be made for that link being relevant to the travellers this machine is targeted towards, but it being pre-loaded made me feel like I was an Acer product, being sold as eyes to their advertisers. Additionally, the pre-installed Foxit PhantomPDF application and Acer ProShield apps didn't give me a feeling of added-value as much as they made me think "send to recycle bin." If you have an IT department that can wipe the unit before handing it to you, I suggest they remove the garbage and add a specific set of applications. However, if you're stuck with the machine as is, there's a lot of Day 0 cleaning to be done. It even tried to install AOL on itself, which I had to decline as an offer. Verdict We liked The Acer TravelMate B115 dares to be different. In a market of 11" MacBook Air clones, this no-frills model succeeds thanks to modest goals. Sure, that sounds like an insult, but if you're going to send your team out into the world, and they need a computer more capable than a Chromebook - but not especially fast - then the B115 is right for your squad. We disliked The touch screen feels like a gigantic waste of time and money. Maybe Acer had a bunch of those screens left over from a production run for a different model, but they're entirely out of place here. What good is a touch screen on a generic laptop that can't fold over completely or detach? It had me reaching out much farther than feels comfortable, looking like a child who assumes all screens work like iPads. Verdict I wanted to write this review entirely on the B115 unit, to replace my existing laptop with it for the duration of my testing. I took it through a series of tests and rigorous use, but I just could not stand using it for more than an hour at a time. It's meant for a little usage here and there - editing a document, checking email, and anything else that isn't completely hindered by its 11.6" screen. You get what you pay for, and it turns out $379 (about £243, AU$466) can only get you so far, even on Windows.

Interview: How going digital can drive business innovation and value Posted: 22 Dec 2014 01:00 PM PST Canopy was formed in 2012 through a joint venture between industry storage and virtualization partners EMC and VMware. Based in Europe, Canopy offers a complete cloud portfolio including tailored solutions across IaaS, PaaS and SaaS to enable governments and enterprises to transform their IT in the digital era. Canopy's global headquarters are in London and it operates in nine countries across three continents. We spoke to Canopy CTO Sean Catalin about how the company is helping businesses transform themselves in the digital era. TechRadar Pro: What distinguishes Canopy's offerings in the cloud service market? Sean Catlin: Canopy is in a unique position to offer end-to-end cloud services including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and consultancy taking advantage of the technologies and expertise of leading joint venture partners Atos, EMC and VMware. Ultimately, Canopy helps customers select the right cloud platform today to support their journey to transform into digital businesses in future. Canopy brings substantial benefits to its customers such as IT cost reduction and reduced capex expenditure through flexible pricing models plus access to innovative and agile technology that can enable rapid cloud implementation and faster time to market for products and services. Canopy offerings are based on open standards so customers can choose their preferred technology and decide whether to run solutions off or on-premise to best meet their business needs. TRP: How is Canopy helping customers transform themselves into digital businesses? SC: The digital economy has changed the stakes for business, and companies that are embracing it are likely to lead their respective industries and be more agile than their competitors. Canopy is empowering businesses to go digital with its latest offerings such as – Cloud Fabric, which provides a platform to develop new applications in the cloud, and Canopy Compose which enables organisations to transfer legacy applications to the cloud. Both help drive business innovation through software by enabling organisations to move from fewer large application updates per year to smaller updates delivered much more frequently. Not only does this approach reduce costs, it improves agility by allowing businesses to grow on demand, reduces time to market, and ultimately allows companies to deliver new and better digital experiences for customers or citizens. The digital world requires two speed thinking – both IT Speed and Digital Speed. Digital Speed is an agile culture and approach, thinking in timescales of days and weeks rather than months and years when creating new applications, and quickly turning ideas into working concepts. Digital speed is also about the acceptance of uncertainty, and designing and delivering solutions that are enhanced rather than undermined by changing circumstances. To reap the benefits of digital, senior management will need to re-imagine the entire organisation - including products, services and the way that they are used to communicate with other businesses. Canopy provides consultancy to help firms cross the chasm of traditional IT supply and formulate a digitally-led IT strategy. With support from the right external cloud vendor to put this process into operation, the migration period can be pain-free for all involved. TRP: Enterprises are facing pressure to reinvent themselves as digital businesses while consistently delivering new and better digital experiences for their customers. How should businesses begin to tackle this pressure? SC: The trend of organisations reinventing themselves digitally has been branded 'the digital dragon' by Gartner. It refers to the radical digital disruption that most industries around the world are undergoing. To tame the digital dragon organisations need to harness the power of big data, mobile and social applications delivered in the cloud. In short, they need to excel at developing and delivering great software that offers superior digital experiences to their customers, and do that sustainably faster than their competitors. With so many different providers in the marketplace offering to provide cloud-enabled digital services, selecting the right partner can be daunting for business decision makers. Firstly, organisations need to consider functionality. Will a particular cloud provider be able to offer them the right 'class' of service, and can they advise them on the right cloud platform that is most suited for their business, for instance hybrid cloud? Other considerations include assessing whether the cost models and performance models are the right fit for their business with appropriate SLAs in place. Senior IT professionals also need to think about other factors including the workflow, access, control, authorisation, auditing and reporting processes. TRP: As companies become digital businesses, they will naturally gain more data. How can this data be commercialised so that companies can take advantage of this? E.g. become more predictive. SC: As the value and volume of an organisation's data changes over time, IT professionals must manage it accordingly, choosing to retire or archive appropriate data sets, or ultimately remove them altogether. But when all that data lives in a private cloud or hybrid cloud environment, it adds a host of extra challenges around Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). Traditional operational structured data sources are being augmented with social, web, government, as well as historically hard to use enterprise 'dark' data (unstructured document libraries and archives) and vast volumes of machine generated data (sensor and log data). Modern ILM strategies involve a multi-tiered approach to handling data primarily for cost management reasons. Crucial factors in this decision making process are the availability of data, performance, back-up and recovery, and price. Companies must also find a provider with the appropriate ILM and security tools, but ones which don't compromise the ease at which data can be stored and extracted. A balance also needs to be struck between tiers, such as with mission-critical applications and older records. Archived data can be stored on slower cheaper storage. For business critical apps, trust and control are important considerations. Furthermore, the speed at which companies can access their real-time data and archived data will have an effect on how data can be used in the commercial business model. The more localised the data, the faster companies will be able to access it. The IT department needs to understand the controls required by the business, what controls are already in place, and then identify the control weaknesses before putting a remediation plan into action to fix those weaknesses. Understanding where and when to put business critical apps in the cloud will become even more important in 2014-15 as businesses undertake pilot projects for business functions.

