Items tagged with band
Microsoft just opened a brand new, flagship store at 677 5th Avenue, in New York City. And since we’re just a short drive away, and were already spending some time in Manhattan today with the folks from Motorola and Verizon, we thought we’d pop in and take a look around.Microsoft's New Flagship Store On 5th Ave.Before you even get close to the front doors, there is no mistaking that this new store is all about Microsoft. Multiple logos are visible from across the road and a ton of product is front-and-center for all to see, behind the giant wall of glass out front. The store is comprised of multiple stories—an elevator has buttons for floors 1 – 4, but only the first three floors are open to...
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With consumers showing increased interest in smartwatches and fitness bands these days, there's a growing market for so-called wearables. It feels like we've just scratched the surface at this point, though if the category is to really take off the way smartphones and tablets both did, battery makers will have to step up their game. Enter Samsung and its new Stripe and Band batteries.The South Korean electronics maker unveiled its new battery products at InterBattery 2015 in Seoul. Both products are positioned to enhance the battery life of wearables so users can spend more time using their smartwatches and fitness bands in between charges. That's no easy task considering the relatively small...
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In this latest episode of HotHardware's Two And A Half Geeks webcast, Dave, Paul, and Marco discuss our recent GeForce GTX 980 Ti round-up, Microsoft's Surface Book, the Surface Pro 4, and other product announcements, Motorola's Moto X Pure Edition, the Moto 360 smartwatch, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, today's monumental Dell-EMC acquisition news and much more! Show Notes: 01:41 - GeForce GTX 980 Ti Round-Up With MSI, ASUS, And EVGA13:22 - Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 Review: Multitasking On Android25:01 - Motorola Moto X Pure Edition Review: Straight-Up Premium Android33:07 - Moto 360 2nd Gen Smartwatch Review: Moto Make It Your Own45:51 - Hands On With The Microsoft Surface Pro 4, Surface Book,...
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Microsoft might be gearing up to release a new version of the Microsoft Band, the wearable fitness tracker it launched late last year. Photos of a new version, which has been dubbed “Band 2” by media in lieu of any details from Microsoft, appears to have leaked.We hope that the photos, which come from MicrosoftInsider.es by way of Windows Central, are legit, because they reveal a much slicker version of the Band than the original. Where the Microsoft Band has a flat display, the Band 2 appears to have a curved display, making for a true bracelet look. At this stage of the game, all we have to go on are rumors and these unconfirmed photos. One of the features that is widely expected for the Band...
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Robots... they're taking over! That's a refrain we've heard for years, of course, but you have to wonder how close we're actually getting when they start to appear in popular music videos. Honda's Uni-Cub, described as a 360-degree personal mobility device, is shown front-and-center in OK Go's latest music video. Granted, the band has a penchant for oddities when it comes to crafting videos to showcase their songs, but this is certainly one of the most interesting uses to date. The song, "I Won't Let You Down," has been viewed over 11 million times on YouTube, and much of the attention has come to the robot within. In the video, OK Go's members ride the Uni-Cub in a synchronized maneuver with...
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In case you haven't noticed, companies small and large seem to believe that health -- and in particular, connected health -- is the next major cash cow. As fitness slots into the mainstream attention, it's an ideal time for the likes of Apple, Google, LG, Samsung, Fitbit, and now Microsoft to make a splash in both health and wearables. Microsoft is joining the war this week with a new platform called Microsoft Health. According to the company, it sees an opportunity to bring devices and services together to allow end users to "combine the information they collect and use the power of the cloud to turn that data in to something more valuable." The Microsoft Health platform includes a cloud service...
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The television may not be what it once was for a mainstay like Toshiba, but the company's still investing in other growth areas. Just this week, it announced plans to plow 200 billion yen (around $1.9 billion) into its chip business beyond the current year. The outfit's CEO, Hisao Tanaka, confessed as much during an opening ceremony surrounding its chip fabrication plant in Yokkaichi, Japan. In case the financial sum wasn't a clue, Tanaka said that "boosting sales and profits" in the company's semiconductor unit was being made an even greater priority than becoming the world's leader in NAND flash memory (for reference, Samsung currently holds the crown there). Toshiba's Fab No. 5 plant was built...
