Netgear AC1200 Wi-Fi Range Extender Launched at Rs. 5,500

etgear, a leading global provider of consumer and business networking products, on announced the India-launch of its new AC1200 Wi-Fi range extender EX6120 with streaming speeds up to 1,200Mbps.

Netgear EX6120 enables consumers to expand and improve Wi-Fi signals throughout their home. Its high-powered amplifiers eradicate "dead zones" and maximise Wi-Fi performance with the help of high-power external antennae, keeping iPads, smartphones and laptops, among others, connected as consumers move about their home, the company said in a release here.

Netgear EX6120 features 802.11ac technology which makes simultaneous use of dual 5GHz and 2.4GHz and reduces interference. Dual-band technology enables users to keep low-bandwidth everyday-jobs like sending e-mail and Web browsing on a different channel than more intensive ones such as online gaming or HD streaming video.

"Range extenders are a fast growing segment for Netgear as more and more customers are choosing it due to the great convenience it offers in enhancing existing home networks. With the Ex6120, Netgear brings the new high speed 802.11 AC standard to range extenders, enabling customers to experience greater range and high speed connections at home," said Subhodeep Bhattacharya, Netgear regional director, India & SAARC.

Netgear AC1200 Wi-Fi Range Extender (EX6120) would be available in India through authorised Netgear partners and other reseller channels by the first week of March at a retail price of Rs 5,500 with a warranty of two years. Netgear is a global networking company that delivers innovative products to consumers, businesses and service providers.

For individual consumers, the company makes high performance, dependable and easy-to-use home networking, storage and digital media products to connect people with the internet and their content and devices. For businesses, Netgear provides networking, storage and security solutions without the cost and complexity of big IT.

Netgear products are sold in approximately 44,000 retail locations around the world, and through approximately 37,000 value-added resellers. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, California, in the US, with additional offices in over 25 countries.

Review: Asus A555LF XX191T laptop by Abhijit Ahaskar

While its range of laptops across various price points is indeed impressive, Asus laptop names and the series can get a bit confusing. For example, the Asus A555LF XX191T (Rs.48,999) that we are reviewing here has eight different variants, each with different configurations and colour combinations. This is the most powerful notebook in the A-series.

Design: Good looking but not exactly thin

The A555LF looks better than a lot of other big screen laptops priced below Rs.50,000. There are some nice design elements, including the lid which has a dark brown glossy finish. And there is a fine-looking pattern too, which masks the smudges well. The plastic looks good, but you can feel quite a lot of flex if you push it with even the slightest pressure. The keyboard is set on a matte aluminium base, which feels very durable.

The A555LF offers all the relevant connectivity options such as memory card slot, a USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.0 ports, 1HDMI port, I VGA, a LAN port. It also includes an optical drive.

This laptop weighs 2.3g, which is what most affordable laptops weigh, and isn’t necessarily the most portable.

Typing: Full keyboard but no backlight

The A555LF provides a full-size keyboard with a number pad. The keys are big enough and well spaced for comfortable and accurate typing. Unfortunately they are not backlit. There is plenty of space for hand rest under the keyboard, so that the user can type comfortably for long hours. The trackpad is smooth and responsive, but lacks markers for left or right click buttons which makes it a bit confusing at first.

Screen: Big but not sharp enough

The notebook has a 15.6-inch wide-screen (16:9) LED display with 1,366x768 resolution. We aren’t entirely sure if this resolution is acceptable at this price because the HP Pavilion 15-ab029TX (Rs.51,990) offers a Full HD 1,920x1,080p which will be significantly better when watching media, reading text and also for future proofing. The A555LF’s screen reproduces natural colours, but movies and games don’t look very sharp. Though the screen handles reflections well, which increase its viability for outdoor users, viewing angles are not very good because of the phenomenon known as colour shift.

Performance: Fast and smooth

The A555LF is a mid-range powerhouse running on Intel’s 4th generation Core i5 processor with 8GB of RAM and NVIDIA GeForce 930M (2GB) graphics card. The powerful specs allow it to handle a variety of tasks pretty effectively. It even played games like PES 2015 without any stutter.

There is a 1TB hard drive which provides a lot of space to install games and store movies. The built-in speakers are loud and clear enough for playing games and watching movies, but don’t expect a lot of richness in sound.

The battery lasted over 6 to 7 hours of continuous use, which is impressive for a big screen laptop that is not running an ultra-low voltage processor.

Software: Runs latest Windows OS

This laptop runs Microsoft’s latest 64-bit Windows 10 operating system offering new features such as voice assistant Cortana, Edge web browser, virtual desktop and action centre features. It also offers one month’s free subscription of MS Office 365 suite which includes Word, Excel, and Power Point.

Verdict

Asus A555LF XX191T has good specs and offers neat performance. But we cannot ignore the fact that the build quality isn’t the best, and the rivals are offering Full HD screens for around the same price.

Raspberry Pi Zero Is a Tiny Computer That Costs Just $5

Raspberry Pi Foundation, the company that makes miniature computers, has just made an addition to its affordable computer lineup. The company has announced the launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero, its cheapest computer to date. Priced at just $5 (roughly Rs. 320), the Raspberry Pi Zero is also the smallest Pi computer, measuring just 65mm x 30mm x 5mm.

As for the specifications, the Raspberry Pi Zero comes with Broadcom's BCM2835 application processor clocked at 1GHz ARM 11 core. The company says that this chipset is 40 percent faster than its counterpart at Raspberry Pi 1. Other specifications include a 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM, and a microSD card slot for storage.

