Parental control within Windows 8 has a feature that can send weekly reports to parents about the child’s activities.

Windows 8 Steps Up Parental Control With Weekly Reporting Feature

Microsoft announced a new parental control feature earlier this week for its up coming Windows 8 operating system. This new feature allows parents to generate weekly reports on their child’s activities and it gets sent to them automatically.
This feature will be available on secondary accounts and will require no extra downloads, configurations or anything. When you are creating a secondary account for your child, you will see a checkbox that says “Is this a child’s account? Turn on Family Safety to get reports of their PC use.”

Check this box and you will be able to set it up in a few steps, guided by Windows. With multiple PCs in a household, it has been getting progressively harder to monitor what the child is doing online. And it is awkward for the child and the parent to be glancing over the child’s shoulder. This new feature makes it much easier for both parties thus. This report is much less intrusive and restrictive than traditional website filtering solutions and it enables the child/teenager to go about surfing the web more freely. In fact, it might make the child more responsible and encourage them to be more productive on the computer on their own.

But this does not mean restriction features are absent in this. If you find website that you do not approve of, you can easily block access to those sites by clicking a link on the email. The changes you make are stored on the cloud and applied all computers that are linked to your account and have ‘Family Safety’ activated. There are also standard parental controls where you can opt to allow only child-friendly websites or only general-interest websites or just block adult-sites. You can also allow all sites with a warning that a site might contain adult content. There’s also SafeSearch, time limits for online activities and filters for restricted apps on the Windows Store.

These features will be available on the Release Preview build of Windows 8 that is scheduled for an early June release.

Existing Users Will Get $15 Windows 8 Upgrade Deal

Windows expert Paul Thurrott made a post earlier this week claiming Microsoft will offer a $15 Windows 8 upgrade deal for existing users of Windows. Those who buy a new Windows 7 PC will be eligible for this offer. Paul published this article on his blog Supersite for Windows. It was already reported by CNET that Microsoft would be charging something for the upgrade but no one could tell how much. The only thing that was known back then, as we reported earlier, was that it is expected to begin with the release of Windows 8 Release Preview Build.

Microsoft has already confirmed the Release Preview for the first week of June. Following the Windows 7 release, the expected date for this announcement is June 5.

To become eligible for this upgrade, customers must buy a Windows 7 PC between June 2012 and January 2013. If the rumors prevail, Windows 8 should become available much before January 2013. At that point, Windows 7 PCs would become cheaper and it would make sense to buy one and then upgrade to Windows 8 for cheap.

Microsoft will apparently do everybody one more favor. Aside from the cheap upgrade price, they will upgrade everybody to the same Windows 8 version — Windows 8 Pro. Previously, Microsoft upgraded everybody to their corresponding editions. So you could technically buy a PC with Windows 7 Starter Edition and then upgrade for $15. Windows 8 Pro is the higher end of Windows 8, which shows just how much Microsoft wants everyone to upgrade as soon as possible.

Microsoft has not said anything about the upgrade cost for Windows 8. However, if it is anything like the current scheme, it would cost consumers $120 for Windows 8 and $200 for Windows 8 Pro. If The $15 charge happens (and it looks like a distinct possibility), it will be a discount of about 93% for the buyer.

NVIDIA Raises Sales Forecast For Tegra 3 With Windows 8 Close By

Graphics bigwig NVIDIA has just raised their sales expectations for the second quarter of this year and has been talking about the increasing success of its Tegra 3 SoC (System on a Chip). And the increase in Tegra 3 demand can be directly attributed to the smartphones, tablets and hybrid devices that will come out of the whole Windows 8 wave.

The SoC is definitely a great platform for such devices but then there’s just one problem that NVIDIA has to solve right now — keep up with the demands of the market when it comes to supplying the GPU’s. The company did not anticipate this much demand and has consequently fallen short of supply from its manufacturers. So Tegra 3’s success will ultimately depend on whether NVIDIA can solve this issue quickly.

NVIDIA also expects to make it big in the Ultrabook market. Rather, in the Ultrabook competition market because Ultrabook is an Intel brand that NVIDIA is competing with. Using the ARM-based SoC, NVIDIA can easily trump Intel in terms of battery life, mobility thinness. However, it will be difficult for the GPU giant to beat Intel at providing processing power to match up to the Core series with the latest Ivy Bridge chips in place.

These details came out from the NVIDIA’s first quarter financial report, where sales were hurt due to the non-availability of the 22nm chips that the company depends on for its line of high-end graphics solutions and more.

NVIDIA has great things to say about the new Kepler series GPUs but has again mentioned that supply is still a problem and it will remain a problem going forward through the rest of the year. That information came straight from NVIDIA CEO Karen Burns.
Tegra 3 is the first ever quad-core ARM SoC and it also has a fifth Ninja core for dedicated touch input processing. It has a become a favored platform for super phones and tablets in general.