Updated: CES 2015: what to expect from the biggest tech show of the year Posted: 22 Dec 2014 12:53 PM PST Samsung, Sony, LG, Asus and HTC This page is being constantly updated with the latest CES 2015 news and rumors! CES invades Las Vegas January 6 - January 9, 2015. Those dates are fast approaching - hell, the annual tech fest to end all tech fests will be here before you can say, "Happy New Year." Already we've had info coming in revealing what CES 2015 will hold, though of course many mysteries still await in those desert conference corridors. Read on for a company-by-company breakdown of what we expect to see during the 2015 International Consumer Electronics Show, and let us know in the comments if there's anything you're particularly keen on peeping come early next month. We'll keep an eye out for it. Samsung Update December 16: It's a very long shot, but there are whispers the Galaxy S6 may in fact show it's face at CES 2015. Why is it a long shot? The reasons are almost innumerable, so here's just one; Kim Hyun-suk, Samsung's head of visual display, was quoted as saying "there will be no surprise shows [at CES]." We take that to mean no S6, though of course, anything is possible. Update December 11: One thing is for sure; Samsung plans to show Tizen TV at CES. Kim Hyun-suk revealed a Tizen TV will be there for people to "meet," though per his above quote, we doubt we're in for any earth-shattering announcements. Update December 5: Samsung has sent out formal invitations to its CES 2015 keynote and press conference. The press conference will be "a journey to discover Samsung's latest innovations that will create new possibilities and shape the future," and the place we'll likely see most if not all of Samsung's announcements. It goes down at 2 pm PT on Monday, January 5. The keynote begins at 6:30 pm PT on January 5; President & CEO BK Yoon will discuss the Internet of Things and "how it will transform our lives." What else we expect to see from Samsung... Samsung's CES 2014 press conference will live on in infamy thanks to Michael Bay, but this year we expect the Korean firm to rebound with products that steal the show, not stage-ditching directors. It's par for the course Samsung will unveil its latest TV line at CES, and we expect a follow-up to the bendable TV unveiled last time around (maybe one that folds in half!). Some of the firm's CES '14 televisions had gorgeous curves, making a repeat of sloped screens highly likely. But that leaves us wondering, what else? Will we see the next iteration of Galaxy Pro tablets? It's possible. A new laptop? Slightly less likely, though not a stretch. More washing machines? Oh, you know it. What would really knock our socks off is an update to the company's smartwatch and fitness tracker line-up and, if we can be so bold, some talk around Gear VR. That's all speculation on our part, but not out of the realm of possibility. Samsung's plans may have yet to fully crystallize, but you can bet one of if not the biggest brands at CES will do it up this year. Especially if it wants you to forget about Michael Bay. Sony Update December 19: Talk about a beautiful nightmare - Sony has released a very surreal teaser trailer for CES 2015. From a pregnant woman to a painted face to an all-eyeball closeup, Sony's clip has us scratching our heads. There are some hints to be gleaned; the "5" in the elevator and lollipop are likely references to Android 5.0 and a possible glimpse at a super slim TV. Check the teaser out for yourself: YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gC_NIVpXf4 What else we expect to see from Samsung... Sony always comes out swinging at CES, and we expect this year to be no different. The company is hosting the prerequisite press conference on January 5, and there it plans to parade "the latest products and technology in 4K UHD, Hi-Res Audio, Digital Imaging and Mobile." If that doesn't spell it out for you, we're not sure what will. While the thought of more (affordable?) 4K TVs is certainly tantalizing, the possibility of seeing the Xperia Z4 onstage is what really piques our interest. The firm announced its new Exmor RS IMX230 camera sensor in mid-November, and though it packs the same 21MP resolution as the Xperia Z3's camera, it has a number of new features, including a CMOS image sensor that can track rapidly moving subjects. A report from PhoneArena has the handset, said to come equipped with a larger QHD screen, joined at CES by an even heftier Xperia Z4 Ultra. Among the rumored upgrades, both new phones could sport a heaving 4GB of RAM. What those extra GBs will bring is anyone's guess, but they'll sure look good on a spec sheet. Update December 16: Or maybe we won't see the new Xperia line at CES? A mid-December report has the Xperia Z4 Compact and Z4 Ultra rocking Snapdragon 810 processors, a chip set that's reportedly in short supply. If the new phones are set to sport the 810s, it may not be until later in 2015 we actually lay our eyes on them. We also expect Sony to return to the wearable conversation; the tech is poised to be a major focus of CES 2015, and Sony should have more to say on its Core fitness tracker and other wearable goods. LG Update December 18: LG dropped another pre-CES tidbit the week before Christmas by announcing webOS 2.0 will be unveiled during the Las Vegas event. The updated Smart TV platform is said to be simpler and more intuitive than the first iteration. A better UI is matched by more services like Amazon and Netflix. webOS 2.0 is due to show its face on a new line of TVs revealed at CES. Update December 16: LG unveiled a new line of 4K UHD TVs in the pre-CES build up that use quantum dot technology for improved color saturation and wider palette. Nano-sized crystal dots are used to emit various colors, depending on their size, can help improve the picture color reproduction rate by more than 30%. What's more, the quantum dots (the coolest TV tech name ever?) are also said to improve the screen's overall brightness. Look out for the new line at CES. Update December 1: Well, things just got a little more interesting for LG. Word from some Android Authority sources is that the company will go on a Vegas bender, literally, and show off the LG G Flex 2. While the first G Flex was more gimmick than gimme product, the second gen is said to be a major upgrade over the original. In addition to its signature curve, the G Flex 2 will reportedly have a high-res OLED screen and small form factor. What's more, the phone can apparently self-heal even better than before. What else we expect to see from LG... As it does every year, LG is kicking off media day with an 8am PT press conference. It's early, it's packed, and it usually leaves us looking to MWC for the more memorable consumer electronic goods. In short, like a $5 casino buffet breakfast, we'll get our fill of announcements here but will be hungry for more an hour later. Last CES was all about LG meeting Samsung on the TV battlefront, and that should continue on at CES 2015. What that means in terms of significant come-to-market announcements is likely not much, but it should make for good chest-thump viewing. LG's press conference invite is predictably vague, offering only the chance to "enjoy a sneak peek at what's in store for 2015" and hear from LG execs about "product introductions and business strategies for the year." Unfortunately "product introductions" probably doesn't mean the LG G4. Instead, look for the aforementioned televisions, some of them massive, more than a passing word on webOS and a wearable, plus a healthy smattering of smart home products. Asus Don't sleep on Asus; the firm released two trailers for a new ZenFone set for a CES unveiling. Though short, the trailers (viewable on Asus' Facebook page) offer a number of clues. The first flashes what looks like two rear cameras. The second, longer teaser gives another fervent glimpse at dual rear camera lenses as well as a dual flash. The tagline "See what others can't see" also points to added camera functionality. The second video also spends an odd amount of time on what appears to be a button, indicating a new one (with added functionality) is situated on the next ZenFone. HTC HTC, it seems, does have CES 2015 plans after all. A company spokesperson said in early December the One M8 maker planned to debut a new wearable in Las Vegas, though it won't be a smartwatch, as has been previously rumored. The product is said to be "very different from anything currently on the market," though of course HTC would say that. For the device, HTC will reportedly work closely with firms who have already made headway in the activity app space, signalling we could be in for a fitness tracker or something else along those lines. Sharp, Nvidia, Valve and Hyundai Sharp Details are few and far between for Sharp, but an invitation to the company's January 5 keynote is something, at least. The firm's presser kicks off at 9 am PT and is titles "Life Inspiring Imagination." What will we see there? The surest bet is TVs, but perhaps Sharp will have a few surprises up its sleeves? Nvidia As it did for CES 2014, Nvidia is going early with a press conference schedule for January 4 at 8 pm PT. It's here CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will unveil new mobile and automotive technologies, which is pretty much what we got the last time around. We're likely in for the company's latest and greatest processor post-Tegra K1, and it's interesting to see that Nvidia's auto obsession continues beyond last CES. Valve and other Steam Machine makers About the only thing you can expect from Valve is that it won't be at CES 2015, despite having a huge presence during the 2014 campaign. The Portal maker informed TechRadar it won't be attending CES in the New Year, saving its Steam Machine mojo for March's GDC 2015. Although the progenitor behind the Steam Machine movement is sitting this CES out, other companies like Alienware, Maingear and Gigabyte could be present to show off their PC-gaming-in-the-living-room wares. We haven't heard anything definite, but we don't expect CES 2015 to be totally Steam Machine silent. Hyundai Yes, a car maker makes the cut, in this case Hyundai and its new Display Audio system. The infotainment system is due to be showcased at CES 2015. What really sets Hyundai's solution apart is it works with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. We're intrigued to see how it performs given the system's almost complete dependance on a user's phone - everything from music streaming to remote start to maintenance alerts all emanate from your mobile. What we want to see: #1 - #5 The ramifications of CES 2014 are still being felt in everything from TVs to processors to wearables. CES 2015 promises to be an even bigger show, full of the innovative, the inspiring and the impossible. We've put together a list of what we want to see at CES 2015, so read on for our hopes and best guesses for the show. And don't forget to let us know what you're pining for come January, too. 1. TV innovation beyond the bend and curve We get it. You can bend and curve (see here and here) a TV. Big whoop. How about revealing some television innovation that truly improves our viewing experience? CES 2014 was all about the curved TV screen for big guns Samsung and LG - who could make it bigger, thinner and curvier without folding? The problem was, was there even a problem for these concave couch curlers to solve? As Dan Grabham asked in his CES hands on review of the 105-inch curved Ultra HD TV from LG, "do we really need curved TVs?" The answer, from looking at the market, is no. Yes, there was an awe factor when unveiling these futurist devices in front of ravenous consumer-tech crowds, but when the lights faded and everyone went home, we weren't buying these sets. Instead of trying to lure us in with more bends and curves, we want Samsung, LG and others to announce more 4K content and a viable system to deliver it to consumers at CES 2015. We know it's not the sexiest subject, especially since we've already seen 4K-and-beyond TVs, but why not give us stuff to actually watch on the growing field of ultra high-res screens? There's currently no reason for the average person to buy a pricey 4K TV because there simply isn't that much 4K content to watch on them. If Samsung, LG, et al can come up with the content and fast, reliable ways to get it to consumers, we may leave Las Vegas truly impressed and excited for the living room screen's future. The TV that impressed us most at CES 2014 wasn't curved Update: LG gave us a taste of what its future TV innovation has in store. In mid-July, the company posted a YouTube video of its flexible 18-inch OLED display. It's a neat trick and one that could have actual benefit to consumers, like fitting larger screens in unconventional spaces. Might we see the tech at CES 2015? We'd sure like to. YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxbHpXE4VM0 2. Stop the 4K TV price madness It's no secret that 4K TVs are astronomically expensive, but on July 22 Samsung took it to a whole new level by revealing the price of the 105-inch curved 4K TV it showed off during CES 2014. The damage? A whopping $120,000 (about £70,333, AU$127,732). Talk about going from wow factor to ow factor. We understand the parts for these high-res beasts are expensive, but it'd be fantastic if Samsung, LG and other makers of 4K TVs could lower the price of their products in addition to giving us stuff to watch on them. It may take years before 4K TV prices are within most people's budgets, but the movement could start at this upcoming CES. We want to see top-tier TV manufacturers like Samsung reduce the price by one digit with a $999 price tag for a 50-incher. This may be wishful thinking, but it's not unreasonable to want TV makers to begin to bring down the prices of the technology it carts out to amaze us. 3. More than just more tablets from Samsung Director Michael Bay's meltdown was the most memorable moment of Samsung's CES 2014 press conference. Unfortunately for the Galaxy tablets also wheeled out during the presser, they were upstaged. Hard. Samsung has unveiled even more tablets since CES, leading us to plea, "Enough!" We're heading into the pre-CES months hoping Samsung can cook up a mobile device (yes, just one) that will hold its own next to celebrity implosions and smart laundry machines. The Korean firm intrigued with its Youm flexible phone screens during CES 2013 - perhaps it will be ready to unveil a consumer-ready foldable phone or tablet during 2015's dance? With LG revealing roll-up displays (destined for TVs, to be sure), Samsung may be feeling the heat to bring a bendy phone/tablet to market. 4. Steam Machine pricing and availability No doubt the people's favorite at CES 2014 was Valve and its army of Steam Machine partners, not to mention the Steam Controller. Valve hasn't kept quiet; since January, the company held a developer conference, showed off its VR headset and, in not so good news, announced Steam Machines won't arrive in consumer homes until 2015. It's the last point we want addressed at CES. While at least one non-Valve Steam Box - the Alienware Alpha - should be out this year, we want the release date and price questions resolved for everyone else. In other words, we want CES 2015 to be brimming with Steam Machine news, including word of a truly affordable one. YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YAf5S4LSJQ Aside from Alienware, the rest of the pack, led by Valve, should get its act together by CES 2015. Of course, anyone familiar with Gabe Newell's crew knows speed is not their calling card, so while we can hope, we won't hold our breath. 5. LG and Huawei deliver standout smartphones It's a long shot to think LG will actually unveil a smartphone during CES as it hasn't the last two years and typically saves such unveilings for MWC. Nevertheless, this is a list of what we want to see, right? Along with Huawei, LG could use CES to gain massive exposure with a knockout smartphone. The LG G3 isn't chopped liver, but perhaps LG could put its foldable display tech to work bending like a Cirque du Soleil performer? As for Huawei, the Chinese firm is trying mightily to break into the US market. What better way to re-re-introduce itself to US buyers than with a carrier-backed, affordable and better-than-average phone announced in Sin City? Hell, trot out AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega or, better yet, T-Mobile CEO John Legere to say a few words. Even better, bring them both onstage and see what happens. We digress, but the point is CES has become stagnant on the smartphone announcement front. We'd love to see LG and Huawei liven up the proceedings with a phone that makes us drool. What we want to see: #6 - #9 6. Next-level wearables Wearables are here, and they're beyond what even Dick Tracy could have imagined. CES 2014 saw its share of fitness and activity trackers, but in the subsequent months the market has exploded (relative to what it was, at least). Android Wear has ushered in a new era of wearable tech, and there's more than a fair chance we'll see the Apple iWatch announced before CES 2015 gets off the ground. Although wearables are gaining steam, there's always room for improvement. Our wish list for CES 2015 wearables includes waterproofing, more with heart rate monitors, standalone smarties that don't need a mobile device and more full-featured smartwatches that are compatible with different OSes. The last one is another long shot, but as TechRadar's resident wearables expert Matt Swider opines, it'd be nice to be able to have an Android Wear smartwatch that worked with an iOS device, and vice versa. There's little doubt CES 2015 will be filled to the walls with wearables. One manufacturer - Lenovo - has confirmed it plans to unveil new wearable devices during the Vegas gathering. The question is, will the new batch of wearables be much of an improvement of the ones we already have? 7. Virtual reality in Las Vegas Just like wearables, we're no longer speaking of VR as a far-off possibility. There are a number of big-name contenders that, while not quite ready for consumers, are pretty damn close to being released. Oculus Rift is eyeing 2015, Sony's Project Morpheus is moving along and Samsung Gear VR is looking increasingly ready to reveal itself. That's not to mention the other smaller firms working on virtual reality gear (like the Virtuiz Omni) and the gaggle of developers likely to spring up after Oculus' VR conference in September. CES is as much about entertainment as it is anything else, so VR-related innovations are well within the scope of the show. We want to see more VR content (games, apps, movies, etc.), more polished products and, if it's not revealed at IFA 2014, Samsung's VR headset. Gear VR will likely be a serious Rift and Morpheus competitor, so come CES, we hope Samsung and anyone else dabbling in virtual reality are ready to bring it on. 8. Truly good 2-in-1s It's not CES unless a cacophony of computers make their voices heard. There will be PCs of every stripe at CES 2015, but we're looking specifically at 2-in-1s for right now. HP, Dell, Acer and Asus are just a few of the notable names we're putting money on to unveil new tablet/laptop hybrids, so it's not a matter of if they'll be announced but rather of how good they'll be. There's a chance Windows 9 will release this fall, which would already be an improvement over Windows 8.1. Even if we don't go all the way up to nine, Windows 8.2 may be ready to rumble come January 2015. Aside from a souped-up OS (assuming most of the hybrids will run Windows), the advances in processors like AMD's Beema and Mullins APUs and Intel's Core M could make the 2015 crop of 2-in-1s the best to date. If the build quality matches better internal specs, 2-in-1s may be the sleeper hit of CES 2015. 9. Smarter cars than ever before Toyota ran away with our Best of CES 2014 awards thanks to its hydrogen-powered car. Part of our reasoning in giving the FCV the top spot was because of its industry-changing position as the first mass-produced fuel-cell vehicle. Its impact, we reasoned, would be far reaching and vastly positive. Next CES, we want more of the same. We want cars that run on next-gen energy sources and we want cars that don't need a driver at all. Google typically doesn't drop by CES, but that doesn't mean automated cars from different venders can't make an appearance. Speaking of Google, we fully expect automakers to show off their Android Auto as well as Apple CarPlay-equipped models. For those who haven't picked a side, CES 2015 is the perfect time to call shotgun. Car infotainment systems are in some ways still in their infancy, so we're excited to see what solutions await. Especially if it means going for a test-drive. Relive the magic of CES 2014