On the connectivity front, there's a mini-HDMI socket that supports 1080p60 video output, a 40-pin GPIO header, and a composite video header. Do note that there isn't a standard USB or Ethernet port, so you will have to purchase an additional hub to be able to connect your peripherals or devices to it.

On the software front, the device can run Raspbian, a Linux-based operating system. The processing power should be enough to be able to handle apps such as Minecraft. It is available for purchase in the United Kingdom from element14, The Pi Hut and Pimoroni, and in the United States from Adafruit. There's no word on its Indian availability, though based on the previous launches, it should be available in the country via authorised resellers soon enough.

Interestingly, a Raspberry Pi-powered product called Poco Supercomputer, is currently up on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo , which promises to offer an open source, completely hackable device. It has three Micro-USB ports, microHDMI-out, microSD expansion, two joysticks inlets, and a range of sensors. The company says that Poco Supercomputer can be used as a portable media player, a fitness tracker and a range of other things, as users see fit.

​How to remove Dell's 'Superfish 2.0' root certificate - permanently

Dell has been slammed by security experts for blatantly disregarding user security, by including a digital certificate on its PCs that allows an attacker to install malware on the system.

Dell on Monday vowed to remove the offending certificate following an outcry by users that the computer giant had repeated the same security blunder made by rival Lenovo less than a year ago, putting its customers at risk of malicious attacks.

The company plans to remove the certificate in a rolling software update, starting today.

For Dell hardware owners who don't want to wait for Dell to eliminate the offending eDellRoot certificate, security firm Duo Security has provided instructions on how to remove it immediately.

Its researchers note in a new paper that the private key shipped with the certificate -- a serious cryptographic blunder on Dell's part -- in the hands of an attacker would allow them to sign malicious code as safe and legitimate, or dupe targets into unknowingly visiting a malicious web page.

Duo Security stressed that simply removing the eDellRoot certificates from the root and personal certificate stores is not enough to protect users. Some users had indeed reported that the certificate reappeared after rebooting.

According to Dell, the root certificate eDellRoot is inserted by software called Dell Foundation Services, and was purely there to provide support and service to end users.

To remove it permanently and prevent it being reinstalled, users need to remove the eDell plugin.

"This can be accomplished by deleting the Dell.Foundation.Agent.Plugins.eDell.dll module from the system. Failure to do so may result in continued exposure to this security flaw," Duo Security said.

"Note that if you ever perform a factory reset on your Dell system, this certificate and the eDell plugin will be restored to the system and you will have to manually remove it again," it added.

Duo Security researchers Darren Kemp, Michail Davidov and Kyle Lady said the company had been analysing the eDellRoot issue before it came to public attention on the weekend.

Using the Censys IPv4 internet scanning project, it discovered a second eDellroot certificate at 24 IP addresses scattered across North America, Europe and Asia. It said this discovery suggests Dell has made the same error -- distributing identical keys on multiple models -- previously.

"This seems to be a blatant disregard for basic cryptographic security, when the goal of having a cryptographic certificate for Dell software to use could have accomplished by, eg, shipping a program that generates a unique certificate the first time you boot the computer up," the company said.

It also discovered that one of the 24 IP address using the certificate for providing web services over an encrypted connection was a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, which are used in large industrial plants.

"How this particular misconfiguration happened is unclear, but what is clear is that this certificate is showing up in some extremely unusual and frankly concerning places," Duo Security noted.

Additional instructions from Dell on how to remove the eDellroot certificate can be found here.

Dell hit by fresh Superfish scandal that leaves PCs open to attack

Computer giant injected its own PCs with software
that makes the computers vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Almost a year after Lenovo had to apologise for shipping PCs with Superfish adware that potentially exposed consumers to cyberattacks, US tech giant Dell has been hit with a similar problem.

Dell is understood to be shipping PCs that come preinstalled with a digital certificate that hackers can use to cryptographically impersonate HTTPS-protected websites.

The issue is eerily reminiscent of the debacle that hit Lenovo when adware installed on PCs left consumers vulnerable to cyber attack.

Dell is understood to have installed the transport layer security (TLS) credential eDellRoot itself as a root certificate on two computers – the Inspiron 5000 series notebook and the XPS 15.

Dell Superfish opens up consumers to attacks on e-commerce purchases and online banking
Potential hackers can extract the key and use it to sign fraudulent TLS certificates for any HTTPS-protected websites.

The problem was discovered by security researcher Joe Nord.

What this means is any of the computers with the root certificate will fail to warn users that the encrypted pages they may visit have been compromised.

‘A malicious hacker could exploit this flaw on open, public networks (think Wi-Fi hotspots, coffee shops, airports) to impersonate any website to a Dell user, and to quietly intercept, read and modify all of a vulnerable Dell system’s web traffic’
– BRIAN KREBS

This means hackers could direct consumers to what they think are legitimate websites but could leave them open to attack.

“A malicious hacker could exploit this flaw on open, public networks (think Wi-Fi hotspots, coffee shops, airports) to impersonate any website to a Dell user, and to quietly intercept, read and modify all of a vulnerable Dell system’s web traffic,” warned Brian Krebs of Krebs on Security.

It is understood that the eDellRoot certificate was installed on desktops and laptops shipped from August 2015 to today.

The idea was Dell customer support would be able to assist customers in troubleshooting technical issues.

“Unfortunately, the certificate introduced an unintended security vulnerability,” Dell stated.

“To address this, we are providing our customers with instructions to permanently remove the certificate from their systems via direct email, on our support site and Technical Support.”