Citrix Products To Be Windows 8 Ready Soon

Citrix is the company behind a varied number of products that have to do with online virtualization, remote access and conferencing. Most of their products are in extensive use throughout Enterprises and the corporate sector in general. Scott Schwarzhoff, Citrix vice president, product marketing, said during a Sunday event at the company’s Synergy 2012 event that their Citrix Receiver software will be available for Windows 8 at launch. Citrix Receiver is used for ‘playing’ virtualized Windows applications on various different platform that include various versions of Windows as well.

Later during the event, CEO Mark Templeton told the gathering that all their products will be compatible with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 at launch. Citrix Group vice-president and general manager Sumit Dhawan also supported this statement by saying “Windows 8 is a big part of our roadmap.”

The main issue the software makers like these are facing is having to port ‘legacy’ Windows apps to the cloud. Since all of Citrix’s products are for the cloud (like Podia) or cloud-based, the company should have a faster upgrade process. On top of that, Citrix’s products can be used by companies to give a cloud like experience for various different applications that have not made the transition over to cloud and will take years to do so in a way that matches feature per feature of what the legacy app can do now on the user end.

Windows 8 opens a whole range of possibilities for cloud interaction but then software that will become legacy post-Windows 8 will mostly have to be rebuilt by their developers to fit the new environment. However, Windows 8 will still be running legacy applications on Desktop, which ensures that your workflow can still remain the same and you might not have to re-invest if you are already working on Windows 7.

HP is rebooting its tablet initiatives but this time it is only for businesses and Enterprise level customers.

HP Working On Windows 8 Tablets For The Corporate

Your office might soon be taken over by Windows 8 tablets made by HP or at least that is what the company hopes will happen once Windows 8 launches. The world’s largest PC maker has revived its tablet aspirations in what will be the company’s third attempt at making a tablet that sells. The last attempts had to be aborted prematurely with the last one ending up in a fire sale of sorts.

This time, HP has decided that the consumer level market has already been taken over by the rest of the industry (read the iPad and the Kindle Fire), so it will not concentrate on offering tablets to the businessman instead of the common man. It will be focusing on Enterprises and SMBs (small to medium businesses) for now but there’s always the possibility of the firm diversifying later and re-entering the consumer market.

Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP’s Personal Systems group, spoke at the Global Influencer Summit and said that HP was working with partners to gain a foothold in the global tablet market. They are trying again after the unsuccessful launch of the HP TouchPad — their last attempt.

“Our strategy is around partnering with Microsoft and bringing Windows 8 tablets to the market place. It’s not to say that this [partnership] is forever – markets evolve,” said Bardley while answering questions. He then said that their products will “…have a more enterprise and small business focus than a consumer focus.”

HP did not reveal any further information regarding the tablets and Bradley said this was because the event was not a place for such information to be announced. He mentioned that it was all about thin and light devices that help you consume information. And it isn’t about creating content and data, which why they had separated the announcements from the Ultrabook Spectre XT launch.

Windows 8 RT Will Not Allow Third-Party Browsers On Desktop

Windows 8 RT is the version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM. Microsoft has apparently made restrictions within the platform that prevent any third-party browsers from running on the Desktop of Windows 8 RT. This has upset Mozilla (the makers of Firefox and Fennec) and they have called out the Redmond tech giant, saying it was a return to the ‘Dark-Ages’ for technology.

Microsoft prevents all non-IE (Internet Explorer) browsers from accessing APIs (Application Programming Interface) that are required to run the application on the Desktop. Windows 8 RT will be running mainly Metro and it has been revealed that Microsoft will allow a heavily restricted Desktop mode that will only run Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer.

Steven Sinofsky said something earlier this year that seemed to confirm the fact that Microsoft has indeed cordoned off the Desktop area for third-party software vendors. This enrages other software makers because now Microsoft applications like Internet Explorer will be able to take advantage of the entire platform, providing a more stable, speedy and secure performance. Third-party software will always be second-class citizen on Windows RT at this rate. It seems like Microsoft has opened a veritable Pandora’s box by creating a Desktop area on Windows 8 RT.

Microsoft has not responded officially to any these comments and at this point, there are several things to take in to consideration. There’s no accurate documentation, if any, of which parts are blocked for third-parties. So we don’t know how restricted is restricted. Secondly, Microsoft’s Windows 8 RT is no longer the Windows we know. So this is another platform entirely. From this point forth, Microsoft should be making clear to the world what is already becoming clear to the tech industry — Windows is now just a brand and it happens to have cloud, mobile and PC under its banner.

DisplayFusion Ver. 4.0 Comes With New Features And Windows 8 Support

DisplayFusion 4.0 was just released with support for Windows 8 Consumer Preview along with a host of new features working with multiple monitors on Windows.

One of the most useful features on DisplayFusion is the ability to add the taskbar on every screen instead of just one, which is how Windows handles multiple displays by default. Any application that is running on a screen will have a corresponding button on the taskbar that is present on that screen. This version also enables Jump Lists on every screen, a feature that was sorely missing on previous versions of the app and is completely missing from the normal Windows support for multiple monitors.

