One of the more annoying features of Windows 8 and 8.1 has long been the lack of support for Matroska (MKV) files. MKV is one of the most flexible container formats available, but when Microsoft announced the file formats it would support natively with the Metro or Windows Media Player, MKV didn’t make the list. The company is finally rectifying that oversight.
First, a word on what MKV actually is. Like the old AVI (Audio Video Interleave), MKV is a container file format as opposed to an actual encoding standard. Most of the file types that people talk about — MP3, MP4, MKV, AVI — are container formats. The same video stream can be encoded in MP4, MKV, MPEG-2, or AVI. Each of these container formats will impose its own set of rules and limitations on the final output, but they all accomplish the same thing (with varying degrees of quality and capability).
Depending on who you ask, MKV is prized for two reasons. The cynical might say it’s typically favored by pirates, and to be honest, that’s where the format is most popular. Visitpopular torrent sites, and MKV files abound.
Linking MKV and piracy, however, is a lot like linking RAR file compression or BitTorrentactivity with piracy, or claiming that because programs like TrueCrypt can be abused, they automatically will be abused. At best, this is sloppy thinking. Many companies now use peer-to-peer networking to distribute files to large user bases without crushing their own infrastructure.
There are technical advantages and disadvantages to MKV. On the plus side, it’s one of the most flexible container formats in existence, with support for multiple audio and video streams that some other formats, like MP4, don’t support or only support in restricted fashion. If you have a multimedia library that you’ve built from ripped discs over a period of years, with multiple format shifts over time, MKV is a simple way to preserve or standardize it.
Previous attempts to bring MKV support to Windows 8 did not go well, as we covered in our Surface review
The downside to MKV is that it typically isn’t well supported in mobile players, though there are some exceptions. Most of the players aren’t rated very well, though VLC for iOS does claim MKV capability (it’s not mentioned on the Android version). VLC’s much-ballyhooed launch for Windows 8 occurred earlier this year.
The reason I’m glad to see Windows 8 add this use-case is simple: it means Windows 8.1 now has an edge over Windows 7 when it comes to installing the OS and firing up media content. With Windows 7, I have to plan to install VLC or K-Lite. With Windows 8.1, content should play out of the box, provided that the necessary updates are slipstreamed into the OS install. Right now, this support is limited to Windows 8’s Xbox Video player, but the company apparently intends to make global MKV support happen in Windows 10 from the get-go.
There might be life in the old beast yet: Microsoft now accepts Bitcoin as a payment option on its Windows and Xbox stores — which means you can now use Bitcoin to purchase a new copy of Windows, the latest installment of Call of Destiny: Master Chief Edition, or even to buy the latest season of your favorite TV show. Obviously, this is a pretty big deal for Bitcoin: Not only is a currency only as valuable as its ability to be exchanged for useful goods, but an endorsement from a company as large as Microsoft will be seen as a significant milestone that might get other important companies to take another look at accepting Bitcoin.
As of yesterday morning, you can now use bitcoins to add funds to your Microsoft account. When you go to add new funds, you have the usual options of using a credit card or gift card — but now you also have the option of using bitcoins (it’s US-only for now, incidentally). Microsoft isn’t handling Bitcoin itself; instead, it’s partnering with BitPay, a payment gateway. Basically, BitPay allows retailers to accept bitcoins instead of dollars — and then it goes ahead and handles all of the actual currency exchange, so that there’s no risk for the retailer (the Bitcoin-USD exchange rate is somewhat volatile).
In short, this means you can now use Bitcoin to pay for (I think) everything that Microsoft sells online — basically, everything from the various Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox stores. I’m not sure if this covers the Microsoft Store itself — I don’t know if you can buy a new Microsoft Band or Surface tablet with bitcoins — but I wouldn’t be surprised (the online Microsoft Store uses the same account credentials as all of Microsoft’s other services). In any case, you can definitely use your bitcoins to buy Xbox games, music and video content, and apps for any of your Windows or Windows Phone devices. If you’re feeling particularly avant garde, you’ll probably even be able to pay your Windows 10 subscription with bitcoins.