Security researcher Graham Cluley said the vulnerability makes it easy for online criminals to spy on your online activity, including intercepting your email, online purchases and online banking.

“Yes. It is bad. The issue, which first became well known via a Reddit post, affected Dell computers are being shipped with a pre-installed trusted root certificate – called eDellRoot – that can intercept HTTPS encrypted traffic for each and every website you visit,” Cluley said.

In this way supposedly secure communications can be eavesdropped upon, and passwords, usernames, session cookies and other sensitive information could fall into the hands of malicious hackers.

Why Dell is picking thermal fingerprint scanning for next year's notebooks, tablets1

The Dell Latitude Extreme Rugged laptop -- the sort of device which should soon feature NEXT fingerprint scanners. Image: Dell

In 2016, Dell's commercial and ruggedized notebooks and tablets will feature patented fingerprint scanner units from Norwegian firm NEXT Biometrics.
NEXT says it is providing Dell with at least 1.2 million scanners, which are based on thermal scanning, as opposed to the capacitive fingerprint scanners almost all other vendors employ.

That approach means scanners from NEXT, headquartered in Oslo, Norway, registers temperature differences between the valleys and the ridges in a fingerprint. Other scanners use a radio frequency-based signal, measuring signal-response differences between fingerprint features.

Both techniques operate at pixel-level on the sensor but NEXT argues that sensor size and security level are tightly interconnected.

Its reasoning is that the larger surface area of the sensor, the more fingerprint details can be detected and compared -- and the larger the number of identification points in the fingerprint, the better the basis of identification.

NEXT talks about its "full-size" sensors, which measure 11.9mm by 16.9mm (0.47 by 0.67 inches) and provide a sensing area of about 201 square millimetres. In comparison, the fingerprint scanners in today's mobile phones from Apple and Samsung offer sensing areas ranging from 30 to 45 square millimetres.

Because the technology behind NEXT's fingerprint sensing is different from that used by most other vendors, the manufacturing process is unique and also less expensive, according to the firm. As a result, NEXT Biometrics says its sensors can be produced "at a fraction of comparable competitor costs".

It is the price and size that NEXT is pushing as its product's main advantages. According to NEXT CEO Tore Etholm-Idsøe an extensive comparative test conducted by the University of Madrid recently examined the NEXT sensor and concluded that size is key to fingerprint sensor system performance.

"Suppliers targeting to offer security and convenience for close to 100 percent of a population can simply not compromise on sensor size. Nor, can they offer the old swipe sensor format," Etholm-Idsøe said in a statement.

"NEXT sensors are up to 70 percent less expensive than comparable-sized competitor fingerprint sensors, which allows manufacturers to offer their customers consistent security and convenience at mass-market compatible prices."

The Dell contract was signed in November last year, for launch in real products in the last quarter this year. In the meantime, NEXT has delivered about 15,000 sensors to Dell, as a part of the preparations and ramp-up to full production, according to NEXT.

Asus All-in-One Pro Z240 - like an iMac, but better

The All-in-One Pro Z240 shows Asus trying to trump Apple's iMac hardware, and succeeding. It has a better specification, includes more advanced technologies, and is as well if not better made. The more advanced technologies include a 10-point touch sensitive screen, an Intel RealSense camera - which supports face-recognition log-on via Windows Hello, and "air gestures" - and an array microphone to get the best out of Windows 10's Cortana personal assistant.

Asus reckons the AiO Pro Z240 will appeal to business buyers who want powerful desktops, and to creative professionals - the colour is accurate enough for photographers and video editors. The touch screen means it can also be used for many retail and point-of-sale applications. But, according to Asus technical PR specialist Tom Jenner, "it still works great as a family PC, including light gaming." That's probably a bit of an understatement.

The AiO Pro Z240's raw specs include a 24-inch IPS "Ultra HD" screen showing 3840 x 2160 pixels (4K; 185ppi), a quadcore Sklylake Core i7-6700T processor, 16GB of DDR4 memory, an Nvidia GeForce 960M graphics processor with 4GB of memory, and a 1TB hard drive. On the back it has three USB 3.1 ports, one USB Type C port, plus two HDMI ports, a memory card slot, Wi-Fi etc. It comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse, and the keyboard includes a number key pad.

The GeForce 960M is a high-end mainstream rather than a gaming GPU, but it should be able to play all the major games at HD or even Full HD with decent frame-rates, if not all the effects. It has roughly twice the performance of the optional Radeon R9 M395X, which adds £200 to the price of the 27-inch iMac.

SonicMaster stereo sound is delivered by six small loudspeakers in two groups of three. According to Asus's website, two of these are "internal woofers". I tried playing the video of Prince's first public performance of Purple Rain on full volume. The result was some way from hi-fi, but it did have bass, and would fill a smallish room.

The AiO Pro Z240 is a unibody aluminium design with diamond-cut edges. The stand is cut from one block of metal so there are no joins. As with the iMac, you lose the height adjustment, but the screen offers a small degree of tilt.
On the downside, the AiO Pro Z240 is, like the iMac, a sealed box, not user-upgradable. However, 16GB should be enough of a safety margin for most users, and the motherboard can take 32GB, if Asus wants to offer it.

As is usual in the PC industry, there will be several models, from different suppliers, in different geographies. The AiO Pro I looked at is available from PC World/Currys/Dixons for £1,499. A version with a Full HD (1920 x 1080) screen and an SSD should be more widely available for £1,399. There will also be an entry-level 21.5-inch Z220 with a Core i5 and 8GB for £899, which should appeal to the family market.