The new version also adds support for several icon profiles for quickly changing how icons are arranged according to what are doing at the moment. Hotkeys for DisplayFusion have been available for a while now and version 4.0 just makes it easier to customize them. Aero coloring is now smarter and is based on the current wallpaper or the application that is currently active on the screen. There are also new wallpaper providers added to the built in wallpaper search — DeviantART, Google Image Search and Bing Image Search.

Other than these, there are also new enterprise features and support for right to left languages. The new version also fixes certain known bugs and has better performance than previous versions.

The application needs to be bought using the full features but it does have a free version that you can download to try things out. The app is developed by BinaryFortress and here’s the link to their DisplayFusion 4.0 announcement

— http://www.displayfusion.com/News/2012/05/displayfusion-40-now-available/

Nokia Calls Out Jorma Ollila Reports On Windows 8 Tablets

Nokia has denied the reports published earlier that cited Jerom Ollila’s statements as proof of the existence of Windows 8 tablets in Nokia labs. Nokia says these reports are ‘misconstrued’ and Ollila said no such thing. Whilst that is technically correct, Ollila said everything about the tablets and hybrid smartphones except two things — the timeframe for launch and the platform they would be running on.

Other than that, he mentioned Nokia’s interest in various form factors and their commitment to providing convergence across devices through a single unifying platform. Put together with their recent tryst with Microsoft, there’s really only one platform that can tie tablets, smartphones, PCs and hybrids together and that is the upcoming Windows 8 OS.

What Nokia is trying to do here is to dissuade people from taking this as an official statement because that would get them in to more than just legal trouble. Companies avoid announcing products and developments prematurely to avoid damaging sales of existing products on the market.

There have already been enough rumors about current Lumia phones not supporting future OS’, so reports like these could further hurt Nokia’s case in the market.

Rumors about a possible Nokia Tablet have been circulating ever since the first Lumia phones were launched, with statements going back and forth between Nokia heads and industry rumormongers. There’s really no telling when Nokia will unveil their tablet but it officially cannot be before Windows 8 itself launches. Hence, there’s still time for this to happen. It is quite possible Nokia will be releasing the tablet/s right around the Windows 8 launch around October. Or may be even a bit later in the year but still early enough to cash in on the holiday rush.

Windows Phone 8 Devices Found On Speed Test Reports

Here’s the greatest confirmation anyone has provided so far about the existence of Windows 8 Phone devices on any US wireless carrier. Devices running Windows Phone OS 8.0 have been spotted on speed test reports from both Verizon and T-Mobile, confirming two things — the phones are up and running with the future OS and they are definitely coming to the two carriers mentioned here.

The names that show up on the speed test result also show that the phones will be coming with IEMobile 10 and there are two devices identified from the series — Nokia Fluid and Qualcomm Fluid. Whilst it is obvious that Nokia is going to be amongst the first to push out next generation Windows Phone devices, the second one is likely to be an HTC or Samsung device. Both of those companies are known for making phones based on Qualcomm devices.

If the respective companies have already begun testing, it is proof that they are in late stages of development and phones should be able to go out for real world testing soon enough. Which means who should be seeing “spotted in the wild” rumors with blurry shots of phones soon enough. Samsung has been quite vocal about making a Windows Phone device with the next generation software that will beat everything else on the market. So there’s also the possibility of that Qualcomm Fluid device ending up being a new Galaxy from Samsung.

According to the latest rumors, Microsoft expecting Windows 8 to launch around October and industry experts and watchers both agree on this. There’s expectation of Microsoft launching the entire Windows 8 Platform altogether, including Windows Phone 8 and Window on ARM or Windows RT, as it is officially known.

Dolby Digital Plus Added To Windows 8

Microsoft has announced support for Dolby Digital Plus on Windows 8. According to the official statement, it will be supported all across the Windows 8 platform, including Windows RT that will be running on ARM processors. This announcement was penned by Tami Reller, CFO and CMO of Windows and Windows Live at Microsoft.

This is what she had to say about the agreement: -

“”With the incredible growth of online download and streaming media, particularly for video content, this agreement ensures a great audio experience for those consumers who wish to download or stream TV and movies containing Dolby Digital Plus. Additionally, all of their existing and future home videos recorded with Dolby Digital Plus audio will work great on Windows 8 right out of the box.”

As opposed to the THX certification, which is primarily profit driven for device manufacturers, support for Dolby Digital Plus is actually going to be useful for consumers.

Dolby has definitely been pushing for the certification as something that would really workout well for the consumer by enabling them to enjoy cinematic sound everywhere they go on every device. Provided that the device supports it of course. And it is true for most part. For consumers who are into streaming and downloading a lot of media content, this would be quite the helpful thing to have.

Since the ARM version of Windows 8 will also be carrying the Dolby-decoder, tablets and possibly even smartphones running Windows 8 would be able to take advantage of this decoder. This would really help Microsoft use it as a selling point for portable device with great entertainment features. It will come in handy whilst competing with the likes of Apple’s iPad and the varied number of Android devices.