This is the first real build of Google's self-driving car Posted: 22 Dec 2014 11:58 AM PST Google may not plan to build the final version of its self-driving cars, but that's not keeping the Mountain View firm from cranking out working test versions. The Google Self-Driving Car Project today revealed "the first real build of our self-driving vehicle prototype." In other words, this baby ain't no mock-up, and it's got real headlights to boot! You can see the car in the image above. It's actually an amalgamation of several different prototypes Google created to test various car systems, such as steering and braking as well as the computers and sensors that let the car function driver-free. Using the earlier test work, Google created the craft you see above, its "first complete prototype for fully autonomous driving." Holiday test drive The self-driving car team said their holiday time will be spent on the test track in preparation for putting the vehicles on Northern Californian roads sometime next year. Unfortunately for fully autonomous driving enthusiasts, safety drivers will oversee the cars for the foreseeable future, and temporary manual controls will be utilized as the cars undergo further testing. Read our Google Glass review!

Microsoft quietly kills free Public Websites feature Posted: 22 Dec 2014 09:04 AM PST A little known feature that some described as Microsoft's online version of "FrontPage", the company's ill-fated WYSIWIG HTML editor, will be dropped within weeks according to a Knowledgebase post. The latter confirms that the SharePoint Online Public Website feature will be deprecated from January 2015 and will be available for existing user for a minimum of two years. New Office 365 users won't have access to it. Moving forward, the statement says, "Office 365 customers will have access to third-party offerings that will enable them to easily integrate their public presence with their Office 365 service". More details will be unveiled next month. Microsoft explained the move by saying that the "difficult decision" was taken to deliver the utmost value to its customers and focus future investments while relying more on potential partners who will provide solutions at "discounted pricing rates". It's interesting to note that Microsoft has been relying more on "partners" lately. The move to strategically allow others to get selected portions of Microsoft's cake (where the company was never expected to get big revenues) is interesting indeed. Back in November, Microsoft announced a strategic partnership with Dropbox allowing the latter to compete better against its own cloud storage, OneDrive. Microsoft Office 365: Our rolling review

Intel betting on semi-custom designs for 2015 Posted: 22 Dec 2014 08:56 AM PST Intel's head honcho for anything data-centre related has confirmed that the company is betting big on semi-custom designs for next year. Diane Bryant told the New York Times that she expects half of the chips it sells to public clouds to use custom designs. That amounts to about nine million units annually. Intel's top clients, those that can order hundreds of thousands of chips, include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook (but not Apple) as well as Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu. Outside this group are about 200 other public cloud providers including the likes of Ebay, Twitter, Oracle or Lenovo. "The name of the game is customisation", she said in an interview. Intel chip factories (or fabs as they are known) are now so automated that they allow for models to be tweaked with very little overhead, although the manufacturer is likely to charge a premium. That allows for a much higher average selling price and profit margin. Perhaps more importantly, it allows Intel to cement its position in the cloud-market against the potential competition coming from ARM partners like AMD, Qualcomm or Applied Micro, all of which have been eyeing a slice of the booming DC market.

ARM server startup Calxeda back on track Posted: 22 Dec 2014 08:41 AM PST Remember Calxeda? This startup was the first one off the blocks with design wins for ARM-ready server chips. It was good enough for HP to adopt it in its first Moonshot server back in 2013. It did come as a shock to a lot of analysts later that year when Calxeda shut down citing a lack of funds. It was especially ill-timed as the ARM server market was just about to warm up with Broadcom, Qualcomm, AMD, Cavium, Marvell and Applied Micro announcing products or at the very least a definite interest in that sector. Calxeda IP has been purchased by AtGames Cloud Holdings and its technology revived via one of its subsidiaries, Silver Lining Systems, which has already completed successful proof-of-concept designs. A spokesperson for the company suggests that products will come in early 2014. AtGames Cloud Holdings which made news when it purchased the assets of popular game streaming service, Gamefly. AtGames is also known for selling video game consoles based on vintage platforms such as Sega Genesis or even the antiquated ATARI. Interestingly, Foxconn's server group and ARM are partners although it remains unclear who actually owns Calxeda technology and assets. We will be interviewing Barry Evans, the former CEO of Calxeda soon. So stay tuned for more details. ARM: Days of China copying Western tech are ending

Apple readying 'ultra-thin' Retina MacBook Air and Apple Watch in autumn 2015 Posted: 22 Dec 2014 08:10 AM PST Apple's long-rumoured Retina MacBook Air may finally be getting a launch next year following a new report that it will enter mass production in spring 2015, along with the Apple Watch. Citing anonymous sources on the supply chain side, Digitimes reports that a 12-inch Retina MacBook Air featuring Intel's new Broadwell processor is on the way. The notebook, which has been rumoured to exist since 2012, has been pushed back due to the slow supply of components from the Cupertino-based company's supply chain players, according to the report, an issue that it says has been resolved. The Retina MacBook Air is expected to be ultra-thin and lighter than previous MacBook Air models in addition to being "fanless", allowing for a redesigned chassis. Following the success of recent iPhones and iPads, Apple will apparently offer it in gold and two different shades of grey. According to the report, the Retina MacBook Air is being manufactured by Quanta Computer and is expected to be a high-end product that will initially be available in limited supply. Retina MacBook Air: 5 things we want to see