Microsoft, which joins the likes of Newegg and Dell, is almost certainly the largest company so far to accept Bitcoin. With the legal status of Bitcoin as a currency somewhat in limbo, and a historically very volatile exchange rate, many larger companies have shied away from accepting it. With the exchange rate stabilizing, though, and slick gateways like BitPay assuming most of the risk, adoption is definitely on the rise. It will be interesting to see if other tech juggernauts like Apple and Google now follow suit — and, even more importantly, whether this will cause the value of Bitcoin to increase or decrease.
Oh, and of course, if you have significant Bitcoin holdings, and you haven’t yet bought anXbox One or PS4, this might be the clincher that you were waiting for.
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After an extended testing and preview period, Google has announced the final release of Android L, its latest version of the world's most popular mobile platform. Android 5.0 Lollipop is debuting on three new Nexus devices — the Nexus 6 smartphone, Nexus 9 tablet, and Nexus Player streaming media device — and will be available on the Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Google Play Edition devices in the coming weeks.
Lollipop's most obvious new features come in the form of visual enhancements and user interface changes, which Google has dubbed Material Design. The platform has new, more fluid animations, a cleaner design with a bolder color palette, a revamped multittasking menu, and offers new ways to interact with your voice. Many of the new Material Design features can be seen in the recent updates that Google has released for its own Android apps such as Google+. The Material Design initiative is meant to unify the software's look and feel across various form factors, whether that's a tablet, smartphone, home media streamer, or something else.
MATERIAL DESIGN IS MEANT TO UNIFY THE ANDROID EXPERIENCE ACROSS DEVICES
In addition to a visual overhaul, Lollipop brings over 5,000 new APIs for developers to tap into and lets multiple different Android devices with various form factors work better together. Google says that things such as songs, photos, apps, and recent searches can be seamlessly synced across various Android devices. Lollipop also includes new notification controls to limit alerts during meetings and other times, a new battery saver mode that can eke out 90 more minutes of life between charges, multiple user accounts, guest user modes, and new ways to secure your device via trusted Bluetooth connections. Lollipop will also include a protection against resetting the phone to factory defaults, which is designed to make it difficult for phone thieves to use a stolen device. Many of these features have been implemented by various Android device makers on their own smartphones and tablets for some time, but Google is now making sure they are part of the core Android experience.
Android 5.0 Lollipop is a big release for Google — it's the most significant visual update to Android since 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich was released in 2011, and it lays the foundation for Android to grow as a platform outside of smartphones and tablets. Google is very clearly pushing Android as the software for the future, and it wants Android to be on every connected device we interact with. Lollipop is the first step to getting there.
Update, 1:15PM ET, October 15th, 2014: Google has confirmed that the Nexus 4 will receive an update to Android 5.0 Lollipop and this article has been updated to reflect that.
On Tuesday Microsoft will preview the next-generation Windows operating system – currently codenamed Windows Threshold, but expected to be called Windows 9 – and it will be a keystone to Microsoft's plans over the coming years.
With that in mind, here are five features that Microsoft must add to Windows 9 if it is to have a chance of not only tempting me back into the ecosystem, but also of dissipating the cloud of negativity that Windows 8 currently finds itself engulfed in.
#1 - Hassle-free Windows updates
Here are just some of the changes that need to be made:Microsoft needs to take a long, hard look at the Windows update process. The system as it currently stands is so antiquated that it would be laughable if not for the pain it inflicts on users.
We need more cumulative updates. Installing updates only for more to appear immediately afterwards is tedious and time-consuming, especially when setting up new systems. Fully updating a system should be a one-click process, and users shouldn't be left wondering if all the patches and updates are correctly installed. Fresh Windows 8 installations can take almost a day to fully patch, which is a wholly inappropriate waste of time.
Windows Update needs to be more reliable. I'm still coming across updates that just don't want to install, and trying to diagnose the problem can be a long task. Easy, one-click access to a separate installer would help, rather than forcing users to dig through countless knowledgebase articles.
Rebooting should be kept to a minimum, and when needed it should recover my PC back to the state it was before the reboot, opening up the apps and files I was using prior to the reboot.
#2 - Over-the-air Windows recovery
If a Mac system suffers a catastrophic disk failure, then the operating system can be recovered over-the-air without the need to dig out discs, USB keys, or rely on a recovery partition. It's a quick, easy, and painless process.
If Apple can do this, then there's no reason why Microsoft can't. And if Microsoft could add a feature that would enable us to download a diagnostics package containing system scan tools, a virus scanner, and fixes for common problems for flatlined Windows system, then that would be awesome.