It will be interesting to see how well they sell. Windows PC buyers typically expect to buy PCs for half the price of an Apple product, or less. Not many firms have tried matching Apple's prices while providing a better product, unless you count Microsoft's Surface Pro range, where Apple had no equivalent product.

ASROCK BEEBOX MINI-PC PRICE IN INDIA

Our Verdict

This particular unit costs a lot more than the competitors that we’d tested earlier and this fact underlines the performance increment. The price-to-performance argument needs to be re-evaluated considering the street price to paint a better picture.

With everyone getting on the mini-PC bandwagon, ASRock has gone ahead and launched yet another Mini PC series under the brand name Beebox. Centered around Intel’s Braswell architecture these Mini-PCs pack a little extra power than their Bay Trail-M competitors and that too for a lower TDP thanks to the newer 14nm manufacturing process. The unit we’d received had a flashy gold nish making it quite the attention grabber. There are plenty of ventilation grooves all over the device and the SoC has a small fan which channels hot air through a small plastic shroud straight out of the casing. The external gold chassis is made out of plastic and feels sturdy thanks to the reinforcement provided by the inner metal chassis. For an MRP of Rs. 17,999 they’ve included a USB Type-C port on the front and an IR remote which you’d have had to purchase separately in most of the cases. Performance wise it performs better than the ECS Liva and the Gigabyte BRIX N2807 and with mini-PCs it’s purely down to the SoC which in this case happens to be a generation ahead of the other two. However, this particular unit costs a lot more than the competitors that we’d tested earlier and this fact underlines the performance increment. The price-to-performance argument needs to be re-evaluated considering the street price to paint a better picture.

Here is a look at the specifications of the device.

• CPU: Intel Quad-Core N3150; 
• Memory: 2GB DDR3L 1600 MHz; 
• Expansion Slot: mSATA + 2.5-inch HDD; 
• Storage: eMMC 32GB; 
• Audio: Realtek ALC283; 
• LAN: Gigabit Ethernet; 
• Ports: 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.0 Type-C; 
• Dimensions (LxWxD): 110 x 46 x 118.5 mm; 
• Warranty: 1 year

Apple, acquisitions, and adherence: Inside IBM's Watson Health unit

IBM's cognitive computing effort Watson may still be best known for winning Jeopardy! back in 2011, but since then, Big Blue has been working to raise its profile in the business world.
After reportedly making just $100m from Watson in the three years that followed its quiz show win, IBM doubled down on the cognitive computing tech. In January last year, IBM set up the Watson Business Group with an investment of $1bn, aimed at recasting the natural language learning system as the motor behind cloud analytics services for the pharmaceutical, retail, banking, media, and education industries.

In April this year, IBM stepped up its Watson efforts once again with the launch of Watson Health, its first vertical offering involving the technology. That the company targeted the healthcare market initially is no surprise -- two of the first pilots of the technology involved oncology hospital Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and health insurer Wellpoint.

According to Dr Shahram Ebadollahi, VP of innovation and the chief science officer at IBM Watson Health Group, the unit was set up in part in response to the changing nature of healthcare data.

"We know that data in healthcare is becoming increasing available and it's at the point where managing it and making sense of it is becoming problematic. If you look at the so-called determinants of health -- things that have a bearing on people's health and wellbeing -- 10 percent of them are clinical data, things that get captured in a patient-physician interaction, 30 percent are genomics related data, and more than 60 percent are the so-called exogenous data -- things that happen to people outside a regular care setting," he told ZDNet. "Behavourial, social, environmental, and non-regular clinical type of data."

Among the drivers behind the growth in exogenous data is the spread of health-related connected hardware. Not only is there more data being gathered by fitness bands such as the Fitbit, or the smartphone platforms like Apple HealthKit, Google Fit, or Samsung's S Health, there's also more and more medical kit -- insulin pumps, pacemakers, blood pressure cuffs, and so on -- that's capable of recording data about its user.

"The data around activity, nutrition, other things that could be captured but don't get captured in your physician check-up have a lot of important things to say. Take a diabetic person: they probably see their physician once every 90 days, but what happens in between those visits has a lot of bearing on what direction they're going to go. This data is becoming important, especially in managing chronic conditions," Ebadollahi said.

Healthcare providers will need to gather that data, combine it with other data sets such as electronic patient records or hospital reports, and add it to their analytics systems like Watson Health Cloud to enable doctors, as well as patients themselves, to get information they can use to manage their health, he added.

But with so much exogenous data being generated on a great many diverse devices and platforms, there are obvious difficulties in getting that information out of the silos it's in and into the system the healthcare provider wants to use.

Over the six months since its inception, the Watson Health group has struck a number of partnerships with companies in the healthcare field, from medical device manufacturer Medtronic, to Johnson & Johnson, to latterly Apple - and its that last partnership IBM is hoping can help tackle the silo problem.

"IBM has a strong partnership with Apple that goes back a year and a half or so and that is about the enterprise enablement of Apple devices and apps, but in Watson Health, now this partnership goes into HealthKit and ResearchKit-type things -- how to interface with those kind of data sets, how to bring them into Watson Health Cloud, and providing services for the provider institution that needs that kind of thing for their patients."

ACQUISITIONS AND TARGET MARKETS
In the six months since its inception, Watson Health has ramped up significantly -- it got a new headquarters and a new GM recently, and has launched a number of new cloud services aimed at the healthcare industry. The headcount at the unit has doubled by "at least two orders of magnitude," IBM's Ebadollahi said. "It's growing very fast."

It's alsos acquired several businesses, including medical imaging company Merge for $1bn, which will enable the unit's analytics systems to be put to work on X-rays and other medical images as well as written material.