Review: Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha Posted: 22 Dec 2014 08:08 AM PST Introduction It's always tricky for a budget brand to climb the ladder and Alcatel's attempt to break out of the basement and claim some mid-range success with the Idol Alpha is a good example. At first glance this looks like an expensive smartphone, but the premium aluminium exterior and intriguing translucent strips are concealing a multitude of sins. Looking past the beautiful body we find a 4.7-inch 720p screen, a quad-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz, just 1GB of RAM and a 13MP main camera. There are a lot of disappointments with this phone, but the main stumbling block for potential buyers is going to be the price tag. The average selling price of Android smartphones has been falling steadily for the last couple of years. IDC reckons it will be as low £160 this year for an unlocked phone. The market is fiercely competitive and at around £280 off-contract, the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha doesn't stand out of the mid-range crowd. If it's looking to attract people upgrading from the budget sector, then it's not working hard enough. Consider that £229 will get you the vastly superior OnePlus One. Shop around and an extra few quid will score you an LG G3. You may even prefer one of the now heavily discounted flagships of yesteryear, like the Galaxy S4. Why does Alcatel think you should fork out so much money for the Idol Alpha? Limited availability means that you probably will need to buy it off-contract if you want one. Is it worth spending nearly £300 on? Design After removing the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha from the unusual metal cylinder it comes in I was genuinely impressed. It has an aluminium body with polished chamfered edges and there are two interesting translucent strips at the top and bottom. It's a nice size and it's easy to operate one-handed. It measures 138 x 66.6 x 7.5 mm and weighs in at 117.4g. The aluminium frame feels cold and expensive, not unlike the iPhone 5S. It gives the Idol Alpha a satisfying weight, but the premium bubble bursts when you discover that the metallic looking back is actually plastic. Sadly the translucent strips are also plastic and they protrude slightly, which definitely makes the idol Alpha feel a little less sexy. Their purpose becomes apparent when you turn the phone on and a series of LEDs lights them up. It's a really nice, imaginative twist on your standard LED notification. There's a speaker and front-facing camera at the top and you'll find the standard three capacitive buttons below the screen, although they are unmarked and don't light up, which is a little strange. The icons to identify them appear on the translucent strip at the bottom. The haptic feedback makes it clear when you've hit them, as does the onscreen action, but it does feel odd at first. Flipping over to the back we find the camera lens and flash at the top left, then the Alcatel logo with a shiny embossed OneTouch logo beneath. At the bottom there's a huge speaker grille with a knobbly bit either side, presumably to stop the grille touching surfaces when you put it down and reduce the chance of dust getting in there. The back doesn't come off, so there's no removable battery, and there's no microSD card slot either. Both the top and bottom edges are naked, which is aesthetically pleasing, but not practical. The biggest annoyance is the microUSB port which is right at the bottom of the left spine. This makes it awkward to use the Idol Alpha when it's charging. To make matters worse there is no 3.5mm headphone jack. You have to use the supplied adapter to plug your headphones into the microUSB port if you want to use them. Having that jut out the side makes it awkward to use comfortably with the phone in your pocket, which is why you generally find the headphone port on the top of a phone. Nearer the top of the left edge you'll find a SIM tray. You pop it open using the supplied tool and it takes a microSIM card. Jumping over to the right edge we find the power button and the volume rocker above it. They look stylish, but they only protrude a tiny bit so they aren't always easy to press without looking. My review model is a grey, slate colour, but you can also pick the Idol Alpha up in three shades of gold. The 4.7-inch IPS LCD screen has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels which gives it a pixel density of 312ppi. It looks just fine at first glance. If you're coming from an older phone it won't bother you, but it's obviously inferior to 1080p and way behind the QHD displays that are hitting the market now. All in all the Idol Alpha's design is its strongest selling point. The aluminium frame is reminiscent of the iPhone 5S and the translucent strips are a really nice idea that works well, but look a little closer and you can see the premium quality isn't consistent. It's a mixed bag with some odd choices, most notably are the microUSB placement and lack of a headphone jack. Key features The mid-range Android market can definitely be a bit bland and samey. The Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha is not blessed with a lot of USPs. The specs are distinctly average and there's really nothing here that's out of the ordinary. Aesthetic style is the only thing that differentiates this phone. That chamfered aluminium frame is very attractive. It feels a bit like an oversized iPhone 5S, and while the plastic back definitely detracts from that impression, you don't often find this kind of design in Android's mid-range market. You might fall in love with the translucent strips containing that pulsing LED. It flashes when the phone rings or there's an incoming message, which looks undeniably cool, but also does a great job of catching the eye. The top one stays lit when the Idol Alpha is charging. They're stylish and functional, which is the killer combo. There's also a lighting menu where you can customize the behaviour. Alcatel has made some effort to add value with its own UI and a smattering of pre-installed apps. It's good to see a radio app on there and basic utilities like note-taking and a torch are covered, but there is some bloatware too. Thankfully you do have the option to uninstall some of these but others, like Deezer, can only be disabled. Considering you only have around 13GB of 16GB free to play with out of the box, it's a bit annoying. There's a good setup guide that will certainly help smartphone newbies get to grips with Android, but Alcatel's skin doesn't improve on stock Android and there are some redundancies where Alcatel apps offer the same functionality as Google apps. You could possibly point to the 13MP camera as another USP. The Nexus 5 is about the same price and it only has an 8MP shooter, but it's not just about megapixel count. The Idol Alpha camera has a decent range of features and it's fast. It would have been a really noteworthy surprise on a mid-ranger a couple of years ago, but it's becoming more common to find a decent main camera beyond the flagships now. I'll get into how it actually performs in detail later. Interface and Performance You'll find that the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha is running Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. With Android 4.4.4 KitKat out and about, and Android 5.0 Lollipop making its way onto most phones, that's not a good thing. There's no telling when, or even if, it will get an update. Alcatel's skin over the top is another mixed bag. The lock screen features a bouncing ball in a circle and you drag it down to the lock icon to unlock the phone, or you can shortcut to phone, messaging or camera by dragging left, up or right respectively. The animation sometimes sticks and you have to try again, which doesn't create a great impression. Once you're in you'll find a fairly light touch. The notification shade is stock, but the capacitive touch button at the bottom right is still menu rather than multitasking. Press it once and you get an ugly pop up menu in white. Long press it and you get the line-up of your open apps, but it's weirdly confined to the bottom of your screen. I don't really understand why Alcatel has done this and found it very annoying. I'm used to that being multitasking so it tripped me up repeatedly. Even Samsung has done away with the menu button as a default now. It's mostly familiar Android territory, but there are a few different options in the menu. For example, the status bar entry allows you to decide which app's notifications should and shouldn't appear in the status bar. They'll still appear in the notification shade when you pull it down, you just won't get the little icons at the top. There are also a couple of optional gestures that allow you to flip over the phone to mute or shake to switch music. It's quite common to find an app on your Android phone that allows you to schedule quiet time and set your phone to turn off connections or stay silent during certain hours, such as while you sleep. Sony offers Smart Connect, there's Motorola Assist, Samsung has Blocking Mode. Alcatel's option to schedule times of day for your phone to turn off or on has to be the most basic version of this I've ever seen and it's buried in the settings menu, but at least it's there. Basic setup is a breeze and the guide that prompts you about how to edit your home screen and things like that will definitely be handy for newcomers to Android. Dig into the guts of the OneTouch Idol Alpha and you'll find a MediaTek chipset. The quad-core processor is rated at 1.2GHz and backed up by an average 1GB of RAM. The animations when you're navigating around stutter sometimes. The Idol Alpha also noticeably lags coming in and out of apps on occasion. It's not consistently awful, but there are hiccups often enough to make it annoying. It handled basic games like Clash of Clans without a problem, but Asphalt 8 was a different story. It took an age to load, had trouble handling the graphics, and it felt unresponsive and laggy. When I quit the game it paused and a loading bar for the home screen launcher popped up for a second. If you like graphically intensive games then forget about this phone. When I ran Geekbench 3 the Idol Alpha's multi-core score was 1082. That's just absolutely horrible. The Nexus 5 scored 2832 the last time we tested, the OnePlus One scored 3050, and even the mid-range HTC Desire 816 managed 1463. With less than 13GB free out of the box and no option to expand via microSD card, storage is going to be a concern for some people. If you're a big gamer, or you want to load up TV shows or movies to watch then you're going to run low on space pretty quickly. Battery life and the essentials Battery life The Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha has a 2,000mAh battery and there's no prospect of carrying a spare because it can't be removed. It's not as big a battery as the latest and greatest. In fact, it's definitely too small. The Nexus 5 has a 2,300mAh battery and I found it made for average performance. The Idol Alpha is not as efficient. Ten minutes playing Clash of Clans ate 3% of the battery, while the