Having to rely on third-party tools to fix Windows system is quite frankly crazy. Microsoft should be able to do the job much better.
#3 - Separation of OS, applications, and data
It's 2014, and drives are cheap. It should be easy – and by easy, I mean as close to automatic as possible – to make Windows take notice of the fact a system has multiple drives and use one for Windows and programs, and the other for data.
Taking this a step further, I'd like to see Windows isolate all applications from the operating system in such a way that I can, with a click of the mouse, either blitz all the settings of a specific application to default, or even remove that application from the system, deleting all of its setting with it. This would go a long way to eliminating the bitrot and slowdowns that affect Windows as time goes on.
Windows 8 already has a feature that rolls Windows back to an "out of the box" state, but this is a very blunt instrument. Repairing an operating s system should no longer means nuking everything and starting from scratch.
#4 - Pure desktop experience mode
If I have a desktop or notebook PC that isn't touch-enabled, then I don't want to have to suffer through a user experience compromised by features aimed at tablet users. Just give me the Windows Desktop and the Start Menu and let me get on with what I want to do.
#5 - Transparent backup
If there's one trick that Microsoft should learn from Apple, it is how to make backing up easier. The Time Machine mechanism in OS X is simply awesome, and takes all the strain out of backing up a system, and after the initial setup it is a total "fire and forget" system. It's not 100 percent perfect, but it's light years ahead of anything Microsoft has to offer.
Data is the single most important thing that users have on their systems, and giving users of all backgrounds a quick and easy way to ensure that their precious 1s and 0s is safe is a no-brainer.
A few other things I'd like to see changed
Before I close, here are a few more things I'd like to see changed in Windows 9:
Get rid of all the pointless Start Screen tiles from a default install. If people want to add weather or a search tile or a tile that displays financial info, tell them how to do it, but don't add to the user's cognitive load by throwing a bunch of ever-changing tiles into the mix by default.
Bring an end to big-bang releases. We don't need to be subjected to huge user interface and paradigm shifts every couple of years. Such a cavalier attitude creates disruption and makes an unavoidable learning curve associated with a new release unnecessarily steep.
With iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite, Apple has taken great steps to integrate the PC and post-PC ecosystems, allowing users to shift from one to the other in a more seamless way. Microsoft has yet to do much to assimilate the two worlds.
Tone back the animations. I want an operating system, not a Pixar movie.
When it comes to touch, gestures need to work better. Right now they're a mess, and different sensitivities on different devices make them even trickier to use.
Microsoft needs to figure out battery life, especially if Windows RT is dead. Windows 8/8.1 is far too much of a power hog compared to OS X, even on cutting-edge hardware.
Fix the inconsistent user interface. Bolting on a touch UI to the existing Windows UI has made matters much worse.
Three weeks ago, I switched from Google search to Bing. There, I said it. No longer do I Google something; I Bing it. And I haven't looked back since.
The move away from Google wasn't easy. Sometime in the late 1990s, I was invited to test out Google's search engine. I moved from poring though filing cabinets to typing queries in a search box. If it was out there on the Web, Google promised, Google would find it.
And it did. Over the years, Google became smarter and more responsive. Google Instant auto-suggested search results before I finished typing them. "Google it" became part of my vernacular.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's Bing search engine was getting no respect. Bing it? Please.
But Bing doggedly continued to improve. It added social connections and "cards" identifying key topics and related searches. It improved speed and reliability. Then one day, when I wanted to dig up older stories I had written using Google's search engine, I found I had better luck finding them using Bing.
So I switched.
By the end of this story, I'll tell you how to switch your browser's search engine from Google to Bing in just a few seconds. But before that, here are some of my favorite (and yes, even bizarre) reasons to switch to Bing.
Number one? Because Microsoft will pay you.
1. Search for cash with Bing Rewards
I'm cheap. I'll generally pass up a $12 artisanal beef slider at the food trucks near my office in favor of a less expensive salad that could stuff a throw pillow. I often wear the same pants two days in a row to save on my water bill. I use coupons.
So if Microsoft wants to pay me about $5 a month to do what I normally do? Sign me up.
MARK HACHMAN
Just some of the things you can redeem your Bing Rewards search points on.