Watson Health has also snapped up data company Explorys, and health management software firm Phytel. Explorys connects to healthcare providers' systems to bring their data into the cloud and run analytics on it, for example, for risk stratification and care coordination for large populations of people, while Phytel's software lets clinicians manage individuals' care.

"Explorys provides a macro view of the population whose conditions you're trying to manage... and if Explorys is about a macro view of population, Phytel is a micro view: you know this person is at risk for their diabetes condition or heart failure condition, the platform enables the provider to deliver care to them and do outreach," Ebadollahi said.

Curam, which makes administration software and was bought by IBM back in 2011, has also been moved under the Watson Health umbrella. Initially a social services software product, under Watson Health, Curam has been put to work looking at how social factors can impact healthcare.

"5,000 hours per year people go about their daily lives and don't see physicians. What happens to them in those 5,000 hours has a lot of bearing on their health and wellbeing," Ebadollahi said.

The rationale behind the new additions was to give Watson Health products the ability to manage health data from single-individual level to population level, he added.

And, despite its name, Watson Health is looking beyond the healthcare industry: earlier this month it added new life sciences products including the IBM Watson Health Cloud for Life Sciences Compliance, which lets researchers put regulated workloads, such as preclinical trials, onto a cloud infrastructure.
As well as drug discovery and post-market analytics, IBM is targeting the pharma industry with its partnership with US pharmacy chain CVS Health, which is centred on the issue of adherence -- how well patients follow the treatment regimes prescribed by their doctors.

"On average, people make probably nine or ten visits to such a pharmacy store when they don't go to their doctor every month. You have an opportunity to address issues like adherence. One of the things we're working with CVS Health on is the issue of adherence -- how to make sure that pharmacist or the person in a retail clinic... one of the things they're working on is how they can help that customer or patient stay adherent to their medications. If they don't, all the money [healthcare organisations spend on drugs] is going to waste, and they're not getting better. You can extrapolate this to all sorts of uses across life sciences."

With its first six months now behind it, the main concern for Watson Health is integrating IBM technologies both old and new, Ebadollahi said.

"It's a fast-growing organisation with multiple parts. The priority is bringing all the pieces together and taking these new technologies -- our cognitive technologies, the technologies coming from our research division -- adding them to the capabilities that came through the acquisitions," he said.

How to stop Windows 10 "spying" on you

Before I begin I want to address the word "spying." Despite some of the more hyperbolic headlines and articles you might have come across, there is no evidence to suggest that Microsoft is using this data to actively spying on anyone. The data that's being collected is being used to make Microsoft products and services better, and crazy claims aside, no one has been able to produce a shred of evidence to the contrary. This is why I've put the word spying in quotation marks in the title, and I'm only using this word because this is the word most commonly used by those concerned by this issue.

If you ask me if you be worried about using Windows 10, my answer would be a "no." I have several Windows 10 installations here and I'm not concerned.

But despite such reassurances there are a lot of people who are concerned by this, and the fact that Microsoft isn't willing to give concerned users a way to opt out from data collection (which I think is a bad idea) is adding fuel to the flames.

Another problem is that all this hysteria is making people go out and look for tools and utilities to put a brakes on Microsoft being able to collect data from their PCs, and some of the tools out there are, well, shady at best. I've come across a number of "Windows 10 privacy tools" from unknown sources that do who knows what. Some tools actively display ads, and one even installs a third-party tool that displays ads in other applications.

Talk about taking what is a non-issue and blowing it up into a real problem! No self-respecting privacy tool should install adware onto a system. Period.

If you really need to block Windows 10 from sending telemetry data back to Microsoft then the utility I recommend you use is Spybot Anti-Beacon. It's a one-click solution (along with an undo button in case things don't go as you planned) from a known developer that's been in the privacy business since 2000. And there's no adware!

I've tested this tool on a number of systems and it seems to do what it says it does on the tin, and nothing more.

I want to reiterate that I don't believe that there's a need for anyone to do this because there's no evidence to suggest that Microsoft is doing anything evil with the data. But if you just want to opt out, this is a safe way to do that.

Which desktop processor should you get?

With literally over a numerous desktop processors being released each year, you need to know the right processor for your needs, be it for simple productivity tasks like surfing along with the occasional gaming or for more complicated tasks such as video editing. While technically there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to processors, you could buy the best and satiate every application on your machine while burning a hole through your pocket which is why there are different segments for desktop processors and it isn’t just about the number of cores or the clock speed.

Generation

Source: Intel® Press Deck

Every one and a half years, a new generation of processors are launched and they being a host of improvements to the table. The question is, whether these things matter to you. Take for example, the Intel® 6th Generation Core™ i7 and i5 processors that were launched last month. These new processors are 30% faster than the Intel® 3rd Generation Core™ i7 3770K and 20% faster than the Intel® 4th Generation Core™ i7 4770K processor*1. But for someone who’s just interested in casual gaming and using their desktop machine as a media consumption device, this performance increment isn’t a priority unless they’re looking towards future-proofing their machines. Laptops are a different ball game altogether but the rule of the thumb is that newer is better.

Segment

If you’re in the market for an Intel® processor, then picking between a Core™ i3, i5 or i7 processor is quite simple. The Core™ i3 is for everyday tasks like surfing, casual gaming, watching movies and for running productivity tools like Excel/Word. Then comes Core™ i5 which can do all of the above but better. AAA games like Call of Duty, StarCraft and other RTS titles have a lot of events happening in each scene which requires a decent amount of processing power and the Core™ i5 is quite capable of providing that. These two cases are what most people would fit into. Then come the enthusiasts, these are the kind of people who run a lot of power hungry applications simultaneously which requires not only a really good processor but also ample amounts of RAM. They feel most comfortable with a machine that is quick to respond even under high loads and the Core™ i7 series is most suitable for their needs.