graphically intensive Asphalt 8 ate 5% in ten minutes. Twenty minutes of browsing in Chrome ate another 5%. In one night, while I was sleeping, the Idol Alpha managed to drop 14% and there were no incoming calls or messages during that period. It really shouldn't be draining that much when idle, and unfortunately a glance at the battery usage statistics did not solve the mystery. I'm definitely a heavy user and I had to charge the Idol Alpha every day. It didn't even reach the end of the day before needing to be plugged in on more than one occasion in the week I was using it. Casual users will probably get by fine with a nightly charge, but there's no escaping the fact that the battery life is poor. Our 90 minute video battery test, with the screen at full brightness, drained the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha from fully-charged down to 73%. That compares to 74% for the Nexus 5 and 83% for the OnePlus One. Google has improved power efficiency since 4.2 Jelly Bean was released, so there is hope that the Idol Alpha will get a little more staying power with an update, but there's no telling when that might happen. The essentials As a phone the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha is perfectly adequate. It imported contacts from my Google account during setup. Call quality was fine and clear outdoors. Testing it indoors revealed a much weaker performance with the other caller cutting out fairly frequently. I don't get great reception in my home, but the Idol Alpha was noticeably worse at handling calls than my Xperia Z2. The basic apps from Alcatel are very barebones. They function reasonably well; they just don't look great or have an overabundance of features. There's an FM radio app, which is handy when you're out and about, particularly as this phone does not support LTE. The torch app is boosted by the LED strips top and bottom. There's a nice weather app with a minimalist widget. You'll also find a file manager, a note taking app and a handful of other utilities. Alcatel has also included a batch of OneTouch branded apps. The quality of the curated selection of apps in OneTouch Live is debatable, but you might appreciate it. The backup app could prove handy and there's a dedicated app for sharing your screen, though it didn't seem to be able to detect any of my other devices. The preinstalled apps are a real mixed bunch. Things like Evernote and WhatsApp are potentially handy, Gameloft Live less so, but regardless of their usefulness you might prefer to choose them yourself. Thankfully most of them can be uninstalled. You'll find a batch of apps organised into folders when you swipe onto the third home screen. Google's offerings are tucked in here and the Idol Alpha has the same redundancies you'll find on many other Android smartphones. There's a basic browser, but Chrome is there too and it's better. There's a basic messaging app, but Hangouts is there too and it's better. There's a basic gallery app, but Photos is there too and it's better. The list goes on. Another weakness I found with the Idol Alpha was web browsing. Chrome is a bit faster than the basic browser, but it still stuttered fairly frequently. There's also a problem with the screen brightness. On auto it consistently went too bright for comfort and at times it started to whiteout the detail in images. Overall the display is too bright and even when you choose the lowest brightness setting it's actually a bit painful to read if you're in a darkened room. On the flipside you'd expect it to have good sunlight legibility, but the screen is quite reflective so it doesn't. Camera On paper the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha has an impressive main camera. It's rated at 13.1MP, it has an LED flash, and it can record 1080p video. In reality it's a very easy camera to use and it's fast at capturing a shot, as long as it isn't HDR. You can go from the lock screen to shooting a photo in around three seconds, which is great for catching those spontaneous moments. The results I got were reasonably good on the whole. The app is straightforward to use and clear. You touch to focus and you can touch and hold to take a burst of shots. There is a HDR mode and also a night, sports, and panorama mode. If you want to dig deeper you can set the ISO and exposure manually. Video recording is also solid. You can capture full HD 1080p video at 30 frames per second. The only options offered are three different quality levels. It's smooth and the automatic settings handle action quite well. The front-facing camera is a 1.3MP snapper that can record 720p video. It will do just fine for video calls, but it's not going to satisfy selfie addicts. Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Click here for the full-res image Media The display on the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha is good enough to enjoy video content and engage in a blast of gaming. If you're inside then you're going to want to turn the brightness down and the colour saturation is noticeable at times, but it's perfectly watchable for streaming Netflix or YouTube. It can also handle basic games like Clash of Clans without a hitch. Graphically intensive titles like Modern Combat 5 or Asphalt 8 don't fare as well. Expect slow loading times, stuttering, and lag when you exit. The main speaker is on the back so if you're listening without headphones, then be careful not to cover it up with your hand. The volume is limited and if you crank it to the max it starts to distort. You're definitely better off with headphones. The music and video apps are incredibly basic, but they support a decent range of file types and were able to play back everything I tested. There is a widget for the music player if you want to use it, and you can create playlists and order by album, artist, or song name, but you'll find a multitude of better options in the Play Store. I had no problems watching Netflix on the Idol Alpha and it was quick to load a high quality stream. It also worked fine for choosing content and streaming to my Chromecast. I also tested Spotify without any issues. You'll need headphones and the adapter for the microUSB is annoying, but aside from that it works just fine for listening to music. With around 13GB of your 16GB storage available and no micro SD card slot, you might feel space is limited. If you like to have movies or a big music collection on your phone then it will be a problem. Games like Asphalt 8 are over 1.5GB, but then it performs so poorly you won't want to install it anyway. Google gives you 15GB and the option to automatically backup photos in the cloud, so that's a handy boost. The OneTouch backup app that comes preinstalled is something of a mystery as the user agreement is in Chinese, but it appears to just link up with your existing accounts on Dropbox, Box or Google Drive. Comparison Google Nexus 5 It's more than a year old now, but for £300 the Nexus 5 still looks a better buy than the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha, if you can get hold of one. It has a slightly bigger, full 1080p resolution display, a much faster processor, double the RAM, supports LTE, and boasts the very latest version of Android. The only thing, beyond the design, that the Idol Alpha has to tempt you is the 13MP camera, compared to the 8MP camera on the Nexus 5. Alcatel's interface does not really add any value over stock Android and you could snag all of the preinstalled apps for free in the Play Store. In every other measurable way the Nexus 5 is better. Read the full Nexus 5 review OnePlus One In terms of specs the OnePlus One, with its 5.5-inch 1080p display and Snapdragon 801 chipset with a 2.5GHz quad-core processor backed by 3GB of RAM, is in a different class. In terms of price it's actually cheaper than the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha at just £229 for the 16GB model. The OnePlus One also boasts a 13MP camera, a 5MP front-facing camera, support for LTE, the latest version of Android KitKat, and the hugely customizable CyanogenMod. The main detractor for many potential customers of the OnePlus One, apart from the invite system, is a lack of trust for the brand and maybe a concern about aftercare if something goes wrong. Alcatel certainly has a longer track record, but it doesn't have a great reputation, so I really can't see a reason to pick it over OnePlus. Read the full OnePlus One review Samsung Galaxy S4 It may be old news, but sometimes yesterday's flagship is a better bet than today's mid-ranger and you can pick up a Galaxy S4 for around the same price as the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha. It boasts a 5-inch 1080p display, a quad-core processor rated at 1.6GHz, and 2GB of RAM. You also get a 13MP camera, 2MP front-facing camera, and an incredible array of extras from Samsung. The Idol Alpha has a more premium feel and a more arresting look, but the S4 is a better phone. Read the full Samsung Galaxy S4 review Verdict Why does Alcatel think it can sell the OneTouch Idol Alpha for £280? Having played with it for a week I honestly can't explain. It doesn't seem likely that any carriers in the UK will pick it up, so you're looking at paying the full whack up front. The simple truth is that you shouldn't buy it because there are too many better options at around the same price tag. It isn't an awful smartphone by any means, and I do like the exterior design, but I want to do more than look at my phone. People seeking an entry-level phone will find plenty to tempt in the budget bracket, this is presumably supposed to attract anyone upgrading and on that basis it's destined for failure. We liked Those shiny chamfered edges are lovely. The Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha looks like a premium device. When the translucent segments light up, so do I. It's a genuinely innovative design touch and you don't see them very often, especially in the mid-range segment. The camera is easy to use and fast at capturing a shot. The detail level is good and the burst mode is handy. Video recording is solid. Overall it's far from perfect, but it definitely goes in the plus column. We disliked The stuttering is a major turn off. A combination of Alcatel's skin, the processor, and the lack of RAM is causing it to lag and even struggle sometimes. Poor performance during graphically intensive games and in the browser simply isn't good enough for a phone at this price. You can't even get through a busy day on a single charge. The battery life is weak and it drops surprisingly fast at times. The OneTouch Idol Alpha would obviously benefit from the latest version of Android. It could help soothe the stuttering and extend the battery life. Alcatel should update it as soon as possible. And the omission of a headphone jack - now that's just plain crazy. Final verdict The experience of using the Idol Alpha definitely doesn't live up to the early promise. There are an awful lot of other Android smartphones that match or surpass the hardware and software on offer here and cost the same or less. If you're wondering why you should buy the Alcatel OneTouch Idol Alpha, the short answer is you shouldn't.