The concept behind Bing Rewards is simple: As you search, Microsoft gives you credits. You earn 1 credit per two Bing searches on a desktop PC (up to 15 credits per day), or 10 credits per day for searching Bing via a mobile app. Bing searches are automatically triggered via Cortana on a Windows Phone, or the Bing Search app for Android or iOS.
The best part: These credits can be redeemed for things you'll actually use.
For 475 credits, Microsoft will give you $5 to spend at Amazon, or Fandango, Sephora, Starbucks, or other merchants. You can also redeem your rewards for a nice 5% coupon at the Microsoft Store, discounts on Windows and Windows Phone apps, or even a free month of Xbox Live Gold. Use Bing frequently enough, and you can climb your way up to Silver or Gold status, which confers a 10-percent "discount" on credit redemptions.
And this is all for simply using Bing during the course of your day.
2. Search quality: as good or better than Google's
I wouldn't even mention Bing Rewards if Bing itself wasted your time. But it doesn't. My personal belief is that Bing delivers slightly more useful information than Google in general search. And don't worry: Using Bing still means that you can use other Google services, like Gmail, as often as you'd like.
MARK HACHMAN
Context is key, and Microsoft has made this a priority with Bing.
If I search for a term like "Notre Dame football," Bing makes better use of that vast, white space on the right side, displaying contextual information about the school, its history, news, and more. (Both engines show me the recent scores, but Google's card displays a more complete upcoming schedule.)
Bing's lead widens when you search for celebrities, as it includes videos as well as images and biographical information. And though Microsoft could do a better job of highlighting this information, Bing provides one-click links to a celeb's social media pages for what they're thinking about, right now.
MARK HACHMAN
Bing includes social media links, too.
There are exceptions, of course. One of Bing's odd quirks is an inability to list the home page for Windows Phone Central as the top search result. But, in general, Bing performs as well or better on most of my common, day-to-day searches than Google does.
3. Bing gets the picture
That goes for image searches, too. Bing was first to implement the "infinite scroll" in Bing Images, where users could simply scroll and scroll and never reach the "end" of their search results. Today, Bing's image search adds an extra layer of search filters that Google users must drill down to find, including options to show only pictures with faces, for example, or display images in a particular layout. And if you need to find a licensed photo to illustrate a newsletter, Bing makes that information more easily accessible than Google does.
MARK HACHMAN
Bing's Image Search page is attractively formatted, with lots of jumping-off points for further exploration.
About the only reason to use Google's image search if you're hunting down animated GIF images, as this is an option Bing has yet to offer.
Keep reading to see how Bing gives you more video search results than Google.
4. Bing shows more video, if you can bear to look
For whatever reason, the conventional wisdom is that Bing is the porn search engine of choice. Wander through some of Reddit's Microsoft forums, and it'll eventually come up. Heck, The Daily Dot even dedicated an entire article to it.
Part of the reason is that, even with filtering turned off, Google now takes a rather puritanical attitude toward filtering copyrighted videos, while Microsoft has adopted a more libertarian approach. Bing simply shows you videos about your search topic from around the Web, whether it be "baseball" or "boobs."
That's not to say that Bing is a shadowy corner of the Web full of smut and depravity. Thumbnail images of anything Bing thinks is for adults only are actually blurred out by default. But if you're searching for something tagged Not Safe for Work, be aware that Microsoft will show it to you (assuming your search filtering options allow for it, of course).
MARK HACHMAN
Microsoft's Bing treats you like an adult, if that's what you're searching for. (Note that you can filter out X-rated searches on both Bing and Google.)
Oddly enough, neither Google nor Microsoft shrinks much from violence. Both turned up what I assume to be complete videos of the various hostage beheadings in the Middle East, none of which I cared to watch.
A snap to switch
If you're a lifelong Googler and Bing's advantages intrigue you, great. Here's how to switch.
MARK HACHMAN
To change your search provider in Chrome, click the "hamburger" icon in the top right, then scroll down to "Settings".
Both Microsoft and Google offer their own browsers to go along with their own search engines. With Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome, both companies preconfigure their browsers to use their own search engines by default, accessible via the search bar at the top of the screen. (Of course, you can visit bing.com or google.com and search there anytime you'd like.)
Switching Chrome's search provider to Bing is relatively simple: In the upper right corner, you'll see a tiny menu icon that looks like three horizontal lines on top of each other. Click it. Near the bottom of the drop-down menu, you'll see "Settings." That, in turn, will lead you to a second menu where, halfway down, you'll have the option of configuring your search provider.