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How many of you are aware of the 5 GB cap that Frontier DSL has imposed? Or of the trials in Beaumont, TX that Time-Warner Cable is running? It's only a matter of time before others impose caps. And here we are, with a big ISP imposing a cap. But really, let's be honest: this ISP already had one, just one that was hidden.Today Comcast detailed its new "network management" policies. Basically, they set a 250 GB cap on users, effective October first. It should be noted that for years people have complained about a "hidden" cap that Comcast had, whereupon it would terminate a user's account without giving him or her exact numbers. Now we have an exact number. ...
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The high-speed Internet advocacy Web site, Speed Matters, has just released a report on the average Internet connection speeds by U.S. state. If you live in Rhode Island (6,769 Kbps), Delaware (6,685 Kbps), New Jersey (5,825 Kbps), Virginia (5,033 Kbps), or Massachusetts (4,564 Kbps), you can take pride that your state has one of the fastest average Internet downstream connection speeds in the U.S. But before you get too smug, compare your speed against the average 63 Mbps downstream speed that the Communications Workers of America (CWA) claims Japan has... Or South Korea (49 Mbps), Finland (21 Mbps), France (17 Mbps), or even Canada (7.6 Mbps) for that matter. Credit: Speed MattersThe report...
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A study just released by the Leichtman Research Group, indicates that the "twenty largest cable and telephone providers in the US" now total approximately 65.1 million, high-speed Internet subscribers. Those 20 providers make up roughly 94 percent of the U.S. broadband market. Assuming that Leichtman's results are correct (and assuming that Neilson's latest numbers are as well, which show 164 million U.S. users went online in May 2007), this would mean that about only 42 percent of U.S. Internet users connect via a broadband connection. This is significantly lower than the 55 percent of adult Americans that the July 2008, Pew Internet & American Life Project reports have a home broadband...
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A new study (.PDF) released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that not everyone wants broadband. Seriously. According to the study, 55% of adult Americans now have broadband internet connections at home, up from 47% in 2007. Also according to the study, with the increase in broadband adoption, only 10% of Americans have dial-up. Whoa: that means 35% have no Internet access at all, if we did the math correctly. For those without broadband, the study gave the following reasons for not having broadband: Non-broadband users cite a number of reasons for not using the service - including availability, price, and lack of interest. 62% of dial-up users say they are not interested...
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Om Malik at Gigaom has made an interesting analysis of the effects of widespread broadband penetration into the US market. As the demand for broadband tapers off because the pool of persons that don't yet have it slowly dries up, there's really only one thing the providers have left to sell: faster speeds.It should come as no surprise that the carriers have let go of incremental speed upgrades and have gone ahead and doubled or tripled the speeds of their offerings. Why? Because bumping speed to 2 Mbps from 1 Mbps doesn’t really feel like a big boost. A 6X speed bump, on the other hand, makes the Internet much faster — and worth paying for. Suddenly, Hulu and YouTube become much more fun to watch....
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Fortune's Apple 2.0 column asks an interesting question. It appears that iPhone users really like using their handsome little phones to surf the Internet, and at least in some areas, that usage is translating into a great deal of bandwith strain on the iPhone's cellular carrier, AT&T. Will that become a problem as new users continue to buy and use the phone?...analysis by American Technology Research’s Shaw Wu found several points of concern going forward, one of which was new to us.iPhone users, it seems, are “bandwidth hogs” to an extent that could affect Apple’s (AAPL) dealings with cellular carriers and sales to new users. As Wu put it Wednesday in a report to clients: ...
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After reversing their stance on BitTorrent, Comcast has announced plans to offer their 50Mb/sec broadband in all existing markets by 2010. What would people use the extra bandwidth for? Digital distribution of movies and music seems a likely candidate and BitTorrent seems like it is going to be a key player in that arena. So how fast is a 50Mb/sec connection in terms of downloading movies? Fast enough:“With the faster service, a customer could download a 4 gigabyte high-definition movie in about 10 minutes, compared with about an hour at previous speeds.”?With this kind of bandwidth on tap, we can’t help but wonder if Comcast will start increasing the unofficial usage limits they currently...