Nintendo is working on its next console, which may be powered by AMD Posted: 22 Dec 2014 07:07 AM PST Nintendo's dropped several hints that it's already looking ahead to the Wii U's successor, but it's now being a tad more explicit about its plans. Nintendo game design chief, Shigeru Miyamoto, has confirmed that the next console is in development, and even dropped a hint about who might be helping to launch it. "While we're busy working on software for the Wii U, we have production lines that are working on ideas for what the next system might be," he said in an interview with the Associated Press. What makes this (mostly unsurprising) news a tad more interesting is a separate announcement that may turn out to be nothing more than a coincidence. Recently AMD CFO Devinder Kumar announced that the company had just landed two big design wins. At the time he said: "one is x86 and the other is ARM, and at least one will be beyond gaming, right. But that is about as much as you going to get out me today. From the standpoint [of being] fair to [customers], it is their product, and they launch it. They are going to announce it and then […] you will find out that it is AMD's APU that is being used in those products." It's unclear as to exactly which ARM project he's hinting at, but if it were to appear in the Wii U we're crossing our fingers that it's the Project Skybridge SoC that was announced earlier in the year. More likely is that the next Nintendo console will be powered by a x8 SoC like the PS4 and Xbox One, but as we're probably not going to see the platform for at least a couple more years, who really knows? Gettin' Shiggy with it Shigeru Miyamoto also hinted that Mario might be the one to launch the console, however the Italian plumber may get a makeover beforehand. Miyamoto explained that, like the gradual evolution of Disney's Mickey Mouse, he'd like to see the next phase of Mario tie in with the next platform. "With each digital evolution, [Mickey Mouse] was there to usher in the next era," he said. "I think that maybe when we release the next hardware system, you can look forward to seeing Mario take on a new role in a new game." Interesting - perhaps we'll see Nintendo go all Frank Miller by portraying a older, weathered Mario a la The Dark Knight Returns. Or maybe we'll finally get the GTA-Mario crossover game we've been pining for, with Mario trading in his hat and wrench for cigarettes, women, tasteless tattoos, and an affinity for street crime. Is it time to buy the Wii U?