MARK HACHMAN
Make sure you click the "Bing" icon to enable Microsoft's Bing in Internet Explorer, if it isn't already.
Microsoft hides its search engine configurations as well. If you have IE set up to use Google, go to the URL bar and click the magnifying-glass (search) icon. At the bottom right of the drop-down menu, click Add. Click the tiny Bing icon at the left bottom to set Microsoft's search engine once again as your default.
About the only change that Bing currently foists upon you is sending you to Bing Maps, not Google Maps. And if you're searching for videos, guess what: Google's YouTube isn't exactly Bing's first choice.
Bing offers as-good-as-Google search capabilities, plus many little added conveniences and rewards to entice you to switch. Doing so takes just seconds. Are these enough to make you try out Bing yourself? Let us know in the comments.
It was just about a year ago we announced Student Advantage, a benefit that allows eligible students to get Office 365 from their school for free. One drawback to Student Advantage—the onus has been on the school to initiate the service, create an account and order the Office 365 license on behalf of the student.
Today we’re making it easier on the school IT department with a new self-serve model for students that lets them sign up for the free service on their own.
If you’re a student 13 years-old of age or older, here’s what you can do the check your eligibility and get Office for free:
The latest versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access and Publisher
Installation on up to five PCs or Macs, and Office apps on other mobile devices including Windows tablets and iPad
1 Terabyte of OneDrive cloud storage
Office Online
Sign-up for students is available in the U.S. today, and will expand worldwide later this year.
In order to be eligible for this benefit, the student must attend a school that has purchased Office organization-wide for all faculty/staff via the Microsoft Volume Licensing program.
You can see the new sign-up process on the Garage Series with host Jeremy Chapman as well as other really cool features of Office Mix, Power Map and OneNote.
These changes not only make it easier for students to get Office, but it makes managing the services easier on school IT. In the past, organizations were required to initiate the service, create accounts and order the free licenses on behalf of their students. All this needed to be done prior to students being able to access Office and OneDrive. The new self-service model removes all of that unnecessary friction and delay by simply allowing eligible students to sign up for the service themselves, while maintaining the same level of control, flexibility and security institutions have come to expect from Office 365.
Office 365 ProPlus benefit available for faculty and staff starting December 1, 2014
We have even more great news to share—we’re also announcing that faculty and staff will soon be able to access the same Office 365 ProPlus benefit as their students. This means that any organization purchasing Office for all of their faculty and staff can now include an Office 365 ProPlus subscription at no extra cost for all students, faculty and staff.
Extending the Office 365 ProPlus benefit to faculty and staff ensures that teachers are using the latest versions of Office and the same feature set as their students. It will allow teachers to install full Office on up to five PCs or Macs and unlock the editing capabilities of the Office apps for iPad. It also gives them access to all their Office documents both at school and at home. With Office 365 ProPlus teachers can take advantage of great Office apps and add-ins like Office Mix to record and publish class lectures.
Teachers in the U.S. can sign up for Office 365 ProPlus in October and expand to worldwide teachers later this year.
Last year's Nvidia Shield handheld games system was a true innovation, offering fantastic internal tech and amazing physical gaming controls, but it was always going to be a niche product with limited commercial potential. Nvidia isn't abandoning the concept just yet, but the Shield's successor is a very different beast to what we saw in 2013 - the handheld form factor has been dropped in favour of a more traditional tablet style. Does this valiant attempt to create a tablet for gamers deliver the goods, or has it lost its uniqueness by adopting the slate-like appearance? Get those thumbs ready, because we're about to find out.
The good
The original Nvidia Shield was a technological powerhouse, proving the graphical strength of the Tegra 4 processor. The Shield Tablet is another massive step forward, boasting Nvidia's new Tegra K1 chip, which boasts the same kind of power you'd see inside the Nintendo Wii U or Xbox 360. This is evidenced by Trine 2, a visually stunning action adventure which comes pre-loaded on the device. It's indistinguishable from the home console versions, yet it runs on a device which is small and light enough to slip effortlessly into your bag.