Source: Intel.com For illustration only.

In the end come, the extreme enthusiasts who want the best and have deep pockets to afford the best. The Extreme Edition Intel® Core™ i7 processors are most apt for their needs. These are the folk who run very resource heavy tasks like video editing software and want the work to get over quick. The enthusiast Core™ i7 is also well capable of handling video editing but when time is of the essence you need every single bit of processing power you can get your hands on and the Extreme segment exists for this very reason. The Core™ i7 5960X Extreme Edition processor is the recommended Desktop processor for such folks.

Threads and Cores

Source: Intel.com For illustration only.

Think of computational tasks like cars driving on highways / freeways. The more highways there are between your destination and you, the better traffic conditions you’ll experience. To add to this, if you have more lanes along each highway, the traffic along the road gets balanced out better with faster cars moving along the fast lane while those who aren’t as eager riding on the normal lanes. In the context of a CPU, the highways are Cores and the lanes are Threads. Simply put, more is better. But it also comes down to the driving skills i.e. how an application is programmed. Having 16 threads won’t help much if your application isn’t programmed to utilise all of them. Most games only need four threads to run optimally and anything more than four might not be used at all in certain cases. Which is why gamers are generally recommended Intel®’s Core™ i5 processor which generally have four threads. Given current generation of processors, the number of threads is an integral multiple of the number of cores. So a Quad Core™ i5 6600K has four cores and four threads which a Quad Core™ i7 6700K has four cores and eight threads. One important thing to note would be that performance does not scale in an integral manner. So the Intel® 6th Generation Core™ i7 6700K is not twice as fast at the Intel® 6th Generation Core™ i5 6600K.

Source: Intel.com For illustration only.

Cache

The processor memory architecture follows a simple hierarchy and what goes where is just a matter of priority. L1 is the fastest, followed by L2 and in some cases L3 before the data gets to the RAM. Cache capacity is calculated so as maintain optimal use of real estate on the CPU die along with data needs. Since it is the fastest, data that’s stored here gets used equally fast so you only need very little of L1 cache. Data that needs to be retained for longer periods of time is relegated to the L2 cache and it goes on so forth.

Socket

The socket is where your CPU sits on the motherboard and it goes without saying that you need to pick the right socket for the processor. The latest Intel® 6th Generation Core™ processors make use of the new LGA1151 socket. LGA stands for Land Grid Array which indicated the type of contact points the socket has and the number that follows LGA tells you the number of pins it has.

Integrated Graphics

An important part of mid-range and entry-level processors are the integrated graphics options which would dictate which processor you’d need to get for a hassle free experience. So if you want to run multiple displays at really high resolutions but don’t want to play games i.e. invest in a graphics card then integrated graphics like the one present on the Intel® 6th Generation Core™ i7 6700K would do the job for you. The Intel® HD 530 graphics can easily power two 4K displays while using just 1.7 GB of RAM  at peak workload. *2

Clock Speed

The clock speed dictates how many instructions a CPU can handle in a given span of time. This is again a simple metric where more is better. Increasing clock speed also generates a lot of heat as you go higher so processors are clocked to keep temperatures in check. There are SKUs which can be overclocked and those which can’t be, you need to keep this in mind while going in for a new processor. A processor like the Intel® 6th Generation Core™ i7 6700K has an unlocked multiplier and is easily overclocked to give your more performance as and when you desire it. But you don’t always have to manually overclock your processor, when needed most processors take it up a notch without any intervention. Intel® calls this technology Turbo Boost. The Core™ i7 6700K generally runs at 3.5 GHz but should it feel that more performance is needed, it will automatically scale all the way to 3.9 GHz.

Technologies

The last thing you need to keep in mind are the different types of technologies that each processor has. Newer generations of processors usually best everything that the previous generation did. So let’s say you want to encode videos quickly, in that case Intel® Quick Sync is a recommended technology for your processor. And if you want even clearer video playback for HTPCs and such then Intel® Clear Video and Clear Video HD will give you a better experience. There are ample number of technologies that can aid your computational needs like VT-x and VT-d which helps with a better Virtualization experience or you’d want more security, in which case Secure Key is a technology that you might want to take a look at.

*1 Intel® 6th Gen Press Deck

*2 Official specifications: http://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz?q=6700k

* All explanations were sourced from individual tooltips on the processor details page.

http://ark.intel.com/products/88191/Intel-Core-i5-6600K-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz

http://ark.intel.com/products/88195/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4_20-GHz?q=6700k

Dell launches new threat protection products for the enterprise

Dell has launched a new range of security solutions designed to protect enterprise clients from evolving digital threats.

Revealed this week at the Dell World conference, the PC maker said the new range "offers a fresh approach" to malware blocking, sandboxing and data security while also improving the flexibility of a business.

In a preview offered at the event, Dell showcased the SonicWALL APT Protection Service, the first new addition to the tech giant's security portfolio. The new service, available on both firewall and email solutions, scans files and quarantines suspicious files until a verdict on the file's risk can be reached.

Built upon multi-layered sandbox technologies and able to tap into Dell's cloud forensics platform SonicWall Grid, the advanced persistent threat service makes use of real time analytics from over 500,000 next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) to improve network security.