Download of the day: Foxit Reader Posted: 22 Dec 2014 07:00 AM PST Foxit Reader is one of the best all-round PDF packages available, exceeding what many of its paid-for rivals do whilst remaining completely free. Why you need it If you're looking for great free PDF software, head in Foxit Reader's direction. It makes the bold claim that it is 'better than Adobe PDF Reader and Acrobat', but this isn't merely a case of hubris from the new kid on the block. Foxit Reader has been around for half as long as Adobe's PDF software, but it's been making some serious waves along the way. It's secure, light on system resources and loads up quickly, and the Microsoft Office-style ribbon bar keeps options tidy and easy to find. Separate PDF documents can be loaded in the same window thanks to Foxit's tab system, ensuring your desktop doesn't get clogged up with multiple windows. When it comes to reading and editing PDFs, Foxit puts in a truly strong showing. You can highlight text, insert bookmarks, draw graphics, type on the document and more. Create PDF documents from scratch, convert images into PDFs or reverse the process and change PDFs into text documents – it's all there in Foxit. Then when you're done, you can easily share your work with collaborators or on social media using Foxit's extensive range of integrated tools. Foxit Reader's main rival is Adobe Acrobat, and while Acrobat has a few more advanced features, it also currently costs $19.99 a month to use (about £12.79 a month); Foxit is totally free, packed with features and more than meets the needs of the everyday user. Key features Works on: PC Versions: Free Read and edit: Foxit contains extensive tools to help you edit and mark up PDF documents in pretty much any way you need to Create and convert: Make PDF files from scratch or create them from a range of imported files, or convert them back the other way Keep things organised: Foxit's intuitive user interface ensures options are easy to find but never cluttered You'll also like PDFCreator Free PDF Perfect PDF24 Creator PDF-XChange Viewer PDFsam

This is Samsung's Z1 Tizen phone, launching in January Posted: 22 Dec 2014 04:37 AM PST It's been a long wait for Samsung to push out a smartphone powered by its own Tizen software, but it looks like the much-anticipated handset is almost upon us. There were expectations that it would launch this month, however according to The Korea Economic Daily it's now been pushed back to January. A Samsung official is quoted as confirming that the handset will launch on January 18, 2015 in India. We had hoped to see a high-end Tizen smartphone, dubbed the Samsung Z, appear this summer. Samsung had a change of heart though, scrapping the handset launch and saying it wanted to stockpile apps before unleashing Tizen on the world. The imminent Samsung Z1 is a much more modest affair, said to be sporting a 4-inch WVGA display and a dual-core 1.2GHz processor. There's also a dual-SIM card slot, a 3.2-megapixel rear camera, and 3G connectivity, according to early reports. Z1 leaks More fuel for the Tizen fire comes from a tweet and a blog posting that purport to show the Tizen-powered Z1 in the (metal) flesh. It looks stylish enough, even if there's not much power under the hood. With a sub-$100 price tag and a limited launch in India, Tizen is being positioned as more of an Android One competitor than something that's going to challenge iOS and the mainstream version of Android. It may eventually reach the US and UK, but there are no indications of that happening right now. Still, it will be interesting to finally get a look at Tizen on a smartphone (as opposed to a smartwatch) and find out what it's capable of. Let's hope the launch doesn't get pushed back any further, and that the Z1 doesn't meet the same fate as the Z. Samsung is going to reveal Tizen TV at CES 2015

Downloads: Christmas crackers: Foobar2000 Posted: 22 Dec 2014 04:00 AM PST Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without a little music, and whether you're listening to traditional tunes or something a little different, Foobar2000 can take care of all of your music needs. This free player keeps things wonderfully simple with its clean, uncluttered interface. There's support for a wide range of popular audio formats including MP3, AAC, FLAC and many more, as well as audio CDs and CD ripping. If you have existing playlists, they can be easily imported into Foobar2000 and arranged onto individual tabs so you can easily switch between them, and you can also create new lists with ease. As with other media players, you can set up a watch folder so that any files that are added to it are automatically included in your music library. With the option of adding folders from other computers, networks drives and local storage, you may well end up with a large number of music files, so it's just as well that there's a sturdy tool available to help you find what you're looking for. Foobar2000 is a highly competent program from the offset, but you can add extra feature by installing free add-ons.

Two months in, Apple Pay is doing impressively well Posted: 22 Dec 2014 03:25 AM PST Tech-savvy punters in the US have been able to use Apple Pay in stores since October 20, and now we have our first indication of just how well it's doing. Analyst firm ITG has reported that the tech accounted for 1% of all digital payments made in the US in the month of November. That's a solid start for Apple considering you need an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus and iOS 8.1 to be able to use it on the go. By comparison, the more established Google Wallet accounted for 4% of transactions in the same period. ITG said Apple's service has "strong momentum" and "the ability to significantly transform the mobile payment space." What's more, 60% of Apple Pay buyers made use of the service multiple times in the same month. That's an impressive level of loyalty considering PayPal's comparable figure is hovering around the 20% mark. Cyber shopping And where exactly are these dollars being spent? Whole Foods was the most popular retailer for Apple Pay users, with 20% of all transactions. It was joined in the top five by Walgreens, McDonald's, Panera Bread and Subway. Apple Pay users activated the tech an average of 1.4 times per week and continued to use Apple Pay at the same retailer 66 percent of the time. The general feeling is that these are strong figures for Apple, and the statistics should look even better once the Apple Watch is out. If you're in the UK and eager to start swiping with your iPhone to pay for goods, services and McDonald's fast food, the indications are you might not have much longer to wait. Apple Pay review

Tech Bargains: TechRadar Deals: PS4, Xbox One, TV + soundbar, headphones and more! Posted: 22 Dec 2014 03:08 AM PST Saving you money is what TechRadar Deals is all about, and we've got some more bargains for you to consider here. Whether you're after something for the family or simply looking for bargains for your own good self, we've got some deals for you! And if you haven't heard about the deals bonanza that's going down on the 26th, check out our Boxing Day sales page! Here's a great little deal to kick us off. If you're looking to pick up a kick-ass USB stick, you can currently get the SanDisk Cruzer Extreme USB 3.0 drive with 64GB capacity for just £24.99. Today's Hot Deals If you're after the cheapest possible price on a PS4 or Xbox One console today, this is probably it. By using the secret code GKHC9 at the checkout, you can currently get an extra 20% off the price of both, leaving you paying just £279.20! Get the PS4 deal | Get the Xbox One deal This is a great deal on a TV and soundbar combo. Pick up the Sony KDL-42W829 - one of TechRadar's favourite TVs of 2014, with a Sony soundbar and subwoofer, all for just £509 while stocks last at Currys. Here's an exclusive deal just for you. Portable phone chargers are one of the most useful gadgets to own, and with the secret code TR14XMAS you can currently get £3 off the Omaker Premium portable charger with 10,000mAh of charge! That makes the price just £14.99. Looking for a boatload of storage space for your home computer? This massive 5TB hard drive can currently be had for just £119.99 at Amazon. And finally, IWOOT currently has the B&O Beoplay Form 21 headphones at a sizeable discount, currently just £47.99. MORE DEALS Yamaha RX-V377 5.1Ch 100W Output 4K Ready AV Receiver - £179 - Richer Sounds Xbox One Console - £285.00 @ Amazon Crucial M500 240GB SSD £64.98 Free Delivery @ Amazon Lenovo e50 Quad Core Desktop PC 25% off £149.99 (£119.99 after cashback) with free delivery @ ebuyer Sony Xperia Z3 Sim Free £399.88 at unlocked-mobiles Griffin CinemaSeat for iPad Air - Now £4.98 (was £29.95) @ John Lewis (Click & Collect) From Dusk Till Dawn 1-3 Complete Collection Blu-ray £8.99 @ Zavvi Habitat Kringle Small Colour-Changing LED Tree only £6 Argos 80% off 50 Pranks Magic Tricks Tin or 50 Amazing Magic Tricks Tin £2.00 ( was £10) @ Halfords