Although it doesn't come bundled with the tablet, the Shield Wireless Controller is an essential part of the package. It apes the same control arrangement seen on the Shield handheld, and offers the kind of interface you'd normally expect to see on the PS4 or Xbox One. The pad is brilliantly constructed and very comfortable to use, and thanks to its use of WiFi Direct, offers low-latency response.
When you're not playing Android games, you can also stream the latest PC titles to the tablet's screen and control them using the Shield pad - assuming you have one of Nvidia's graphics cards in your PC, of course. The experience is stunning, with no discernible lag to speak of.
Nvidia has used stock Android 4.4.2 to power this device, which means there's no custom user interface to clog up the experience like with Samsung's TouchWiz. It also means that the system should get fast software updates, just as the Shield handheld did since it launched in 2013.
The bad
The Shield Tablet's technological power isn't in doubt, but aside from Trine 2, there's not much out there that really pushes it to its limits at the moment. Most Android games are rather basic visually, although the pre-installed Nvidia Hub does make the process of finding them that little bit easier.
Battery life is a real issue with the Shield Tablet, and that's largely because of the demands of the K1 chip. When it's running at full pelt it has a massive appetite for power, and will drain the tablet's battery in less than three hours. Normal use doesn't drain the juice quite as dramatically, but if you're looking to use this as a gaming platform first and foremost, then you might find it's not as mobile as you'd like.
Not bundling the Shield Wireless Controller with the tablet is also a real mistake, and at £50 it's rather expensive - even more so when you consider that it doesn't have Bluetooth and therefore can't be used with any device outside of Nvidia's Shield range.
The bottom line
Nvidia's approach may be slightly different this year, but the end result is the largely the same - if you're serious about Android gaming then this really is the only option in town. It offers console-standard graphics - along with a console-quality controller (albeit at an additional cost) - and a fantastic user experience. Add to this the ability to stream PC games and you've got a slate which will have serious players drooling with excitement; it's just a shame that the controller doesn't come as standard and that there are so few Android games out there that truly push the Shield Tablet to its absolute limits.
- See more at: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-news/nvidia-shield-tablet#sthash.aTH6a3SM.dpuf
Today’s tablets and smartphones are more powerful than ever, enabling people to be productive on the go. However, typing on the small, virtual on-screen-keyboard of a smartphone or tablet can be uncomfortable and inefficient.
It’s also common for people to carry multiple mobile devices and use the one that is best suited for the specific scenario they’re in — an iPad while in a coffee shop, a Samsung Galaxy S4 while sitting on an airplane, a Windows laptop in their hotel room.
With all these different devices, people frequently find they have a mixture of operating system platforms, resulting in them having to carry different accessories for each device. Microsoft’s new Universal Tablet Keyboard helps address that — it works with iPad, iPhone, Android devices and Windows tablets.
With the Microsoft Universal Mobile Keyboard, getting stuff done while you’re on the go has never been easier. Power through emails, put together a proposal, build a presentation, or simply instant message with a friend. The Universal Mobile Keyboard has an OS switch that lets you change from one operating system to another while maintaining a fully functional keyboard. And with the physical “chiclet” style keyset on this keyboard, you’ll feel like you’re typing on your laptop without lugging around the extra weight or bulk.
The Universal Mobile Keyboard was built with portability in mind. It’s easy and quick to set up, especially on the go. Simply open the protective cover and the keyboard automatically turns on, and connects using Bluetooth. Shut the cover, and it instantly turns off.
The cover has an integrated stand that can easily be detached, so you can position your tablet in the most comfortable position.
The Universal Mobile Keyboard will be generally available in October 2014 for the estimated retail price of $79.95 at the Microsoft Store and at various other retailers.
Bluetooth is invading everything from scales to lightbulbs, and now even your bathroom. That's right, the folks at Oral-B have put together an electric toothbrush armed with Bluetooth in the form of the Pro 6500 SmartSeries, and it even syncs up with your phone. It's all to improve your dental hygiene and instil some good habits along with tracking where you're going wrong, but is it really worth the £249.99 price tag? We squeezed out the toothpaste and gave our jaws a good brushing to find out.
The good
Brushing our teeth is something we all do daily but, according to Oral-B, we generally don't do it for long enough. That's why the company’s range of electric toothbrushes are armed with built-in timers that buzz once two minutes have elapsed, but even those aren’t fool-proof. Instead, Oral-B is going visual with its latest smart toothbrush, which not only comes with a wireless timer to offer feedback - dubbed as a "SmartGuide" - but your new toothbrush can also link up with your iPhone or Android handset with an app to help improve your brushing habits.