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We often take the internet for granted, not necesarilly aware of the struggles that go on behind the scenes, such as that between U.S. based Cogent and Swedish TaliaSonera. Presently these two large bandwidth providers are fighting over peering issues:“According to Cogent CEO David Schaeffer, TeliaSonera peered data selectively and refused to upgrade bandwidth at some of the companies’ peering connections, causing traffic to take long, winding routes around the internet and saturating peered connections’ pipes.“Schaeffer went on to imply that the loss of routing to their customers (and eventually consumers down the road) was not a result of their spat with TeliaSonera, but likely had more to...
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Limewire, the file sharing service where I'd be shocked, shocked I say to find pirated music, has launched a DRM-free digital music store offering half a million MP3s for as little as 27 cents per track. The good news? Pretty good sound quality and no restrictions. The bad news? You never heard of anybody on the list of artists.Users of the application will eventually see "buy" links alongside options to download songs for free from other users using BitTorrent or Gnutella technology. Those who don't want to install the LimeWire P2P application can already access the LimeWire Store online.At 256 Kbps, LimeWire's MP3s are relatively high-quality files, which could entice some to buy a given track...
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It's well-known that Comcast has hidden bandwidth caps. How would you feel about a publicized hard cap?Time Warner Cable may be exploring the possibility of implementing overage charges for its RoadRunner cable broadband service. According to excerpts from a leaked internal memo posted to our forums, the company will be testing a usage-based system in the Beaumont, Texas market. The system is aimed at gaining additional revenue from "5% of subscribers who utilize over half of the total network bandwidth." The trial will determine whether it's practical to deploy such a system nationally.The memo claims new customers in the Beaumont market will be placed on metered billing plans where overage...
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Modern PCs are inching closer and closer to having 10 GB/sec or more usable memory bandwidth, and we haven't really had any complaints about the steady increase until we heard that Rambus was working on technology that could enable 1 TB/sec of memory bandwidth.The applications for graphics cards and consoles are certainly interesting, but we think that desktop and server CPUs might also end up benefiting from such an increase. Consider that when Intel released the P4, its theoretical memory bandwidth was 6.4 GB/sec, and that was 4 years ago. Today's CPUs have 4 cores, and it is safe to say each core is faster overall and thus could use more bandwidth.So how does Rambus plan...
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With Wal-Mart's "Always Low Prices" does this mean we can look forward to dropping prices on broadband? There are still areas of the country that cannot receive DSL or cable modem service, and that is where this initiative focuses.Wal-Mart's presence in rural American life continues to grow. Today, the company announced it will begin selling HughesNet Broadband service at 2,800 stores across the nation, with a notable presence in rural areas where terrestrial broadband services are still largely unavailable.“Wal-Mart is perhaps the only retail store in the country that reaches as many people as HughesNet,” said Mike Cook, senior vice president, North America Division, Hughes. “This relationship...
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It's something that many have suspected. Broadband speeds that in reality are much slower than advertised. Some 3,000 readers took part in speed tests and 62% found they routinely got less than half of the top speed advertised by their provider. It is the latest in a series of questions over the way net firms advertise broadband services. Regulator Ofcom said it was aware of the issue and was "investigating". The figures were gathered from more than 100,000 speed tests that the 3,000 respondents carried out to build up a picture of their average net-browsing speed on ADSL lines. It would be interesting to see a similar test...
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Unlimited. The Princeton on-line dictionary offers several possible usages of the word, however the one that would directly apply to the consumption of some resource would be the following:inexhaustible: that cannot be entirely consumed or used up; "an inexhaustible supply of coal" That definition makes perfect sense to most, but apparently not to some ISPs.Comcast, who was recently accused of putting the kibosh on P2P traffic, is now cutting off customers that it feels have used 'too much' of their unlimited bandwidth.According to Comcast the people are abusing the system, which actually makes the surfing experience worse for other users. Comcast also contends that they give a month-long grace...
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OQO already has a very impressive UMPC, but in an increasingly crowded market it seems that they've decided to upgrade it and offer the following: Vista support Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess technology built-in 5" Display with a native 800 by 480 resolution UniChrome Pro II IGP HDMI Port VIA C7M ULV processor Up to 1GB DDR2 Storage up to 60GB Bluetooth 2/0 EDR 802.11a/b/g "SAN FRANCISCO, February 5, 2007 - OQO Inc., mobile computing innovator and creator of the groundbreaking model 02 computer, today announced that OQO is now offering the model 02 computer with integrated EV-DO Wireless WAN capability compatible with the Verizon Wireless BroadbandAccess service. Recently unveiled...
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