Interview: World could "run out of storage capacity" within 2 years warns Seagate VP Posted: 22 Dec 2014 03:00 AM PST Seagate VP for branded products group, Mark Whitby, walks us through the fascinating world of storage, warning us of the dangers of not producing enough data and introducing us to the concept of the Zettabyte. The world, he says, will produce 44 of these by 2020, which might not sound a lot until you consider that a Zettabyte is 1^21 bytes. TRP Tell us a little bit more about Seagate MW Seagate is a leading provider of hard drives and storage solutions. From the videos, music and documents we share with friends and family on social networks, to servers that form the backbone of enterprise data centers and cloud-based computing, to desktop and notebook computers that fuel our personal productivity, Seagate products help more people store, share and protect their valuable digital content. Seagate offers one of the industry's broadest portfolio of hard disk drives, solid-state drives and solid-state hybrid drives. In addition, the company offers an extensive line of retail storage products for consumers and small businesses, along with data-recovery services for any brand of hard drive and digital media type. The company developed the world's first 5.25-inch hard disk drive (HDD) back in 1980 and in March, 2013, Seagate also became the first storage manufacturer to ship two billion drives globally. Seagate is headquartered in Cupertino, California and employs more than 50,000 people around the world. TRP Why should people care about storage? MW Data has never been more important. As valuable as oil and just as difficult to mine, model and manage, data is swiftly becoming a vital asset to businesses the world over. Companies large and small are taking their first steps in data analytics, keen to gain an insight into how their customers behave and so better position themselves in the market place. Although still in its infancy, analytics holds the potential to one day allow them to find solutions, sell more products and develop customer trust. While most businesses have yet to determine how to get the most from their existing data, let alone understand the masses of unstructured data from outside their organisation, they do accept its potential. Tomorrow's competitive advantage may well be driven by the ability to quickly identify the right data, collect it, analyse it and act on it. In order to amass this valuable digital repository, however, there must first be ready storage capacity. And in order to drive all possible value from that data, it must also be stored in such a way as to be quick to access, efficient to manage, and low-cost to maintain. Unfortunately, therein lies the rub. Data centres today are not equipped to be able to handle the anticipated influx generated by the Internet of Things, nor geared towards feeding it smoothly across to the analytics platforms where it can prove its worth. There is little chance that the billions of whirring silicon-based hard drives around the world will be able to keep up with the flood of data driven by the 26 billion connected devices (not including some 7.3 billion smartphones, tablets and PCs) that Gartner predicts will be in use by 2020. TRP What do you think will be the main challenge facing the storage industry over the next 5 years? MW Three words: data capacity gap. We are entering a world where everything is connecting to everything else and the resulting big data is anticipated to solve virtually all our problems. However, by 2016, the hard drives housed in all those connected devices, whirring away in countless data centres, will start to reach their limits. The total amount of digital data generated in 2013 was about 3.5 zettabytes (that's 35 with 20 zeros following). By 2020, we'll be producing, even at a conservative estimate, 44 zettabytes of data annually. A zettabyte might not be a word you've heard of – even Word's spellchecker doesn't recognise it – but consider it in terms of a more familiar unit. A standard smartphone today will have around 32 gigabytes of memory. To get to one zettabyte you would have to completely fill the storage capacity of 34,359,738,368 smartphones. At this current rate of production, by 2016 the world will be producing more digital information than it can easily store. By 2020, we can predict a minimum capacity gap of over six zettabytes - nearly double all the data that was produced in 2013. TRP If the world is running out of storage, why can we not simply increase production of hard drives and build more data centres? MW Unfortunately, the imminent breach between storage demand and production is not a problem that can so easily be solved. The fact of the matter is that it's far harder to manufacture capacity than it is to generate data. Building factory capacity that is capable of meeting such stratospheric demand would take hundreds of billions in investment. It's simply not a realistic option. Another factor is the technology in use by the storage industry today. Even if the investment was there and thousands of new data centres could be commissioned, it's becoming more difficult on a molecular level to squeeze increasingly dense volumes of information onto the same amount of space. Seagate produced its first ever hard drive in 1979: it had 5MB of storage and would have cost a few months' wages. What it could store today is about 2 seconds of low resolution video shot on a smartphone, or 2 high resolution photos. A modern 5TB hard drive will set you back less than £200 and is capable of storing 2 million photos, 2.5 million songs and about 1,000 movies. Although it's not physically any larger than our oldest hard drive, in capacity it's actually 1,000,000 times bigger. So, while the ability to squeeze ever more dense data onto the same amount of space is a real testament to human ingenuity and engineering, it's starting to reach the point where new technologies will have to take over. TRP What are some of the latest innovations in data storage that could help heal the data capacity gap in 2020? MW Silicon may be the work-horse that has helped us get to where we are today, but it's starting to show its age. Fortunately, there is an impressive amount of innovation taking place in the industry at the moment and a number of these advances could help us to seal the data storage breach over the next five to 10 years. RRAM (resistive random access memory) is one such example. A smart type of computer memory, this could, in theory, let us store tens or even hundreds of times as much data on our smartphone. The high difficulty and costs of production have meant that many companies have overlooked it in the past s, but researchers at Rice University have recently had a break-through. They have shown a way to make RRAM at room temperature and with far lower voltages. Some prototypes have even been proven to store data densely enough to enable a terabyte chip the size of a postage stamp. If RRAM doesn't seem quite far enough removed from the world of silicon-based storage, there's also DNA to consider. Last year, a team of scientists from the European Bioinformatics Institute reportedly stored a complete set of Shakespeare's sonnets, a PDF of the first paper to describe DNA's double helix structure, a 26-second mp3 clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, a text file of a compression algorithm, and a JPEG photograph in a strand of DNA, no bigger than a speck of dust. Another forward-looking team at Harvard University's Wyss Institute later brainstormed their way to successfully storing 5.5 petabytes, or 700 terabytes, of digital data into a single gram of DNA. TRP Is Seagate developing any new storage solutions at the moment? MW Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is one new technology that Seagate is investing in. This method uses lasers to first heat the high-stability media before magnetically recording data. HAMR is expected to increase the limit of magnetic recording by more than a factor of 100 and this could theoretically result in storage capacities as great as 50 terabits per square inch - current hard drives generally have a capacity of a only few hundred gigabits per square inch. To put this in perspective, a digital library of all books written in the world would be approximately 400 TB— meaning that in the very near future conceivably all such books could be stored on as few as 20 HAMR drives. While these technologies are still some way from our desks and data centres, these advances and others like them are certainly on their way. Innovation combined with the plunging cost of components is ultimately what's needed if we are to keep up with the world's growing demand for data storage. TRP Will CIOs need to supplement existing storage resources? MW CIOs certainly need to consider the implications of a data capacity gap for their business and address it by thinking strategically and longer term in regards to their storage resources. Typical big data resides on traditional disk storage, using standard hardware and software components. Since companies began to store information, a large amount of standard infrastructure has built up around the process. Data centres today include legacy components comprised of hardware and software stack components. This approach is highly inefficient - in a single system there will often be several unsynchronised components caching the same data, each working independently, but with very poor results. In order for a company to get to a better cost and efficiency model, to match the requirements in the future, a better solution must be put in place. One of the latest big data storage methods is a tiered model using existing technologies. This model utilises a more efficient capacity-tier based on pure object storage at the drive level. Above this sits a combination of high performance HDD (hard disk drives), SSHD (solid state hybrid) and SSD (solid state drives). SSHD hybrid technology such as this has been used successfully in laptops and desktop computers for years but today it is only just beginning to be considered for enterprise-scale data centres. This new method allows the most critical data to sit on the more expensive SSDs or hybrids, where it is easy and quick to access and well-placed to be processed by analytics platforms, while the less valuable meta-data sits on cheaper HDDs where it is still available and secure, but slower to access. This potential part-solution to the data capacity gap is part of a growing trend for larger, more efficient data centres. That the world has grown from a planet producing just under one zettabyte per annum back in 2009, to potentially well over 44 in 2020, is truly astounding. Managing this—whether you're a technologist responsible for managing data, a business user who has the task of analysing it, or a consumer trying to manage the flood of your own digital information—will be an interesting challenge for all of us. Check our the review of the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD V.4 6TB Hard Disk

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