The Pro 6500 we tried is decked in a slick black finish with blue LED lights to indicate battery and Bluetooth activity, and it’s a welcome change to the bland white models Oral-B has produced in the past. There are three additional brushing heads in the box, a charging cradle and a travel case. The Pro 6500 also features five different brushing modes, such as Daily Clean, Sensitive, Gum Care, Whitening and Deep Clean - some of which require different brushing heads, but unless you have specific needs the Daily Clean option will be your go-to mode.
While you can easily survive using just the bundled SmartGuide timer, the Pro 6500 really shines when you've hooked it up to your phone, which can also provide you with a two minute timer and graphs of your recent brushing habits. You're able to look at your daily, weekly and monthly brushing activity, and you can check out your average session length and whether you've used too much pressure or not. There are reminders built-in for things like flossing, cleaning your tongue and rinsing with mouthwash, helping to keep your mouth in minty-fresh condition. Hit a streak of days where you've smashed your timed goals and you'll be rewarded with a trophy; you can even check out other dental and brushing tips to maximise time spent in front of the mirror.
The bad
The toothbrush itself offers a step-up from most of Oral-B's range, and most of the products in Philips' Sonicare family as well, but we couldn't help but think it was trying to do too much. For starters, the app is rather convoluted, and a lot of its features seem to be all over the place. It's nice to check your agenda for the day along with top news headlines and the weather, but the sheer number of features merely offer a distraction rather than helping you to concentrate on brushing - which is Oral-B's goal here.
Oral-B also wants you to brush each quadrant of your mouth, but there's no way for the toothbrush to actually monitor that or prompt you where you're going wrong, with the app and SmartGuide only timing your brushing duration. We'd love to see Oral-B offer even closer tracking for your teeth, but that'll only up the price even more - £249 is already expensive for a toothbrush.
The bottom line
Oral-B's Pro 6500 SmartSeries toothbrush is expensive at a penny under £250, and it seems more of a novelty than an essential piece of kit at the moment. Bluetooth and the companion app are not killer features for a toothbrush, but there’s plenty of scope for improvement, and this first version shows that just like with tracking your fitness, you'll pick up better habits along the way. Unfortunately, Oral-B has crammed too many features into both the toothbrush and the app to make it worth the asking price - but if this is the future of brushing, it's on the right track.
- See more at: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-news/oral-b-pro-6500-smartseries-bluetooth-electric-toothbrush#sthash.TGkxefyh.dpuf
Good things come in small packages, right? That's what the KAKKOii Wow Bling speaker is promising, as it's a small Bluetooth speaker that not only aims to catch your eye with its brightly-hued, rubber shell, but it aims to pack in booming sound to boot too. Can it live up to its 'Wow' name and dazzle us with its sound quality, or is it just another Bluetooth speaker for the pile? We put one to the test to find out.
The good
KAKKOii, drawn from the Japanese word for 'cool', has created a very fun and funky speaker. It looks great, even though the vivid body can be a little harsh on the eyes - ours arrived in a bright orange that drew plenty of attention. It's a simple, single Bluetooth speaker that easily pairs with your smartphone or tablet with a few button taps, and it packs in a hefty amount of power for a speaker of its size, all thanks to its 4W, 1.4-inch driver. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the sound the Wow Bling produces, and it travels quite a distance too, meaning you could easily use it at the centre of your parties. You don't have to worry about staying close to the speaker either, as it's rated for a range of 10m - we never saw a drop, even when we strayed a little bit further away.
The Wow Bling has been designed to, well, look like an actual speaker with a horn design. It's a refreshing take that helps it stand out from the range of rectangular blocks and other odd Bluetooth speakers that, frankly, look the same. You can also face the speaker upwards for wider reaching, 360-degree audio, or you can plant it facing down to muffle out the noise when you fancy a softer sound around you. As it's made from rubber too, it's capable of taking plenty of drops, and thanks to its compact size, it can also survive being stuffed into the bottom of your bag, making it ideal for taking wherever you go. Handily, while some Bluetooth speakers can take your call, the Wow Bling will go on silent when you need to answer the phone, giving you a bit of privacy. We wouldn't have minded an inclusion of a microphone though.