In addition, Dell is now offering integrated management of Dell Networking X-Series switches through the Dell SonicWALL firewall interface, giving clients the option to manage their security policies through a single console, increasing operational efficiency and reducing the complexity often associated with protecting business networks.

Cyren, a cloud-based Internet security firm which provides threat detection and security analytics, have also provided antivirus signatures for Dell SonicWALL Email Security applications from version 8.2, joining DELL SonicWALL Grid AV, McAfee AV and Kaspersky AV as part of Dell's multilayer antivirus net.

Dell has also released the One Identity Cloud Access Manager 8.1, a SaaS-based, multi-authentication secure access service for internal and cloud-based enterprise applications, which will be available October 28 worldwide.

Furthermore, Dell Security Solutions announced three new additions to the Dell Data Protection (DDP) portfolio to strengthen the protection of data on the move:

Dell Data Protection | Cloud Edition 2.0 allows businesses to encrypt their data and enforce policy controls as the data moves from endpoints to public cloud platforms. The latest version caters for Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive for Business in addition to Box and Dropbox.

Dell Data Protection | Server Encryption provides software encryption for Windows servers in branch or remote offices to better protect data on vulnerable servers.

Dell Data Protection | Endpoint Recovery gives customers the option of simple continuous backup for laptops, desktops and tablets in order to reduce the risk of data loss.

At the conference, Dell also announced a hybrid cloud system, featuring technology jointly developed with Microsoft, intended for the enterprise market where players are yet to move to the cloud and require a low-risk, simple transition.

Xiaomi Launches Mi USB Fan in India at Rs. 249

Xiaomi India has launched the Mi USB Fan at Rs. 249. The new Xiaomi accessory will go on sale starting Tuesday at 2pm IST via company's online store (mi.com/in). The company announced the launch of the Mi USB Fan in a tweet.

The new Mi USB Fan from Xiaomi is likely to be sold from the company's 'Lifestyle Items' section much like the Xiaomi Mi LED Light, which went on sale at Rs. 199 back in June. Interested consumers should note that Mi.com charges shipping on orders below Rs. 500, so you'll need to pay a Rs. 50 delivery charge if you are thinking of picking up just a single piece of the Mi USB Fan.

The Mi USB Fan comes with a flexible frame and is powered by a standard USB port, which means it can be plugged into any USB charger, a COMPUTERS USB port, or indeed any power bank with a USB port. The company touts that the USB Fan works at just 25.8 decibels and can be paired with Xiaomi's Power Banks as well.

Xiaomi claims that the Mi USB Fan can be used continuously for up to 20 hours when plugged into a 5000mAh power bank or offer up to 38 hours when plugged with a 10400mAh power bank, and up to 62 hours when plugged into a 16000mAh power bank.

The company is widely expected to launch its next-generation flagship smartphone, the Mi 5, at its October 19 event. The teaser image by the company read "The next generation of new conference" (Bing Translation). Xiaomi may also introduce its next-generation Mi Band at the same event as the wearable is also likely to receive an upgrade finally.

Qualcomm enters server CPU market with 24-core ARM chip

Qualcomm has revealed its plans to enter the server CPU market with a custom processor based on a design from U.K. chip company ARM.

Qualcomm becomes the latest vendor to build a server chip using the ARM architecture, which is widely used in smartphones and tablets. Some believe ARM can challenge x86 in the data center because of its low-power characteristics.

It's aiming the chip at hyper-scale customers such as Facebook and Google, as well as service providers and large enterprises. It says the chip will be suitable for cloud workloads including big-data mining, machine learning, and Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service offerings.

Qualcomm's Anand Chandrasekher shows a test version of the company's ARM server chip

Qualcomm demonstrated a pre-production chip in San Francisco on Thursday. It's a purpose-built system-on-chip, different from its Snapdragon processor, that integrates PCIe, storage and other features. The initial version has 24 cores, though the final part will have more, said Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm senior vice president.

The company is shipping the part to big customers now for testing, he said, though he declined to name them. He also wouldn't say when a product will be available commercially; Qualcomm will provide an update on that during the next year, Chandrasekher said.

Prototype servers based on Qualcomm's upcoming ARM server chip

Still, it's been working on the part for two years and demonstrated it Thursday running a version of Linux, with the KVM hypervisor, streaming HD video to a PC. The chip was running the LAMP stack -- Linux, the Apache Web server, MySQL, and PHP -- and OpenStack cloud software.

Chandrasekher was joined by the CEOs of Mellanox and Xilinx, who are working with it to build a complete server platform. Mellanox is designing network cards to work with the SOC, while Xilinx said it will build programmable chips to speed up particular workloads.

“We believe this will enable the market, which today is fully controlled by one player, to have diversification and improved performance,” said Xilinx CEO Moshe Gavrielov, referring to Intel.

Qualcomm joins a long list of companies targeting the same space. AMD, Cavium, AppliedMicro, Marvell, and Broadcom already have ARM server processors on the market.

But Qualcomm is a powerful entrant thanks largely to its huge smartphone business, and it appears willing to invest heavily.

"We realize this is a long-term investment that will take multiple years," said Qualcomm President Derek Aberle.

It's early days for ARM chips in servers, and it doesn't seem like Qualcomm is in danger of being left behind. A few big companies have been kicking the tires with ARM servers, including PayPal and Baidu, but the market is still broadly in the testing phase, said Patrick Moorhead, lead analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

One of the biggest challenges is that the software stack needs to mature, he said.

Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64, differentiates between two classes of hyperscale customers. Giants like Facebook and Google design their own servers and write their own software. For those companies, moving to a new architecture is more feasible if they see sufficient benefits, he said.