The bad
Unfortunately, while it's designed for a life on the go, battery life just doesn't keep up with its worldly ambitions. It charges up via a standard microUSB cable but you'll only be able to squeeze out four hours of battery life at best, meaning you'd best pack a charger if you're heading to a festival or long camping trip. Granted, at this size, a small battery is to be expected, but it falls a long way short of Logitech's UE Mini Boom, which boasts almost 10 hours of battery in a similarly compact shell. There's also a lack of volume controls on the speaker itself, meaning you have to adjust it on the source device, which can be annoying and more time consuming.
The bottom line
For £60, you get plenty of sound from such a small speaker. We can see why you won't find any extra features, as it's built for simplicity, but we do wish it had a few additions like NFC for quick pairing. The Wow Bling is also £5 more expensive than the standard Wow Wireless speaker, which gives you more muted colour tones, making the Wow Bling a bit of an extravagant purchase. We love how loud it is, and that it can take plenty of knocks, but we just wish its battery life lasted a whole lot longer.
- See more at: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/gadget-news/kakkoii-wow-bling-speaker#sthash.i9gGYgFr.dpuf
Are you ready to ditch your point and shoot for just a cameraphone? Samsung's betting on you carrying around only one gizmo that does it all with its lens-heavy, camera-orientated Galaxy K Zoom, the successor to last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom. Can it stack up to well-established phone snappers like Nokia's top-notch Lumia 1020, or will you still need to carry around your dedicated camera? We took one for a spin to find out.
The good
Last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom had plenty of things right with it, mostly in the camera department, but it was simply far too big to really fit in your pocket. This time around, Samsung's slimmed things down with the K Zoom, all thanks to a handy retractable lens, making it much more capable of fitting in even the skinniest of jeans.
The star of the show is the K Zoom's retractable camera lens that pops when you launch the camera app or hit the dedicated shutter button, and it extends out to 24mm to help you frame the perfect shot with the phone's 20.7-megapixel sensor. That's a boost from last year's 16 megapixel snapper, and the result delivers you some brilliant snaps. You're also given some hefty zooming skills thanks to the lens, as it extends out to 240mm giving you a 10x magnification, which can even be extended to 20x thanks to digital processing - but we wouldn't suggest using it often, as the quality drops. Samsung has also included a bright xenon flash and optical image stabilisation, plus a range of image shooting options to suit any photographer.
As a phone, the K Zoom performs well, thanks to Samsung's own nifty Exynos 5 Hexa processor which has six cores packed in - a 1.3GHz quad-core processor for your regular activities and a 1.7GHz dual-core processor for more grunt - along with 2GB of RAM, which makes it run smoothly along. We found no problems with our daily tasks and it handled intensive apps with aplomb.
The bad
Samsung's slimmed down last year's model with the K Zoom, but it's still very bulky. It measures up a hefty 20mm at its thickest point, more than double than LG's flagship G3, and it also weighs up at 200g, making it not the easiest blower to cart around. Thanks to all the tech it's got packed in, there's not much room for its battery, which it also chomps through quickly. You'll be lucky to last a whole day with the K Zoom, and you'll have to charge it up at least every day.
We're also disappointed by the K Zoom's screen: it's a paltry 720p display that measures up at 4.8-inches, which simply doesn't do any justice to the photos it can snap, and it's very over saturated too. Unlike the Galaxy S5 that it shares a lot of its DNA with, some of the most useful features don't make an appearance here: you won't find a fingerprint scanner or any waterproofing, meaning you may be shy to break it out if it's raining.
It's also loaded up with Android 4.4 KitKat, but it does have Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, which tends to get in the way and grants you an exceedingly long settings menu - we'd suggest to load up your own launcher instead. Samsung has also only included 8GB of storage space onboard, which is not a lot if you're planning on taking a lot of snaps - but there is a microSD slot that can handle up to 64GB cards.
The bottom line
Samsung has largely improved on last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom, cranking up its camera skills and dropping its huge heft, but it's simply still a tank of a phone. Despite its top-notch camera, the rest of the specs don't match up to its £400 price-tag. Samsung has tried to deliver the best of both camera and phone, and unfortunately, it just doesn't match up.
- See more at: http://gadgetshow.channel5.com/review/samsung-galaxy-k-zoom#sthash.PQO24JzA.dpuf
MARK HACHMAN