But service providers like Amazon and Microsoft, with AWS and Azure, are running workloads for customers who developed their software for x86 servers. Those will be harder to move over.

In addition, Intel has responded to ARM with low-power versions of its Xeon chip, and with other server processors based on its Atom core, which was originally designed for mobile devices.

"You can’t look at Intel’s product roadmap and say they’re missing something," Moorhead said.

Still, ARM's model of licensing its architecture to multiple vendors makes it easier for a challenger to x86 to emerge, Brookwood said.

"ARM is really the only alternative for companies that want to do something unique. You have everyone competing within this common ecosystem, and that's a game-changer," he said.

Big service providers are often reluctant to talk about what they do in their data centers, but some companies have been kicking the tires with ARM servers. AppliedMicro said this year that PayPal has deployed its ARM chips in servers, and Marvell has said Baidu is using its ARM products.

French hosting company Online, a subsidiary of telecom giant Iliad, has also reportedly build a bare-metal cloud based on thousands of ARM servers.

Driving these companies is a desire to cut energy costs and make better use of power in their data centers.

"The limiting factor is how much power you can get in the building," Gavrielov of Xilinx said. "If you can come up with a low-power solution, that will be very attractive to them."

Dell to use VMware to help pay for EMC deal

A company logo of Dell is seen on the cover of its laptop at a Dell outlet in Hong Kong

Dell Inc is planning to use equity in cloud software company VMware Inc (VMW.N) to help pay for its acquisition of EMC Corp (EMC.N) in a deal valuing the data storage company at more than $55 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the bulk of its offer will be in cash, Dell also plans to pay EMC shareholders with "tracking stock" that follows the value of the 20 percent of VMware that EMC does not own, the people said on Friday.

A deal could be announced as early as next week, assuming that financing arrangements and the remaining negotiations are completed, the people said.

The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Dell, EMC and VMware did not immediately respond to requests for comment. EMC shares ended trading on Friday up 2.5 percent at $27.86 after tech website Re/code reported that Dell was offering $27.25 a share for EMC in addition to stock in VMware.

An acquisition of EMC would strengthen Dell's presence among corporate customers at a time when Michael Dell is trying to transform his three-decade old PC company into a provider of complete enterprise computing services.

EMC has been under pressure from Elliott Management Corp to spin off VMware. The activist investor has said EMC's structure of combining several businesses obscures "enormous" value.

Dell - which has about $12 billion in debt, according to Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi - went private in 2013 in a deal worth $25 billion, less than half EMC's current market capitalisation.

How to Disable the Windows 10 Lock Screen

Recently we’ve been covering topics related to the sign in process for Windows 10. One of the things Windows 10 includes in that process is the lock screen, which is a mobile style feature. It’s nice to have it on a Surface Pro or tablets running the new OS. However, with a laptop or traditional desktop, it’s just an extra layer of the login experience that you might want to disable.

There are a few different ways to go about killing the lock screen, but it will depend on which version of Windows 10 you’re running. Here’s how to do it in both versions.

Disable Lock Screen Windows 10 Pro

If you’re running the Pro version of Windows 10, you can use group policy editor to turn it off. To do that hit the keyboard shortcut Windows Key+R to bring up the Run dialog and type:
gpedit.msc and then Enter.

Now head to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization and select Do not display the lock screen.

Now change Not Configured to Enabled and click OK and close out of group policy editor.

Disable Lock Screen Windows 10 Home

The Windows 10 Home version doesn’t include advanced admin tools like group policy editor. However, you can still disable the lock screen with a registry hack.

Important: Making changes to the registry is for experienced users and not for the faint of heart. Before making any changes, create a Restore Point or a backup of the registry first!

First hit Windows Key+R to bring up the Run dialog and type: regedit and hit Enter.

Head to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Personalization. If you don’t have the Personalization key, you’ll need to create it.

Right-click the right pane and create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it NoLockScreen.

Now double-click the NoLockScreen value and give it a data value of 1. Then click OK and close out of Registry Editor.

That’s it! Restart your computer and the lock screen will be disabled, and go directly to the login screen.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you set your Windows 10 PC to log in automatically, it will disable the lock screen as well.

Windows Phone Recovery Tool Has a New Name and Features

Microsoft is requiring a mandatory update of its desktop app: Windows Phone Recovery Tool. The update will rename the program to Windows Device Recovery Tool.

If you’re part of the Windows 10 Mobile Insider program, you’ve probably had to use this once or twice while testing out the mobile builds…I sure have.

In fact, to install Windows 10 Mobile build 10136 you were required to use it to restore your phone to Windows Phone 8.1 first.

The name change may seem minor, but has implications of the future. The new name reflects that it’s not just for Windows Phone, but also other devices, like small tablets that will run the Windows 10 mobile OS.

Hopefully, we’ll see some of these new devices at Microsoft’s Windows 10 event in New York City on October 6th. During that event, we hope to see two new flagship phones, a new Surface Pro, and Microsoft Band 2 are among the rumored devices.

According to the programs change log, it will introduce the following changes:

• Renamed to Windows Device Recovery Tool
• New Windows Device Recovery Tool in-product help pages
• Accessibility improvements for narrator and keyboard support
• Minor bug fixes and improvements

This is a great app to have at the ready if you’re having issues with your Windows Phone, whether you’re testing Windows 10 Mobile or things just aren’t working with Windows Phone 8.1.

If you already have Windows Phone Recovery Tool, just launch it to get the update. Or you can get it via a direct download here.